Endorsing Obama

Friends of mine wrote this endorsement and are trying to spread it around. If it speaks to you, please email it to those voting tomorrow (or thereafter), or even post it to your own blog -- they are trying to spread it as widely as possible.

We are supporting Barack Obama for president and we want to urge you to consider voting for him in the primary in your state. There are many reasons we support Obama, but we focus here on what we take to be the most important considerations. We would like very much to hear your views too, whether you agree with us or not.

This is a pivotal time for the United States. The last few years have seen us go down the wrong path on many issues of national and global importance. It is vital that we now choose a president who can bring us back to the right and reasonable path, restoring what we know can be great about our country and repairing the world we live in.

Among Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have very similar policy platforms. Either candidate's policies could in principle deliver what we need -- if they can get it done. "Getting it done" will require four things. First, they must be able to win the presidential election against the Republican nominee. Second, they must be able to forge an effective governing coalition in Congress. Third, they must be able to win the respect of people and leaders around the world. Fourth -- and this may be the most important if elusive factor -- they must be able to inspire all Americans to come together with a sense of common purpose, shared sacrifice, and dedication, to work to make the country and the world a better place.

Obama is our choice because he alone appears likely to succeed on these four criteria. We admit we were first drawn to him because of the "inspiration" factor. When we watch his speeches, or read his books, we are inspired in a way that we have not been by any candidate in our lifetimes. We highly recommend his first book, "Dreams from my Father", written years ago, before he entered national politics. It is actually a good book! When we read it, we couldn't help but feel astonished that someone who writes and thinks so clearly and honestly could actually be running for president. If you haven't watched any of his speeches, watch his South Carolina victory speech:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-iVAPH_EcmQ

What's important is not how we feel, though, but how Obama makes people feel across the country. You can search on Google with the query "Why I support Barack Obama" (make sure to use quotes) and you will find about 108,000 hits telling similar stories. You will see stories not just from stereotypical Democratic party constituents, but from lifelong Republicans, libertarians, evangelical Christians... people from across the full range of the American political spectrum. You can see video testimonials at youbama.org (we particularly recommend "Why Lorna switched from Clinton to Obama", currently #3 on their most popular list). Obama's impact on the youngest adults is most striking and significant. He is inspiring a whole generation to become active in setting the direction of their country, and this is the best hope we have.

In contrast, if you search Google with "Why I support Hillary Clinton" you will find fewer than 5,000 hits. (Variations on the phrases yield much smaller numbers.) The statements for Clinton are impassioned and genuine, but they are almost all from the stereotypical Democratic base. We have no doubt that many people will vote for Clinton and support her if the choice is between her and a Republican, just because they are committed to the Democratic party. Clinton has fought long and hard for core Democratic party issues, and she is respected as a tireless partisan. But that's the problem: she is the consummate partisan at a time when most Americans feel we need to move beyond the partisanship of the last 15 years. Clinton does not have the potential to transform our political landscape. As Obama has said, and many have said about him, on the day he is inaugurated, our country will see itself differently, and the rest of the world will see us differently too.

Obama's potential as a transformative political force is fundamentally why he is best positioned to succeed on the other points above.

1) Who is most likely to win in the general election? It now seems very likely that John McCain will be the Republican nominee for president in 2008. McCain is a strong candidate, appealing to free-thinking voters (such as ourselves) who are not committed to a particular party. National polls currently show a close race between him and either Clinton or Obama. In the most recent poll we have seen (Washington Post-ABC News), McCain beats Clinton 49-46, but Obama beats McCain 49-46. And yet, more Democratic-leaning voters view Clinton as the stronger candidate in the general election. This perception of her greater "electability" seems to be the source of some of her support, but it is simply mistaken. Obama has a much wider reach into the independents and swing voters who will decide this election. Most importantly, he has received an astonishing degree of support from Republicans,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020102663_pf.html

which will be vital in winning the general election and building a new national consensus for how to set our country back on track.

2) Who is most likely to forge an effective governing coalition in Congress, in order to implement the changes we so desperately need?

