100,000 families affected by conflict Lebanon an mounting, warns Catholic aid agency

Today, the German-based Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need, (ACN) described the number of families affected by the ongoing military clashes in Lebanon to be exceeding 100,000, most of them Christian.

ACN announced that, “While the number of casualties exceeds 300 dead and 900 wounded, many of the some 100,000 affected families are taking refuge in public and private schools as well as in convents and other Church buildings,”
“At present, canned food, milk for children, detergents, soap, and medication are the items most urgently needed”.

ACN has sent 25,000 dollars as an immediate response to an appeal launched by Issam Bishara, regional director of the Pontifical Mission.
Father Joaquín Alliende, ACN’s international ecclesiastical assistant, strongly appealed to Catholics world wide to “follow the call to prayer of the Holy Father for peace in the Middle East.”

" the number of families affected by the ongoing military clashes in Lebanon to be exceeding 100,000, most of them Christian ."

Not so. Despite having at least one Christian village severely hit, including its Saint George Greek Orthodox church, after the residents (mostly elderly people) left, Rashayya al Fukhar, on the western slopes of the Hermon. Plus a number of Christian villages completely isolated in the region going from Maroun el Ras to the seashore, no Hezbollah inside. They have given refuge to neighboring Shiite civilians who prefered to stay, those having links with Hezbollah left at the beginning of the operations after israeli leaflets have been thrown over their houses.

The difficult problem now is providing these isolated villages with supplies and medicine. That is what humanitarian organizations should try to solve for the time being, get the provisions to these villages.

If you mean by affected, having a direct negative effect, then everybody in the whole region, israeli and lebanese, suffered from the direct negative effects of the war, by losing business, jobs, nerves, sleep, some leaders losing temper, and you name it.

As for the 91% of Americans not understanding the war, no wonder, the same ratio applies in the countries concerned. Great clichés hold up high by the politicians mislead the large population.

NYer, off the topic, I have been watching that miniseries on EWTN about the Maronites. Thank-you for refering to that presentation. I have learned more about this rite in a new and better way. Also had seen for a short time, on the same cable channel, with my senior mother, what I do believe is another Eastern rite of the Catholic Church, the Melkite rite celibrating Divine Liturgy in the chapel this morning. I figured it was that rite because Father Pacwa was there. If my memory is correct, every year at the Holy Week, he says he visits a Melkite rite parish in Texas for that particular week just prior to Easter. He was assisting in that Divine Liturgy. It had to be Melkite because the priest has his back facing the people, in the Maronite rite, the priest faces the people like it is in the Latin rite. Take care.

It's a fact that most Americans don't know s&*% about Lebanon; many posts here are amalgamations of inaccurate generalizations and cut-and-paste stereotypes. Not that I put myself up as better than that: I certainly know less than many other FReepers, some with roots in Christian Lebanon.

How many of us can even conceive of what a 15-year civil war can do to a nation? Think what a four year civil war did to the United States, in tems of economic and social devastating the South, which took 50 years to recover.

And the situation is much, much more complex in Lebanon. Just for an introduction, I suggest we all read the CIA World Factbook entry on Lebanon:

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/le.html

Two items:

(1) Lebanon is not some crappy camel-herding Muslim sandtrap. It was, for decades, a modern, economically progressive and beautiful country, "French Riviera East": the bustling banking and commercial hub of the region, full of universities and culture and upscale tourism (they used to call Beirut "Paris on the Mediterranean"), majority Christian (these people were Christian for 500 years before Muhammad was born).

(2) The civil war (1975-91) plus Israeli invasions caused an outflux of hundreds of thousands of emigrants, most of them Christian, and an influx of Palestinian refugees, skewing the population balance from 60% Christian-40% Muslim to the reverse, 60% Muslims - 40% Christians.

