Getting "Used" to the Israeli Drone in Lebanon
It ain't normal
A few weeks ago, I went back to Lebanon for the first time in years. It was my first time back since the start of the 2024 war, itself the first time since Israel unleashed hell at this scale in nearly two decades.1
I was by my 89 year-old grandmother's bedside at the hospital when I posted this on Bluesky:
In Lebanon. Can hear the Israeli drone constantly now. I’ve only been back for a day but folks here deal with it 24/7, for months. It’s psychological torture. You can even see it, just flying around. The Israelis want to let everyone know that they can kill whoever they want whenever they want.
Kids go to school hearing the drone. You brush your teeth hearing the drone. You go out hearing the drone. You shower hearing the drone. Everything you do, all the time, it’s always there. The Israelis clearly enjoy terrorising millions.
It’s hard to describe knowing, for an absolute fact, that there is no such thing as safety, ever. You can lie to yourself long enough to get through the day, but at any point, maybe you let your guard down, and it’s still there.
I’m currently at the hospital with my 89yo grandmother and can hear the drone as clearly as I can hear her. We don’t even talk about it. It’s like talking about clouds. There’s a sense that it’s pointless to talk about it. Israel feels beyond human agency, because nothing ever stops them.
If you don’t fundamentally understand that Israel has no equivalent enemy, there there are no ’two sides’, and that this is entirely due to Western governments like the US, UK and Germany - but also the entirety of the EU - then there’s nothing I can tell you. You’re too brainwashed to get it.
It’s so much easier for so-called journalists to ‘explain’ this as if it’s remotely normal, as if Israel isn’t throwing away any rule of any books on a daily basis. If there was any honesty left in media this would be self-evident.
(I was angry)
(not my video)
I was, of course, already aware of the drone. Friends often post about it on Signal and Whatsapp groups, and on social media. Occasionally they see it, most of the time they just hear it.
What I did not and could not know were all of those days and weeks where they wouldn't bother mentioning the drone online - because what's the point? Posting about the drone on social media is driven by a sense of hope: Maybe, just maybe, if we show the rest of the world how cruel and absurd it is to have a drone flying over our heads 24/7 for days and days and days, someone, somewhere, will tell Israel to stop.
But of course, Israel does not stop. Nothing stops Israel because its allies have long benefited from having this quasi-outpost in the Middle East test out its weapons on us (and keep in mind that, whatever the Israelis do in Lebanon, they always do worse in Gaza.) So, after some time, the social media posts stop, the Signal/Whatsapp updates stop.
I'd occasionally send a message to a friend asking if they heard the drone today, and they would reply with a casual “yeah I can hear it now.” One friend told me that “it's been a while,” only to realise, when I followed up, that “a while” meant “yesterday.”
The drone destroys your sense of time. I only experienced it for a few days, and even then intermittently because my childhood home is not in Beirut. I drove to Beirut daily and I heard the Israeli drone for four or five out of the six days I was there. At my cousin's, at my other cousin's, at the hospital, at my friend's, at my other friend's, at my other friend's, at the restaurant, at the bar, at the other bar, while walking, while driving.
When it's particularly loud — can someone ask the Israelis how they decide when to make it louder? — it can be overwhelming, but I found that it is in those moments when you expect it the least that it can really fuck you up.
I first heard it at the hospital. I had just landed in Beirut. As the nurses moved my grandmother to the floor above the one she'd been staying at, I heard the drone for the first time. It took me a good 10 minutes to realise that this wasn't some other noise (hardly a rare occurrence in Beirut; think construction sites, generators etc.) No one around me was reacting to the drone. The nurses kept on working, the doctors kept on working. It makes sense, of course it does. If you hear the drone for long enough, at some point, surely, you get ‘used to it.’
But no, it's not quite that. You cannot get used to something that has already killed, that will certainly kill again. A surveillance drone is sometimes what one hears before a strike. You can't ever know, and that's the point. They could be ‘surveilling’ for days and nothing happens. For all we know, the 19 year old Israeli sitting down in front of a screen somewhere in Tel Aviv is scrolling trough TikTok or Instagram and has put the drone on automatic mode for a while. For all we know, today is the day when the drone precedes a strike.
Plan your days accordingly. You can't. Again, that's the point.
