Tuesday, August 15, 2006

and the real losers are

the lebanese people.

it is easy to talk about winning and losing, about who started a war, who is right or wrong, about many things that pertain to war, because that's what makes news. even death is talked about in numbers, in cold abstractions that take away from painful the reality of it. 10 civilians. 100 civilians. 1000 civilians. a million. this side. that side. when numbers are that large they cease to have any meaning other than the quantitative. and death isn't the only outcome. displacement, injury, pain, fear proceed a war. and anger. anger at an unjust war.

when 700 people are killed, at least 3000 people are affected: wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, fathers, brothers, sons and friends... those people are left in misery, in loneliness, in orphanhood, in bewilderment, in sorrow, in anger and in resignation. i can't imagine what a person must feel like to lose a loved one like that, in a meaningless indiscriminate war that was unleashed by a murdering state. i hope i never would.

other than those 3000 bereaved, there are the thousands that were forced to leave their homes. after israel so nobly warned them that it will destroy their villages and towns, around half a million new refugees moved out of their houses into other areas of lebanon. those aren't just numbers. those are families, mothers, fathers, children, babies, elderly, and sick people who need food, water, shelter and medicine. thank God the weather is fair: a cold winter could've spelled death to thousands. imagine worrying about clean water, or diapers for your baby, or medicine for your grandfather or food for your family. and moving away not the end of it, merely the beginning. those refugees in their own country have to go back to broken homes, destroyed villages, unearthed buildings, pitted streets and roads.. they need to search for where their houses were between the ruin. they have to face the cold fact that their house is no longer there, that instead it's a pile of rubble.

the bill of destruction will definitely run into the billions. a country that suffered a long civil war and only recently started recovering, lebanon will need to rebuild, refinance, regather and find the strength to recreate the country its people worked so hard to build and preserve. so yeah, the lebanese, with the destroyed houses, dead relatives, damaged ports, unearthed infrastructure, the lebanese, are the ones who lost the war.

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