In Israel-Hezbollah war, Lebanese ask: Why were we bombed?

In every corner of Lebanon, people are reeling from the scale, intensity, and ever-growing death toll and destruction of Israel’s relentless air and ground campaign to decapitate and dismantle Hezbollah. The Shiite militia joined the war against Israel, firing rockets and shells into northern Israel, a day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, assault.

One year on, 2,710 people have been killed and more than 12,500 wounded in Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. Israel says a large majority of the dead are fighters.

Estimates of the damages reach as high as $25 billion. Lebanon’s hospitals have been overwhelmed, scores of medical facilities have been closed, and first responders have been killed. Some 1.3 million people have fled their homes – 20% of Lebanon’s population.

Among the civilian casualties was Selena al-Smarah, a 6-year-old girl killed along with her parents when Israel struck their home in late September. Selena had for months attended arts workshops run by the Tiro Association for Arts, which converts abandoned cinemas into arts centers and, recently, shelters.

Tiro director Kassem Istanbouli’s eyes well up with tears at her memory, and he decries the conflict’s civilian casualties.

“What is the reason? They are normal people. This is criminal for humanity,” he says.

High in the forest-scented hills of the Mount Lebanon range, mourners carry 10 coffins draped in Lebanese flags out of the local mosque, one after the other, for a public ceremony before they are buried.

The funeral banner features a typical mix of Lebanese faces, making up three generations of a Shiite Muslim family that lived for decades in this predominantly Christian area north of Beirut.

One man was a teacher, another a municipal engineer; one boy wears a scout uniform. The women are all pictured wearing headscarves, from the beaming matriarch to a young student with a bright, ready-for-the-future smile.

All were killed by an Israeli airstrike that had flattened their home two days earlier, on Oct. 12, leaving the community in shock and raising questions that echo increasingly across Lebanon as Israel prosecutes its military campaign against Hezbollah.

Why this target? Why so many civilian casualties, especially children?

The family has no apparent formal connection to Hezbollah, other than general support for the Iran-backed Lebanese militia. But one coffin is loosely draped with two yellow Hezbollah flags, and the funeral turns into a pro-Hezbollah event, featuring heartfelt chants of loyalty to Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah chief assassinated by Israel in late September.

Two days after the Israeli strike, banners that read “Made in USA,” with an image of the Statue of Liberty screaming, have been strung up across the wreckage. As is typical in Lebanon, grief over citizens lost in conflict is inseparable from politics, and so-called “resistance” to Israel.

“We gave a promise to ourselves [that] we will not bring any weapons to this place, and we don’t have any military bases and armed people – and they [Israelis] know that,” Sheikh Mohammed Amro, the white-turbaned Hezbollah chief for Mount Lebanon and the north, tells mourners. “In spite of all that, why are the children killed? Most Lebanese people ask that: What did they do?”

The sheikh was the purported target of an Israeli strike Sept. 25 in Maaysra, which destroyed a house and killed three residents.

“Believe us, the history of the new Middle East will be written by these martyrs – we promise that,” says Sheikh Amro.

A million people on the move

From every corner of Lebanon, people are reeling from the scale, the intensity, and the ever-growing death toll and destruction – estimates reach as high as $25 billion – of Israel’s relentless air campaign, and more recent ground incursion, to decapitate and dismantle Hezbollah.

Hezbollah joined the war against Israel, firing rockets and shells into northern Israel to create what it calls a “support front” for Hamas, a day after the Palestinian militant group’s Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel.

One year on, 2,710 people have been killed and more than 12,590 wounded in Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health. The figure does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. The Israeli military estimates more than 2,000 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in that time.

Lebanon’s hospitals have been overwhelmed, scores of medical facilities have been closed, and first responders have been killed. The government calculates that it needs $350 million each month to provide basic food, water, and sanitation to the 1.3 million people who have fled their homes – 20% of Lebanon’s population.

Among the civilian casualties was Selena al-Smarah, a 6-year-old girl killed along with her parents when Israel struck her family’s home in the southern coastal city of Tyre in late September.

Selena and her sister Celine, age 10, who was wounded in the attack, had for many months attended arts workshops run by the Tiro Association for Arts, which converts abandoned cinemas into arts centers. During the war it has run programs for displaced children in Tyre and the northern city of Tripoli.

The impact of Selena’s death could not be more acute for Kassem Istanbouli, director of the Tiro Association, whose eyes well up with tears at her memory. He shows a photograph he took on his phone of a smiling Selena, just a day before her death, holding up a picture of a flower with just two petals colored in.

“She didn’t finish her last drawing,” says Mr. Istanbouli, clearly heartbroken, his usually unbridled positive energy dimmed.

“This family, they are very nice, a poor family selling food by the cinema to stay alive,” he says. “I cried very much. I see Selena like my daughter. I don’t understand. It’s a big shock.”

A joint recipient last year of the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture, Mr. Istanbouli attracted praise for his work from United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres when he visited Tyre in 2021.

Lebanese decry widespread bombing

Israel launched a new wave of airstrikes on Tyre last week, saying it was targeting Hezbollah command-and-control centers. The refurbished cinema where Tiro worked was already closed, because of its proximity to the strike that killed Selena.

“At the beginning it was like a shelter. There were many people and activities, but people feel sad; they feel afraid, especially after these bombs,” says Mr. Istanbouli.

Many families Tiro worked with in Tyre have moved north to Tripoli for their safety. Mr. Istanbouli is now in central Beirut, renovating a long disused cinema that Tiro is racing to fix up to shelter displaced people.

The air thick with the smells of fresh plaster and paint, a dozen mattresses are laid out on the balcony, each with a blanket and a pillow. Among the first to arrive is a headscarfed mother with teenage sons from Tyre, whose house was destroyed in an Israeli strike.

“Thank God we are away from there. We can’t sleep in Tyre,” says the matriarch, who gives the name Umm Abdullah and expresses gratitude for the roof and the tins of rice they received upon arrival.

Across Beirut, in the Christian district of Achrafieh, other survivors of Israeli airstrikes are heavily bandaged as they recover from severe burns at the Lebanese Geitaoui Hospital.

The only specialized burns unit in the country normally treats around 100 cases each year, says Dr. Pierre Yared, the hospital’s co-director.

“When we received 30 cases in a week, it was a big deal – we had to create a new unit” for patients who often require many weeks to recover, says Dr. Yared. The scale of casualties today is four to five times higher than during the last Hezbollah-Israel battle, in 2006, he says.

In one bed, Ronald Antoine Karam, a middle-aged Christian food salesperson, is recovering from multiple burns. He says he was walking to his car in his village near Baalbek – a Hezbollah stronghold in eastern Lebanon – when Israel struck nearby.

“I lost my car. I lost my job. I lost my health – who is going to pay for that?” he asks. “The Israelis don’t ask, ‘Who are you?’ They shoot all the people. People are suffering there.”

In another room is 11-year-old Mohammed Ibrahim, his face bandaged after an airstrike brought down his six-story building east of the coastal city of Sidon. The strike left 71 people dead, including his father and brother; his mother was injured. To shield him from the anguish of those losses, the sixth grader has still not been told of them.

Back in the cinema, Mr. Istanbouli decries the conflict’s civilian casualties.

“What is the reason? They are normal people. This is criminal for humanity,” he says, adding that death of little Selena motivates him to tell her story through art “everywhere in the world.”

“She gives us a lot of energy for the future, to speak about her and all the children,” says Mr. Istanbouli. “We will not stop.”