|
|
A tearful Mayssoon begged Harper to
"say the truth about Israel, say that Israel destroyed my
family home in Lebanon and Hizbullah was trying to protect
it."
|
MONTREAL — Bamboozled into believing that the
death and blood-laced life in the canyons of Beirut has titled towards
peace, Ali El-Akhras, a Canadian pharmacist of a Lebanese origin, took
his children to introduce them to their grandparents back in the tiny
Arab country.
El-Akhras wanted to show the elders how three
generations had thrived in Canada, reported Agence France Presse
(AFP).
He did not take helmets or spacemen flak jackets
for the children with him.
Soon he came to realize that the thwacks of bullets
and the thunderous sounds of Israeli missiles would come to lodge
again in Lebanon, to trap him and his family bringing a tragic end
their Montreal-Lebanon journey.
An Israeli air strike pounded the family home in
Aitaroun in southern Lebanon to rubble this past week, killing the
Montreal pharmacist, his wife and four children, as well as his mother
and an uncle, relatives said.
Israeli forces have poured a Niagara of attacks
into Lebanon since last week after Hizbullah resistance men captured
two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border confrontation.
The number of people killed in seven days of
Israeli strikes rose on Tuesday, July 18, to 227 after a new wave of
deadly air raids.
At least eight Canadians have so far been confirmed
dead in the Israeli onslaught, which sent more than 100,000 people,
many with dual Lebanese nationality, into a panicking fleet.
Nearly 50,000 Canadians, many with dual Lebanese
citizenship who vacation in Lebanon in the summer months, have been
caught in the conflict, Foreign Minister Peter MacKay said.
Canada is sending six chartered ships in likely its
biggest rescue operation since World War II to evacuate thousands of
Canadians trapped in the conflict.
Shocked
|
|
At least eight Canadians have so
far been confirmed dead in the Israeli onslaught.
|
"We're all devastated. It's a shock,"
Walid El-Akhras, 21, a relative who works at the family grocery in
Montreal, said in pain.
"We learned from relatives in Germany that
they had died. We got confirmation today," he told AFP.
On Monday, customers offered their condolences to
the family.
"It's senseless," said one wholesaler
dropping off goods.
Ali El-Akhras had graduated from Montreal
University and worked for the popular pharmacy chain Jean Coutu in the
city's Cote-des-Neiges district.
He had scrimped and saved to afford to bring his
four children, aged one to eight, to Lebanon and introduce them to
relatives for the first time, his sister Mayssoun told reporters at a
press conference in Montreal.
"He wanted to return because the country was
for a while peaceful ... but they died as they slept, they burned to
death in the same room," she said, evoking images and sounds of
the bombs their parents "had fled 35 years ago which finally
caught up to them."
Pathetic Canada
The El-Akhras family had left Montreal on June 27.
Ten days after they arrived in Ali's parents' home village, the
Israeli air strike hit.
"They tried to contact the Canadian embassy in
Beirut for help immediately after the crisis began," Walid
returned to say.
"Officials asked him to be patient while they
sorted out what to do and that was the last we heard from them.
"We tried calling and sending emails, but
there was no response," he said.
An emotional and tearful Mayssoon begged Prime
Minister Stephen Harper "to take our side and say the truth about
Israel, say that Israel destroyed my family home in Lebanon and
Hizbullah was trying to protect it."
Harper told reporters at the G8 summit in Russia
that Israel had been "victim of the initial attack,"
referring to the Hizbullah attack.
Earlier, the Canadian premier defended the Israeli
military response as measured.
"Emphasis has to be on the de-escalation of
violence... the return of Israeli soldiers and shelling of Israeli
territory stopped," his foreign minister said.
"That would lead to further cooperation and
efforts that would bring us toward a diplomatic solution."
Voter Backlash
Canadian media expect the conflict to have domestic
political ramifications for Harper's government.
The Conservative government would likely face a
voter backlash over his dogged support for Israel and his refusal to
blame Israel for the Canadian deaths.
Over the weekend, thousands in Ottawa, Toronto and
Montreal protested Harper's position.
The Gazette newspaper wrote in a commentary that
his stance "could have implications for his party's chances of
making inroads in Canada's three largest urban areas -- Montreal,
Toronto and Vancouver, which have large multicultural
communities."
The Globe and Mail newspaper noted Harper would be
"judged both on his government's ability to navigate a crisis
that has Canadian lives in the balance and on its wisdom in shifting
so strongly in favor of an Anglo-sphere worldview."
It stressed that more than at any time in the past,
"the Middle East for Canada is now a domestic political
concern."
