Advice to World Leaders from Citizens of Lebanon

For a whole day I cried while watching the same newsreels over and over, the pictures of Beirut in a mushroom cloud, in flames, in flying shards, in broken walls and tumbling cars, her stunned people covered with blood.

I will not attempt to tell you what happened that day or since, but it seemed like the end of something. Not the end of the suffering of the Lebanese. If only. Not the end of hope, either. This was not, I knew, the “last straw” as we would say in English, because this was not a straw.  It was at last the intolerable. After that, nothing could be the same.

I sought comfort from the Lebanese themselves. Who else?  First I needed to discover who was alive and safe and still sane.

Then hearing that President Macron of France had called for a meeting of world leaders to discuss help for Lebanon and that Trump promised to be there, I began to hope and fear what they would do.

This led to an idea.

I wrote notes to people I know in Lebanon, selecting people, all Christians but from various walks of life and different churches, all people who by their presence make the world better.  They have been faithful to their country and contributed to its character and well-being through endless challenges and disappointments.   Because I know them to be sane, sensible and wise, I sent them this message:

“In a few days perhaps there will be a meeting of world leaders to discuss aid to Lebanon. If you could send one sentence of advice to this group, what would you say?”

The only explanation I gave them for my request was that I would use their message in support of Lebanon. No one of them knew who else received the request. I wrote late in the day and by morning the next day I had received an answer from every single person.

Here is what they told me. Each paragraph is a different speaker:

“Don’t send money or any sort of aids to the government, because they will take them and leave us to die. Send teams to distribute them personally.”

“Do not give a penny to the government. And even as you give directly through NGOs, do not turn the role of NGOs into government and do not flood the country with help to the point where our politicians are once again buoyed up and given a second wind. The anger on the street this time has to bring deep and permanent change.”

“Please help us to have a non-sectarian regime, with uncorrupt leaders and positive neutrality.”

“I would like to advise the group of leaders not to send anything to the government, but help directly the families, the churches, the affected people. The majority of Lebanese do not trust them. We do not trust how they might distribute the aid.”

“We ask world leaders to freeze all assets of Lebanese political leaders until they pay back their debts to the country and justice is made.”

“Now is the time to establish a new political system for Lebanon, a Federation or Confederation, while preserving neutrality. We want to live in peace with dignity in the international community, where we naturally belong.”

Well, there it is in the words of Lebanese Christians, representatives of the most Christian country in the Middle East, yet holding within its small borders all the faiths, philosophies, people groups, pleasures, problems and pain of the whole Middle East.

May God keep them and give them the future they so desire.