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The News Stand is where The Public Source breaks away from its signature long-form work to bring you a selection of noteworthy news, photos, insights into the week's happenings, and sneak peeks or behind-the-scenes looks at upcoming articles. 

Out every Friday.

The News Stand

June 28, 2024 The Warfront South Lebanon

Map of Israeli strikes in the South of Lebanon

A map from the National Council for Scientific Research shows the latest available data on Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon since October 8, 2023.

Israeli occupation forces have conducted at least 5,800 attacks across multiple Lebanese regions since October 8, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, killing more than 450 people. Israel has destroyed more than 3,000 houses and damaged more than 12 million square meters of agricultural land, according to the Council for the South, and is threatening to further intensify and expand its attacks on Lebanon.

Beirut, Lebanon. June 26, 2024. (CNRS)

June 21, 2024 Beirut Port Explosion Justice Denied Justice Palace

Man stands next to burning tires
Families of the victims of the port explosion stand outside the Justice Palace
Man pours diesel on a tire fire

Families of victims of the Beirut port blast demonstrate and burn tires in front of the Justice Palace in Beirut, on June 3, demanding that authorities complete the long-stalled investigation into the devastating explosion almost 4 years ago.ㅤ

Yesterday the families returned saying, in the words of lawyer Cecile Roukoz, who lost her brother, "This fire you see here, our siblings burned in it... we won't leave and we won't let you relax until you move forward with the file of the Beirut port investigation."

The investigation has been stalled, again, since January 2023, when former prosecutor at the Court of Cassation Ghassan Oueidat instructed judicial police not to comply with summons issued by investigative judge Tarek Bitar.

Beirut, Lebanon. June 3, 2024. (Marwan Bou Haidar/The Public Source)

June 14, 2024 "I'll Answer Your Question With a Story" Barzakh, Hamra

Arundhati Roy speaks in Beirut
Arundhati Roy and Fawwaz Traboulsi speak in Beirut
Audience listens to Arundhati Roy and Fawwaz Traboulsi speak in Beirut

Guest Post by Farah Kanaan

Indian author Arundhati Roy speaks with Lebanese historian Fawwaz Traboulsi about writing from within and in solidarity with the revolutionary movements and people in India.

During the conversation at Barzakh Bookshop, Roy commented that people are continuously trying to redefine the job of the writer, by calling writers like her activists, simply because they write about things that matter to people. While policymakers spend a lifetime trying to develop a language that masks thought, “where every word [they] use means the opposite,” she said, “writers spend a lifetime trying to close the gap between language and thought.”ㅤ

“That is what novels try and do; they create that universe and invite you to try and live in it, or make sense of it.”ㅤ

Roy and Traboulsi also discussed India’s recent elections and her fear of India becoming the next Israel, the dangers of capitalism and neo-imperialism, and the whitewashing of Gandhi.ㅤ

Following the exchange between the two writers, audience members raised questions about Roy’s position on Palestinian armed resistance. “I believe in what I call a diversity of resistance and I am one of the greatest admirers of how Palestinians have resisted this occupation,” she said in response.

Barzakh Bookshop, Hamra, Beirut. June 10, 2024. (Marwan Bou Haidar/The Public Source)

June 7, 2024 Adam Arrives to Beirut Beirut

Ghassan Abu Sittah at a press conference
Ghassan Abu Sittah Children's Fund press conference
Ghassan Abu Sittah Children's Fund press conference

The Ghassan Abu Sittah Children's Fund holds a press conference in Beirut to share updates on Adam Afana, a five-year-old boy who suffered serious injuries when Israeli occupation forces bombed his home in Jabalia on October 29, killing several family members. Adam arrived to Beirut on May 27 and is the first child to come from Gaza to Lebanon for medical treatment.ㅤ

The Fund, created last winter in response to Israel's systematic destruction of Gaza's healthcare infrastructure over the past eight months, says it plans to treat 50 children at a time in Lebanon, in partnership with the American University of Beirut Medical Center and eventually other Lebanese hospitals.

