It’s Saturday morning, July 15th. The sky is clear, the news sober, and growing more so by the hour, ever since Israel’s incursion into Lebanon after the militant group Hezbollah kidnaped two Israeli soldiers.

In yesterday’s issue of the New York Times, Michael Young reported from Beirut that this is more than a border flare-up:

“It must also be seen as a spinoff of a general counter attack against American and Israeli power in the region by Iran and Syria operating through sub-state actors like Hezbollaoh and the Palestinian organization Hamas.”

Young does an excellent job of delineating Hezbollah’s crossing three political lines:

• The first was its expansion of military operations outside the Shebaa area.
• The second line crossed was Hezbollah’s evident coordination of strategy with Hamas, leaving Israel feeling it was fighting a war on two fronts.
• The third line crossed was domestic. By unilaterally taking Lebanon into a conflict with Israel, Hezbollah sought to stage a coup d’etat against the anti-Syrian parliamentary and government majority, which opposes the militant group’s adventurism.

Young goes on to say that the UN Security Council “Resolution 1559, approved in 2004, called for Hezbollah’s disarmament, and that the five permanent members of the Security Council should consider a larger initiative based on the resolution, which would include: a proposal for the gradual collection of Hezbollah’s weapons; written guarantees by Israel that it will respect Lebanese sovereignty and put its forces out of the contested Lebanese land in the Shebaa Farms; and the release of prisoners on both sides. Such a deal could find support among Lebanon’s anti-Syrian politicians, would substantially narrow Hezbollah’s ability to justify retaining its arms, and also send a signal to Syria and particularly Iran that the region is not theirs for the taking.

Young cautions that: “No Lebanese government could legitimately help to advance such a plan if Israel were to try to, as its army chief of staff put it this week, ‘turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years.’ Israel must cease its attacks and let diplomacy take over.”

(Michael Young is the opinion editor of The Daily Star in Lebanon and a contributing editor at Reason magazine.)

Israel has been set off balance with the realization that missiles are now reaching her shore, frightening and demoralizing her people. Being the bully on the block, with the strongest nation on earth in her corner, has made her too cocky by half. Her chickens have come home to roost.

And what about us? Do we really think we will be immune from the suffering of war, as we allow our weapons to be used with impunity, Christians though we call ourselves?

When it comes to maiming and dying, all wars are alike. But when we stop to see one broken child, one wordless mother or father, one limbless soldier, the general becomes particular, and we stand mute before our ability to unleash such evil in the name of whatever or whomever.

Therefore, let us pause and listen to the story of a Palestinian woman, Ibtisam S. Barakat, who learned about war at the age of three, on the evening of June 5th, 1967, as related in the book, Why Do They Hate Me? Young Lives Caught In War And Conflict by Laurel Holliday. Ibtisam began:

The war came to us at sundown. My mother had just announced that our lentil-and-rice dinner would be ready as soon as Dad arrived. She picked up my infant sister, held out a plump breast, and began to rock and feed her.

The three-year old left her two brothers playing in the garden while she stood at the door waiting for her father to return from work. Then, she would run to him, wait for a hug and guess the treat hidden in his pocket.

But this evening, he ran to her, with no smile on his face, and shouted: “Run back and tell your mother the war has started!”

With the news, her mother said not a word, but struck her cheeks with both hands, and dug her nails into them. She knew about war, for she had been a child in 1948, after the Jews declared Palestinian land as their national home and named it Israel.

She sought strength in her husband’s arms, who told her he had heard that the planes had been targeting homes in particular, and that the safest thing would be to turn off all the lights, leave home immediately, and sit in the garden in the trench he had been digging for a water culvert, while they decided what to do.

As they lay in the trench, clinging to one another, the mother held the baby, trying to keep her quiet, and the father prayed for gentleness in the days to come. Then, he heard footsteps and could make out in the darkness that people were walking on the road, and asked the crowd if they had any news.

A man’s voice answered: “After their planes attack, they will be combing the area house by house. The word is that they will butcher every living thing that they find.”

The dad decided they should join the group, saying, “Death in a group is mercy.”

The mother ran back to gather some food, and told the children they must find their shoes in the dark. Then, shrill sounds were heard, and bullets were fired at her as she ran. She fell to the ground. The father crept along the path, grabbed her foot and pulled her toward him, discovering that she wasn’t hurt. The bullets had missed, he told her.

She rose, and ran to the house again, poured some lentil and rice into a bag, and searched until she found some gold bracelets which had been part of her dowry. The father rounded up blankets and whatever clothes he could carry.

The boys put on their shoes, and held on to their mother’s dress; the infant was in her arms. In the darkness, Ibtisam couldn’t tie her lace-up shoes, and called out, “Help me!” No one answered.

A new wave of people came along, and the child decided to leave her shoes and run after them. In the distance, she could see a woman with a long braid down her back, and thought she must be her mother, but when she caught up and tried to hang on to the woman’s skirt, she heard, “Who are you?” The child dropped her hand to her sides, and walked on, too frightened to speak to anyone.

She didn’t join those who chose to stop in the caves, but walked on until the group came to a road. Later, she would describe the scene this way:

“I could see more people around me than I had ever seen before. They were gazing into the horizon where a long line of unanswered prayers hung from the sky. They were cursing. They were struggling to swallow the bitter news. They were begging one another for a drink of water. And some were still praying. And all awaited a miracle to transport us away from the war, away from our home. I wandered among the faces and somehow saw my father, my mother, and my two brothers. I could neither cry nor smile. And although I walked up to them, and they to me, we had become a heartful of fright estranged.”

The family made their way to Jordan, and finally returned home after four months. There were soldiers everywhere, marching with their guns along the road. The children didn’t play outside for a long, long time.

Ibtisam concludes: “And over the years I understood that the war was only the start, and that our lives, and all things Palestinian, were marked for destruction by a fire that would not be put out.”

Ibtisan lived on the West Bank until she was 22. She graduated from Birzeit University , and went on to get a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, and is now a writer in Columbus, Missouri.

Let us remember, as this war gathers speed and engulfs more and more three-year olds who can’t tie their shoes in the dark, that we are, also, guilty Barbarians at the Gate, smothering our consciences as we unload our armaments, then run away to sit in an air-conditioned mall.

This new fire threatens millions. Can we not stop providing the fuel?

There has been enough destruction, enough death, enough waste. and it’s time that together we occupy a place beyond ourselves,our peoples, that is worthy of ... the descendants of the children of Abraham.

King Hussein of Jordan

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