Numbing news

Dear  reader,

Sometimes, the news is so heavy that it becomes numbing.

This week, I numbed down. When I came to write this newsletter in the morning, I could not remember what happened this week.

Except for the killing — via an Israeli strike — of six-year-old Amal al-Dorr in southern Lebanon. Her picture is stuck in my head and I can’t seem to shake her away. I’m not sure I want to.

We owe it to the more than 30,000 people killed during this as-yet-unnamed regional war reverberating from Gaza to remember that they had lives, that they were loved, that they were fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, grandparents, grandchildren.

We owe it to the thousands of people who got injured to help them rebuild their lives.

And more prosaically, we owe the dozens of people whose apartment buildings crumbled down these past months in Lebanon to provide them with emotional support and a state with homes that stand steady.

These days, it feels like our lives are hanging by a thread. If we’re not at risk of being crushed by an Israeli strike, we are at risk of dying when our own houses crash down above us.

No wonder we’re numbing down.

MJ Daoud

Head of features, L’Orient Today 

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