Beirut, Lebanon. June 5, 2024. (Marwan Bou Haidar/The Public Source)

May 31, 2024 "Sound and the Fury: Living With Noise Pollution in Beirut" Bonus Photos Mar Mikhael

Man smokes a cigarette
Two women stand in their kitchen
A loud nightlife spot in Beirut

Excerpt from "Sound and the Fury: Living With Noise Pollution in Beirut"

Nammour tells The Public Source that justice is not accessible to everyone. The residents of Mar Mikhael are facing people who have much more money than they do.ㅤ

“Before Mar Mikhael got gentrified, it was an industrial sector of the city,” he explains. “Most of the families who used to work in those factories lived in that area. And this is why they cannot really afford a legal battle.”ㅤ

Pierre, 61, lives in his old family house facing the Électricité Du Liban building in Mar Mikhael. “The house shakes because of the different noises,” he tells The Public Source while pointing to the cars from his balcony.

Bonus photos by contributing photojournalist Rita Kabalan.

May 24, 2024 From the PFLP Bulletin Nabatieh

An Israeli military vehicle burns on the side of the road
Crowd gathers around an Israeli military truck

An Israeli military convoy in Nabatieh burns in late 1983 after reportedly opening fire on a crowd. In mid-October of that year Israeli forces fired on an Ashura commemoration in the southern city, wounding several civilians, according to the PFLP Bulletin, amid massive military and civilian resistance to the occupation ranging from guerrilla attacks to civilian barricades. In the face of determined resistance, Israel was forced to withdraw from most of Lebanon, besides the occupied Shebaa Farms, in May of the year 2000.

Credit: PFLP Bulletin, No. 69, 1983

May 17, 2024 76 Years of Nakba Beirut

Protesters pull on police barricade
Protesters carry Palestinian flag
Protesters carry cardboard signs

Students and community members commemorate the 76th anniversary of the Nakba with a march from the American University of Beirut to the British Embassy.

Nakba Day is observed annually on May 15 in remembrance of the mass dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, which led to the establishment of the Zionist state on the ruins of hundreds of depopulated villages in historic Palestine.

Students held banners calling for the boycott of the Israeli settler state.

May 15, 2024. Beirut, Lebanon. (Marwan Bou Haidar/The Public Source)

May 10, 2024 Israeli Aggression on Alma el-Chaab Alma el-Chaab

A man walks through wreckage of a destroyed home
A view of a destroyed house
A destroyed car amid the wreckage of a destroyed home

A destroyed home and vehicles in Alma el-Chaab on April 16, 2024. On April 16 Israeli warplanes conducted airstrikes on two houses in Alma el-Chaab, causing no casualties. The day before, the Israeli military fired artillery and white phosphorus shells in the area around the town, in addition to an airstrike. The Israeli military has struck Alma el-Chaab at least 175 times between October 10, 2023 and May 3, 2024, killing Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and an estimated five Hezbollah fighters, according to data from ACLED. 

Alma el-Chaab, Lebanon.  (Marwan Bou Haidar/The Public Source)

May 3, 2024 Students Protest Gaza Genocide Bliss St.

Student protesters hold a large Palestinian flag
Student protesters hold posters
A man sits in front of a protest banner

Photo 1: Around 300 AUB students and community members rallied in support of Palestine as the global student movement against the Israeli genocide in Gaza spread from US college campuses to universities around the world, including Lebanon.

Photo 2: Students at AUB, LAU, and at least six other campuses held a day of action on Tuesday voicing support for Palestine and demanding their university administrations boycott companies and institutions that are complicit with the Israeli occupation. AUB students further called for full financial transparency.

Photo 3: “Stopping the genocide is a first step towards liberation, return, and decolonization,” reads a banner at AUB. Pro-Palestine protests on university campuses began on April 17, 2024 at Columbia University in New York, USA and have rapidly spread to more than 15 countries.

April 30, 2024. Beirut, Lebanon. (Marwan Bou Haidar/The Public Source)

Richard Salame

Richard Salame is an investigative journalist at The Public Source

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