See this honest, heartfelt Haifa diary, courtesy American ex-patriate Menachem Kellner and the Washington Post.
In a related expatriate development, Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle comments on a rather ironic development: Omar Bakri Mohammed (pictured), who fled the UK for Beirut a year ago, was turned away from a British evacuation ship:
You might have thought Bakri Mohammed would have been delighted that here he was, at last, in a position to act in perfect accord with his relentlessly stated beliefs; a chance to gird the loins, strap on the old Semtex and make haste for the Israeli border. Bang! But no; what he did instead was plead, quite piteously, with the British government to airlift him (at our expense) to safety. It is all very well to cheer on the suicide bombers and the struggle to expunge Israel from the face of the earth — but one shouldn’t really be expected to take part in such dangerous activities oneself. Suddenly the British way of doing things seemed awfully attractive as the shells rained down. Far better to pontificate about Armageddon from a semi in Edmonton.