While Clinton's main strength is as a partisan, Obama's strength is as a coalition builder.

A central theme in Clinton's campaign against Obama is his lack of "experience". Yet Obama has held elected office for longer than Clinton has; and he spent his formative years as a community organizer, which is all about getting people to talk to each other and getting things done against the odds. As an example of how he has been able to apply these skills in political office, look at his work on reforming the death penalty in Illinois (as a state senator). You can read about it at

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/12/obama.death.penalty.ap

Here's a summary of just one aspect of Obama's contribution: he sponsored a bill that would require all interrogations in capital cases to be videotaped. The bill was initially opposed by police unions and the majority of the legislature, and the Illinois governor said he would not sign it even if it passed. Obama got all the parties to talk to each other and to figure out what they could agree on. He compromised on some implementation issues, but not on the core. The bill ended up passing unanimously and was signed into law.

3) Who is best able to win the respect of people and leaders around
the world?

Here is an excerpt from a New York Times magazine article from last November:

"There are maybe 200 people on the Democratic side who think about foreign policy for a living," as one such figure, himself unaffiliated with a campaign, estimates. "The vast majority have thrown in their lot with Obama." ... Most of them served in the Clinton administration, too, and thus might be expected to support Hillary Clinton. But many of these younger and generally more liberal figures
have decamped to Obama. And they are ardent. As Ivo Daalder, a former National Security Council official under President Clinton who now heads up a team advising Obama on nonproliferation issues, puts it, "There's a feeling that this is a guy who's going to help us transform the way America deals with the world."

Clinton's election, in contrast, would signal "more of the same" to the rest of the world. In part this comes from how she handled her role in the Senate votes authorizing Bush to go to war. She did not project visionary leadership or raise the hard questions that some other Democrats, less concerned about polls and popularity, did at that crucial time. Rather Clinton seemed like someone trying to protect her national electability in a climate of fear. She did not show courage at a time when our country most needed it. Obama did.

In late 2002, while Clinton was voting to authorize Bush's move towards war, Obama was speaking out at anti-war rallies. At a rally in Chicago, he said: "I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined costs, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than the best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaida." Of course Obama was not in the Senate at that time; he was not under the same kind of national scrutiny that Clinton was. Yet time and again, Obama has shown that he is willing to speak the truth as he sees it even when it might be unpopular with his audience.

Speaking at Martin Luther King's church in Atlanta, he called on his mostly black audience to recognize homophobia, anti-semitism, and xenophobia as genuine problems in the Black community.

Speaking to a strongly pro-Israel group of American Jews, he recognized that both Israelis and Palestinians have suffered greatly from the failures of peace efforts, and that both sides will have to make heavy sacrifices to achieve peace.

Speaking to auto workers and executives in Detroit, he talked about the "oil addiction" that jeopardizes our national security and about the need for tougher fuel economy standards in US auto manufacturing.

Speaking to teachers' unions, he has endorsed "merit pay", a position the unions are strongly opposed to but which he feels may be essential for bringing better teachers to public schools.

We could go on, but we have probably already worn out your patience. Here is the bottom line for us. This election presents a once-in-a-generation chance to choose a president who can truly make us feel proud to be Americans, who can inspire the full range of Americans to come together to fix our country and achieve its greatest possibilities, and who has the vision and skills needed to make these changes real. It is a chance to say to ourselves and the rest of the world, "Look, we got it right this time!" It felt like that chance would never come, but here it is. Seize it.

Your friends,

Josh Tenenbaum
Mira Bernstein


P.S. If you live in a state that votes on February 5th or later, please go to the polls and vote regardless of how prospects look in your state. Unlike in the general presidential election, every vote counts as delegates are awarded in rough proportion to the number of votes a candidate receives. Every vote can make a difference!

I'm the blogger here at Attempts, and I approve this message.

Another good Obama endorsement can be found here.

Get the word out!

Vote!!

Update: I also recommend Hilzoy's Obama endorsement, which addresses the oft-peddled falsehood that Obama has no substance to him -- and does so with terrific positions that I didn't know he'd taken on not-so-high-profile issues (as well as other stuff). Worth a read.

