Jeff Blankfort sent along this photo today, which he took on his second trip to Israel/Palestine:
In 1983, a year after Israel's invasion of Lebanon which took 17,000
lives, excluding Sabra and Shatila, I made arrangements as a
freelancer to go to Lebanon to witness the devastation
that the IDF had wrought there and back again to Israel, where I heard about six kids in a Palestinian hospital in East Jerusalem who were being fitted for prostheses. They had been hit in Lebanon
and they were the lucky ones. Between cluster and white phosphorus
bombs, which the Israelis also used, many more children were victimized.
The hospitals in Lebanon were full of victims from the war and those
days there was scarcely any electricity to run them. At this Arab hospital in the hills east of the old city, they were treating six children who collectively were
left with two legs from cluster bombs. The nurse brought two out to meet me. I wanted
to weep, but their smiles prevented me and so I smiled back at them.
