2006年VOA标准英语-On the Scene Report: Bombed Hezbollah District

By Challiss McDonough
Beirut
20 July 2006

The Shi'ite-dominated regions of southern Lebanon and south Beirut have been heavily bombed by Israeli jets. On Thursday afternoon, VOA Correspondent Challiss McDonough joined other journalists on a tour of one demolished¹ southern suburb, led by the spokesman from Hezbollah.

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"Just listen to me! OK, now we are organizing a tour. The situation, luckily it's calm right now, but we have to do it very fast. We have to move very quickly. You have to listen to me, to my order. If I tell you to evacuate², that means you have to evacuate right now. The security guys are with us. I'm gonna speak to you. You have to follow me...," he said.
 

Hussein Nabolsi  
  
Not many tour guides start off with warnings like that. But Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Nabolsi is not your normal tour guide.

He led 30 or 40 journalists on a tour of the shattered neighborhood of Haret Hriek in Beirut's southern suburbs.

We walked through nearly impassable streets choked with rubble³, twisted metal and the remains⁴ of shattered lives. A child's teddy bear lay twisted on the ground. There were photo albums crumpled⁵ in the dust, filled with pictures of weddings, birthdays, visits from relatives. 

 
Scene in Haret Hriek, Lebanon 
  
All around us were piles of rubble where buildings used to be, now crushed beyond recognition. Black smoke was still rising from some of the sites, and the air was thick with the acrid⁶ odor of explosives.

Some kind of alarm warbled feebly from one of the piles that used to be an apartment building.

This is the neighborhood where Hezbollah's headquarters were located, and the studios for its television and radio stations. This is where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah lived. None of those buildings are standing⁷ anymore. And along with those targets, Israeli bombs destroyed most of the neighborhood.

The reporters peppered Hezbollah's spokesman with tough questions about whether the group's own actions had brought this fate upon the neighborhood and the country. Hussein Nabolsi was agitated⁸, shouting back his answers and waving at the whole-scale destruction around them.

MALE REPORTER: "So you're saying that the Israeli charge that Hezbollah uses civilians⁹ as a shield to conduct their own activities, you're saying that that's wrong."

NABOLSI: "The Israelis always invent a pretext¹⁰ to take action. In 1982 when they invaded Lebanon..."

When asked whether there were military targets in the neighborhood, Nabolsi gave this response. "You came from the moon? We live in Lebanon! This is Lebanon. This is our land. This is our area. This is where we live," he said.

The tour of the shattered landscape got more surreal with every step, and the spokesman tried to stay on message. "All our actions are a reaction for Israeli attacks. We have never initiated¹¹ any attacks against Israel. It's all a reaction, defending ourselves. This is war," he said.

But Hezbollah did cross the border into Israel more than a week ago and capture two Israeli soldiers. Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets into northern Israel, killing¹² at least 29 people. More than 300 Lebanese have died in the Israeli attacks. A few minutes after denying that his group has initiated attacks, Nabolsi denied Israeli claims that the air strikes have destroyed more than half of Hezbollah's arsenal¹³. He vowed¹⁴ to keep attacking. "And now we launch more attacks, we launch more rockets into Israeli military targets inside Israel. That means our military capability¹⁵ is getting stronger and stronger. Whatever they do to block the way, or if they think that our rocket arsenal, we run out of the rockets, they are completely mistaken. We are going to continue our battle. We are going to continue to defend our land until the last day of our lives," he said.

That is the standard Hezbollah line, that the group is defending Lebanon.

But walking through the blasted streets of Haret Hriek, Lebanon does not look very defended. This is not a neighborhood anymore. There are some buildings still standing, but nothing is undamaged.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on Thursday condemned¹⁶ Hezbollah's kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers, and its continued rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. But he also said that the Israeli response has been disproportionate, calling it "excessive use of force."

Hezbollah has been blocking most residents from returning to the southern suburbs. The journalist tour was only possible because over the last few days, the number of air strikes has slacked off in South Beirut during the daytime. In the evenings, when the cruise ships evacuating¹⁷ foreigners are gone, the blasts again echo through the city.

It is not clear whether the break in shelling is because of the evacuations going on at the port a few kilometers away, or because there is simply not much left to hit.

In contrast to the first few days of air strikes, there have been relatively¹⁸ few casualties in south Beirut in recent days because the southern suburbs are all but abandoned. Their residents have fled to the mountains, or to sleep in schoolrooms in other parts of town.