Report from North of Beirut 2

Updated, see below.

The latest letter from my sister-in-law, trapped in Lebanon, north of Beirut. Earlier letters can be found here: one, two, three. (The last of these was temporarily removed, but has now been restored.)

When I wrote some of you on Thursday morning after the news of the airport bombings we still thought that this was an isolated target in Beirut and that the main target was in the South. I said I was planning to spend the coming days at the pool on the roof of my building in Beirut. I wasn't quite grasping the severity. That evening I went to my yoga class, where the instructor Tania asked us to dedicate our practice to peace in the South and in Israel. No one anticipated the scale at which the rest of the country would be bombarded. Yesterday as we saw that the bombs were targeting all along the coast to Syria it became clear that the phrase "nowhere is safe" was not an idle threat. Again, we don't feel that we are in any danger where we are. It's just that for vagabonds like myself and the others that are attracted to the development business what we find hard to handle is the sense of being trapped, immobilized, and for a rare moment in our over-active lives prone to inertia.

In the car yesterday on the way up to Batroun our project driver, Rabih looked back at me and said "shu, Adina, you are scared? You want to leave us?" He said this with just a slight condescending smirk of someone who has lived through things you have not. "You won't stay and fight with us? We will get you a kafiyah?" We laughed. Rabih is a good friend, he is scheduled to get married next week and had been upset with me at not extending my trip to be here for the wedding. He understands that my wanting to leave has little to do with being scared. It has to do with the fact that, as all my Lebanese friends have reminded me when deciding whether to stay in Beirut, I have no real ties here to dedicate myself to – this is not my home. Huda, our project financial director, was sitting in the front seat of the car, summoned up by our project director to work out some financial issues on the project. She looked back at me and said in her slow, straightforward way, "You see, Adina, we have been living this way for 30 years." She said it as though I were being picked up from the airport on my first trip to Lebanon and needed an orientation in modern Lebanese history. It's a trait of feeling victimized to want to articulate this victimization as often as relevant.

During the day the yesterday contingency plans were made for our project, one of which is that we have to shut down altogether and I don't come back to Beirut once we leave. When I left Beirut yesterday around noon my country director had told me to pack light and be ready for an evacuation that afternoon or the next day. I spend a quarter of my time in Beirut and stay in a furnished apartment there where I leave clothes and a few other things – mostly the short skirts and tank tops I can't wear in Cairo. Following instructions to pack light I left most of my skimpy wardrobe behind, along with six bottles of good Lebanese wine from a day trip to the Ksara winery with friends last weekend that I was planning to bring back to Cairo, where Lebanese wine is a hot commodity; some samples of products from the micro- and small- food processing companies our project works with – a few different types of honey and labneh in olive oil – from trips to the Beqaa last week to work on business plans and artisinal cheese making; a yoga mat; and a calligraphy print I bought in the old city of Damascus on my last trip by an aging Palestinian artist, which translates loosely, as my memory serves me, to "I spent my life looking for Allah, and just when I was about to give up my search, I looked in the mirror, and saw Allah in me, looking back at me." Obviously, my clothes, wine, and small piece of art are dust compared to what families are prepared to lose in conflicts like this one, but it gives me a tiny speck of the feeling of abandoning a home.

At some point during the late afternoon when a military post near our hotel was being bombed, both my Lebanese and Egyptian mobile phones lost service for several hours, and we were told by the hotel reception that internet was out permanently because of the bombing. I realized later that bombings simply offer great excuses for bad service, and found a café down the street with high speed internet access. (My friend Sahar agreed with this assessment – apparently during the war people would avoid commitments and engagements they didn't feel like dealing with for ages, claiming that they could not get in touch because the phone lines were out). I got a little anxious, much more at the idea of being cut off from contact – especially after having established contact with so many friends and family – than at the idea of actually being bombed, the possibility of which has still really not hit me, remote as it is where I am.

