You say, “Did we hand the enemy a pretext?”…

You say, “Did we hand the enemy a pretext?”…

What is this thing you call a “pretext,” my friend? Have you truly seen into the truth of what happened on October 8, 2023? That day was no pretext. It was an open resumption of a war halted seventeen years before. What came after flowed, in its broad course, from that moment—broadly, not in every detail. The details stretch long, rising and falling.

In July 2006, a similar “resumption” took place. Weeks later, a speech was delivered in the stadium of Bint Jbeil—one the whole world would hear.

At that same moment, a woman stood amid the ruins of her home in Beit Yahoun, voicing a question that scarcely reached anyone:
“Is this to your liking, Umm Samir [al-Qantar]?”

This time, everything—the facts, the voice, the echo—was utterly, utterly different.

“A pretext?” you tell me—“a pretext?”…

—From the Facebook writings (in Arabic) of Ahmad Beydoun.

*Ahmad Beydoun is a native of Bint Jbeil.