'Nekat' circulating on social media. Montage by Jaimee Lee Haddad.
Less than 24 hours after the simultaneous explosions of Hezbollah members' beepers on Sept. 17, 2024, which resulted in dozens of deaths and thousands of injuries, social media and WhatsApp groups of all Lebanese were already flooded with messages like: "Watch out for your e-cigarettes!"; "There's the intercom; maybe I should unplug it"; or even this image of a man wearing an old vintage phone at his waist, captioned: "The only solution", with the mention that the message had been "forwarded many times."
These nekat (jokes, in Arabic) circulated on the groups between urgent updates about a new wave of explosions—this time from Hezbollah walkie-talkies on Sept. 18— with photos of charred walkie-talkies, and death tolls.
Since the war of attrition between Hezbollah and Israel at the border, which had been ongoing since Oct. 2023, escalated at the end of September into an unprecedented and deadly Israeli assault, resulting in over 2,000 deaths and more than a million displaced people in Lebanon, jokes about the conflict have flourished on social media, even making their way into casual conversations.
One Strike, One Joke
For each event, there’s a twisted version; for every tragic aspect of the war, there’s a comedic counterpart.
“Question for the MK above my head: where's my black jeans?” jokes the Lebanese Memes account on X regarding the spy drone buzzing day and night over the Lebanese heads.
“Daily routine: the Hezb(ollah) strikes in the morning. Dawn to 3 PM, Israel drives us crazy with its drones. Around 4 PM, 5 PM, they assassinate someone. In the evening, they clash at the border. In the middle of the night, they’re bored and strike Dahieh (a southern Beirut suburb),” summarizes another message.
In this flood of remarks, everyone gets their share; the jokes poke fun at both Hezbollah and its Israeli enemy. A few days after the announcement of the Israeli ground incursion into southern Lebanon, a parody garnered over 1.3 million views on X by presenting “a summary of events at the Lebanese border”: in a clip from the cartoon Tom & Jerry, Israel is depicted as a barking dog on a leash, trying unsuccessfully to bite the cat Tom, adorned with the Hezbollah flag.
On TikTok, other Lebanese also ironically comment on the frequent GPS jamming by Israel that disrupts the orientation tool on their smartphones: “Stop asking me where I am! I’m at the Amman airport, on vacation,” jokes a young man from Beirut.
There's also a internet user posting a video on Instagram while a bombing occurs nearby: “Look, Israel lost 1-0 to Japan,” he quips after the football match. “They’re going to strike Laylaki (a neighborhood in southern Beirut frequently targeted by Israel),” he deduces, just as a muffled explosion rings out, with no details about the reality of his location.
Stand-up on standby...
“Laughter allows us to humanize the inhuman, to endure the unbearable, to accept the unacceptable,” analyzes Dr. Marie-Ange Nohra, a psychoanalyst and professor at the Lebanese University.
“It’s another form of resistance. A peaceful weapon, in a way.” A weapon that resonates on social media in a Lebanon where live performances are currently on the decline. The famous stand-up collective Awk.word, for example, has canceled all its events until further notice. “It was imposed on us. With everything that has happened, many comedians found themselves at a loss for words for a while,” explains Andrew Hreiz, one of the co-founders of the collective created in 2018. “When you go through trauma, it’s very difficult to talk about it directly.”
The thirty-something, who has been living outside Lebanon for a while, accompanies the collective's artists on their tour. Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Europe... “It also helps to raise awareness,” he believes, currently alongside Palestinian comedian Sammy Obeid on his tour. “And stand-up isn’t just about laughing out loud all the time. It’s also serious.”
On stage, Sammy Obeid gives a reminder that his stand-up show was not canceled in Beirut due to the situation: “I had a show scheduled for October 14, and the Lebanese didn’t cancel! I was in a panic, and they were like, ‘No, no, the show is still on,’” he says in a clip posted on his Instagram on Oct. 5.
“They won’t cancel the show as long as half the building is still standing!” he smiles. His appearance has, however, been postponed. Awk.word, in any case, does not plan to resume its events in Lebanon for now. “We’ll see how things evolve,” sighs Andrew Hreiz.
Other artists, like the duo G-String, have muted their stand-up to organize fundraising for displaced persons. For their duo's fifth anniversary on Oct. 16, they opted for a free-entry evening in Jbeil (Kersewen), with the possibility of making donations to an association. “This way, we perform a few of our songs, relax, play some games, but we also help,” they explain on Instagram.
'If We Can Laugh About the Same Things...'
While some are criticized for joking around in wartime, the co-founder of Awk.word sees it as a nearly vital necessity.
“Those who fight on the front lines and return to their barracks in the evening, they laugh; what do you think? Everyone does it; everyone needs to decompress,” he defends.
“Laughter has always been a form of therapy for individuals, as it allows them to express what’s on their hearts in a pleasant way,” adds Marie-Ange Nohra.
Even though the psychoanalyst agrees with the widespread notion of Lebanese “resilience” through humor, she also points out its limits. “In the collective unconscious, we also mock difficult truths to forget them. Memory embellishes things: people recount the wars of 1975-1990 and July 2006, saying they were having fun and laughing in the shelters. But at that moment, it wasn’t funny at all,” she believes.
Laughter, as a distancing mechanism and a lighter expression of denial, can also unite, according to the therapist. “If we can laugh about the same things, maybe that can bring us together, in some way...” But that remains to be proven, she says.
