Perhaps many of our OFWs don’t want to come home – Lebanon may be ‘safer’

Everybody’s jumping for publicity’s sake on the urgency of rescuing our 30,000 Filipinos from war-torn Lebanon, with Senator Ralph Recto, for instance, proposing that our government allocate part of its P2.8 billion income from the "internal income" of the Department of Foreign Affairs (coming from passport and consular fees, etc.) to ensure that the 30,000 Filipinos there are safely evacuated.

Now that’s nice. But how can the DFA just grab part of its own-generated funds which automatically go to the national treasury and the pork barrel of our senators and congressmen?

As it is, our foreign ministry is strapped for funds, even to fix door-knobs or pay its own domestic and overseas employees. Sus, when our senators and members of the House of Representatives couldn’t even approve the 2006 budget, they ought to stop yakking about money.

We cannot fault Senator Recto for his concern, but by golly, where is the enabling law? DFA officials who . . . well, "misappropriate" funds even for a noble cause can get themselves in very hot water in this land of more than 50,000 heat-seeking lawyers, not to mention battalions of nitpickers, dak-dak club members, and know-it-alls, including us gadflies and busybodies in the Mighty Media.

Why don’t our legislators – since our OFWs as they ululate are the heroines and heroes who send home more than $16 billion per year – appropriate a substantial, stand-by, renewable emergency, evacuation, or rescue fund and have done with the bureaucratic red-tape and press releases.

Ralph’s statistics are correct, including his observation that there are, in Lebanon, another 6,000 reportedly TNT or undocumented Filipinos, while another 30,000 are working in Israel – the attacking nation – with another 22,500 in that postage stamp-sized but militarily powerful country, without proper documentation. Don’t we remember what happened at the height of the suicide-bombing by Islamic militants of buses, depots, malls, restaurants and other neighborhoods in Israel, our government offered to pluck out Pinoys and Pinays working in that embattled land? The OFWs refused to leave. At least in Israel, they huffed, they had gainful employment, despite the risk of being blown up by some jihadi or Palestinian suicide-bomber, or a rocket sent into Israel’s cities and towns from the West Bank or Gaza. In Manila, or back home, many grumbled, they’d starve, without jobs. And besides, some ventured, it’s safer in Israel than in Metro Manila.

They’ve a point there. Betcha our Filipinos in Israeli warplane battered Beirut and the rest of Lebanon, except those already "concentrated" in embassy relief centers without employment, or fleeing from abusive employers, will opt to stay – or go somewhere in the area where the bombs don’t fall, or the Israeli naval ships don’t bombard them in the Navy’s campaign to knock out Hezbollah radar stations.

There’s ridiculous talk about providing alternative employment for our refugees from Lebanon back here at home. Sanamagan. We can’t even employ the jobless we’ve already got here, and didn’t have a chance (they’re eager and waiting) to leave for abroad.

I suggest we get real, instead of sounding like a bunch of panicky and cackling chickens.

Sure, General Roy Cimatu (I mean Ambassador) must get ready to provide rescue vehicles for those who’re desperate to depart – not by airplane since the Israeli Air Force has blasted huge craters in the tarmac of Beirut’s international airport. By car, bus, or other land vehicles? They won’t be able, despite our diplomatic entreaties, to get into neighboring Syria – since the highways and roads are jammed with more than one million hastily "homecoming" Syrians who overstayed in Lebanon because life there (and the rackets) are better, including 200,000 Syrian secret police agents who were left behind to continue to mingle, and spy on the local population when angry world opinion compelled the occupying Syrian forces to finally leave Beirut and Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

The outside world was outraged last year when Lebanon’s heroic former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the man who almost single-handedly rebuilt Beirut from the ruins of its terrible Civil War, funding the rehabilitation mostly with his own hard-earned billions – from rich Saudi construction contracts.

Hariri, a devout Muslim and genuine patriot, had clashed with the "imperial" Syrians whose military presence had made his homeland a virtual satrapy of an occupying power.

He wanted his land free from Syrian bullying and "control." He got ousted from the Premiership for his pains.

Worse, the former Prime Minister, coming from a hearing in Parliament, was passing with his entourage on the Corniche between the old St. Georges and Phoenicia Hotels (both in ruins) when a powerful car bomb blew him and his bodyguards to kingdom come. The fingerprints of that terrible crime led all the way back to Damascus, even to the highest levels of the Syrian government.

