Summer 2006 Conflict

There's a main highway running north-south through Lebanon, and it appears that most of the bridges along it were bombed. The quick fix was French-military bridges.
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The July War (Israel/Hezbollah/Lebanon) began just before we moved to Jordan, and we thought about not coming, perhaps the conflict would widen.  But it didn't, thank goodness.  I didn't think that we would be going to Lebanon during our year here, but it seemed safe, and Shazzam had a business trip there, called us and told us to pack our bags and join him it was wonderful.  And I'm so glad that we did, not only because it is a wonderful place but because the long-suffering people of Lebanon deserve our support and our tourist dollars.  If you want to find out more about the conflict, ask someone else.   Its hard to say that either side was right, I am just sorry for the civilians who suffered.  We asked our driver to take us to the area that was hit, because the areas that we were going to had no damage at all.  All of the photographs that I'm showing here were taken within the space of about fifteen minutes, just driving through the area.  We couldn't get out of the car, after all this is Hezbollah headquarters within Beirut, and they aren't very happy with Americans right now; after all, my taxpayer money may have purchased those bombs.  I felt terrible seeing the damage, especially realizing that it was in a predominantly residential area.  It wasn't one or two buildings, it was whole blocks of the Muslim neighborhood taken out.  But they were rebuilding.  Now our children can identify the results of aerial bombardment and see what war does to a country.   And maybe work towards ending war one day.

whole blocks taken down