Concord Monitor, NH
Aug. 25, 2006
Our place of peace, their world of war
No summer idylls for Lebanese kids
By KATY BURNS
For the Monitor
August 25. 2006 8:00AM
It was a near-idyllic evening just a month ago in the only Henniker
on Earth.
A local barbershop chorus, the Concord Coachmen, was the
entertainment. Listening were well over 100 people, most of whom had
brought their own folding chairs, gathered on the shaded lawn outside
New England College’s art gallery.
Many were gray-haired and a bit wrinkly, but there were young
families, too. A few toddlers took full advantage of the soft grass
and their indulgent overseers, and they romped, sweetly, in front of
the chorus. One particularly exhilarated young lady ran first one
way, then the other, always followed by one of her adult keepers. She
was having the time of her extremely young life. And she was also
about as safe as a child could be.
As harmonies filled the summer air, a welcome breeze arose, almost
dispelling the heat we had all been enduring.
The singers took a break. Much of the audience retreated to folding
tables laden with punch and cookies that had been provided, we were
told, by "the peace group." We had no idea what the peace group was,
and it didn’t matter. In this quintessential college town, there had
to be a peace group. Peace groups are as much a part of our New
England heritage as stone walls and steepled meetinghouses.
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Refreshed, the audience and the entertainers enjoyed a few more
songs, including a medley of stirring patriotic tunes. Then all
dispersed into the deepening dusk.
It was wonderful. But it was hard to forget that, half a globe away,
in the perpetually tortured Middle East, society had abruptly,
explosively shattered once again. There were no peace groups there,
not really. Had there been one, it would have been far too busy to
serve punch and cookies.
Children were not cavorting on soft grass. They were huddled in bomb
shelters, at best. They were stranded amid piles of rubble, clutched
tightly in the arms of their shell-shocked and frantic parents. They
were dead, horribly dead, or lost, separated from their mothers and
fathers, accidents of war, collateral damage.
The picture in Henniker that evening was an updated 19th century
Currier and Ives illustration brought to life. In Israel and Lebanon
– and in violence-wracked Iraq and in Gaza, where Israel’s bombing of
a power plant has created a humanitarian nightmare – we had the raw
and vivid footage of the savagery of 21st century warfare.
Now, at least in the case of Israel and Lebanon, there’s a ceasefire.
No one seems to know exactly what that means, and few believe it will
last.
Much of Lebanon is rubble. Its infrastructure – roads, bridges, power
plants, ports – has been laid waste by Israeli bombs and warships. It
is an ecological calamity as well, especially an 87-mile long oil
slick caused by Israeli destruction of an oil storage depot – a
moving catastrophe that threatens not only Lebanon’s fragile
coastline but also that of its neighbors, including Israel.
Lebanon had spent nearly two decades rebuilding after another clash
with Israel and a brutal civil war. It was bright and shiny and open
for business. Now it’s shuttered again. Close to 1,200 people are
dead, the vast majority civilians.
Israel got off a lot better when it came to physical damage. The
rockets that streaked incessantly into the country, terrifying as
they might have been, were far less damaging than Israel’s massive
air strikes. While fires devastated farmlands along the Lebanon
border, Israel’s infrastructure is essentially intact, and fewer than
one-third of its 157 dead were civilians.
Yet the more seriously damaged party in this madness may well be
beleaguered Israel, surrounded by mortal enemies. Its aura of
military invincibility is seriously damaged, and its principal
nemesis in the latest conflict is lionized by Arabs throughout the
Middle East.
No matter what anyone claims, there are no winners here.
Tranquility lost
We can be thankful that at least some guns have gone silent, however
temporarily. But the future of the most recent combatants, and that
of the benighted citizens of Gaza, looks bleak. Nearby Iraq is a
cauldron of violence and sectarian hatred that boils furiously each
day, clearly beyond the control of our military or its nominal Iraqi
"allies."
It is nearly impossible for most of us, whose forebears probably came
to this country to escape Europe’s incessant and bloody wars, even to
begin to imagine the day-to-day stress and sadness of living in such
places. Despite the efforts of some politicians to scare us half to
death, the truth is we live in security and even tranquility.
Once, Lebanon offered a similar tranquility to those fleeing violence
elsewhere, as our friend Steve reminded us in an e-mail the other
day. His father and several relatives were among the lucky few who
escaped Turkey’s brutal, bloody purge of its ethnic Armenian
minority. For 20 years, the remnants of the shattered family found
welcome refuge in Beirut.
Steve’s father emigrated from Lebanon to the United States in 1939,
but he never lost his love for the nation and the city. Once a
vibrant, tolerant city known as the Paris of the Middle East, Beirut
gave him sanctuary, and he instilled that same affection in his only
son. Today, that son is heartbroken, as are so many other Americans
with ties to that blood-soaked part of the world.
And all of us who live far removed from the conflict find woes half a
world away casting their sad shadow here, even in a place as serene
as the only Henniker on Earth.
(Monitor columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)