After sending my last email last night I went for a beer with Kim, my friend with the infant in Amman being taken care of by her husband who reported proudly yesterday that he had taken their 9 month old swimming, only to admit that he put him in the water in jeans because he couldn't find the bathing suit, and had forgotten the sunscreen, and had bought him a hamburger for lunch. She needed a drink. While we were drinking our Almaza one of the other American contractors, the head of another NGO project here, came to find us and to tell us that flyers had been distributed in the area informing that a bridge just north of the hotel was being targeted and that we should get back to the hotel asap. We said we'd finish our beers. The table next to us of about 12 young Lebanese men overheard the conversation. "It is far," they said, "don't worry, it's far, not close." Having heard countless renditions of "close, close, not far" when asking directions in this region over the years I wondered if in this case the reverse would be any closer to reality. Then one said, "Don't worry, we are here. We will warn you…One, Two, Three, BOOM!" They all cracked up laughing, and more of them started joined in, this time counting in French "Une, Deux, Trois, BOOM!" and fell out of their chairs laughing. When we got back to the hotel at just after midnight the wedding that had just been starting in the evening had vanished – for an Arab wedding this was the like not having started at all. We found out this morning that the bombing had happened and that a local Christian youth had been killed and another lost his hand. The Israelis were apparently targeting some radar stations which they thought was how Hezbollah had located the ship they hit the other night.

Only late last night and this morning did I hear the first-hand accounts of the situation in Beirut. I talked this morning with my friend Zeina, who I spent part of Friday evening with along with her parents (who originally come from South Lebanon) her 6 month old daughter Zayan, her sister and brother-in-law and their four-month-old daughter Sara, all waiting for Zeina's husband Basel to arrive via Amman after being diverted from Geneva on a business trip. She sounded calm, saying that everything is still fine in Hamra where she lives, a few blocks from my apartment towards the water. Our other friend, Lina, who also lives in Hamra, and who along with her sisters and some other friends were the last people I was out with on Friday night before they got anxious and went home, trying to take me with them, sounded more nervous, saying the explosions are sounding closer and closer. My friend Perveen, a human rights lawyer I know from Cairo, had been planning yesterday to come and join us here in Batroun, where we have one extra bed in one of the rooms we are sharing because the hotel is full. Now moving is the scarier prospect. Everyone just wants to stay where they are. Even here, although we are now concerned about the possibility that the bridges between here and Beirut will be bombed making it difficult to get back if an evacuation happens, the thought of moving again is to stressful. We seem to be held here by inertia until someone forces us to make a move.

My colleague Imad praises the Israelis for one thing in all this – the destruction of the Manara lighthouse, which he hated. The original Manara lighthouse had been just inland from what is now the Corniche which runs along the edge of the sea in Beirut. The story is that Hariri wanted to build a large building that would block the historic lighthouse from view from the water and agreed to replace the lighthouse in a new location right on the water. The new lighthouse is an ugly structure painted in stark grey and white – but nevertheless a fixture of the new Beirut. I run by it several times a week and had walked by it yesterday morning when I finally left Hamra for a walk. We heard that it was destroyed yesterday afternoon. We've now seen that only the top part was destroyed, very disappointing to Imad.

This morning felt incredibly calm, and I went for a run along the coast. Not many people were out – a young couple huddled under a tree looking out at the sea next to their parked car, an old woman standing on her balcony under a massive Lebanese flag, also gazing out at sea, some men sitting on plastic chairs outside of closed shops, looking out at nothing, all seeming to be waiting for a conclusion. Finally, as I was finishing my run, I passed a construction site, a half finished house – with a team of six men working on building. The sight of construction during such impending destruction was somehow both incredibly uplifting and deeply depressing. For people with as acute a sense of intuition about the situation to come it seemed like the most positive sign I've seen yet. At the same time the sight almost sums up the Lebanese experience – the cycle of devastation and ingenuity that keeps them going.

