At least 50 air raids. More than 100 shellings. Thousands of homes flattened. In a single day, over 30 civilians were killed in Israeli strikes. Dozens of children killed. Entire families wiped out.

Lebanese-Canadian engineer and artist Hicham Takache has been documenting the toll from his hometown of Nabatieh in messages sent over the past month — through both text and paint.

“My city was bombarded several times,” he wrote to me recently, apologizing for his delay in response to my questions two days before. He was again displaced in Sidon, not far from where they used to live, looking for a long-term apt to rent.  “A father, his three children, and their visiting neighbour were killed. Another man on his motorbike was killed. In the cemetery, a bomb fell next to my mother’s grave.”

The same thing is unfolding in villages across southern Lebanon.

I began corresponding with Takache in early April while displaced in an Airbnb in Beirut, after what came to be known in Lebanon as “Black Wednesday” when Israel launched a concentrated wave of airstrikes across the country, hitting more than 100 so-called Hezbollah targets in minutes. The attacks killed hundreds and injured more than a thousand. It was one of the deadliest days in Lebanon in years, yet received relatively little media attention.

That was one of the reasons why I reached out to Takache, whose art I had come across on social media a few years earlier. 

Takache studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design and lived in Toronto from 1990 to 2005. A computer programmer analyst by training, he says he moved back to Lebanon after September 11, 2001, when he began to feel that the environment in Canada was no longer as welcoming to Muslims as it had once been.

“I felt something in the air,” he said. 

He began planning a return to Lebanon, where he said he could offer an environment protective of students’ faith and culture. In September 2005, he moved back and co-founded a private school in Nabatieh.

Before the war, his award-winning artistic work ranged widely: he painted Niagara Falls, reimagined scenes of the nativity, and created quiet landscapes, animals, and intricate carpets. 

More recently, his focus has shifted to what life looks like under fire.

“On October 31, during the last Israel-Lebanon war in 2024, my home was bombarded and destroyed completely. I had 117 paintings in my home. Some of them I had painted as far back as 1976.

Out of the 117 paintings, 28 were totally lost. They just disappeared and we couldn’t find any trace of them. Many other paintings were badly damaged, and some paintings survived. So in the past 15 months or so, I have been restoring some of these paintings, very meticulously.”

Today, the school Takache co-founded in Nabatieh has been shut down since the latest round of strikes began. His home has also been hit twice by Israeli airstrikes — first in 2024, and again in early March this year. 

“One of our teachers was killed last week… a very fine person,” he tells me. “He has two daughters and one son, and his eldest daughter is 13 with a rare cancer.”

“I also [recently] lost two cousins, two dear friends.”

A fragile ceasefire

One month later, a U.S.-brokered ceasefire sits shakily in place until mid-May — but only after more than 2,600 people in Lebanon and 18 in Israel have been killed, over 8,000 injured, and entire neighbourhoods flattened.

The ceasefire has been repeatedly violated by both sides, with strikes reported almost every day. According to Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research and National Center for Natural Hazards and Early Warning, Israel violated the ceasefire 220 times in the first three days.

The escalation along the Lebanon border has unfolded against the backdrop of a wider regional confrontation involving Iran, Israel, and the U.S. Israeli forces remain deployed in a strip of southern Lebanon, about five to 10 kilometres deep along the border, with the stated aim of creating a buffer zone to shield northern Israel from Hezbollah attacks.

For Israel, the framing of the enemy has been consistent. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described Hezbollah as an immediate and ongoing threat that needs to be “dismantled” as part of what he calls a “sustainable peace… achieved through strength.”

Israeli officials have also blamed Hezbollah for civilian deaths and infrastructure. 

They also emphasize the group’s backing from Iran as justification for ongoing strikes — even during a ceasefire window.

But inside Lebanon, Hezbollah is not understood in a single way.

Hezbollah as ‘a crutch’

South Lebanon has long been shaped by layered histories of occupation and resistance. Hezbollah in particular emerged as an armed resistance group in the early 1980s, in the midst of the 1982 Lebanon War, when Israel invaded southern Lebanon and reached as far as Beirut. 

