[Peace-discuss] Israel bombs Red Cross ambulances

Thu Jul 27 10:56:32 CDT 2006

Add this to the story of "apparently deliberate" (Kofi
Annan) Israeli attacks on UN positions in Lebanon.

What an ally!  We should definitely be speeding up
munitions deliveries ... oh, sorry, we're already
doing that.

Ricky  

--- James Holstun <jamesholstun at hotmail.com> wrote:

> From: "James Holstun" <jamesholstun at hotmail.com>
> To: palestineisrael at lists.riseup.net,
> baldwinricky at yahoo.com, ckendri at luc.edu,
> shanna3 at acsu.buffalo.edu, zarembka at buffalo.edu
> Subject: X marks the spot
> Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 15:32:56 -0400
> 

---------------------------------
Not only are they the most moral army in the
world--they're damned good shots, too!
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=295
Israeli Missiles Rip Into Medics' Esprit de Corps

Tuesday, July 25, 2006 | Los Angeles Times
by Megan K. Stack

TYRE, Lebanon ï¿½ In the burning haze of the missile
strike, Qasim Chaalan thought he had died. But piece
by piece, he noticed that he was still there, inside
the ambulance. He could still feel his body. He opened
his eyes, and discovered he could see.

This image taken from video made by Lebanese Red Cross
workers Sunday, July 23, 2006 in Qana, south Lebanon,
and made available to AP Television, shows the roof of
a Lebanese Red Cross ambulance destroyed in what they
say was an Israeli airstrike. The Red Cross workers
who provided AP Television News with the video said
that nine ambulance workers were wounded in the
explosion as they tried to ferry injured people from
the town of Qana, 20 kilometers (about 12 and a half
miles) from Tyre, to hospital. (AP Photo)

He and the other medics were lucky: They had survived
the blow of an Israeli missile. Dazed and slow, one of
the men fumbled for the radio and began, "We have an
accidentï¿½. " He didn't finish the sentence. A second
missile smashed with a roar into the ambulance behind
them.

Six Red Cross volunteers were wounded in the Sunday
attack, and the injured family they were ferrying to
safety suffered fresh agonies. A middle-age man lost
his leg from the knee down. His mother was partially
paralyzed. A little boy's head was hammered by
shrapnel.

Perhaps most dangerous of all, the attack blunted the
zeal of the band of gonzo ambulance drivers who have
doggedly plugged away as Red Cross volunteers. Young
men and women with easy grins and a breezy disregard
for their own safety, they have remained as the last
visible strand of social structure intact after days
of Israeli bombardment.

When the fighting erupted between Israel and
Hezbollah, many of the volunteers sent their families
north and stayed behind to help their countrymen. Clad
in helmets and flak jackets, they brave a rain of
Israeli bombs, a crazy maze of cratered roads and
perpetual uncertainty over how bad the fighting might
become. Fiercely proud of their work at the Red Cross,
they had clung desperately to the hope that, as
lifesavers, they would be spared.

Many times over nearly two weeks of bombing, medics
say, missiles struck the roads nearby; they felt
harassed. But somehow, they managed to convince
themselves that they were invulnerable to attack.

"We used to kid ourselves, think we couldn't be hit,"
38-year-old volunteer Imad Hillal said. "Even in this
war, even when bombs fell around us, we never thought
we'd be hit. But what happened has changed
everything."

Sitting in the radio room at Red Cross headquarters
here Monday, Hillal rested his head wearily on one
hand. When asked whether the ambulances would continue
running, tears clouded his eyes.

The Red Cross team had been sent out into a night that
thundered with falling bombs. They'd been assigned to
ferry three wounded civilians out of the heaviest
battle zone of the southern borderlands on Sunday. One
team of medics had headed north from the town of
Tibnin, the wounded family stretched flat on gurneys
in the back. The other team had rushed south from Tyre
to meet them halfway.

>From the time the call came in, Chaalan hadn't been
able to shake his dread. He didn't understand why. He
had made the trip plenty of times before.

As he made his way out to the ambulance, he turned to
the other medics loitering around and, surprising even
himself, used a traditional Arabic farewell that
implies death may be near.

"I'll see you, forgive me," he told them. He'd never
said that before. One of his colleagues followed him
out the door. "Please take care," she said. She'd
never done that before; it made him even more nervous.
He brushed her off and climbed into the ambulance.

The three young men drove out to the town of Qana.
Looking up, they could see red lights in the sky
overhead. Israeli planes, Chaalan thought.

They came to a stop on a stretch of battle-pocked
roadway in Qana.

The medics favor that spot because the ambulances,
with their trademark red crosses emblazoned on the
roofs, can be seen clearly from above. They thought it
was safe.

They climbed down, removed the patients from the other
ambulance and slid them into place. They moved fast;
everybody was nervous.

Then the roar and smash of the missiles shattered the
summer night. Both ambulances were hit, directly and
systematically, by Israeli bombs, the medics said.

Everybody else must be dead, Chaalan remembered
thinking as he slowly came to his senses. He called
out his first medic's name, and got an answer. He
called out the second man's name. Silence. "We lost
one man," he thought.

The grandmother had crawled out of the ambulance after
the first missile strike, but the medics didn't
realize that. There was no way the adults could have
survived, the medics decided.

So they grabbed the little boy and took shelter in a
nearby basement.

Most of the houses on the street stood empty,
abandoned by families who'd heeded Israeli evacuation
orders and fled north. More bombings continued to
puncture the night.

Huddled in the darkness of the basement, they ran
their hands over their own bodies, checking for
injuries. The boy's head, full of shrapnel, was
bleeding badly. They used T-shirts to bandage his
wounds.

Then they waited in the darkness. They managed to get
through to the Red Cross station from their
cellphones. An hour and a half dragged past.

Finally, Hillal and the other medics made it to the
scene. "It was a disaster," he said.

"The cars had exploded all over the place. There was
one man so badly injured we didn't know what to do for
him."

At first, the Red Cross had considered whether to stop
making ambulance runs altogether, he said. Then the
organization thought better of it and recommended that
the teams only stop driving south. Hillal didn't know
what would happen. He only knew that the ground rules
had been blasted away ï¿½ the medics had been stripped
of their sense of safety.

"When we were driving in the ambulance before, we did
not feel we are safe 100%," Chaalan said. "But now
it's direct on us."

On Monday, medics and the wounded family were all in
the hospital. The grandmother lay on her side in a
hospital bed, face turned to the sky outside her
window.

"Give me something for the pain," she groaned. "I'm
going to vomit." A son and grandson were unconscious
in the intensive care unit. Her son, whose leg had
been struck by the missile, lay under a tangle of
tubes. The sheet reached just below the knee. His calf
wasn't there anymore.

Chaalan was bleeding from the ear, and stitches bound
his chin and a leg. He needed a few more days to
recover, but he insisted on going home.

He peeled off his bandages before stopping by to kiss
his mother.

And then he was back at the Red Cross station, padding
around in a Las Vegas T-shirt, insisting that he was
ready to get back to work.

"I prefer to die when I'm helping people," he said.
"Not when I'm hiding."

ï¿½ 2006 The Los Angeles Times 

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