The Lebanese need to come to a realization that their country is under Iranian occupation, and this is the real reason the Israelis are turning it into a killing field. The IRGC and Hezbollah are using the Lebanese, across the board, as human shields.
This is not a slogan. It is not an exaggeration. It is the operating reality of the country today.
The one hundred or so Israeli attacks across Lebanon should be one more reminder that your own building or neighborhood is unsafe—not because of fate, not because of coincidence, but because the IRGC and Hezbollah see it fit to hide there, to operate there, to conduct their meetings there, and to store their money, their weapons, and their networks within civilian spaces.
You are not being protected. You are being exposed.
A few hours before the bombs broke the silence of Beirut, Hezbollah was not preparing for peace or de-escalation. It was preparing for a political and military consolidation of power—what can only be understood as a creeping coup justified under the language of “divine victory,” a language that permits it to silence, intimidate, and, when necessary, eliminate its detractors.
This is not resistance. This is control.
The bombs that fell on Beirut will leave scars, but these scars can heal. Beirut has rebuilt itself before, and it will try to do so again.
What will not heal is the continued exposure of the Lebanese—particularly the Shiite community—to the toxic sectarian logic that has reduced entire populations to instruments in a larger project
What will not heal is the continued exposure of the Lebanese—particularly the Shiite community—to the toxic sectarian logic that has reduced entire populations to instruments in a larger project. This logic has already turned Lebanon into a nation of the displaced, a country where people are repeatedly uprooted, sacrificed, and told to endure in the name of causes they do not control.
Left unchecked, this logic does not lead to survival. It leads to implosion.
The only way to survive is to act in defense of life—your life, the lives of your children, and the lives of your elders. Do not let anyone deceive you into believing that this reality is normal or necessary.
Hezbollah will stop at nothing to survive, even if it means dragging the country down with it.
Hezbollah will stop at nothing to survive, even if it means dragging the country down with it.
And that is the choice now facing the Lebanese: continue to live under a system that turns their homes into targets, or begin the difficult process of reclaiming the state, the streets, and the meaning of citizenship itself.
If there are armed actors or operatives hiding within civilian spaces, the responsibility is not to ignore them, normalize them, or accommodate them. The responsibility is to reject their presence, to expose it, and to insist that it be addressed through lawful and collective means, or to simply take action.
Anything less is an invitation to more destruction.
Makram Rabah is the managing editor at Now Lebanon and an Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut, Department of History. His book Conflict on Mount Lebanon: The Druze, the Maronites and Collective Memory (Edinburgh University Press) covers collective identities and the Lebanese Civil War. He tweets at @makramrabah
