Reflections on UNIFIL’s “Impartiality” Amidst Israel’s Genocide

This collection of essays illuminates the seasonality of war in Lebanon (its present and its longue durée), looking at how those who inhabit Lebanon’s many wars live with and through them and (continue to) resist them ordinarily. Written from the middle of the most recent maelstrom by a majority of authors who were in Lebanon for its duration, the essays touch on diverse aspects of being in war: childhood, kinship, care, shelter, solidarity, (histories of) struggle, planting, helping, learning, teaching, salvaging, surviving. This collection contends that although death and destruction may be the goal and the threat viciously wielded by the war-machine, those (humans and others) who live through war are defiantly concerned with life and with living. As scholars and humans grappling with displacement, loss, anguish, sorrow, steadfastness, strength, shatteredness, numbness, exhaustion, fear, terror, horror, rage, courage, hope and love, we write to bear witness to war from the belly of the beast. Anthropology has the tools to bring war into experiential purview, to show that war is not merely the exotic habitat of distant savages to be theorized (or theoretically resisted) from afar. Grasping war as an arena of recognizable, relatable life on this planet alongside (and not exceptional to) the violence of capitalism, nation-states, empire, is a necessary first step in resisting war broadly, effectively, collectively. Those who inhabit war know the great power of life as resistance. We should take note.