We were told this morning by the embassy that they are planning to have a boat here to take Americans to Cyprus – on Wednesday or Thursday. We are still looking into possibilities of going overland to Amman today or tomorrow, but at this point a combination of nerves and inertia seems to keep us staying where we are. Meanwhile we have found a nearby bar called Droopies with wireless – the only thing open in Batroun today – so we have set up shop and dubbed ourselves the "Droopies groupies." I'll continue to keep you posted as much as possible.

Update: And then the following came several hours later (posted somewhat belatedly):

It's 3 am and I've been sitting in the hotel lobby talking with Mohammed, who works the night shift at the hotel's front desk. He is telling me not to worry, there is no war here in Batroun, it is safe. Granted the bombs falling around this area in the last two days are nothing compared with the devastation in the south and in the southern parts of Beirut, which we expect to be unparalleled tonight, when the Israelis plan to make vast progress in "cleansing" the country of Hezbollah. There are few such loaded verbs as "cleanse." Israel is admitting that Hezbollah can not be eliminated from the broader population through targeted air attacks and is essentially planning to demolish the entire southern part of the country, justifying the civilian losses with prior warnings.

With all of this destruction I have still not seen any of it up close. All of the clients and counterparts of our project in the South have surely been deeply affected, but we are still finding out the details. This experience of watching the country fall apart from within but afar is more and more surreal by the hour. But far as I am from the direct chaos I'm close enough to feel the sense of devastation of the region falling apart around us. Israel's ability to retaliate at exponential scale with support from the US and Hezbollah's insistence on keeping up its side of the antagonism with support from the region will very soon leave the two countries in a deep state of shock and disrepair. But clearly the scale of Lebanon's destruction will be incomparable. Israel's justification for this seems to be based on the presumption that the life of its citizens is more valuable than that of its neighbors and a grand sense of entitlement to maintain its sovereignty under whatever terms it claims for itself. But few of you need my commentary on this.

The other element weighing on us here is selfish – for the three of us who are not based in Lebanon and definitely leaving the country, it is when and how to go home. We cycle through the day – an hour debating exit strategies, an hour watching the news, an hour trying to relax, and then right back through. We're all exhausted from analyzing and weighing the scenarios – waiting for the promised evacuation or heading north through Syria, which has now opened its borders to Americans without visas, but which reportedly has up to a 36-hour wait to get through (a busload of Italians waited that long, only then apparently to be evacuated to Cyprus). Every moment a new factor comes into play, we debate, talk to our companies and partners, try again to get a call through to the embassy, and still fail to come to a conclusion. Again, somehow inertia prevails over the bizarre manic energy that takes over in the midst of this kind of chaose. And meanwhile the situation is escalating to a scale that none of us could have conceived of. The Lebanese have had their hearts broken by the plight of their country long ago. We foreigners are just experiencing that now. I feel like mine is being crushed from both sides with this war. I know that many of you feel the same. Wishing for peace to somehow find its way out of this chaos...

Report from North of Beirut

The following is from a third letter from my sister-in-law (who is trapped in Lebanon by the Israeli siege) which arrived a little while ago. The two previous letters can be read here and here.

This afternoon, about an hour after I left Beirut to join my colleagues in the North, seven bombs were dropped reaching farther and farther north into the city. We just saw on the news that bombs have hit Junieh, the next city north of Beirut and half way to where my colleagues and I are now. There are also reports of bombs and shells hitting Tripoli, the next city north of where we are. Basically all the assumptions about the rules of the game that Israel would be following here seem to have dissolved. I've just been watching coverage on a local station of emergency workers in Tyre loading corpses in the back of a UN truck. They hold up each body for the camera before loading them in, and more than one have been children. And now we're hearing reports that Hebollah is talking about having the capacity to reach Tel Aviv. This has clearly spiraled completely beyond control.

