Robert Fisk Diary from Beirut

A change of policy by The Independent (on Sunday) (or maybe just temporary) has Robert Fisk's Beirut Diary available in full here: A land reduced to rubble: 'These places now look like French villages did after German bombardment during the First World War' (20 August 2006) is worth a look. Just a bit from Tuesday the 15th considering the tragic death of David Grossman's son late in the conflict (yes I know there are hundreds of the unkonwn dead, that Uri was an army, that it's in the context of Israeli aggression and a particularly cynical military exploitation of the last few hours before the announced ceasefire kicked in). There is still something tragic about the futility of deaths so late in a war. Anyway, a quote from Fisk:
"The Lebanese papers carry the news of the death in action of David Grossman's son Uri, killed fighting the Hizbollah in southern Lebanon. That Grossman, a brilliant and compassionate writer well known in Lebanon - his books are on sale here and the local newspaper reports are written with dignity - should suffer in this way seems especially cruel. I turn to his work on the Palestinians of Israel, which nestles in the bookcase beside my desk. "Every acrobat knows the secret of walking a tightrope over an abyss; the Arabs in Israel have learnt something even more difficult - to stand still on the wire," Grossman wrote in 1993. "To live a provisional life that eternally suspends and dulls the will... So it has been for decades, for hundreds of thousands of acrobats."
Wednesday 16 August