Writers RESPOND to the Israeli War in Lebanon:
My Family in Lebanon
Hayan Charara is an Arab American poet living in Houston, Texas. He is the author of two books of poetry and a forthcoming anthology.
I have stopped counting the dead. A single death is more than this world can afford, and after the first one, there were already too many. I have also stopped distinguishing between the dead. Can I say, to anyone--a friend or enemy--"Your little girl deserved to die"? I hope never. I have some innocence left in me, and I am not willing to give it up in order to quench an anger that always thirsts for more. Nor will I allow anyone, or anything, to take whatever good is left in me. Not now.
But I am tired. I'm exhausted by the arguments over who began all this destruction. Those games are best played by children on playgrounds--not by us, and certainly not by those who decide who and who doesn't live. I cannot listen either to another person repeat that the State of Israel has a right to defend itself. Defending a country and its people is one thing. Bombing a country back twenty years, for the release of two soldiers, is quite another. Whatever it is, even in the most delusional state imaginable, it cannot be constituted as defense--unless, of course, Israel views the lives of Arabs as sub-human. Only then do the arithmetics of retribution add up. Israel stamps out the Lebanese and the Palestinians like so many cockroaches. A pestilence--that's how the Arabs have been treated.
I expect little relief in this regard from the United States. After all, having suffered two hours of terror on Tuesday morning, September 11th, 2001, my country collectively punished two nations, two peoples of Biblical histories, overthrew their governments, plunged their societies into chaos, destroyed their lands with depleted uranium, sacrificed its own young men and women for the task, and now, five years into the punishment, it continues to dupe the American citizenry into believing the most dangerous threat is from outside the United States.
I say it again--there's too much talk about defense and security. On the other hand, not enough people are repeating Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states, "No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and property are prohibited."
Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, collective punishments are a war crime. Let me be clear: the dozens of Katushya rockets fired by Hezbollah into Haifa and the cities of northern Israel are acts of collective punishment. Let us also be clear about other war crimes committed in the last several days, specifically those created by the more than 2,000 sorties over Lebanon by the Israeli military. The word "punishment" does not dignify the nightmare that is life under Israeli bombardment.
They need a break. We need some respite. Like so many, I eat and sleep less, and I worry and grieve more. Like so many of you, I want to hear a familiar phone. I want a loved one to be here--to be anywhere but there. My father is one of those people. And if you know me, or know him, you'd laugh at the irony of my desire for him to be close to me. My brother is in Lebanon, too. He is a six year old. He's mischievous, and he can curse fluently in two languages--a skill, apparently, he learned miraculously because no family member admits to teaching him. He likes dinosaurs. He has several cats and dogs, all of them named Lucy. He hopes they're safe--they could not return home to Bint Jbeil to rescue them from the bombs. Like me, he was born in Detroit. But unlike me, he is concerned--at age six--about missiles falling from the sky, coupled with a real fear that they will land on him.
It's nearly impossible to remain sane when all around us people make insane demands. Politicians, scholars, strangers, and even friends want us to accept the killing and terrorizing of Arabs and Israelis. My president thinks ceasefire is a bad idea. And warmongers call for taking the fight to other countries, to other people, as if begging for Armageddon is the next and only logical step. The task right now is to remain sane, regardless how difficult or painful. The opposite leads to ruin--always has, is right now, and always will. All over the earth people pray for things to be better. Whether they light candles in solidarity, or repeat verses from a holy book, or fast, or meditate, or gather together in demonstrations, they want a better world. They have reached the most rational conclusion: we are at a point where we must just stop. And I stand with them in this regard. I stand with my friend Rashida Ismaili, who insists that the present spirit "must become so that every person is made to feel the importance of their mortality and responsibility for all people, that we all make efforts to be better human beings and treat each other and this planet with care and respect."
I believe this, and I implore you to act on it. You will encounter resistance against this ideal--it will be disregarded and called foolish, you will be called naive, you may even be told you are a horrible person for wanting such a thing, because some people believe only a select few deserve to be treated humanely. Yet despite the slogans justifying inequality, and violence, and the incredibly irrational politics of war, we know and we want otherwise. There are billions just like us, too. We must demand peace, from each other and for others. This is our struggle, which is just and dignified. And we should not be embarrassed to voice it nor act upon it, and never ever be apologetic for wanting it.
