New Year’s Eve 2024. Champagne glass in hand, we wish each other “Happy New Year!” We are returning from a Ukrainian ballet. It was moving to see the blue and yellow of the flags in the hall of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.
As I marvel at the smoked meat with this Ukrainian couple of friends, we revisit my very short stay in their country and their life in France since the invasion of their country by Russia over three years ago.
We tread carefully in our conversation: war is a crossing that we navigate with discernment.
I ask them if they manage to go to Kyiv from time to time. They continue: “Why do you want to return to Beirut when the war is not over?”
I tell them that I left without saying goodbye to my friends, that it weighs on me, and that I really need to go back now. Our six eyes meet in a mirror, and something opens inside — an abyss.
Our trajectories are different, but we have been thrown into extreme, unpredictable realities.
Talking about the wars that disrupt our lives, the conversation shifts to Donald Trump. Lebanon is in a state of ceasefire, but we wonder what Trump has in store for Ukraine.
Three years ago, I would have slapped myself for placing any hope in him. But faced with the Europeans’ inability to understand that they are lulled by pacifism to the point of blindness, the failure of international law to enforce itself, and the repeated “deeply concerned” in press releases, I find myself placing a glimmer of hope in Trump.
Even without champagne, there is enough to make one stagger: having to rely on an orange man, incapable of articulating a cause and its effect to think about the future of Ukraine, Lebanon, and Gaza, makes me dizzy.
After all, Lebanon’s fate was partly decided in a restaurant in Michigan: to win the votes of Lebanese people in this swing state, Donald Trump wrote a letter promising to end the war — a condition set by the restaurant owner to host him during his visit.
Since Trump’s stepson is Lebanese, we briefly believed that things might improve. Especially since the 45th — and now 47th — President of the United States is used to managing his affairs within the family. The father of his son-in-law, Massad Boulos, is now his advisor for the Middle East.
A corner of a tablecloth during a presidential campaign and personal relationships rather than diplomacy and human rights, then.
Since the war in Ukraine, and even more so since the massacres committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and the genocidal war in Gaza that the Israeli government subsequently embarked on, doubled with expansionist wars in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, I have often felt like I have crossed to the other side of humanity.
That was before these wars, which shattered the intellectual and moral standards that had been instilled in me. Sometimes I think I no longer know what I think, or that I no longer know how to think.
Retrospectively, in France, I feel like I grew up with a plastic food wrap stretched vertically between me and a large part of the world outside the West. The education I received there insidiously convinced me that I could not share a common destiny with other inhabitants of the planet.
That was before these wars, which shattered the intellectual and moral standards that had been instilled in me. Sometimes I think I no longer know what I think, or that I no longer know how to think.
We need to rewind.
On February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, I cried. I cried again at the sight of gray corpses in the streets of Irpin and Bucha. That was when I was still saying, “This can’t be happening.” I thought the unraveling would be short-lived.
We stagger.
Russia has been sanctioned by the European Union since 2014, but I am alarmed by the slowness of the Europeans in concretely helping Ukraine defend itself.
Raised on the idea of the end of wars and their transformations, two generations, including mine, refuse to believe in frontal danger when they encounter it. I am angry with us.
It is not just my attachment to Ukraine that allows me to see things differently: there is a Lebanon effect. Having arrived in 2011, five years after the 2006 war between Hezbollah — both a Lebanese political party and a militia — and Israel, peace and war took on a practical meaning for me.
On the morning of October 7, I woke up to notifications and understood that Hamas has committed massacres and that it is serious. In my mind, it is spinning: “This can’t be happening. At the same time, it was to be expected.” From Lebanon, we closely observe the actions of the most right-wing Israeli government in the country’s history, elected in late 2022. In the West Bank, according to Doctors Without Borders, the Israelis had killed 205 Palestinians between January 1 and October 7, and starting in June, the Israeli army launched airstrikes.
My brain oscillates between shock and logic, horror and anxiety.
On October 8, in Lebanon, Hezbollah, armed by Iran, opens a “support front” for Gaza, which is being bombed by Israel — itself mainly armed by the United States — and fires the first rockets at the “Zionist entity.”
From this moment on, we collectively slide down a muddy slope, occasionally stabilized by a balance of forces and strategies that elude us.
