Grapevine

‘A nightmare’: Lebanese Americans anxious, angry as Israel attacks homeland

Lebanese community members in US are pushing through grief, fear and outrage to help people back home.

Ali Dabaja says Lebanese Americans have been struggling for the past 12 months with “work-life-genocide” balance as tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.

But now, with the Israeli military unleashing its firepower on Lebanon over the past week, the community is at a “boiling point”.

Israel’s large-scale bombing campaign in Lebanon has hit close to home for Dabaja, a Detroit-area physician. His cousin, Batoul Dabaja-Saad, was killed along with her husband and three children in an Israeli air strike on their home in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil.

“There is disbelief. There is anger, and there is the feeling of loss – tremendous loss,” Dabaja told Al Jazeera.