It was my niece and nephew's bedtime when I heard it again. Its sound echoed in the valley. The sun had already set, and the air was rather chilly. And the drone was there, somewhere. Strikes hadn't happened where I was, so I didn't feel in danger. Besides, it was probably further away, judging by my wholly approximate drone recognition capabilities.
The situation felt absurd, but none of that matters. There is no way to register your complaint, no international mechanism to account for the fact that kids going to bed hearing a drone is, simply put, fucked up.
It's not even in the top 100 crimes committed by the Israelis in just 2 years, so who am I to complain?
The purpose of the drone is hardly just surveillance. It is also a tool for collective punishment — a proud Israeli tradition — a natural continuation of a hyper-militarised state whose only sense of self-worth is in complete domination. In other words, we are what keeps Israel going. Without us, our bodies, our minds, Israel would have nowhere to go. If they did not have an existential boogeyman somewhere, all they'd have going for them is one another — and that's a terrifying thought. Years and decades of dominating other people has a corrosive effect on your population's morale, you will be shocked to know.
As mentioned, I was only there for a few days, so I can't quite tell you what it feels like to get ‘used’ to the near constant presence/absence of a drone above you. Do you start hoping for rain? Surely that makes drone business harder. Does a nice day out mean relaxing with friends at the beach? Or does it mean ‘let's hope we won't have to think about the drone today oh fuck it's already here'? Do you order food, call it a day?
When the drone is followed by a strike, my phone buzzes. You never know when it can happen, so I have found friends reflecting on all those moments where it feels like, maybe, probably (?), it might happen today. The drone is louder than usual, whatever usual means, so that must mean today is the day. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. A friend was going out, heard the drone, and decided to wait it out. It turned out that staying at home was worse, so he told himself fuck it and went out. Going out is some act of defiance now, even if you're going out to drown yourself in booze or whatever. It's not really, of course. We have no idea if this makes any difference to the drone operators, let alone the genocidaires giving them orders.
If this feels disorienting, it is intentional. I am trying to explain what it feels like to not just hear or see a drone but to experience it. I am likely doing a bad job at it. I don't think me hearing it for many more days and weeks would have made much of a difference, other than tire me even more. You can't flip off a drone, yell at it, throw rocks at it. You can't do much really, at least not against those. The Israelis kill for less. It's sort of their thing these days.
So there you go. I may write more about it one day. I might be able to tell you that, after a while, one starts feeling the drone before even really hearing it. That must surely happen. We've all had days where we've felt that something is wrong before knowing that it is. I suspect that the drone has the potential to ruin your day before it starts, if only because it serves as a reminder of how worthless your life is to this international system. Despite thousands and millions of people protesting, writing letters, doing direct actions and striking against Israeli actions, Israel continues to kill children in Gaza every single day.
At least it's not as bad as in Gaza. At least we don’t hear the drone every day. The Israelis don't even bomb that often anymore, just here and there, four or five times which ain't too bad — after all, four or five times, that's still fewer times than, say, 14 or 27. Bless. It hasn't been heard in a while now, so maybe the bombings will go down for a bit, we can take a deep breath, no sudden movements. That might do the trick. Pray, yell, ignore, sleep, use pills to sleep, shower, take drugs, smoke, everyone smokes now, go out, lose yourself. It doesn't matter. It might matter. Who knows.
Certainly not me.
Referring to the 2006 war here
This is a much wickeder version of the Panopticon. Not conceptual. Auditory (panauralicon?) and accompanied by confirmed death and destruction, not merely the possibility of surveillance. The inconsistency and intermittent reinforcement make it ten times worse. A constant sonic irritant could probably be tuned out, just as noise-cancelling headphones are most successful with an uninterrupted ground hum or in-airplane chhhuuuuuhh. This seemed to be the case in Gaza, where the sound really was ubiquitous and videos without it were the exception. What you’ve described, instead, is an on-again-off-again unpredictability made still worse by there being no discoverable link between the presence, absence, volume, or altitude of the drone and imminence of a deadly attack.
The pattern of no pattern, only a grim lottery, will unquestionably make people sick. In recent decades, there has finally been some acknowledgement that racism in the US has a physical toll of unhealth on those it targets. Existing all day every day under heavy manners in this way, especially where the issue is anticipating the precise moment of an attack, not whether or not there will be one, is sick-making.
In the timeline I choose to imagine we inhabit, Israelis and their enablers will answer for all of this. I just wish we could jump to the penalty phase.