Bay Area Lebanese Community Unites Amid Growing ‘Sense of Doom’ as Israeli Strikes Mount

Dr. Ramzi Salti met with his new students at Stanford University earlier this week.

In the Arabic language course he has taught at the university for 25 years, students read the news and discuss current events. Salti, an advanced lecturer in the school’s Arabic program, told KQED he’s unsure how to incorporate the most recent conflict in Lebanon into his curriculum.

“We haven’t had time to process any of it,” said Salti, whose family left Lebanon and immigrated to the United States 45 years ago. “But you cannot have a course about current events in the Middle East and not go there.”

Concern and anxiety have gripped the Bay Area’s Lebanese diaspora, a community of more than 5,000 people, according to estimates from the West Coast’s Honorary Consulate of Lebanon, since Israel began pummeling southern Lebanon with airstrikes on Monday. More than 500 people were reportedly killed, including 50 children.

Thousands fled the region for Beirut, the country’s capital on the Mediterranean coast. The airstrikes follow a series of pager and other device explosions across the country facilitated by Israel. The coordinated attack on Hezbollah killed at least 40 people and injured 3,000 others. Israel and Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia and political party in Lebanon, have been locked in almost daily cross-border skirmishes since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

The majority of Richard Kadi’s family lives near Saida, a city in southern Lebanon. The barrages fuel constant worries about his cousins and uncles. Kadi, who lives in Belmont, checks on them daily. It’s difficult, he said, for them to escape the region.

“The roads are congested,” Kadi said. “They are really afraid that there won’t be any gas for the cars, or there won’t be any food or bread. People are worried and scared, and they don’t know how far this is going to escalate.”

MJ Azzi, who came to the United States as a student six years ago, is in constant communication with her parents.

“They are very scared,” she said. “They say that whatever it is that they have been dreading to happen for the past many months is happening right now.”

Salti said that the situation has spiraled more dramatically than his friends and family in Lebanon expected. They’re now afraid the country could get dragged into the worst conflict in its history.

“I think that there is a sense of doom, unfortunately, that has overtaken people who maybe had too rosy of a picture before,” he said.

Salti remembers what he calls “a beautiful childhood” in the country. Lebanon was a cultural powerhouse for much of the 20th century. It has the most liberal media in any Arab country. Lebanese artists produced Arabic-language pop music, books and movies, and Beirut was known as the “Paris of the Middle East.” Many Lebanese people speak Arabic, English and French, and the country’s many religious and ethnic minorities are guaranteed representation in government.

Bordered by Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, Lebanon was stable for three decades after gaining independence from France in the early 1940s. Salti recalled the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, which began as a clash between Lebanese Christians and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Then, the U.S., Syria, Israel and Iran got involved in the 15-year conflict that displaced nearly 1 million people.

Waves of Lebanese have left the country since. Many fled when Israel invaded and occupied southern Lebanon in 1982 and again in 2006 during the Israel-Hezbollah war. Hezbollah was founded after Israel’s invasion in 1982.

The history looms heavily over this week’s fighting.

“That’s been the story of Lebanon for the past 50 years,” said Kadi, who emigrated from Lebanon 24 years ago. “Every now and then, there’s been bombardment attacks or airplanes flying over our heads.

Younger Lebanese, like Azzi, have been traumatized by the periodic violence, as well as the port explosion that rocked Beirut in 2020.

“You can never plan for the future,” said Azzi, 27. “I grew up in a climate of instability, and it just feels like it’s been the same for as long as I’ve known.”

California is home to the second-largest Lebanese diaspora in the U.S. after Michigan. Thousands gather annually at the Bay Area Lebanese Festival held in August in downtown Redwood City. On weekends, Kadi and friends play soccer and cards together, and they meet on Sundays at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church in Millbrae.

While Kadi isn’t part of a political organization, he and others in the community share their opinions about the inflamed tensions in the region.

“People see things differently, from different perspectives,” Kadi said. “Of course, people blame Hezbollah. But at the end of the day, it’s the bigger power who can actually serve justice.”

Several Bay Area politicians have called for an end to the violence. East Bay Congressman Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord), who voted against providing offensive weapons to Israel earlier this year, is among the elected officials urging the Biden administration to pursue a ceasefire in the region.

“I’d like to see America assert that there has to be a regional and international pressure on both sides to stop and to get to a discussion about long-term peace, which means coexistence,” DeSaulnier said. “We’re tempting World War III. Not to be over reactionary, but smaller conflicts, as history has taught us, can escalate.”

In his final speech addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, President Joe Biden said, “Nobody wants to see full-scale war.”

“A solution is still possible,” he added.

Both Salti and Kadi hoped for a stronger statement from Biden. As they wait for a ceasefire, they find hope in community and culture.

When he’s not teaching, Salti hosts a radio program and podcast called Arabology. Each two-hour episode is filled with facts about Arabic music and artists, woven through an array of indie-Arabic tracks and remixes.

He’s planning an episode on Lebanese music featuring, Salti said, “everything that’s beautiful about Lebanon, not the war and destruction.” Included in the mix is “I Love You, Lebanon,” a song released in 1970 by Fairuz, whom he called “the Diva of Lebanon.” The nostalgic lyrics summarize the love that a lot of Lebanese have for their country, Salti said.

“It’s a song about peace, about loving Lebanon through its best times and worst times,” he said. “It’s the best medication I could recommend right now in terms of Lebanese music that can be healing and empowering.”

KQED’s Carly Severn contributed to this report.