Over the course of the last several weeks, I’ve been compiling war data to take stock of the past year and observe how conflict has coincided with and shaped the experiences covered in our end of year issue. Included in this compilation of data is a month-by-month list of all casualties and injuries in both Palestine and Lebanon, as well as Israeli casualties from the terrorist revolts on October 7th, 2023. Watching a spreadsheet of human numbers rise month by month and then grow to include massacres of children (well over 13,000 in Gaza, over 170 in the West Bank, and at least 240 in Lebanon), and children who have lost one or more parents (over 35,000 in Gaza) is an experience that renders global commitments to human rights and international law to nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
As I sifted through media reports to draw up a timeline of horror, patterns of language became increasingly evident and often contrasted quite dramatically with the real lived experience of the events they covered. The past year has made it clear that the language of aggression dresses in the sheepskin of righteous justification. Of course, many in this region, and Palestinians in particular, have known this to be true for decades.
September 17th, 2024 was the day that Israel drastically ramped up the back-and-forth conflict that had been playing out over the past year, with Hezbollah sending up to hundreds of near-daily rockets toward—and occasionally into—northern Israel “in solidarity” with Hamas and Palestine (though many would argue that this show of support did little to nothing to actually assist Palestinians), and Israel destroying lives and infrastructure—often civilian—in south Lebanon in return.
I had decided that afternoon to pick up my two younger daughters from our neighborhood school and bring them to collect the oldest from her school in Beirut. Since I was coming from home, I took a different road than I usually take when driving from work, and I parked on a different street. After dismissal, I let them play in the open outdoor play area of the school.
Above the noises of the city, I began to hear the near constant sirens of ambulances. At first I thought it was only unusual, but when the rush of ambulances increased and when one flew up in the wrong direction on the narrow one-way street where I usually park, a false-calm state of action took over: checking my phone to figure out what was going on (no answers yet), taking the girls to the car, driving purposefully to our house in the quieter mountains above Beirut while sirens were still incessant.
Once home I learned what was happening. Pagers used by Hezbollah members—civilian as well as combatant— had detonated throughout the country where their owners were going about their days. In living rooms and kitchens and bedrooms and bathrooms, in grocery stores, in cars and on motorcycles, in small elevators, on busy roads, on streets full of pedestrians. These communication devices had been covertly planted with explosives in an attack that was over a decade in the making, triggered into action by a distant hand. It happened again the next day with walkie-talkies: detonations, panic, ambulances, hospitals filling and filling, everywhere the dread of confirmation that no part of our lives here in this country is unviolated by an omniscient and malevolent eye that watches all our movements, always calculating and preparing.
In the following weeks, walking past the hospital where all three of my children were born, I passed men—but also women and children—with bandages on their faces, hands, and hips. The area outside the hospital was full of families standing together. All in all, there were over 3,000 injuries and 35 deaths including the killing of two children. In the news I read words that would come to be sickeningly familiar: “targeted,” “sophisticated.”
The 1999 International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism defined terrorism as “any . . . act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.” The majority of those injured and killed by the pager attacks, including those who may have been combatants, were not “taking active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict” on September 17th and 18th, and on the many days that followed. But the Lebanese population was terrorized.
The language of the aggressor is always neat, sanitary and self-validating: “targeted strike on terrorist operatives,” “successful operation,” “limited ground incursion.” Words conveniently and dutifully serve the aims of war; language itself becomes a weapon with the purpose of minimizing imagined impact and creating such a distance between the audience and the victim, that the victim ceases to exist. Afterall, is a “terrorist” a victim? Is a “Hezbollah stronghold” not a legitimate war target?
On the flipside, the experience of aggression is not cerebral but visceral; language becomes cheap and grossly inadequate. The following are unpunctuated messages and voice notes—a few have been translated from Arabic—from chat groups I’m part of, and from friends during the war, none of whom are combatants:
“My house is shaking”
“My kids are hiding under the table”
“The building next to ours came down”
“My parents’ home is gone. After living their whole lives they have nothing now.”
“I can’t feel my legs”
“I can’t breathe”
“Ya Allah make this stop”
“I don’t know how I will go on without him. We were together every day.”
“People are stuck in traffic and can’t get out
That’s why we didn’t escape
People are screaming”
“My god did you hear that”
“They bombed the last homes in my village. The whole village is gone.”
These are the choked and terror-filled words of war. They are inherently scant to convey the depth of loss of life and livelihood. There is a particularly unspeakable evil in the destruction of places that hold layers and layers of history, often land that has been passed down through family lineages for centuries.
The language of aggression—which is also the language of power—masks as the language of peace, and uses false, unwanted assurances to deceive and divide. “We are liberating you.” “We are destroying Hezbollah strongholds.” One woman on a chat group explained that her daughter had been in one such “Hezbollah stronghold” when it was bombed for the first time in January 2024. She recalled insisting that it was just the local area where they spent every afternoon, that the label must be a mistake. The language of strongholds justifies every aggression. But these “strongholds” are neighborhoods belonging to families, friends, shops, sports clubs.
“Haret Hreik [a heavily hit neighborhood in Dahieh] is my crafting stronghold,” joked one woman.
“Hadath [another heavily bombed Dahieh neighborhood] is where my OBGYN’s office is,” I responded. “My baby gestation stronghold.”
Bir Hassan is my running stronghold, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. These are places where I can spend time—but what of the thousands of families who live there? A friend showed me photos of her home, which she and her husband had just renovated last year. The building is still standing, though it may no longer be structurally sound. The windows and doors are blown in and glass is shattered all over the floor. I saw shards of it sticking out of her son’s teddy bear. Right outside is a gargantuan pile of the rubble from twelve buildings—most belonging to families on her street.
What of the medical workers, hospitals, and civil defense centers that became deliberate targets during the war? What of the journalists who were killed and UNIFIL workers who experienced repeated attacks meant to intimidate?
Those of us whose work involves language and the manipulation and construction of words for story, can quite easily become complicit in the justification of evil by parroting instead of unmasking the narrative of the aggressor that perpetuates the types of sanctioned and funded brutality that international law and declarations of human rights claim to categorically oppose. Israel recently announced a $150 million dollar increase to their “Hasbara,” or propaganda budget. A war of unctuous words can smooth over genocide and starvation and war crimes. But regardless of the propped-up narrative of the day, violence is violence, violations are violations. Globally agreed upon principles still exist, regardless of whether they are adhered to, conveniently forgotten, or unapologetically stamped underfoot. Journalists in these cases are the message bearers who can choose either to protect the powerful or elevate the voices of the vulnerable.
