Lebanese Canadians fear for family back home as violence escalates

Lebanese Canadians are hoping for an end — or even just a pause — to the violence in their home country as hostilities increase between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. 

Israel has stepped up its attacks on the militant fighters in Lebanon over the past two weeks, culminating in a targeted strike on Friday that killed Hezbollah's longtime leader.

More than 1,000 people have been killed and more than 6,000 wounded as a result of the attacks, according to Lebanon's health ministry. About one million Lebanese have been displaced by the strikes, including hundreds of thousands since Friday, a separate ministry told Reuters on Saturday.

Ghinwa Karouni lives in Montreal but regularly visits her parents in Ottawa. She said she's now returning to live with them "to morally help them during these tense times."

Karouni said they have numerous extended family members living in different parts of Lebanon. None have had their homes destroyed, she said, but some of her relatives — including those living in the southern cities of Tyre and Sidon — have left their homes "as they feared escalations."

Monitoring events from afar is taking its mental toll, Karouni said, calling the experience "draining." 

She said she's found her mother checking her tablet for news in the middle of night and had to counsel her to get some sleep.

"They've been on the edge," she said of her parents, who have maintained their dual citizenship since moving to Canada from Lebanon decades ago. 

Viewing the war 'by proxy' 

Ruby Dagher, a professor of international development and global studies at the University of Ottawa, is also Lebanese Canadian and was born in Lebanon. 

She says it's not the first time Lebanese Canadians have experienced a war "by proxy" through social media or television coverage. 

"It is not new [for] us to go through hard times, to see our loved ones displaced," she told Radio-Canada.

Dagher added she was happy to see the Canadian government arranging for flights to take Canadians out of Lebanon, as some airlines had cancelled their own flights. 

Ahmad Araji, another Lebanese Canadian who is the president of the Lebanese Club of Ottawa, is currently in Beirut.

Production on a humanitarian program he was working on, Araji said, was halted earlier this month after the deadly pager attacks targeting Hezbollah members. 

He's staying in an apartment in Beirut — which has been rocked by explosions, including the one that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah — and says there are people on the street with no shelter, food or even water.

"It's devastating what Lebanese civilians are going through, what Lebanese children are going through, people who have no links to any organization in any way or form," he said. 

'Not reassuring at all' 

In a statement on Thursday, Global Affairs Canada joined other nations in calling for a 21-day ceasefire across the Lebanon-Israel border to provide space for "diplomacy towards the conclusion of a diplomatic settlement."

But in a fiery speech the next day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back at critics of his campaigns against Hamas and Hezbollah in a speech at the UN General Assembly.

For Karouni, who wants an end to the violence, those remarks were "not reassuring at all."

"We want, at least, stability," she said, even if it's only a temporary reprieve. "Just something so that, people over there and over here, they can breathe."