In the midst of this emerging chaos I spent this afternoon at the pool of the San Stefano Beach Resort in Batroun, about an hour north of Beirut, surrounded by the rich and beautiful Lebanese and American contractors who can afford to set up camp here. All day reports and rumors have been circulating about an American evacuation. Almost all other Western embassies have evacuated. The embassy tells us that they are still working out their plan. There was a moment, relaxing by the pool, when I found myself thinking that it wouldn't be that bad to be stuck here for a few days. Being so close but so removed from conflict is a bizarre feeling – but it's one I recognize from the times I have been in Israel after having spent time in the territories. The difference is that there it is hard to find other people who actually understand what is happening on the other side of the border. Here everyone is acutely aware of what is happening in the rest of the country. A little while ago, walking around the old city of Batroun with a friend (another American woman who came to Beirut Wednesday on a 24 hour trip from Amman, where she left her 9 month old baby) we shared the bizarre feeling of war tourism. Batroun is a calm, quiet old town where the main attraction is an ancient Phoenecian wall and the only indication of people's knowledge of what is going on in the rest of the country is the general weariness on their faces and a few kids looking up in the air for Israeli planes.

When a country is being bombarded it seems incredibly self-centered to take it personally. But from the start on Wednesday, and especially when the bombing started in Beirut on Thursday morning, I have been taking this very personally. I am deeply connected to Israel. I've spent many formative periods of my life there as a child, an adolescent, and an adult. My immediate and extended family has supported Israel from its inception in every conceivable way – we have lived there, contributed to it with physical and intellectual manpower, supported the state politically and lent conscience when we have seen the government diverge from what we believe a Jewish should stand for. To be trapped by an Israeli siege feels like a personal attack, like family turning on me. With my close Lebanese friends – the ones who have lived in New York and Toronto and London and who, the first time they met me, gave me the wink of recognition of my Jewish name – I have a running joke about my secret direct line to the Israeli military. Now of course I'm wishing that this was not a joke, that I could somehow invoke some sense into this situation. But instead I'm just trying to leave.

I got into economic development with the aspiration of somehow contributing to Middle East regional stability and therefore strengthening the viability of Israel's existence in the region, something that despite deep issues with the Zionist project I have always at the core had to support. The link to economic development came as a response to conditions I experienced working in Arab-Israeli coexistence programs in Northern Israel. For a year I worked in an Israeli-Arab village, teaching an Education for Tolerance curriculum in neighboring Arab and Jewish schools and running day-long interactions aimed at creating personal contact and positive impressions between the two sides. Working between the Arab and Jewish communities I was struck by the immense economic gap and felt that trying to resolve conflict through dialogue or any other means was pointless without resolving the gap in resources and opportunities. I felt that the same applied to the two sides within Israel and to the region as a whole, which made me explore economic development in the Arab world and the possibilities for regional economic integration, and ultimately brought me to work in Egypt and Lebanon.

The project I helped design over a year ago here in Lebanon, which is now being implemented with over $7 million of USAID funding and which I spend a quarter of my time supporting, aims to help small- and medium- enterprises and small farmers in the Beqaa Valley and parts of South and North Lebanon to access higher value markets for niche Lebanese agro-food products and eventually to be able to export to Europe and the US. Through a Lebanese-British colleague we had just made a preliminary deal for supplying several products to Whole Foods UK, which would have made an immense difference in the lives of all involved in creating and marketing those products and reduced their reliance on entities like Hezbollah to provide basic services which they could not afford and which the government does not provide. This was of course the rationale for USAID funding such a project in the first place. We were expecting the products to be on UK shelves in a few months. With the air and sea blockade, and destruction of roads into Beirut, who knows when we will get back to the point we were at a few days ago. The infrastructure will take ages to rebuild, and it keeps getting worse. The idea that this confrontation will somehow mobilize Lebanese civilians against Hezbollah is absurd. It's like thinking that the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina would increase support from the American South of the war in Iraq, which diverted the vast majority of US resources which could have been used to respond to the domestic catastrophe. Instead the events of the last few days will simply increase loyalty to Hezbollah by the thousands of people who will now rely even more heavily on their support.

