Living with War - from Poland to Lebanon

Reflections on Historical Circumstance and a Conversation about Life inside Lebanon

I have always known how incredibly precarious peace and freedom can be. It’s part of how I was raised. After divorcing her husband, and not wanting to continue to live under Soviet rule after the state of Poland had been dissolved during World War 2, my grandmother moved to Germany. There, she had to take shelter in her basement from the heavy Allied bombardments on German cities. These traumatic experiences she never mentioned, at least not until her old age when the past and present were becoming increasingly indistinguishable to her. When the war ended, there was widespread hunger in Germany, and she moved to Romania, where her sister lived, but after a few years moved back to the newly re-founded Poland. Eventually, my father was born. Life there, as the son of immigrants, was hard. When he went to school at age 7, he did not speak the Polish language as well as the other children. In those days, teaching methods involved beating the kids if they did not pay attention in class. Fast forward 19 years. In response to the rising popularity and strength of the Polish Solidarity workers mass movement, there were fears that the Russians were about to put it down by force, and the Polish government eventually declared martial law. As his mother happened to be in Germany visiting his sister, my father told her to stay there and fled the country, leaving everything behind but a few valuables which he hid in between two slices of bread.

Understandably, my father wanted nothing more than seeing my brother and I grow up in peace, and have the opportunities that he had never had. Kids just being able to be kids, safe in the comfort of their home without having to worry about things like war or oppression. Never having to leave everything behind and start somewhere anew with nothing, forced to work low-paying jobs, people looking down on you, never really feeling like you belong.

Israel’s unrestrained violence
I have been lucky. Through a combination of historical circumstances and choices they made in my upbringing, my parents were able to give me that life. Not everyone is so lucky. Over the past year, tens of thousands of children have had that life taken away from them. Shot in the head. Torn limb from limb. Countless parents have had to pull what was left of them from the rubble of their own homes. Fathers have had to choose between letting their family starve to death or risking their life to find food, and then after miraculously surviving the trip coming back to find only the smouldering remains of their home, nothing left of their family but rubble and ash.

Each of these lives matters. Each of these lives lost is a tragedy that can never be undone. Why would it matter whether someone lives on the other side of the world or right next to me? Each person has their own stories to tell, their own experiences that have made them who they are today, their own dreams of love and happiness that they want to pursue. Why should one of them have more value than the other?

Ever since Israel began its invasion of Gaza after the Hamas attack of 7 October, its soldiers have been deliberately killing as many civilians as they can, wiping out schools and hospitals, torturing and raping prisoners, and live-streaming their many war crimes with palpable glee. Shortly after Israel’s attack on Gaza, the Lebanese political/military group Hezbollah vowed to fight Israel until it stopped what was quickly turning into a genocide. The two sides have been in direct conflict ever since, firing thousands of rockets and shells at each other.

Source: Al Jazeera

More recently, Israel has been setting its sights on Lebanon. In one of the largest terrorist attacks of at least the past few decades, Israel used booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies to kill at least 42 people and maim and wound thousands more. When Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered more than 80 two-ton bombs to be dropped on an entire Lebanese apartment block in order to kill Hezbollah leader Nasrallah, in total killing 11 people and wounding 108, the U.S. called it “a measure of justice” and the Israeli government celebrated the attack with cake. Hezbollah has been firing back at Israel, and more recently Iran has been getting involved in the conflict, despite its stated intention to prevent it from escalating further, with Israel saying it is plotting strikes on Iran to topple its government.

Yet in spite of all of this, Western countries keep supplying Israel with more weapons, saying things like “There are deliveries and there will always be further deliveries. Israel can rely on that.” The impunity has gotten so bad that when I see U.N. experts talking about a “terrifying violation of international law”, I have to first check to see which violation they are talking about.

The situation inside Lebanon
Hoping to learn more about what it is like inside Lebanon, I got into contact with Christa-Maria, who lives north of the capital Beirut. Just like me, she works as both a writer and teacher. Christa-Maria was kind enough to answer my many questions about her country and how she is coping with everything that is happening. I spoke to her a few days after Israel executed a series of airstrikes which were the most deadly since the Lebanese Civil War ended in 1990. According to UNICEF, 558 people including 50 children were killed that day. I wanted to know more about what daily life was like in her town and what she was hearing from her friends and family closer to Beirut.

Picture of Christa-Maria

“No one is safe. Even those who live in supposedly ‘safe space’,” she explains. “We move forward, but we never know when it might all stop or when the next strike from Israel might occur, potentially bringing unimaginable destruction. There’s a constant underlying tension that never quite fades. Conversations usually revolve around the uncertainty of the future, the economy, and the ongoing instability. People are often filled with frustration, a sense of helplessness, and anxiety. While we try to adapt and stay hopeful, it’s difficult to escape the worry. But you do have some people who are still in denial, or who manage to forget that there is a war or who act as if nothing is happening. Personally, I am more anxious than ever. People talk about emigrating, finding alternative work outside Lebanon (each Lebanese family has somehow, some way, a family member who is abroad), or simply trying to survive the next few months.”

Christa-Maria has been trying as much as she can to avoid looking at the footage that her friends have been sharing, such as the videos below.

Israel has been applying the same tactics it has been using in Gaza in Lebanon as well, calling and messaging people and telling them to flee the area—often without specifying which areas and to where they would need to go—and then “treating everyone who does not or cannot leave […] as a military target.” There are also reports of warnings being sent after an area has already been bombed.

An example of a message sent by Israel. “It’s a warning,” Christa-Maria comments, “telling people to get away from a place that the Israelis say they are going to attack. They claim that Hezbollah uses these locations to store weapons in between civilians.”

