Letter from Beirut
We debate about the role of the journalist as the objective observer, the witness to history dedicated to remaining above the fray to report the news. Journalism currently is a deeply troubled and confused craft struggling for a new direction — a path that will sustain the obligation to give the public the information it needs to make good decisions in a democracy. People say they don’t know who to believe and they often scoff at the idea that anyone can deliver objective news when journalists slip so easily into opinions.
I recently received a powerful example of how objectivity can deliver powerful, honest journalism from Alia Ibrahim, a colleague in Beirut. The piece carries the headline “Fifty Shades of Death and Hope in Lebanon.” Its power lies in the way the author objectively confronts the pervasive threat of death and the hope that hazards engender.
One of the many courageous journalists I’ve met over the years, Alia Ibrahim and I connected when I chaired the board of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, a string of TV and digital news networks set up by the American government to provide unbiased journalism to the Middle East and North Africa. Although I left that volunteer job a few months ago, I remain friends with many colleagues that I met, journalists such as Alia, a founding partner in Daraj, an investigative news start-up in Beirut.
Anyone familiar with Lebanon knows that being an investigative journalist in Beirut is dangerous enough in times of peace. But Lebanon is particularly precarious now, thanks to Israel’s relentless war against Hezbollah, which is based in the southern suburbs of Beirut and controls the Lebanese government. Adhering to the standards of objective and factual reporting represents a steep challenge to anyone aspiring to be an impartial witness to history. Factual reporting can seem to cast a pall over the human condition like a cloud of indifference, agnostic to anyone with a heartbeat.
But Alia’s story published In Daraj reads like an insightful letter about life, death and hope in the eye of strife; it gives you a sense of place, a taste of being there, an objective take on what’s happening in a war from someone who lives with the threat of death on her doorstep. It is a raw, gripping account of life in a place where hope struggles to overcome heartbreak.
“In times of war,” Alia writes, “death comes in confusing forms: My own world is safe,” she says, sharing that her immediate family and colleagues at work are safe. “I know there is still a risk of being on the wrong road at the wrong moment,” she says, “But that’s something I can ignore. Death is something I am reminded of every minute of the day.”
Alia struggles with a form of death that goes beyond her own fate or of those she loves. For her, “death is now a facial expression etched on the faces of men, woman and children who escaped its grasp now making homes in the classrooms of four schools in my block, their cars parked around. It is now the distant sounds of explosions that fill my ears as I wonder how many have lost their lives in the homes and nearby suburbs. In the face of this kind of death, the kind that makes headlines until it no longer does, I navigate a torrent of emotions and confusing feelings as carefully as I can.”
The news tells the story of the war that Alis navigates every day:
Hamas, an ally of Beirut-based Hezbollah, stages a savage attack on Israel; killing around 1,200 Israelis and foreigners, seizing 250 hostages
Isreal retaliates with a relentless counterattack, destroying much of the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, killing more than 40,000 humans, more than half women and children
Hezbollah stages a sympathetic attack on Isreal that has kills 72 Israelis and just over 3,000 Lebanese
War injures thousands more, creating massive displacements on all sides
An unparalleled humanitarian crisis unfolds, particularly in Gaza, the headquarters of Hamas
And on and on. The headlines seize the news by the neck every day for more than a year.
In a strange way, the numbers allow Alia to maintain a grip on what is happening around her.
They allow her to focus on the numbing nature of the body count. ”I try not to think too much about the faces, the names, the lives. When I hear about a neighborhood being targeted, I tell myself everyone must have left — that its only buildings being bombed. I try not to dwell on the ‘unimportant’ things that a missile can erase in seconds, the stories, the memories, the photos, a child’s comforting toy, an elder’s favorite chair, all the little pieces of life that, in the face of death, stand no chance of being saved and the regrets I know will follow.”