Since I've come to know Lebanon in the last 15 months I've been struck daily by how similar Lebanese are to Israelis, how much Beirut feels like an amalgamation of elements of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. There are moments, running along Mediterranean past aging pot-bellied men playing paddle-ball, stunning women walking and roller-blading in skin-tight clothes, and the seedier element of the small fraction of men who haven't left the country, when I literally forget whether I'm in Beirut or Tel Aviv. The similarity is I think partly due to the Mediterranean temperament and the spirit of people who live through chronic conflict, but the similarities have been intensified over the last several years as Lebanon has started to close the gap economically – even though much of the wealth is concentrated in an elite segment of the population (as illustrated by the responses by different segments of the population to the attacks in the last two days). With this siege the economic gap has already opened back up like the crater of an artillery shell. While Lebanon may not yet be back to where it was 20 years ago in terms of the physical destruction, it has certainly already turned back at least that far in terms of prospects for stability with Israel and the region. It feels like the people on both sides who have been living through this for decades just don't have the energy to start over on a path towards peace which they have always been suspicious of but thought they would give a chance.

Anyway -now mobile and internet are going in and out. The embassy is still figuring out a plan for cyprus but hasn't announced anything. Anyway I'm fine - they won't bomb a resort.

Report from Beirut 2

Another letter from my sister-in-law in Beirut (the first is here). This one arrived a few minutes ago.

Just to assure you, I'm FINE. In case you're up for a description of today, I've had time to write it since everyone abandoned the one bar open in my neighborhood at about 9:30...

At about 1 PM today the atmosphere in Beirut changed as though a tornado had swept through. Within a matter of an hour or two the approach of Beirutis with the means to do so changed from sitting tight to fleeing to North Lebanon in masses. Around noon leaflets began being dropped in certain neighborhoods warning of specific targets in the area and advising evacuation (my neighborhood was not targeted). Families mobilized, planned, and left literally within a matter of an hour like they were carrying out a military drill. These are families in which the parents are from the generation who grew up and came of age during the war confronting the insanity on a daily basis with the manic energy of people who don't know much other than strong alliances and acute loss – people who I've spent hours listening to telling war stories over Almaza and Arak. Today they were putting that same manic energy into keeping their children safe. I had lunch with one of my close friends and colleagues, a Lebanese-Canadian who worked for years in the West Bank on economic development projects (using his Canadian passport) and his wife, who is Jordanian but spent the entire war in Beirut, at one point being held with fellow students by the Israeli navy during a failed evacuation by the Jordanian government. During the hour that Imad was making lunch for us Sahar called around, made arrangements to rent a house in the North, packed up the children and had them and the Filipina maid in the car as soon as they were finished with lunch. She explained that having lived through the war, they can just sense what is coming, and she wouldn't take chances with her girls. A bridge right near their house was bombed a few hours later.

Several of my colleagues decided just as quickly this afternoon to rent space in a hotel resort an hour north of Beirut. They called me as they were on their way to pick me up, expecting me to simply jump in the car. I didn't… I guess because even though I've been close to some intense situations in this region I've never really been close enough to fully grasp what the Israelis have said from the start, that "nowhere is safe" – and because I have friends in Beirut who don't have the option of driving up north to a resort for the weekend – and because I grew up with stories of my grandparents sticking it out on the edge of East Jerusalem through the 6 Day War - and because Beirut has come to feel like one of my many homes. When my Lebanese friends found out I had turned down a trip up north they visibly disapproved and all responded by insisting that I come and stay with them. The way I always describe Lebanon is that there are intricate codes of conduct here that outsiders will never fully understand (I use the metaphor of the traffic lights, which Lebanese seem to intuitively know which to respect and which to ignore). Responses to this situation are clearly governed by some of these intuitive codes. My Lebanese friends know exactly which roads and which spots are safe. My neighborhood, Hamra, is one of the few places in West Beirut which everyone seems to thinks is safe. Last night I managed to sleep through all the bombings, a coincidence of where I live, that my apartment is on the bottom floor, and that I was out late drinking at the one bar open in my neighborhood. But now the bombings are very audible from here, and everyone was leaving the bar at about 9:30. I'm planning to join my colleagues up north in the morning.

