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The Land of Milk

By Paul Larudee, August 2006

The name Lebanon literally means “land of milk”. It is one of the names given to a mythical earthly paradise in ancient times, usually located in one’s neighbor’s land, which typically justified the conquest of said neighbor, assumed to be barbarians.

Results of an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon. (credit: Paul Larudee)

Of course, such justification is no longer acceptable
today under the Geneva conventions. Merely coveting one’s neighbor’s land is not enough, even if those neighbors are barbarians (today’s term is “terrorist”) unworthy of life itself. A “terrorist threat” is therefore required as a pretext for Israel to take land that it and its founders have coveted since at least 1918, when David Ben Gurion first described Lebanon’s Litani river as Israel’s future “natural” border to the north.

Yesterday the original meaning of Lebanon’s name came to mind as I sat for five hours in a shared taxi on the way to Beirut from Damascus airport. The tour had to use the longest possible route because it is the only remaining one; all the rest had been closed by Israel’s bombing of the bridges. This one had no major bridges, so even if it is bombed, a rough detour is probably still possible.

Within a few kilometers of the border crossing, in the far north of the country, was a destroyed vegetable distribution center that Israel had attacked the same morning, claiming that it was a munitions depot. At least twenty people died to prove them wrong. What could be the purpose of destroying the infrastructure in the largely Christian north? Perhaps it is Israel’s way of punishing them for showing solidarity this time with those resisting Israel’s invasion of the south, or perhaps it is just SOP to cause misery as widely as possible.

Today I will join a team of international volunteers recruited by Adam Shapiro, one of the co-founders of the ISM, and including his Palestinian wife Huwaida Arraf, Kathy Kelly (founder of Voices in the Wilderness) and other experienced nonviolent activists, who are in the midst of discussions with the local Lebanese committee of activists on nonviolent strategies that we will employ in the coming weeks and months to confront Israel’s occupation and to express the solidarity of many Americans and other peoples with the Lebanese and their rights, and to show that some of us oppose Israel’s actions enough to come here and do what we can to stop them.

Whether we use the ancient term “barbarism” or its modern equivalent “terrorism” we recognize that it is just the latest form of racism to justify taking the “land of milk” from its people, who are portrayed as savages for defending their land and way of life. We hope that we may be able to change perceptions and demonstrate in person that our fate is bound directly to that of the Lebanese, and that our best protection is the protection of the rights of everyone.

Postscript: A week later, LebanonSolidarity, with the participation of ISM-Lebanon, launched its first nonviolent resistance action with 200 volunteers and 52 vehicles. For more of Paul’s and other reports on relief activities after the ceasefire, go to www.hurriyya.blogspot.com or www.lebanonsolidarity.org.

Paul Larudee first went to Palestine in 1965 and began volunteering with the ISM in March, 2002.