War first becomes synonymous with a massive sorting of information: the most precise Telegram channels about the strikes coming to and from Lebanon are run by really dubious guys, unconditional supporters of Iran.
I sidestep the propaganda to get the most precise locations.
I intellectualize heavily: each article, each podcast is a lifeline to understand both the war in Gaza and in my host country, Lebanon.
Then my brain creates scenarios: stabilization or escalation? At this stage, the experts are clear: neither Hezbollah nor Israel has an interest in triggering an escalation, and they call this conflict a “war of attrition.”
Living through a war of attrition is like living in a pressure cooker. It is a choreography of codified bombings to avoid being interpreted in one camp or the other as an escalation, while continuing the war. But the pressure in the pressure cooker increases inexorably until a larger strike releases the steam. Pschit. Then everything calms down a notch until the next escalation. We live almost a year at this tempo over which we have no control.
We feel unmoored.
Gradually, almost nothing in our lives happens on our own terms: some fled as early as October 8 from the Israeli bombings on the southern border of Lebanon with a suitcase and their children. For us in Beirut, the illusion lasts for months.
According to the experts, a ground invasion of Gaza would be a strategic nightmare for the Israeli army. I rely on the rationality of commentators who, in turn, attribute strategic logic to an Israeli government whose priorities seem to be, above all, to stay in power — even if it means pursuing a policy of systematically crushing the Palestinians.
Collectively, we struggle to believe in this absolute immorality.
I need to deprogram myself: I continue to speak the language of the United Nations and international justice.
“It’s going to be a genocide,” I say. And I cry. The words of Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Defense Minister — “We are fighting human animals” — pronounced on October 9, keep playing in my mind. I plunge into an ultra-violent mental space where what seemed unthinkable yesterday becomes possible tomorrow.
Welcome to the destination.
This feeling of a slow, inexorable slide, as deep as the pockets of the Biden administration are for financing Israel’s weapons, forces me to open my eyes wide. The moral derealization — since, after all, one can kill hundreds of children under one year old without the world batting an eye — finishes disillusioning me.
When Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, gives his first speech on November 3, 2023, my anger, my reason, and my values resonate like a crazy orchestra.
My anger awaits this speech with the impatience of revenge: since no one seems willing to do anything to help the Palestinians, and my host country already has 46,000 displaced people, my mind makes the first person who claims to repair this injustice an ally of circumstance.
At the same time, my reason is alarmed for the inhabitants of Lebanon, and my values vomit the ideology mobilized by this militia.
It is cognitive chaos: how can my hope for a return to calm in Lebanon depend on this man?
I have the impression that for the facts I report to be taken seriously, they must be wrapped in a form of respectability, often confused with neutrality—although neutrality is not necessarily a morally just position.
“Welcome to my life,” a Lebanese friend replies when I explain to her that I am tired of wasting my breath in France to make people understand what Hezbollah is — and that, no, this militia is really not my most immediate problem in life compared to Israel’s actions. A compass: the number of deaths on each side. It is still difficult for interlocutors to say openly: “No, one life is not worth another.”
I have the impression that for the facts I report to be taken seriously, they must be wrapped in a form of respectability, often confused with neutrality—although neutrality is not necessarily a morally just position.
It is also complicated not to fall into minimization — by omission or otherwise. When I place Israel’s actions in Gaza at the center of the debate, it does not mean defending the opposing parties. Often, at some point in these conversations, I am asked my opinion on the two-state solution or the disarmament of Hezbollah. I reply: “It is up to the Lebanese and Palestinians to decide their destiny, not for me to give my opinion” — which only adds to the confusion.
I imagine that, more than once, my interlocutors go home thinking I am swayed by Iranian propaganda, reassured, by contrast, of the unassailability of their own positions, which are moral, open-minded, nuanced, and democratic.
Indecrottably idealistic, I welcome the ruling of the International Court of Justice, which, in January 2024, orders Israel to prevent any act of genocide, as a compass finally pointing north. I also read the Human Rights Watch report published in July 2024, which documents, locality by locality, the massacres committed on October 7. The magnetic north reappears on the compass when, in November, the International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, and Mohamad Deif.