As for leaving - we found out today that while the US embassy's website has for the last two days been recommending American citizens to leave the country – but not telling us how we might do that – they have evacuated their own staff. Which means there's no one left to answer the phones. While the roads between Beirut and Syria are not as badly damaged as we originally thought, Syria has not been letting Americans into the country without an existing visa, which makes that route little use. The last time I made the trip between Beirut and Damascus about a month ago for a conference I was held for over 7 hours at the border. And now there are literally thousands of tourists who don't need visas fleeing into Syria by the hour, and all heading for the airport which is apparently packed like a refugee camp. So getting back to Cairo that way is not much of an option. While it seems bizarre that the US can't organize an evacuation, it seems that the problem isn't with the logistics but with the message it would send, that what Israel is doing is problematic and that civilians are in fact in danger. Anyway, I'm registered with security clearance by the embassy for my work here and am apparently at the top of the list for getting out. Still, it is only the fact that my Lebanese friends seem worried about me being by myself tonight that I'm a little anxious for the morning. Insha'alla all will be well.

Report from Beirut

The following is an excerpt from an email by my sister-in-law, currently trapped in Beirut by the Israeli siege. I thought that I would post it (with her permission) since it is a perspective I haven't seen much of on the net (which may simply mean I'm not reading the right blogs). For background, she is an American working for an international development organization. I fixed a few spelling errors; otherwise this is just as she wrote it. (It was sent this morning.)

As a lot of you know I spend 25% of my time in Lebanon for work. I've been here the past two weeks and was scheduled to fly back to Cairo last night, but with the continued bombings of the airport and approaching roads no flights will be leaving any time soon. The sea is blocked off and now many of the roads to Damascus - the one outlet - have been destroyed. So I really have no idea how long I might be here. My American mentality tells me that I should be able to get simply show my passport and be escorted out of the country and go home. It's just setting in that it could be a while before that happens. The embassy was talking yesterday about taking some of us out through Syria, but now that doesn't seem possible with the roads.

The atmosphere is changing tangibly. Yesterday things were open and people were out. Now almost all the shops, cafes, etc. are closed. Although luckily there are still a few shoe stores open near my apartment where I can buy horrendous stiletto-heeled shoes if I get really bored - the shoe and accessory shops seem to be the only places open, which I think is because those are the shops run by foreigners who don't understand the codes of doing business here. On my way to Starbucks this morning (also closed - a very bad sign) I overheard an argument between some of the Lebanese shopkeepers loitering outside their closed shopfronts and a Filipina woman who was starting to open the shop she works in over whether she could open the shop. She did - another shoe store. Meanwhile the food stores are mostly staying open but people are starting to get nervous and are buying out the food and water. I don't think there should be a problem with food any time soon as the roads from the North where much of the food is produced are fine. I'm just hoping this internet cafe will stay open for access to the outside world (Lebanon is one of the few countries that explicitly blocks Blackberry coverage so that's no help).

I've spent time in Gaza and the West Bank, but not extended enough lengths of time to really feel the impending sense of panic of being surrounded, bombarded, and completely powerless. I've certainly never felt that in the years I've spent in Israel - this is a completely different element and scale of aggression. That feeling is starting to settle in now. For my friends and colleagues here who have lived through this before it is acutely real - they know exactly what life will be like if this continues - the threat of taking the country back to the depths of the war, reversing the incredible reconstruction and development efforts - is unthinkable to me, but to them it is another cycle of what they've already experienced, and they continue to feel completely powerless, as many Lebanese are caught between this battle between hezbollah and Israeli. Although most respect hezbollah for the social services it provides to half of the country that the government is not equipped to do, most in Beirut and much of the rest of the country don't support waging war. But they've been expecting this. Last week one of my colleagues was lamenting that she had let her American green card expire which made her nervous in case something happened that she would have to get out. I couldn't quite imagine that something could be imminent that would serious enough to make her leave her life here. And obviously when it happens it happens too fast to expect.

Update: Leila left a substantive and interesting comment below; I encourage readers to check it out. She also has a bunch of related links on her blog here.