Former safe havens in Beirut under attack

Did you see and hear the barrage of attacks?

You are awakened by the bombing. It’s hard not to be. I first heard them at about 3:20 a.m. last night. It just so happened that the way my room faces, I was staring at an area that Israeli warplanes struck repeatedly for at least an hour. I counted at least 18 airstrikes.

You don’t see the aircraft but hear them rocketing as they dive, and then you see the explosion. It’s surreal to be sitting on the balcony of a hotel, sort of a tourist monitoring a war that is just three miles away.

Did you visit the areas that were struck?

This morning we drove to the areas that had been struck. It was in a mostly Shiite neighborhood that is sympathetic to Hezbollah.

When you go to these areas, you must meet with some sort of Hezbollah official to get permission to go on what are essentially public streets. In this case, they claimed that the area that was bombed was a Lebanese military base. There may have been a guard post, but what we saw that  was struck was a fishing port. There seemed to be about 300 small outboard fishing boats — most of which were in ruins — burned, blasted, and sunken boats.

The fishermen had not been using the boats since the conflict began because with Israel’s naval blockade it’s just too dangerous to go out on the water. But still, they saw their livelihood ruined over night.

There was one young man I spoke to, I think he was about 25 years old. As he pointed to his boat that was just sunk with the bow pointing out of the water, all he could say was “Why? Why? Why did they destroy my boat?”  He said he was not part of Hezbollah and has nothing to do with Hezbollah, and that the fishing boats had nothing to do with Hezbollah.

The truth is, I don’t know whether the ports serve some sort of clandestine purpose beyond fishing. Or is it that anything that strikes at the livelihood of Hezbollah, even something providing food, is a target of Israel’s campaign? I don’t know. You are left scratching your head wondering why 300 fishing boats were turned to splinters.

We also visited a factory about three miles away from the city that was also struck by Israeli airstrikes. It’s basically now a two-story crater in the ground. It’s hard to imagine what the building was because now it’s just a hole in the ground.

I met a gentlemen there who said he was the attorney for the company. The company was called the Electra Company for Industry and Trading. The attorney claimed that they made electrical fuse boxes. Of course, you can also question if there were other applications that we don’t know about.

The company apparently had about 45 employees. It had not been operating for about two weeks because of the bombing threats in the southern suburbs. The brother of the owner claimed that they had just invested $500,000 into new machinery before the war broke out. And now everything is just a smoking crater. It’s the same story again.

They tell you that they don’t know why they were targeted and that they don’t understand it.

Your heart wants to believe them, but there is also the cynic that thinks, why would this place be targeted for no apparent reason? Perhaps there is something more here that I am not being told.

That is the quandary in all of the places that you visit. Your heart goes out to those suffering, and your mind wonders, is there more here that I just don’t know?

This is as much a public relations war as it is a war of bullets and bombs. And in this case, the high ground goes to whoever can appear to be morally right or suffering the most. Hezbollah is well aware of that. They have public relations people who routinely meet with the media — just as the Israeli Defense Forces have their public affairs officers with a similar job. 

The role of the journalist is always to try to discern the truth from the spin or someone’s point of view. It’s a little more difficult when lives are at stake and bombs are falling because there is the fog of war as well.

Martin Savidge is an NBC News correspondent on assignment in Beirut, Lebanon.

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