The Israeli army claims, without providing evidence, that “every house” that they strike “contains weapons […] that are intended to kill Israeli civilians.” These claims seem eerily familiar to those made in Gaza, where Israel used unsubstantiated claims of hidden Hamas weapons or the supposed presence of ‘military intelligence assets’ in order to justify bombing hospitals, news outlets, homes, and refugee camps. I have seen people, including on this platform, justify the Lebanon pager attacks as a legitimate and targeted way to kill members of Hezbollah, among which they say no innocents exist. This is the exact same logic used in Gaza, where Israel has been openly calling for the deliberate infliction of starvation and disease and turning entire cities into ash. They have also been telling people to evacuate to safe zones and then bombing the safe zones.

💡According to a recent U.N. report, Israel has:

☞implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza,

☞deliberately killed, wounded, arrested, detained, mistreated, and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles,

☞deliberately created conditions of life that have resulted in the destruction of generations of Palestinian children and the Palestinian people as a group,

☞deliberately destroyed sexual and reproductive health-care facilities,

☞used detainees as human shields,

☞and subjected male and female detainees to forced nudity and stripping and committed sexual violence for the purpose of humiliation or degradation, which is the result of an intentional policy.

Note: While the vast majority of war crimes listed in the report relate to Israeli crimes, it also mentions instances of Palestinian armed groups attacking medical staff and facilities in Israel and the infliction of physical violence against Israeli hostages.

For comparison, here is the definition of genocide written in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the crime of Genocide:

Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Considering these deliberate actions and policies, and the abundant photographic and video evidence, often recorded by Israeli soldiers themselves as a way of celebrating, mocking, or otherwise reveling in the crimes they are committing, it should be no surprise that the Israeli military is not making any distinctions between civilian and military targets inside Lebanon either. In fact, that is its explicitly stated policy. Yet despite everything that is happening, and everything that might still happen, life goes on.

“Life in Lebanon is complex, to say the least,” Christa-Maria tells me when I ask her what daily life is currently like. “We still try to laugh and carry on with life as though things are ‘normal’, but we know deep down it's not. Life in Lebanon has never been normal, but it's normal in our own way. That's how we have lived, that's how we continue to live. We celebrate birthdays, weddings, graduations but we don't know when we won't be able to. Even in the south, where most of the attacks are, people are doing their best to maintain some sense of normalcy. At this point, many of us have become numb to everything that’s happening. We’re trying to live, but it often feels like we’re burying our problems and emotions. We’re resilient, but it’s not out of choice—it’s because we’ve been through so much that nothing seems to surprise us anymore.”

Christa-Maria: "The first picture, that's where I live, the view from my house. The second is from my teaching sessions And the third one is, well coffee 😂. It's mundane things."

At the moment, most of the Israeli strikes are occurring further south. However, last Saturday a car was hit, right next to where Christa-Maria lives. She adds, “My cousins and my aunts who live in Shouf and Beirut respectively, they can hear the bombs and the strikes all the time.”

While it is much harder to live normally with how things are going, Christa-Maria says that she is able to find some escape in her writing and teaching work, “My writing is an escape and a form of protest or activism. I can express my frustrations and communicate the struggles of everyday life to the world. It is a way to reflect on the importance of staying resilient and maintaining hope amid the chaos. It's something I am trying to make a career of but in a country like Lebanon, it's a bit difficult, not to say impossible, and not only because we have a lot going on, but it's also related to the language, because I write in English, mainly.”

📖Title: Filled with Grace | Written by Christa-Maria

I was always afraid of growing older. 

Maybe we all have this sentiment, which is quite human because we're too afraid of what we don't know. But, I have always felt as if time and I are playing a non-stop game of catch where I can't seem to take hold of it no matter how hard I try. I wanted to do so much yet I didn't seem to be able to. I wanted to accomplish too much and be too great.

However after turning 23 and with lots of prayer I no longer feel scared. This feeling has turned around completely. I no longer want too much or put unrealistic goals for my life. I learned that I can't basically fully control the course of my life and that's okay. I have learned to let God take the wheel and to trust that indeed His timing is the perfect time. Not fast, not slow, just right. To trust His timing, His plan, His will, His heart. To know that all is for His glory. 

I can't say that I am in love with growing older now, I have my reservations, but I definitely no longer have a problem with it. I kind of like it. Growing older means wisdom. It means experience and life. It means more chances to love, to care, to spread God's light. It means
more and definitely not less. Growing older is a blessing that we don't yet fully understand as humans. It's nothing to be afraid of but instead it's something to strive for. I am grateful that God has given me yet again another day to live, another day to get to know Him.

I am grateful for all the days that passed during me, being 25.
From the very first day till the last day.
I have learned a lot, I have grown a lot. I have loved a lot.
There were times where I wanted to quit, times where I was on cloud 9, and there were times where I was in deep sadness that all I wanted to do was hide and cry. I have lost people I knew and loved deeply, I have gained new people to love and care for.

I was filled. Then, I was emptied.
I've lost. Then, I've won.
I grew. I lived. I loved .
And now, repeat.

“As for teaching, it is equally important, as I can be directly involved in shaping the next generation. It is both empowering and challenging. Empowering because I can make a difference through my teaching, and challenging because it's not a stable field anymore. We're not paid as we should be. It's hard to maintain a career in a field where you are treated less than others. In terms of my own future, the outlook is a bit hazy. Especially now, with everything that’s going on.”

Christa-Maria as she is teaching Syrian refugees.

Christa-Maria’s private tutoring has been on hold for a few weeks, but she has since resumed teaching English in the afternoons. She has also been helping out at her local church, collecting clothes and food for people who have been displaced.

Stay tuned as I delve further into the rich history and complexities of Lebanon, as I continue my conversations with Christa-Maria.

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