Irish activist's article on Nahr al-Bared in Counterpunch

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press Thursday October 25, 2007 12:08 by Damien Moran

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Irish activist Michael Birmingham and Caoimhe Butterly have been in Lebanon for the most part of the last 14 months. This article by Michael on the plight of Palestinian refugees who recently returned to Nahr al-Bared, after a brutal battle between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese army reduced the camp to rubble, was recently published in the online magazine Counterpunch.

A Palestinian Camp in Lebanon is Burned and Destroyed, the Media is Banned, and the World is Silent
What Happened in Nahr Al Bared?

By MICHAEL BIRMINGHAM

Nahr Al Bared is a Palestinian refugee camp in the north of Lebanon which has been home to about 40,000 Palestinian people, most of whom are the children and grandchildren of those who left Palestine in 1948. Some like Abu Mohammad were born in Palestine. He was ten years old, and next year it will be sixty years since the formation of the State of Israel was achieved through the ethnic cleansing of Abu Mohammad and so many others from their home in Palestine. He told me this as the two of us sat alone in the pitch dark while rats ran around beside our chairs at his house. As I left he went in to sleep alone amongst ashes and rodents, with no neighbours around him, trying to believe that he still has something left to protect.

continued at
http://www.counterpunch.org/birmingham10242007.html

Related articles:

Irish Activists in Lebanon on 1st Anniversary of Israel's War
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/83681

For very important background reading please see Caoimhe Butterly's indymedia report:
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/83157