I have the luxury of time for this justice: I have not lost anyone, I still have my home.
The perversity of war is that it makes us backtrack on our solidarities to continue living.
I wonder: are these the lights of the runway?
In reality, we are plunging.
The perversity of war is that it makes us backtrack on our solidarities to continue living. As long as it takes place in Gaza, and what happens in the South is limited to certain villages, I manage to stay aligned with myself: bombing day and night a population locked in an enclave since 2007, using hunger as a weapon of war, dehumanizing the people of Gaza: genocide. Bombing southern Lebanon, dropping white phosphorus, assassinating civilians: war crimes.
But the war that lasts, that spreads, complicates everything. It is a slow erosion: I am still outraged when a new village is hit in Lebanon, but no longer really for those who, immediately located on the demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel, are now bombed daily; for them, my outrage and sadness have faded. I am alarmed by the systematic bombing of hospitals in Gaza, but the bodies gathered in pieces in plastic bags no longer shake me in the same way.
Insidiously, my little life takes over everything else. The bombings spread, but as long as they do not affect “my” few square kilometers, I continue my routine. This is how the Israeli army has gradually introduced, over decades, an intellectual and emotional separation between the inhabitants of Lebanon — and I am in the process of internalizing it. Nausea.
We are taken aback by the explosion of pagers and then walkie-talkies in Lebanon on September 17 and 18. While hospitals are overwhelmed and many children are among the wounded, part of the French and international press repeats the narrative of a “daring operation” by the Mossad. The dissonance is total. The cruelty as well.
We become aware of the depths.
We now know that the worst can happen. So, on September 23, after almost twelve months of war, when the Israeli bombings spread throughout Lebanon, there is no moment of shock. Just horror. All-out war has been a specter in our minds for months.
It is the beginning of an ellipsis. The days are punctuated by voice messages on WhatsApp, money transfers — war is expensive — and notifications. First, a post from the Israeli army on X announcing an imminent bombing. Then the videos of the destruction: everything turns gray — the buildings, the objects, the people. Then the photos of the dead with emojis, roses, and broken hearts. And then, we start again.
There is no more room for analysis. My concerns become immediate and obsessive: where are the bombs falling? Who is where? I brace myself. The experts no longer have a say.
We are all, each in our own way, immersed in the scenario of the worst. We are no longer anything but the product of our circumstances. The feeling of unreality is gone: my brain has integrated that the horror is here and now.
There are things for which the gap is very large between representations in films and reality. Take nightclubs: in a movie, they are sexy; in real life, the floor is sticky with spilled beer, and it smells of sweat. A ceasefire is the same.
I had imagined immense relief. In reality, it is a long evening of fear, one eye on Al Jazeera, the other on my phone, to stay connected with my friends while Israel orchestrates its deluge of death.
And then? Reconstruction time comes. In the streets and in our minds, it is a devastated landscape: mounds of brownish debris, from which emerge plastic bags and personal belongings.
With the ceasefires in Lebanon and Gaza, and Donald Trump’s statements that he is a “peacemaker,” we take a short breath in January 2025.
Empty of all illusions, my fears return. On February 4, Donald Trump talks about Gaza being transformed into the “Riviera of the Middle East” after the expulsion of the Palestinians. We oppose international law to him. What a joke.
Meanwhile, the United States is twisting Ukraine’s arm for an unfavorable peace, the bombings in Gaza are intensifying, and those in Lebanon are resuming at the whim of the Israeli army.
When it buries fifteen rescue workers in southern Gaza with their ambulances, I close my eyes.
I imagine an immense cemetery. Here, as far as the eye can see, are the Ukrainian graves; next to them, the victims of October 7. Further away, the Lebanese graves and finally, the vast quarter of Palestinian graves, overlooked by a plateau dotted with far too short mounds: 18,000 graves of Palestinian children.
Nearby, a light blue monument. On its surface, in white letters: “Memorial of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law. 1863-2025″*
I look at the graves again: each buried body seems to take with it a little of the great principles to which we have renounced.
*The International Committee of the Red Cross was founded in 1863 by Henry Dunant. It is the origin of the various Geneva Conventions, the foundation of international humanitarian law, the first of which, in 1864, is entitled “Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field.”
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