And here's the worst part: realize that Lebanon, because of its rugged mountain terrain, historically had lots of religiously and ethnically distinct people living in relatively isolated villages: Maronite Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Melkite Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Armenian Catholic, Syrian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Chaldean, Assyrian, Copt, Shi'a, Sunni, Druze, Isma'ilite, Nusayri, etc. Israeli bombing and incursions tended to drive all these people together and unite them for the first time in history under the banner of "Lebanese with a case against the Israelis" (I know, hard to figure, but sometimes having your village bombed to oblivion will do that to ya.)

Am I saying this because I sympathize with Hezbollah? Not a bit. Not even he Arabs like them, because even in this mess they're considered a rogue minority, Shiites (as opposed to Sunni), cat's-paws for Syria and ultimately proxies for Iran. Their aims are repugnant and their tactics are practically demonic.

It's clear they use rocket attacks, kidnappings, etc. against Israel to provoke this kind of Israeli response, knowing that the more civilians are killed, the more the people of Lebanon will be traumatiazed and radicalized, and the more world opinion will turn against Israel. It's a cynical, devilishly clever, and immensely immoral strategy on the part of the Hezbollah. And I fear it's working.

ACN offers Emergency Aid to Lebanon, Northern Israel and the Gaza Strip

Archbishop Chacour
(Jul 26, 2006) People devastated by the conflict in Israel and Lebanon are to receive more than $64,600 in emergency help from Aid to the Church in Need.
In a sign of the severity of a crisis which is fast becoming a humanitarian disaster, ACN is going beyond its main brief of helping the persecuted and poverty-stricken Church to enable Christian leaders to provide desperately needed help for people of all faiths whose lives have been left in tatters by the fighting.

In response to the growing crisis in Lebanon, Aid to the Church in Need is sending out nearly $27,700 to the Pontifical Mission in Beirut. Christian leaders have opened schools, convents, parish centers and other public buildings for use by people fleeing bomb-damaged areas close to the Israeli border. With latest reports of up to 100,000 displaced families, ACN has been told that canned food, milk for children, detergents, soap and medication are urgently needed.

Bishop Elias Nassar last week sent out an appeal on behalf of Catholic communities in his Diocese of Saida, south of the Lebanese capital Beirut, saying that Christians were already running short of supplies just days after opening their buildings to people made homeless by the conflict between Israel and Islamic militants Hezbollah.

Another grant of $18,500 is intended for 30 worst-affected families in the Galilee region in northern Israel, again following an urgent appeal for help, this time made by Archbishop Elias Chacour of Akka.

Archbishop Chacour, whose Galilee-based Mar Elias schools and colleges program has won international renown, told how the region was "practically paralyzed," with people dependant on a daily wage desperate for help after being sent home from work amid the crisis. In a message to Aid to the Church in Need, he wrote, "I never imagined that a day would come when I would have to make an appeal, a kind of SOS for us Christians in Galilee. We wish to wipe away the tears of the children and parents in these difficult times."

Joining forces with Catholic relief organisation Caritas-Jerusalem, ACN has sent out a further aid package of nearly $27,700 to people caught up in the conflict in the Gaza strip. When Gaza's only power generation plant was knocked out earlier this month, electricity supplies were down and water pumps were rendered useless. Those medical centers still able to operate are dependent on what little power local generators can produce.

As reported by Zenit news service, Gaza's tiny Christian community is desperate to help where possible. Father Manuel Mussallam, parish priest of the Latin Convent in Gaza said, "In the streets at night, all you can hear is children weeping. They are so scared." While stressing the need for food and water, he also said, "We need freedom from fear. We want peace."

Aid to the Church in Need has launched an appeal for aid in Lebanon and Israel. To make a donation or for information, contact Aid to the Church in Need, 725 Leonard Street, PO Box 220384, Brooklyn, NY 11222-0384. T.718.609.0939.

http://www.aidtothechurchinneed.com/home.cfm?5C510B09061048797E6204010C0C7B0400010C0600076006111109180108086468627C6E7D0507

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.