In an image that reflects the scale of the human tragedy caused by the aggression on southern Lebanon, the Minister of State and Head of the Qatar National Library, Hamad bin Abdulaziz Al Kuwari, shared a moving testimony on the “X” platform, in which he reviewed the story of the destruction of a house in the town of Bint Jbeil, conveying its details through the words of his granddaughter, who was affected by what her Lebanese friend went through.
In his post, Al-Kuwari began his speech with a question: “When a house is demolished… how many lives are demolished along with it?” Then he told how his granddaughter returned to him very affected, to tell him that her Lebanese friend from southern Lebanon showed her two pictures of her family’s home in Bint Jbeil, the first showing it intact, and the second after it had turned into rubble, “crushed by cannons until not one stone remained upon another.”
Al-Kuwari referred to his previous knowledge of the town since he worked as his country’s ambassador to Lebanon at the beginning of his career, describing it as “a beautiful village crowned with olive, grape and fig vines,” considering that what happened there “is not just passing news, but rather a wound in a place I love.”
His granddaughter was quoted as saying that her friend confirmed: “This is my family’s home… We used to return to it every summer, escaping from the strangeness of the world to its warmth. Here we would gather, laugh, grow old, and preserve the most beautiful memories,” pointing to the deep human dimension of the loss of homes.
Al-Kuwari explained that the house “is not just walls and a roof, but an entire lifetime inhabiting a place,” considering that its destruction means the loss of family memory, the warmth of meetings, and a refuge for fatigue. He described the matter as “the demolition of a part of the great nation and a break in the heart of everyone who inhabited it.”
In the context of his speech, he raised strong questions about the targeting of homes, considering that “the destruction of homes is not only an act of war, but rather an organized production of grief,” stressing that the aggression does not differentiate between a house and a place of worship or between a child and an old man, and leaves tragedies that extend from the separation of families to the erasure of villages from existence.
He concluded his speech by warning that the consequences of these actions do not stop at the borders of one home, but rather extend to entire communities, as “every time a home is demolished, a home of the soul is demolished with it, and whenever a home is leveled to the ground, a part of everyone’s humanity is leveled with it,” in a conclusion that reflects the deep human dimension of the devastation inflicted on southern Lebanon.