In Israeli and western discourse, Hezbollah is typically described solely as an Iran-backed militant group and a regional security proxy threat. But within Lebanon, views of the group diverge sharply.

Hassan Fakih, a Lebanese-Canadian journalist who works in south Lebanon, says support for Hezbollah is often grounded in survival. “Their supporters see them as a means to go back to their homes in the south, or as a means of their existence. They view them as Lebanon’s main strength against being occupied on the ground.”

“I believe they’re closer to Cuba’s revolutionary model than allies in Iran via the IRGC and Yemen via Ansar Allah — as Hezbollah doesn’t have the financial and political backing of the state in terms of its historic military endeavours,” he adds. “They’re not just these guys who hold guns and want to wage war… Their members are normal people with the hope of wanting to live and work their jobs in peace in their home country.”

Their movement is less about them trying to build a new government or new governing system in Lebanon and more so about wanting to exist on their land under their own sovereignty.”

Southern Lebanon has been a contested hot point since, and caught in repeated cycles of war. Israeli forces continued to occupy it until 2000, after years of armed resistance by Hezbollah and other factions pushed Israeli forces to withdraw. 

The 2006 July war that followed devastated large parts of the south and Beirut’s southern suburbs, deepening already entrenched patterns of destruction and displacement. 

The Lebanese state, meanwhile, has long struggled to assert consistent authority or provide services in the south. Decades of political fragmentation, sectarian power-sharing, and external pressures have left parts of the country, particularly border regions, underdeveloped and underserved. While the national government maintains formal sovereignty, many residents describe a gap between state institutions and everyday realities on the ground.

The ‘anti-colonial’ Shi’a

Zeinab Diab, a Lebanese-Canadian scholar specializing in Critical Muslim Studies and Islamophobia, frames some of these dynamics through the lens of systemic marginalization. She describes a broader pattern of discrimination, particularly toward Shi’a communities.

“It is a form of Islamophobia, because Islamophobia is a system of oppression that targets Muslims through advanced colonial, nationalist or Zionist agendas. In this specific context, it is the Shi’a communities that are targeted because they are anti-colonial,” she says.

Diab also points to what she describes as long-standing neglect by the state. “The government is not involved in the infrastructure — bringing water, electricity, helping farmers — they are left to themselves,” she says. “So you have a government that is not working for its people, an army that is disempowered by external powers, and so people are left on their own.”

Church bells and Adhan

Yet even amid that history of conflict and neglect, many Lebanese point to Lebanon’s long-standing, if fragile, traditions of coexistence — an idea captured by Pope John Paul II, who during a 1997 visit famously said: “Lebanon is more than a country — it is a message.”

Richly diverse with a dense mix of Maronite Christians, Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic Christians, Sunni and Shia Muslims, as well as Druze communities, all living in close proximity, with no single group forming an overwhelming majority, Lebanon is one of the most religiously pluralistic countries in the Middle East. 

“It’s what’s so beautiful about Lebanon. You’ll hear church bells and the adhan [Islamic call to prayer] going off at the same time,” says Maya Shoucair, a Lebanese-Canadian woman born in Beirut whose family roots are in the south of Lebanon.

She points to the recent killing of Father Pierre al-Rahi, a Maronite priest known for his pastoral service and refusal to leave his community in the predominantly Christian village of Al-Qlayaa, Marjayoun. According to reports, an Israeli tank fired on a house, and as the priest and others rushed to help those injured in the first blast, a second, fatal strike hit, injuring four others.

“People do stand side-by-side despite some of the dysfunctions. I think that’s what makes Lebanon so powerful and so magical,” she says.

But such moments sit alongside deeply personal losses. “My family, ourselves, our homes were all lost in the south in 2024. When Israel leaves, they don’t just leave, they leave violence behind with them. We had a nine-year-old cousin… who went running back in the backyard to get a soccer ball and was blown up by a landmine… a cluster bomb that they left behind.”

“People are strong. And I hate the word ‘resilient’… but there’s this brokenhearted peacefulness to it that I can’t explain.”