Dispatch from Saida, Lebanon

The following was sent to me by my friend in Beirut who is still awaiting evacuation. She received this from her friend Darine Zaatari in Saida, Lebanon, who requested that she circulate it. I've edited a bit for typos.

Thursday, July 20th

Jumped out of bed at 2:00 am Thursday morning to an airstrike right here in Saida. Great explosion shaking the whole building. It was close, but we could not figure out where exactly. Another airstrike shortly after. Now it sounds a bit further. We rush out onto the balcony. The glass door to the balcony, like every glass window and door at home, slightly left open to prevent them from shattering due to explosion pressure. We cannot see much.

We sit out for a while. It is completely quiet. Even bats are too scared to fly around. Then a noisy buzzing sound in the air. This time it is an MK, a pilotless spy jet, usually smaller in size and flies low, takes photos. It is not to be feared in itself, but what usually follows it does, a new airstrike. It takes photos and explores locations to target. Twenty minutes later, an airstrike. Later we go to bed.

We wake up around 4:30, yet another attack. This time it is a gas station. Anythingto deplete resources and people's will to strife. At 5:00 am, the phone rang. I raced to the phone contemplating every single possibility of who might have gotten hurt from the family and friends in the raid. I hear an automated recording, a voice speaking formal Arabic, "To the residents of south Lebanon, you have to evacuate thesouth. The State of Israel." I was stunned, lost my ability to move or feel anything. Of all the different kinds of direct and indirect threats I have received throughout my life from the Israelis, this is the first time I get it right in my home.Two days ago, they threw flyers with the same text. But, do you think people care? Do you think people respond to these threats? A phone call, a very ersonalized terrorizing message right in my ear and in Arabic, yet insufficient to drive me out of my home. I am only one of many. But I am not a mother and I do not live further south.

According to government estimates Tuesday night, half a million Lebanese have been displaced. Most are staying with relatives or friends or in rented apartments. Over 70 thousand in Beirut and north registered in government centers, particularly public schools. Over eight thousand in Saida are distributed over 30 centers.They are turning abandoned government buildings into refugee centers. They continue to destroy the country's infrastructure and cutting off villages from one another. The two biggest cheese and Labneh factories in the Beqaa bombed to the ground. Hundreds of cows and sheep farms in Beirut attacked from the sky. Trucks with red cross signs on it or not, carrying first aid supplies and food essentials to refugees bombed by jets killing drivers and other people around. Continuous bombing of houses and residential buildings. If the war ends today, 60, 000 people will be homeless.

Yesterday we visited two refugee centers. One had 150 and the other had 310 and was expecting at least 40 more. Resources are scarce, medication, infant formula, food. We rang door bells looking for an extra pillow, sheet, mattress, extra anything. There are 100 mattresses for 310 people in the center. My heart turns into a raging fist as we drive around the city. People looking for their relatives. They know they fled together, but now no word from the other car. Same stories come outof southern Beirut. People leaving their bombed homes and cannot find a child, a husband. In Saida, refugees are sitting on the streets or in street roundabouts, with nowhere to go. Nowhere. Barely made it safe to Saida and then nowhere to go. A family, a mother and four children, surviving one airstrike killing twenty five people right there in the same house they were staying, got attacked by sky shortly before reaching Saida. Nowhere to escape; we are all targets.

More cars with white rags tied on radio antennas. Some cars had flags. Flags, of the many supporters of the German soccer teams, now come to use. They are tied to cars, huge flags, implying someone in the car carries the German nationality and hoping being German is worth something in this war. How ironically tragic, these flags were carried around by people every time Germans won a game, flying up in the air, with horns blowing and people cheering. Flags of victory and joy. So many Brazilian Lebanese around, so many supporters of the Brazilian soccer team, yet no Brazilian flags on any car to be seen. People's values vary with nationality.

At least sixty-one people died yesterday in different areas in Lebanon,the biggest death toll per day since the start of this war. Only one fighter and the rest arecivilians. Families all together killed. Many people believed to be still under destroyed houses. The situation is getting worse by the day. We fear that once the foreigners are evacuated, things will get even worse. According to the media, this is the biggest evacuation in the world since WWI. There are 20,000 Americans being evacuated. Not only with nationality, people's value also varies with place of birth. The US embassy is openly setting evacuation priorities of 20,000 Americans according to place of birth. There is one position lower in the hierarchy to being born in Lebanon and that is Palestine.

So many battles on so many fronts. The battle to survive, the battle to survive strong, the battle with the enemy, the battle with dispelling all the lies from the western media, the battle to stay unified, the battle to hold on to anger, the battle to stay focused and help out, the battle to get out of bed in the morning not just to an airstrike. So many battles. One battle we have won so far, the battle to survive strong. You hear it in people's voices: we do not care about the destruction, we persist and we resist.