Anthony Barnett’s

Notes On Now

Lebanon, Lebanon

Under the ‘cover’ of the Persian assault, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel has invaded Lebanon and, as I write, has just carried out massive bombing raids across that small and beautiful country. We need regime change in Tehran and Washington, but even more we need it in Jerusalem. Its bloodthirsty Old Testament ambition to create a ‘Greater Israel’ will doom the Middle East to everlasting violence – until either Armageddon itself or the Israelis learn to live in peace with Palestinians as their equals. 

A Million Uprooted

Israeli fiats have uprooted more than a million Lebanese to become refugees in their own land; a fifth of its inhabitants. It is as if more than 10 million of us in England had been forcibly cleared from our homes. As if, from babes to pensioners, in Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, Durham, Cheshire, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, had been obliged to flee into the Midlands and the South. Israel warned the people of the ancient historic coastal city of Tyre, once the fifth most populous in the country, as well as those living in its surroundings, “to evacuate your homes immediately … and move north of the Zahrani River”.  

Gaza-fication

Look on the map to see the scale of the ‘buffer zone’ being created. The Netanyahu regime is coldly implementing the ‘Gaza-fication’ of southern Lebanon. Unlike its previous invasions, this time Israel is pulverising villages and towns to create a desert of rubble in one of the most fertile and glorious small Mediterranean states. Adding war crimes to war crimes.

Life under Siege 

I’ve a good friend who was born and lives in Beirut. She is from a Maronite Christian family, and part of her work is helping refugees from Syria. In the office where she works most are Muslims who now look on Google Earth to see if their homes are still standing. The village of her children and first husband has been levelled. A good colleague of hers, who fled north and died of a heart attack, wanted to be buried in her homeplace. Instead, she has been ‘deposited’ – the official term – in a grave with just a number, waiting for the time she can be finally interred in her natal village. This is an act of optimism.