BEIRUT — And here’s another story, this time for the _New York Post_ on trapped New York­ers in Beirut.

BEIRUT — Zeina Sayegh escaped the Lebanese civil war in 1975 when she was 2 years old. Now she’s caught in a new war on her first visit back to her par­ents’ home­land since 2000.
The 32-year-old Man­hat­tan res­i­dent, who is CEO of Fau­chon, a French gourmet-food com­pany, and her mother and aunt have been trapped in the moun­tains above Beirut since Wednes­day, when Israel began its fero­cious attacks.
“We arrived the day before all this hap­pened,” she said. “Since we’ve been here, I’ve been pre­oc­cu­pied with get­ting us out.”

There is a real sense of panic here among peo­ple. The for­eign­ers and young peo­ple who have never expe­ri­enced war are freaked out. And the Lebanese who lived through the civil war and remem­ber it well are freaked out. I seem to be the only one walk­ing around, not­ing the closed stores and sub­dued traf­fic and think­ing, “hm, com­pared to Bagh­dad, this isn’t so bad.“
I think I was in Iraq too long.
The Israelis have been hold­ing their fire (rel­a­tively speak­ing) today but there’s a rumor going round that once the for­eign nation­als are evac­u­ated, they will really open up. That may be true, but we’ll see. I still think we’re going to see a ground inva­sion, but I think it will be lim­ited to the south­ern part of the country.