The Cost of War

“How can one not speak about war, poverty, and inequality when people who suffer from these afflictions don’t have a voice to speak?”
-Isabel Allende

Just something to think about as we watch what’s happening in Lebanon right now.

The volley of rockets that crashed down on Haifa a few hours after sunrise Sunday was by far the deadliest single blow to Israeli civilians since the conflict flared Wednesday. The two sides have been trading hits since Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon crossed the border and captured two Israeli soldiers.

Israel has answered the abductions with round-the-clock airstrikes on Lebanon, killing more than 140 civilians and wounding hundreds more. Over the same time, 24 Israelis have been killed, half of them soldiers, in attacks by the militant Shiite Muslim fighters.

Although Israel’s clash is with Hezbollah, the attacks on this seaside country appear to have done far greater damage to Lebanese civilians and infrastructure. Hezbollah has continued to shoot an unabated barrage of rockets into Israel, in turn frequently hitting civilians, even after Israeli missiles shattered the airport and highways, struck predominantly Christian neighborhoods and drove thousands of people from their homes.

Israel has attacked Hezbollah offices and the headquarters of the group’s leader. But about 1,500 airstrikes have also targeted a lighthouse, grain silos, power plants, bridges, airports and a truck packed with children, targets with no apparent relationship to Hezbollah.

Israel has dropped leaflets telling people to evacuate Beirut, and other areas that are being bombed. But then they’re bombing the roads. There’s no way for people to escape, and nowhere for them to go.

In the past few years, Israel has made painful concessions in the name of peace, withdrawing from many of their occupied territories. And civilians in Israeli cities are still being attacked.

Hezbollah claims to speak and act on behalf of the Lebanese people, and yet its hundreds of civilians — not Hezbollah members, and not terrorists — who are being killed.

And now we have right-wingers in our country and others chomping at the bit to go to war with Syria and Iran, as people in Lebanon and Palestine already suspect the United States of being partially behind this (I’m skipping the links to the right-wing blogs, because reading them on this issue is simply making me sick. This comment thread is a tame example).

I’m an optimist, and I like to think that peace is possible. But I also know that true peace would require a radical shifting of our understandings of nation-states, human rights and patriotism. It would require us to make the kinds of sacrifices for peace that we’re already too willing to make for war.

I don’t see it happening any time soon. But I know that people all over the world are as hungry for it as I am.

Lebanese, Israeli, Palestinian and Middle Eastern bloggers are writing. I hope you’ll head over there, listen to their stories, and send them your thoughts/prayers/well-wishes. The Lebanese Blogger Forum offers various ways that you can help, from protesting to signing petitions to donating to the Lebanese Red Cross. Letters Apart shows us the human cost in Lebanon (warning: disturbing images). Lebanese Lady writes about her heartbreak. Raja documents it as it unfolds. Lebanon Profile becomes a refugee, and captures the tragedies within these tragedies: The fact that they breed more hate, and new generations of conflict. And Robert Fisk asks who are the real terrorists here?

They’re angry. They’re exhausted. They’re frustrated. They’re scared, and yet they remain reflective.

From Israel, Gideon Levy speaks for the many people who are fed up with this conflict. In Haifa, they’re frightened. They’re also angry, though for very different reasons. And they’re disappointed.

I’ll end with words from one Lebanese blogger:

My friends, my brethren, my people, my big extended family spread farther than the eye can see, my souls, my bloods, the reason I am alive and still willing to live, I beg you, I beg you as my fingers tremble and my eyes well-up with tears, brace yourselves, join the broken bridges with your outstretched arms, fill the gaping craters with your unwavering pride, build and rebuild with the torn bodies of those who have fallen, keep together, raise the chants of unity, be not afraid but strong, be not angry but resilient, be who you’ve always been, be alive, stay alive, for this too shall pass. Do not give in to violence, do not embrace it, for there is no victory in killing, but there sure is one in faith, in strength, in unity, in peaceful resolve. The enemies of this nation cannot wipe it out of existence, they cannot kill us all. The hate-ridden hearts and bitter souls will not thrive. They will not persist. What is of stone can be rebuilt a thousand times over, and what is within us, our history, our abiliy to brave all dangers and rise from the rubble stronger still, is what they cannot and will not take away. I say this as my bleeding heart traces its thirty-one years on the streets of the land it fell in love with, the land of giving, of divine inspiration and beauty, the land of all things sacred and all things cursed, I say it as I helplessly watch my land disappear in a dark haze of destruction and death, because I know that this too, as bleak and tragic as it is, shall pass. Just brace yourselves sons and daughters of Lebanon, be strong so I can be strong, survive so I can survive, for you don’t know you are all right here with me in this small room in Nashville, and my heart, my spirit, my tears, are with you, today and everyday until a better day comes, until a better life comes, until the very end of time.