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A young woman walks through a neighborhood devastated by Israeli airstrikes in southern Beirut. Report from assessment team in Lebanon
Tim Shenk An MCC assessment team is currently working in Lebanon to determine the next steps in MCC's response. MCC staff writer Tim Shenk is accompanying the assessment team and reporting developments in this blog. The team includes Jan and Rick Janzen, Middle East and Europe area directors, and Betty Kasdorf, of the MCC Food, Disaster and Material Resources department.
Rick, Jan, Betty and I were met at the airport by Bassam Chamoun, a longtime MCC staff member in Lebanon who is coordinating MCC's relief response. We spent the next three days meeting with MCC partner organizations that provided aid to people who fled the Israeli bombardment in southern Beirut. Our team visited the scene of this phenomenal destruction on Friday afternoon. Ten-story apartment buildings were reduced to piles of concrete rubble. Areas as large as half a city block were leveled. The buildings that still stand are charred and sheared of their walls, cutting open the apartments inside.
Many people in southern Beirut blame the United States for the attacks on their neighborhoods. They placed banners saying "Made in the U.S.A." on the remains of demolished buildings. Local people told us that the Israeli airstrikes destroyed Hezbollah's headquarters, media office and TV station along with many residential buildings. Most residents fled the area before the Israeli airstrikes. A local official told us that in southern Beirut, about 100 people were killed and about 6,000 apartments were destroyed. People fleeing this destruction filled parks and schools in other parts of the city. Several MCC partner organizations responded by providing food and supplies to these displaced people. During the war, MCC provided $40,000 U.S. to support the relief work of two partner organizations - the Middle East Council of Churches in Beirut, and Development for People and Nature Association in the southern city of Sidon. We visited one center where the Middle East Council of Churches distributed food and other items such as soap and candles. It was located in the basement of the Near East School of Theology, a Protestant seminary that is an MCC partner organization as well. The seminary's president, Dr. Mary Mikhael, told us that the war immediately brought back the trauma of Lebanon's civil war in the 70s and 80s, when the seminary was also used as a relief center.
Dr. Mary Mikhael, right, speaks with Janet Janzen, MCC's co-director for Europe and the Middle East, at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut. The school is being used as a relief center. Like most people in Lebanon, Dr. Mikhael is furious at Israel for causing such suffering in her country. "Thirty-three percent of those who were killed are children," she said. "So, it was a mad war, and it was a shame for the history of Israel and for the Jews." Dr. Mikhael does see some hope in the tragic events of the last month, however. She says that the relief that Christians and other religious communities provided to displaced people has brought Lebanese society closer together. "Most of the displaced happened to be Shiite Muslims," Dr. Mikhael said. "They have been received by the Christians and the Muslims and the Druze with open hearts."
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We arrived at Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut on a flight from Jordan Friday morning. The Israelis repeatedly bombed the airport during the 34-day war, and work crews were busy filling in bomb craters in the runways as we landed. The pilot slowed the aircraft very quickly once we touched down and taxied off the runway to avoid a bomb crater directly ahead of us.
