By: Enrique Román

•This little town is Canaan, scene of the wedding in which Jesus changed water into wine, and the one where Israeli bombardments provoked more than 60 deaths on Sunday, July 30, and where merciless Zionist bombings provoked 106 deaths in 1996 • They are the same planes handed over by the same U.S. governments opposed to the UN Security Council decreeing a ceasefire of the savage attacks in the Lebanon

Qana is a small, irregular and dusty town in the south of Lebanon, an enclave in the many peaks that make up the landscape of that region, 10 kilometers from the Mediterranean and less than 30 from the border with Israel. It owes its name to Canaan, given to this entire region in biblical times.

Life there would be insignificant and Qana would remain unknown outside of its small environment if it were not for two events that have definitively introduced it into the history of humanity.

The first is attributed to it by tradition: the place where Christ effected his first miracle, by converting water into wine during certain weddings – the Canaan Weddings. The Lebanese government – note that Jesus is a primordial figure for both Christians and Muslims – constructed facilities there for tourists who visit the place. The tourist route borders the slope of a mountain to a cave which, it is said, was part of the site of the festivities.

The cave is small, too small to have served as the scenario of the weddings, and more interesting are the bas reliefs sculptured in the rocks by the first Christians, reproducing scenes of the evangelists. In fact, another town, similarly named Qana, located in Galilee in the north of Israel, disputes the Lebanese one-horse town having been the location of the first Christian miracle.

The second fact has little or nothing to do with ethical Jewish or Christian teachings. The inhabitants of that place appeared to be abandoned by the blessing of Jesus Christ and Jehovah on April 18, 1996, when the Israeli government, then headed by Shimon Peres – who by the greatest irony had received the Nobel Peace prize two years earlier – launched the Grapes of Wrath operation on Lebanon. Former Israeli invasions of that small country were as criminal as inglorious. In 1996, as today, exposing the lives of Israeli soldiers was avoided. The well-endowed Israeli air force took charge of the heavy work, which included the bombing of south Lebanon and Beirut, in addition to the naval and land blockade.

At the end of the day, one sole event, that occurred precisely in Qana, will remain in history as the most bloody memory of this pathetic operation: the merciless bombing of an installation of the UN forces, visible and well characterized, with white walls and large blue letters, with the flag of that international organization and which was being used as a refuge for more than 100 senior citizens, women and children, who believed themselves safe from the savage Israeli aerial aggression.

Today, there is a museum there from which it is difficult to leave without tears on one’s face, or at least in ones soul. The photos of the massacre, of the 106 fatalities and the 116 wounded, undefended victims of genocide, are frankly terrifying. The collective graves venerated by visitors and residents are shocking in their harshness. Always close among those that visit the location are the inconsolable families of the victims who approach it to recall what were the worst moments of their lives. I recall the reaction of one of the visitors that I accompanied to that place: Qana, he said, must be visited by all humanity so that all human beings know the incredible limits of human barbarity.

Up until last Sunday. Once again the gods abandoned the inhabitants of Qana. Without any justification whatsoever – in that minuscule town there is nothing even remotely resembling a military objective – the Israeli aviation once again showed no mercy on its inhabitants. In the bloodiest action of this shameless war – that has already reaped the total of 500 civilian deaths in the Lebanon – the bombing of a three-story apartment building added more than 60 deaths to the extensive martyrology of Qana.

Perhaps archaeologists will finally discover that it was not in that Qana, but in the Galilee one, where the first Christian miracle took place. But I do not believe that that possibility is currently the preoccupation of any Lebanese, nor, of course, of any inhabitant of the martyred town. For them and for the history of human shame, Qana will be a symbol of cruelty and barbarity, no less than Auschwitz for example, or the multitudinous crimes of the European colonies and American slavery.

The water converted into blood that is running through Qana today is not the work of any miracle. They are another disastrous chapter, as immune as the others, of Zionist racism, happily exercised by the pilots of some modern aircraft of U.S. manufacture. As is the case today, in 1996 there was no public remorse on the part of Israel or of its principal ally, the United States. Bill Clinton, at that time president of the country, received Shimon Peres one week later. There was not one single comment on the crime. A little later Clinton said something that recalls – not at all suspiciously – what George W. Bush has declared: “I believe that it is imperative that Israel maintains security of its northern border. I believe that the United States must be respectful in the face of such circumstances.”

(Granma) 31-07-2006