On the fringes of the neighborhood, a man and a woman parked their car outside an apartment building and dashed inside, probably retrieving¹⁹ a few belongings²⁰ before heading back out to relative safety.

1 demolished   

v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光

参考例句：

• The factory is due to be demolished next year. 这个工厂定于明年拆除。
• They have been fighting a rearguard action for two years to stop their house being demolished. 两年来，为了不让拆除他们的房子，他们一直在进行最后的努力。

2 evacuate   

v.遣送；搬空；抽出；排泄；大(小)便

参考例句：

• We must evacuate those soldiers at once!我们必须立即撤出这些士兵！
• They were planning to evacuate the seventy American officials still in the country.他们正计划转移仍滞留在该国的70名美国官员。

3 rubble   

n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾

参考例句：

• After the earthquake,it took months to clean up the rubble.地震后，花了数月才清理完瓦砾。
• After the war many cities were full of rubble.战后许多城市到处可见颓垣残壁。

4 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

5 crumpled   

adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• She crumpled the letter up into a ball and threw it on the fire. 她把那封信揉成一团扔进了火里。
• She flattened out the crumpled letter on the desk. 她在写字台上把皱巴巴的信展平。

6 acrid   

adj.辛辣的，尖刻的，刻薄的

参考例句：

• There is an acrid tone to your remarks.你说这些话的口气带有讥刺意味。
• The room was filled with acrid smoke.房里充满刺鼻的烟。

7 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

8 agitated   

adj.被鼓动的，不安的

参考例句：

• His answers were all mixed up,so agitated was he.他是那样心神不定，回答全乱了。
• She was agitated because her train was an hour late.她乘坐的火车晚点一个小时，她十分焦虑。

9 civilians   

平民，百姓( civilian的名词复数 )； 老百姓

参考例句：

• the bloody massacre of innocent civilians 对无辜平民的血腥屠杀
• At least 300 civilians are unaccounted for after the bombing raids. 遭轰炸袭击之后，至少有300名平民下落不明。

10 pretext   

n.借口，托词

参考例句：

• He used his headache as a pretext for not going to school.他借口头疼而不去上学。
• He didn't attend that meeting under the pretext of sickness.他以生病为借口，没参加那个会议。

11 initiated   

n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入

参考例句：

• He has not yet been thoroughly initiated into the mysteries of computers. 他对计算机的奥秘尚未入门。
• The artist initiated the girl into the art world in France. 这个艺术家介绍这个女孩加入巴黎艺术界。

12 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

13 arsenal   

n.兵工厂，军械库

参考例句：

• Even the workers at the arsenal have got a secret organization.兵工厂工人暗中也有组织。
• We must be the great arsenal of democracy.我们必须成为民主的大军火库。

14 vowed   

起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• He vowed quite solemnly that he would carry out his promise. 他非常庄严地发誓要实现他的诺言。
• I vowed to do more of the cooking myself. 我发誓自己要多动手做饭。

15 capability   

n.能力；才能；(pl)可发展的能力或特性等

参考例句：

• She has the capability to become a very fine actress.她有潜力成为杰出演员。
• Organizing a whole department is beyond his capability.组织整个部门是他能力以外的事。

16 condemned   

adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He condemned the hypocrisy of those politicians who do one thing and say another. 他谴责了那些说一套做一套的政客的虚伪。
• The policy has been condemned as a regressive step. 这项政策被认为是一种倒退而受到谴责。

17 evacuating   

撤离，疏散( evacuate的现在分词 )； 排空（胃肠），排泄（粪便）； （从危险的地方）撤出，搬出，撤空

参考例句：

• The solution is degassed by alternately freezing, evacuating and thawing. 通过交替的冻结、抽空和溶化来使溶液除气。
• Are we evacuating these potential targets? 能够在这些目标地域内进行疏散吗？

18 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

19 retrieving   

n.检索（过程），取还v.取回( retrieve的现在分词 )；恢复；寻回；检索（储存的信息）

参考例句：

• Ignoring all, he searches the ground carefully for any cigarette-end worth retrieving. 没管打锣的说了什么，他留神的在地上找，看有没有值得拾起来的烟头儿。 来自汉英文学 - 骆驼祥子
• Retrieving the nodules from these great depths is no easy task. 从这样的海底深渊中取回结核可不是容易的事情。 来自辞典例句

20 belongings   

n.私人物品，私人财物

参考例句：

• I put a few personal belongings in a bag.我把几件私人物品装进包中。
• Your personal belongings are not dutiable.个人物品不用纳税。