Newsletter of the Derry Anti-War Coalition

Issue Number 3            December 2006

Derry anti-war activists return from Beirut

In November, six members of the DAWC attended an anti-war conference in Beirut and visited areas affected by the Israeli bombing during the July.August 2006 war. Report by Colm Bryce

We spent most of Saturday in and around the Dahiya suburb of South Beirut, the stronghold of Hizbollah and the area worst affected by the
Israeli bombing. This is a highly built up, poor area, perhaps a 5 or 10 minute taxi ride from the new office blocks and hotels in the city centre. All the photos and TV footage didn't prepare us for the sheer scale of the devastation. Around 240 tower blocks had been completely levelled, some with craters three, maybe four floors deep into the basements.
 There has been two months of clearing and demolition but still we walked through scenes that were like pictures you see of Dresden after WWII.

200 people were killed just in this small area, more than 5000 wounded. But what really stood out was the spirit and the resilience of  the people themselves. There was a complete absence of any sense of victimhood or appeals for pity. Everyone was immensely proud of the resistance, they all feel part of it, and they feel that they won, that, as Kieran put it 'they threw all of this at us and we still stared them down'.

SOUTH LEBANON

            Sunday morning started very early, setting out for the villages of South Lebanon. Lebanon is a small country, Beirut to the southern border is about 100 km. We set off in a minibus around 9am, out past the airport and along the coast. Every single bridge and overpass on the main road to Sidon and Tyre had been bombed by the Israeli military. On many you could still see the huge holes, 15 or 20 feet across, made by the missiles and the twisted steel of the reinforced concrete.

Down here, everyone had a story of seeing people killed. Our taxi driver, Hassan, explained how he had been passing this bridge carrying refugees when the car in front of him was hit by a missile from an F16 fighter. He heard the screams of the people inside, as they burned to death.

South of Tyre, the roads climb up into the hills of South Lebanon, which are very fertile, full of olive groves and tobacco plantations, and
dotted with small villages. This time of year is the olive harvest, but most of the crops in this area cannot be harvested because of the
cluster bombs – an estimated 4 million – dropped by the Israelies. Each day brings new reports of children injured or killed. As of last week, as least 33 people had been killed since August by cluster bombs.

QANA

The first village we stopped at was Qana, This was one of the key aims of our trip, because of the massacre there in late July, which we are pretty certain was caused by a Raytheon 'bunker buster' bomb. The rubble from the building has been cleared and dozens of marble tombs have been set on what was the ground floor.

Hassan called at a local house to see if he could get someone to talk to us and a young woman came back with him. Hala Shaloub was a survivor of the bombing. She had lost both her children, two young girls, two of her brothers and 20 members of her extended family in the massacre. Her eyes were hollow with grief and she spoke quietly of what had happened. They had been sheltering in the house for 18 days, many of them relatives from local houses.

AITA GHAAB

concrete buildings, blown apart by missiles, and every wall pockmarked with bullet holes and smaller shells. We were told that the Israelis had brought in bulldozers when they couldn't take the village, in order to flatten everything before them and build a parking space for their tank units, a launch pad for their invasion. But they never got a foothold. Still, what they have left behind is in ruins, the countryside littered with landmines and cluster bombs and unusable.

The DAWC members who were in Lebanon have made a video of their trip and are available to show it to community groups, schools or other organisations. If you would like to arrange a showing, contact Colm on 07771 781958.

RAYTHEON 9 CAMPAIGN

The Raytheon 9 will make another court appearance on 4 January. Rally at Derry Court House, Bishop St, 9.30am.

The trail of the Raytheon 9 will involve high legal costs. Please rush donations to Derry Anti War Coalition, Halifax Building Society, Derry Sort Code 11-09-68 Account Number 00178353

DERRY CITY COUNCIL AND RAYTHEON

Derry Anti War Coalition, together with the Foyle Ethical Investment Campaign (FEIC), addressed the Policy and Resources Committee of the City Council on 16^th Nov.  Each Councillor was supplied with the Freedom of Information (FoI) documents obtained from Invest NI. These make clear that Raytheon in Derry is working on software which will be used to massacre people in other parts of the world and that Raytheon Derry is committed to expanding this work.

The DAWC delegation pointed out that the documents show  Raytheon and Invest NI referring to the importance of council support for the JETTS project. The “Joint Effects Tactical Targeting System” (JETTS) is described on Raytheon’s own website as “an electronic...toolset” designed, among other things, to improve “lethality.” In other words, to kill people more easily. 

We reminded Council that it passed a resolution in 2004 stating: “Council accepts the location of Raytheon facility in Derry on the basis that it would be engaged in activities that had civilian applications, not military ones; if the basis of Raytheon’s acceptance had changed, the Council’s position would change. Council again calls on Raytheon to immediately clarify the nature of their work in Derry.”  We suggested that the FoI documents show Raytheon and InvestNI ignoring and treating with contempt the motions passed by Council; that Raytheon’s Derry plant is undeniably involved in arm-related production; and we asked the council to implement its own policy and declare that Raytheon is not welcome in Derry.

We appealed in particular to those parties on the Council who are on record as being opposed to the use of violence to achieve political aims to show leadership in implementing Council policy on Raytheon.

The response was disappointing. The SDLP said it is against the arms trade but could not turn away any jobs from the city. The DUP says it welcomes Raytheon and has no problem with the arms trade. Sinn Fein said that we had known the impact of war here and should not be involved in inflicting it elsewhere – but said it was happy for Raytheon to remain as long as it did only civilian work.  As a result, Council agreed to write to Raytheon and remind the company that Council only supported its civilian work.

While DAWC and FEIC would argue that any software work done for Raytheon will eventually end up killing people, the FoI documents make it clear that Raytheon’s presence in the city is economically viable only if it is involved in ‘defence’ work and that it wants to expand its arms trade activity. So, the Council position is meaningless.

End-of-year, end-the-war social

With music from Jim Walker & Robert Peoples, plus The Bluebelles

DJ’s Mary Healy and Danny McGeady

Plus food and DAWC Xmas raffle (first prize overnight stay for 2 in Dublin with spending money)

8pm Wednesday 13 December, upstairs @ Sandinos

www.Raytheon9.org