For those who are not members of Hezbollah, who do not subscribe to the ideology of the Party of God and who do not have blind faith in the group’s leadership, this war is heartbreaking.

They are furious at Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon into this destructive war.

But they are also raging against Israel for imposing this collective punishment on the country.

Seeing Lebanon’s infrastructure destroyed over the course of the last three weeks has been painful.

After the civil war ended in 1990, the Lebanese did an amazing job rebuilding their country, despite political assassinations and the occasional Israeli air strikes.  ~BBC News

It is absolutely true that most Lebanese resent Hizbullah for provoking this fight, and therein lies the greatest tragedy: Hizbullah was the one that overreached and exposed itself to Israeli retaliation that would likely have been welcomed by the rest of the country, and Israel had its best chance to isolate Hizbullah politically in years.  Instead, all of Lebanon has become the target and its people are bearing the costs of Israel’s errors and excesses.  War is always miserable, but this war is particularly grim in its futility.