In an audio recording attributed to one of Hezbollah’s senior leaders, a calm and collected man addresses the group’s loyal supporters, urging them to closely follow developments with the enemy. He claims that after bombing Lebanon, Israeli warplanes are landing in Cyprus because Hezbollah has destroyed their airports. “The enemy is in pain, suffering,” he says, adding that it won’t be long before delegations, including President Biden, come to negotiate. “The enemy is in a bigger crisis than we are, by dozens of times. Spread this good news.”
This message was released on one of the darkest days in Lebanon’s history. The “hellish Monday” when Israel carried out 1,300 airstrikes, killing and injuring thousands of civilians and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee all at once, only to be stuck—literally—for over 20 hours in a bottleneck. They were thirsty and hungry, after 11 months of war without support, because neither the government nor Hezbollah expected such a moment, and because this open war was not with Israel alone, but as if it were with a state like the Vatican or a sultanate like Brunei.
The cleric, reportedly a member of Hezbollah’s Shura Council, asked the community to manipulate their own minds, urging them to spread internal propaganda for the greater good. They were to encourage each other, while trapped in their cars, searching for bottles of water they couldn’t find, trying to secure milk for infants, reassuring their children that the enemy was in greater trouble.
Even as they arrived at schools not equipped to accommodate them, or while they waited again for aid boxes—everything a displaced person lacks except their spirit and the clothes they wear—they were to remind each other of the “good news”: that the enemy is in ten times more trouble than they are.
The cleric wants them to think strategically, while some are sleeping on sidewalks because they don’t know where else to go. The national unity that emerged from northern to southern Lebanon hasn’t secured for them the exorbitant sums demanded by landlords, or perhaps there are no vacant apartments, or they simply don’t want to sleep in a school.
This is the battle in which no voice should rise above that of the new Iranian president, proudly speaking to the Americans in New York with all his dignity and pride. What’s needed now is only solidarity, not politics. Civilians are not at the heart of politics. They are a humanitarian case requiring compassion, solidarity, and shelter—however makeshift—without knowing how long they’ll remain displaced, or what’s become of their homes, or what will happen to their lives. Again? Yes, again. After the last displacement 18 years ago, they find themselves fleeing homes crumbling behind them.
Once more, they are forced to express gratitude for the national charade of solidarity and fall in love with Sidon because an anonymous paper sign reassured them that they will return with their heads held high. Once more, they must exercise tactical patience, view the bigger picture, and accept congratulations on the loss of their young men and women. Once again, they are shattered by the sight of blood filling the eyes of children and their torn limbs.
Once again, they are forced into silence for fear of being accused of defeatism, while screen warriors and social media champions boast that their children, homes, and future are sacrifices for the leader, an ongoing insult to an entire population reduced to living and dying for one individual’s feelings.
Once again, they find themselves in an uneven battle—not aimed at eradicating the enemy, not even to prevent their party’s destruction like in 2006, nor to liberate their land. The stated goal, from their own party, is simply to pressure the enemy to temporarily evacuate its settlers from the north. A war whose ceiling is the party’s implicit acceptance of the return of the occupiers, should Netanyahu meet the condition he refused for 11 months of war: stopping the genocide in Gaza, which Hezbollah failed to influence. In fact, Israel has unleashed more force on Gaza in recent days, while the only news being reported is the war on Lebanon.
People—their homes, properties, shops, fields, children, safety, and dignity—are at the core of this war and the core of politics. At the heart of politics because those who didn’t flee at the start of the war were convinced by analysts, who claimed that Israel fears a large-scale war, American pressure, the unknown that awaits them, the rules set by Hezbollah that Israel dares not breach, the balance of terror, and pressure from northern settlers on their government. All these bubbles burst at once. Yet the army of thinkers resumed, speaking of military table-turning, exhausting the enemy, grand surprises, and the “good news” the cleric wanted to spread before the displaced found a pillow for their heads.
At the heart of politics is the question: what makes them different from the settlers in northern Palestine, who serve as leverage on their government, while those displaced for 11 months do not have the same leverage with their party or government? At the heart of politics is the question: why did this war start in the first place, how did Hezbollah prepare for it, how did it protect and will it protect its civilians from the enemy’s blind killing machine, and how and when will it end? Yes, these questions are at the heart of politics, and at the core of this disaster, and their voices are now louder than the sound of the battle.
