Again, having been glued to Headline News and CNN when not at work, this morning the news said the Hezbollah fired more rockets into Safed, Tiberias, Nazareth, and Haifa, hitting another building, a bus, and the Bahai Temple Gardens in Haifa.
Also a car bomb detonated in Tel Aviv last night, but only killed the suicide bomber driving the vehicle.
It was amazing to watch the news this morning and see the mass evacuation (the biggest since WW II) of Lebanon by the various countries, taking refugees to Cypress to get away from the conflict. One 21-year old student from New Jersey was interviewed this morning after being rescued by a Norweigan cruise ship, and she was asked by the reporter if she was suprised by the fact that it was the Scandanavians and the Greeks who were rescuing Americans from Beirut, not the U.S. forces. She replied back, “No, I mean, not many of us [Americans in Beirut] expected too much help after the lack of response we saw in New Orleans. Everyone there was talking about how long it took to get people out of New Orleans.”
Then, as if to double-punch the live interview, CNN showed fotage of a White House rep, filmed two days ago, talking about evacuating passport-holders from Beirut: “We got this one, we’re on top of this one. We’re right there and we’re on the front lines of countries getting their people out.” Well so far, all the Americans have been rescued by other countries, including Canada.
I’m sure the whole thing is more complicated then CNN is making it sound, but it seems as if there is the typical red tape of America that hinders more then it helps in times of emergency.
On the other side, Israeli PM Olmert visited Haifa and declared that a cease-fire on the Israeli side will not be accomplished until he can be certain that Israel faces no more threats from Hezbollah.
It’ll be an interesting next few weeks, as we see how much this all develops … at least many of the Jewish/Arab communities around the world, including the community in Haifa, seem to be smart about keeping dialouge open.
