Lebanese haunted by footage of their homes being destroyed by Israeli soldiers

Displaced residents left helpless as invading troops film themselves inflicting a trail of destruction

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A ceasefire may have brought the war in Lebanon to a halt but footage of Israeli forces blowing up Ali Mourad’s home and posing near the annihilation is forever etched in his memory.

The university professor, 43, was at work when he received a video from a friend. “My friend warned me, he told me: Ali, be careful, this is not easy to watch,” Mr Mourad told The National.

When he hit play, he was taken aback by footage of a number of buildings in his southern hometown of Aitaroun being blown up at once. On second glance, he recognised his family home being razed.

“When Israel first escalated its attacks on Lebanon, I was bracing myself to receive some news that our home was impacted, due to the geographic location of Aitaroun and the house near the border,” he said. “The last thing I expected was to find out my home had been completely destroyed, through a video posted to social media.”

The town of Aitaroun is only 1km from the Israeli border and had come under heavy fire after Israel intensified attacks on what it said were Hezbollah targets in late September.

On September 23, Israel launched violent air raids across the south and east of Lebanon, killing at least 500 people, displacing hundreds of thousands of families and signalling the start of an all-out war. A week later, the Israeli military announced a ground invasion into south Lebanon “to destroy remaining terrorist infrastructure”.

By November 5, Lebanon estimated that more than 37 towns had been destroyed by the invading forces. Videos documenting Israel’s controlled detonations of mass infrastructure in Lebanese border towns have been shared widely on social media.

The UN special rapporteur on the right to housing, Prof Balakrishnan Rajagopal, told The National early this month that in south Lebanon, Israel had committed “domicide”, defined as the intentional and systematic destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure to render areas inhabitable.

“It was very difficult to watch what Israeli forces did to our house,” said Mr Mourad. “They violated its sanctity and you can tell their intention is humiliation, because troops posted pictures of themselves sitting near my destroyed home and smiling.”

Documenting attacks on social media

In their war on Gaza and Lebanon, Israeli soldiers have made a habit of sharing footage from their military operations to their personal social media accounts.

One video that went viral in recent weeks – it was picked up by journalists and news outlets – was of Israeli troops singing and playing the piano in a house in Khiam, south Lebanon, amid scenes of destruction.

The town of Khiam, about 6km from the border, had been the site of some of the most intense conflict between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters in the past two months due to its strategic location on a hilltop overlooking the frontier with Israel. While Israeli troops could not make significant gains or capture the town, some were able to enter the house where they filmed the video.

The clip was shared widely on social media platforms before the piano was recognised by its owner, Julia Ali, 24, who is a doctor.

"My heart broke as I watched them laughing and dancing amid the ruins of what was once my home," she told The National. "I don’t know how I can get this scene out of my head, I can’t, it’s just so full of hatred,” she said. “Even music was not spared by them.”

In the footage, the troops can be heard playing and singing Bohemian Rhapsody by the band Queen and humming along to the lyrics: “Mama, just killed a man. Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he's dead".

"It felt like a deliberate statement, like a mockery of our suffering," said Dr Ali, who last year celebrated her graduation from medical school.

In response to what she said was a "profound violation" of her home and treasured piano, the young doctor took to her own social media to share older footage of herself playing a Chopin Nocturne, featured in the film The Pianist, which tells the story of a Polish-Jewish musician’s harrowing experiences in Nazi-occupied Warsaw during the Second World War.

“The parallels were impossible to ignore. How could people whose history includes such unimaginable suffering now inflict similar pain on others?"

Checking on homes through maps

Social media also played a crucial role for many Lebanese living in Beirut’s southern suburbs, as the only safe way to check on their homes was through forced displacement maps shared on X by the Israeli army’s official spokesman for the Arab media, Avichay Adraee.

The orders highlighted alleged targets in red boxes, which people used as a marker to locate their homes and see how near or far potential damage was. Many times, displaced residents realised the structures highlighted on the maps were their own homes.

Hussein Chokr, 30, policy researcher at the American University of Beirut, was at his home on November 24 when he got a notification on X from the army spokesman. Talks about a potential ceasefire in Lebanon were already in advanced stages at the time.

“I saw several maps but directly recognised my house,” he told The National. “Israel alleges it is targeting military sites in its attacks but that’s a lie – that was my home being targeted.”

Mr Chokr was later sent footage by a passer-by in his neighbourhood that showed piles of rubble where his family home once stood. Before the ceasefire, he said he was not able to return to the area due to the “constant presence of Israeli drones and jets in the skies”.

“At first you mourn the loss of the house, then you mourn all the small details and memories you have there,” Mr Chokr said.

“My library, book collection, travel souvenirs, school certificates and childhood video tapes that my parents recorded of us since we were newborn babies … everything is destroyed.”

Despite the loss, Mr Chokr said he holds on to faith and relies on his people's resilience.

“Thank God for everything,” he said. “Even such a loss won’t bring me to my knees. The taste of victory and freedom is worth every moment of pain."