Ozymandias & me: Lebanon, a crusader castle & The Abyss
When I was a kid, I always wanted to become an archaeologist and travel
to the Middle East to see pyramids and such. Well, I certainly have
traveled to the Middle East alright. But so far all I've seen there is
war, war and more war. Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Syria,
Afghanistan, Egypt and I forget where all else. War has been going on
in the Middle East for a whole bunch of years now. And Western nations
have been enthusiastically attacking the Middle East since way back in the day when Lawrence of Arabia was riding his camel through Hollywood.
But attacks by the West on the Fertile Crescent and its surrounds have
not just been going on since the 20th century. The Romans also went
there. So did all those medieval Crusaders. And yet, so many
centuries later, there's not much proof left from those times that the West had ever even been
in the Middle East at all.
And many years from now, there probably won't be any proof left that
Eisenhower, Reagan, Bush, Obama, NATO or Netanyahu had been there
either. Sorry, guys.
But recently I was lucky enough to see some real proof with my own eyes that actual medieval Crusaders had actually been in Lebanon nine centuries
ago -- a wannabe archaeologist's dream come true. I got to tour an old
Crusaders' castle! Wow, just wow.
The whole castle was made of a quartz-like rock and practically glowed
in the sunlight. Quiet, windswept and lonely, set on top a hill, it was
spooky-quiet there, almost like standing in an old-growth redwood
forest -- that kind of silence, stillness and hush. Just like Shelley's
poem about Ozymandias, formerly known as the King of Kings. "Round the
decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level
sands stretch far away." Only it was hills with trees on them that were
stretching far away. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/762297.stm
And from the top of the castle, you could look down at Israeli
neo-colonialists' "settlements" -- stretching far away too. I was that
close to the Golan Heights.
Next I visited a place in southern Lebanon called "The Abyss," a
completely different kind of military outpost. This one was constructed
back in 2006 when Israeli neo-colonialists, seeking to steal land in southern
Lebanon, boldly invaded this area, totally confident that their
overpowering Goliath-like military complex, one of the largest in the
world, could take down some poorly-armed Davids in that region. But boy
was Goliath in for a big surprise. He truly got his arse kicked. http://mleeta.com/eng/materials/images.html
"When Ariel Sharon decided to invade Lebanon again, he thought that
stealing our land would be like taking candy from a baby," said a former
resistance fighter. "But then Lebanese freedom fighters built tunnels
under the hills and the resistance fought the Israeli invaders to a
standstill, using only aging weapons from the 1960s and lots of heroism and
grit. 70 Israeli tanks were disabled in a place now called 'The Abyss'
and Sharon's troops were sent packing."