In a grim factual style that resembles a report on a political campaign, Alia writes about the complex politics of the war in which Iran plays a major role as the sponsor of both Hamas and Hezbollah. She is honest about her feelings, though: “In my country, Hezbollah is my enemy,” she writes, “I blame it for dragging us into a war that we didn’t choose”. But, she adds, that “doesn’t mean I wish for its defeat by Israel. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. I remind myself that no matter how unforgivable Hezbollah is or how devious Iran’s commitment to fighting to the last drop of Lebanese blood may be, it is Israel carrying out the killings. The enemy of my enemy has killed more than 43,000 people in Gaza an over 2,500 of my fellow citizens.”
“War is war,” she writes, “and Israel has the right to defend its border,” giving Israel’s rationale for the war. “But even war has rules and what Israel is destroying goes far beyond Hezbollah and its military infrastructure. The intent of collective punishment is clear and there’s no amount of evidence that can justify this level of indiscriminate savagery.”
Alia gives readers the kind of perspective that one won’t find in most of the media, particularly in America where reporting on the war is mainly from an Israeli slant. Her piece might sound opinionated to many, but it resonates with an unvarnished view from a solid and respected reporter on the ground bearing witness to the bombs, drones, missile strikes, and carnage financed by American tax dollars.
Her experience is not just about the numbers. Personal loss and terrifying experiences invade the narrative. One day she received a call from a Lebanese friend working as a broadcaster abroad. She starts to tell her about a dinner the night before with some mutual friends. “But before I could say anything, I heard her crying, the word ‘Papa” being the only one muttered between sobs. I understood that my friend has lost her father.”
photo by Alex Shuper
Alia reacted quickly, warning her friend that travel to Beirut for her dad’s funeral was treacherous. But she knew better. “I knew that war or not, there was no way I could convince her not to come. For the terminally sick and their families, especially those living abroad, the fear of death arriving an at inconvenient time has been overwhelming. What if the bombing is too heavy? What if they don’t get to say their goodbyes. Those of us ill in the country may be closer to physical harm. But those watching their homeland’s destruction from afar are no less invested of traumatized.”
Despite the challenges, Alia’s friend made it to Beirut. “My friend flew in from another country , taking the risk of boarding a plane that might land uncomfortably lose to missiles hitting ‘precise targets’ within sight of a civilian airport.” She gets to spend her last night with her father. “Death is back to being what it is,” Alia observes, “The sense of loss is real. It’s personal. It hurts. But somehow it brings comfort.”
En route to a cemetery for the burial, “a huge explosion shook the car and everyone inside. It wasn’t a sonic boom.” Alia could feel her friend’s hand grip hers. Between the buildings, thick smoke rose from the area they had just left. They soon learned that everyone in the apartment 400 meters from the explosion were miraculously safe. “In the hour that followed, the collage of life and death took an even more surreal dimension.” Children played among the gravestones, telling competing stories of how they lost their homes and who came closest to death before escaping. A drone hovered overhead, reminding them that the war doesn’t pause out of respect for the dead.
“There’s all of that, and then there’s this incredible bizarre blend of sadness and defiance,” Alia wrote. “War or not, we were there, My friend buried her father next to his beloved brother in a beautiful cemetery with fig and laurel trees, overlooking a October sea of a wonderful blue. War or no, we bury parts of ourselves in this land that it ours, and no matter how far we go, it will keep bringing us back.
Israel, Alia notes, “has been exacting vengeance for the war crime that Hamas committed on October 7. The genocide in Gaza and the destruction in Lebanon showcase its military superiority and dispels the myth of an ‘ethical Army.’ But” she asks, ”has it made the life of any Israelis safer? The simple answer is an absolute no. Only a just solution for the Palestinian people will put an end to the cycles of violence. Until then, it’s going to be more shades of death and as much hope as possible and as much love as needed.”
Palestinians yearn for that “just solution” of their own territory for what seems like an eternity. It remains a dream.
—James O’Shea
James O’Shea is a longtime Chicago author and journalist who lives in North Carolina. He is the author of several books and is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. Follow Jim’s Substack, Five W’s + H here.