As the New York Times notes this morning:
Nearly 700,000 people have been driven from their homes in Lebanon, the United Nations said on Tuesday, as Israel's mass evacuation orders and bombing campaign against the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah transform the country into a major new front in the metastasizing Middle East war.
The mass movement of people has prompted Lebanese leaders and international aid groups to warn of a mounting humanitarian crisis in a country still recovering from the last war between Israel and Hezbollah that ended in 2024.
I read this and then wrote my piece about being tired of war.
I went to Lebanon a few years ago at the invitation of the United Nations. It is, at one level, a beautiful country, and historically a melting pot where the people of so many nations came together to talk and trade. Potentially, it is the same place now. It could be a place for trade, a place for tourism, a place for culture, a place for learning. However, hope is denied to it. Its neighbours seemingly give it no hope, and yet again, people within it are the victims of war, over which they have very little control at all.
The consequences are, however, massive. Let's not pretend otherwise. Those migrants arriving in the UK as desperate refugees (because that is what most of them are) are part of that consequence. Our indifference to the plight of their home countries is what creates our domestic problem. Unless we care, we cannot change the world, including our own bit of it.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
Lebanon – an illustration of so many of the things spoken about here.
A dollarised economy with no control over their own currency. Corruption. Surrounded and invaded by war. Battered by geopolitics, occupied and invaded long term by Israel across their southern border. Coping with a refugee population (up to 30% – 1m out of 3m) and massive internal displacement. A history of brutal civil war.
And amazing people.
I listen to live (Arabic) worship every Sunday morning from a growing Beirut church community, whose 2026 motto is “called service” – through caring for refugees, for internally displaced neighbours – especially those they might traditionally call enemies, from Syria, from the southern Beirut suburbs, from Hezbollah country. They practice a religion of care. They love their neighbours, they love their enemies. They bring people together, they feed, house, treat, advise, they welcome.
I keep in touch with them – for over 20 years now – for selfish reasons – they fill me with hope.
Thanks for sharing.