ISRAELIS TAKE REVENGE
TARGET
JOURNALISTS
http://www.MiddleEast.Org
FROM SAM KILEY IN MENARA - The Times,
London -
5/24/2000
A Gunmetal blue Mercedes snaked its way
below the escarpment marking the border
between Israel and Lebanon. It stopped for a
minute or two, then disappeared in a
ball of fire - blasted by an Israeli tank lurking in trees 200
yards away. A few
hours later I discovered my personal connection
with the vehicle.
It was the second car I had seen the
Israelis destroy in ten minutes yesterday.
Their pride hurt by the rout of their forces
and those of their allies in the
South Lebanon Army, who were fleeing
back into Israel, and by the defiant flags
of Hezbollah that
fluttered over the border hamlets they had fled, this was payback
time.
I was to learn that they were shooting at
Jeremy Bowen, the BBC correspondent,
and his Lebanese cameraman. Inside the
car, Abed Taboush, a veteran driver and
"fixer" known and
loved by hundreds of journalists who had been taken under his
wing over 25
years, was dead.
I first met Mr Taboush in January. It was
the finest contact a novice could
make. A guarded
attitude gave way to enormous warmth. He insisted that I meet
his family.
In the hours between risky trips through South
Lebanon's tribal maze, Abed would
clutch a cold beer and render his listeners
tearful with laughter at his
irreverent
descriptions of our
colleagues.
I last sat beside him on Sunday when he
drove me to Beirut airport. He told me
then that he feared his luck would run
out. "I have been so lucky all my life,"
he said.
His car was well-known to the Israelis. Two
weeks before he was killed, he and
I were in Mjdal Zun when Israeli gunners
shelled us for 40 minutes. "They
know me! They know
me!" he said with a smile.
He had driven through artillery
bombardments, braved helicopter cannon fire
to bring his
cameramen into the heart of hundreds of battles. But his wife
and friends had
begged him to stay away from the south during
the Israeli retreat.
In 1996 he was the first into the Qana
massacre, when Israeli gunners killed
130 people queueing for bread at a UN
bakery. In the same month he carried the
11 dead of one
family out of the cellar where they had been killed by an
Israeli "bunker-buster"
bomb.
Yesterday I watched what amounted to his
execution. Mr Bowen told of how he and
Mr Taboush had stopped to film us: the group of
spectators with ringside seats on
the front line. "I got out of the car with the
cameraman and waved my arms so
that the Israelis could see that we were
not armed. I was wearing a pink shirt
[unusual
attire for a Hezbollah fighter]," he
said.
Then a massive explosion ripped Mr Taboush's
car apart and the Israelis used
the tank's machinegun to try to kill the
rest of the BBC crew. At Menara, a
religious kibbutz,
soldiers said that "two terrorists" has escaped and they were
trying to gun them
down. A Red Cross team that tried to retrieve Mr Taboush's
body also came
under fire.
I had spoken to Mr Taboush and Mr Bowen
yesterday morning. They were in good
spirits. "Be careful, stay safe," I
said.
