Bad Times Journal.

I’ve been trying to think of something intelligent to write about this war. It seems almost impossible at this point. I’m working on a more thought out essay about the genocide in Gaza, but in the meantime I’ll begin to publish more frequent journals from Beirut. Writing about it from this position is a difficult line to walk. I, we, are very much affected and also very much insulated. Our passports, and the largely Christian area we live in, protect us from the worst excesses of the violence. It is a powerful and often unpleasant experience to navigate life in a country at war, but it is not decent or respectful to complain too much about the rain when you are one of the few with an umbrella.

I’m writing this shortly after Israel issued an ‘evacuation warning’ for the entire south of Beirut, an area known as Dahieh. An Israeli minister, Smotrich - a psychotically inhumane individual - has just said that soon, “Dahieh will look like Khan Younes.” The roads are now completely congested by panicked families trying to get out of an entire half of the city. As usual in times of crisis, we’ve gathered at the Grand Meshmosh, the hotel next to our apartment. A couple of the staff live inside the span of the evacuation order and have moved into the hotel. A friend here is already hosting his family, who left Dahieh a few days ago at the outbreak of violence. He now waits to see if their houses are destroyed. The drone is louder than usual. There is no operational reason it should be so low. They bring it lower to create more fear.

It was easy to see this coming. Apart from the hardware gathering like stormclouds around the region, you could see it in the markets, in the rhetoric of Tel Aviv and Washington. Most of all you could see it in the puckered, frightened little faces of American power. These people were only ever going to start a huge war. The combination of intellectual dwarfism and piggy-eyed fear that oozes from Trump, Hegseth, Miller, Witkoff, Bondi et al has only one outcome when it is not consistently and calmly confronted with people restating reality. We’ve all met people like that; only in the exercise of spasmodic violence can they briefly push back their terror and feel in control. And who was going to restate reality to them? Legacy media has arguably never done that, and certainly doesn’t now. It will not come from Europe. With only a couple of exceptions (respect Spain, Ireland) the genocide in Gaza has exposed European power for the spluttering moral blank spot that it is.

So, when we woke up last Saturday morning to the news that it had finally started, any surprise was pushed aside by the fact that we had no electricity (something had burned out in the terrifying Medusa nest of wires in the entrance of our building) and our water had run out. I spent the morning calling electricians and then attended a first aid course where, appropriately, we role-played electrocution and various other misfortunes. In the evening I made sure our get-out bag was properly packed in case we need to go to the mountains.

A few days ago we had reason to be out of Beirut and drove back in the evening. There is a spot on the highway, when you are approaching the city from the north, where you can see the whole of Beirut perched on its headland. The haze in the air creates a foreshortening effect and it looms, squat and challenging, against a pink or orange sky. Even now, after ten years I’m thrilled and frightened every time I see that view. This time, an Iranian missile passed overhead exactly as we rounded that particular corner. It sparkled prettily and I admit that I hoped it found its target. When we arrived home, we stopped for twenty minutes to say hi to friends in the Meshmosh. While we chatted and S. and I read a comic book about horses, six or seven bombs exploded relatively close in quick succession. A couple of people leapt up and then stood there for a moment before sitting back down. A woman threw her hands to her face and jumped into the arms of her friend, gasping and squirming. Most of us lit cigarettes and tried to look unconcerned.