Hundreds of thousands of angry Lebanese rallied in Liberty Square to demand the Syrians get out of Lebanon entirely. Hariri’s funeral procession was an outpouring of grief and devotion for the murdered leader. Booed out by worldwide condemnation, the Syrians glumly pulled out their soldiers, tanks, and artillery at last. But their sinister influence remained, bolstered by the fanatical Hezbollah which is financed by Iran, and opposed to anything fundamentally Islamic, including Lebanon’s Christians, Maronite or whatever, Druze, and other faiths.

It is the Hezbollah who angered the Israelis this time around by mounting a raid into Israel from their bastion in South Lebanon to kidnap two Israeli soldiers. Just as the Israelis were incensed by Palestinian militants, who tunneled themselves to the scene, suddenly attacking and kidnapping a young IDF soldier from a border outpost, and their counterattack has savaged all of Gaza and the West Bank, costing the Hamas (who’ve vowed to eradicate Israeli) and the poor Palestinians dearly. The rampaging F-16s, tanks, and artillery of the Israeli Defense Force knocked out power plants, water filtration systems, destroyed buildings, and so on – causing many fatalities among both civilians and militant fighters.

The Israelis, perhaps, played into the terrorists’ hands by counter-attacking with their "terrible swift sword" – but it’s the Israeli way. When any soldier is "kidnapped", they go berserk and exact remorseless vengeance. The Palestinian militants knew this, as did the Hezbollah who also abducted two IDF soldiers Wednesday last week. Now, poor Lebanon is paying the price.

The Israeli offensive looks like over-reaction to the outside world, but the Lebanese are not entirely blameless. I don’t mean to justify the bombings and artillery barrages – in their zeal to blast out Hezbollah (sometimes spelled Hizbollah) headquarters buildings and complexes in Beirut and other cities, the IDF has inflicted many casualties among the innocent civilian population.

Yet, here’s the score.

When Lebanon’s long and bitter civil war, with Christians and Muslims in Beirut for instance, divided by a "green line", and the rest no-man’s land finally ended in May 1990 (it began in April 1975) 150,000 were killed and double that wounded. Beirut, once the "Paris" of the Middle East, was in ruins and scorched rubble.

The Hezbollah, which styles itself the "Party of God" had been organized, with Iranian backing, to combat the Israeli invasion of 1982. When the civil war was concluded, some 40 or so rival militias who had battled for over 15 years, were all disarmed and disbanded – except the Hezbollah, whose splinter group, "Islamic Jihad" had kidnapped many Americans and Westerners, releasing some for ransom, and executing others. Why allow this murderous bunch to keep their weapons and remain battle-capable, while everybody else had been disarmed?

The excuse was that the Hezbollah – which had bombed the US Embassy and other Western embassies, and blown up US Marines in their barracks by suicide-bomber, as well as peacekeeping French troops – was "needed" to continue to wage war against Israeli occupation and the hated Zionists. How specific can you get?

The Lebanese government, and particularly Syria backed up the continuing aggressive actions of the Hezbollah.

Now you see why the Israelis are angrily pounding Lebanon. Indeed, the Iranians have been providing the Hezbollah with more and more long-reaching missiles. They are today bombarding Haifa and other northern Israeli towns with a rain of missiles, from Qassam, Scud and now Katyushka rockets and missiles. The IDF reports that the barrages are reaching deeper into Israel than ever before. No wonder the IDF is going bonkers, and assaulting Beirut, even ancient Baalbeck and, of course, the Bekaa Valley near the Syrian frontier with ever more ferocity.

Of course, it is escalating into total war.

I sympathize with the Lebanese, of whom 30 percent are Christian, and many of whom are moderate Muslims – but they couldn’t control the Hezbollah – and are now, to invoke the old expression, paying the piper.

Will the rampaging IDF go on to attack Syria? Their tanks in the Golan Heights, which they seized from the Syrians in the 1967 six-day war, are within sight and artillery range of Syria’s capital Damascus on the Irbid Peninsula. Their air force could flatten Syria’s aerial-combat capability in a matter of days.

The caveat is that there are too few Israelis to "occupy" any territory. (This is why the Mongol Empire collapsed in Asia centuries ago. The Mongols conquered one land after another, but they ran out of Mongols to occupy their territories of conquest).

What are the Israelis to do? If they retreat once more behind their borders, they will be whittled down by suicide-attacks, rockets, a third intifada and endless attrition.

So they plunge into combat – going the berserkers’ way (as the old Vikings used to put it). David is combating not one but several Goliaths, and must utilize every shot in his sling before the twilight fades. Incidentally Meggido (the final field of Armaggedon) is located in Israel.

The Apocalyptic prophecy may be here.