This article was originally published in the San Jose Mercury News and is republished with the author's permission.

A destroyed building in Qana, Lebanon, where an Israeli air strike on Sunday killed more than 57 people, 37 of them children. (Raoul Kramer, Maan Images)

I woke Sunday morning to the news of an attack on the Lebanese village of Qana. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. It was ten years ago when Israeli missiles struck a United Nations shelter in Qana, killing 106 civilians. But then it hit me, it happened again. This time, Israeli missiles flattened houses in Qana, killing 57 people, mostly children, as they slept. I sat in disbelief, an unspeakable sadness welled up in me. And then my thoughts turned, not to southern Lebanon, but to the Farmers Market in Oakland.

I was buying Arabic pocket bread there this weekend. The vendor, perhaps glimpsing something Middle Eastern in my looks, asked where I was from. "I'm American," I said. "But my family's from Lebanon." He pushed my money back into my hand and said, "for you, it's free." I insisted, but to no avail. "Your country is being bombed and you want me to take your money?" As I walked away, touched by his support but embarrassed not to have paid for the bread, he called out to me, "keep your head high!"

Tears came to my eyes. It's been difficult to keep my head high these last few weeks. My mind is consumed with Lebanon. Half of the time I am remembering my last visit to Beirut, sitting with friends at a café on the Mediterranean, planning our night out on the town and laughing at how only in Beirut, once the Paris of the Middle East, would McDonalds offer valet parking.

The rest of the time, like most Lebanese Americans, I am frantically checking email and calling loved ones to make sure they are safe. With cell phones, email and blogs, we receive nearly constant updates. This brings some relief because with each email we know our loved ones are still alive. But we also know in intricate detail the hell they are living through.

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I spoke with a friend recently, a poet in Beirut. It was almost nightfall there and she dreads the nighttime because that is when the bombs really fall. Another friend, a professor at the American University of Beirut, was abroad with his wife when the bombing started, their young children still in Beirut with their grandparents. While most fled to safety, they struggled to cross the Syrian border back into Lebanon. Along the way, they pulled over to let a convoy of ambulances pass, only to watch the ambulances annihilated by Israeli missiles.

I can't get these scenes out of my head. Maybe the constant updates are not so good. But when the phone lines go out, it's much worse. Early on, seven Canadians were killed. I couldn't reach a Canadian friend in Beirut. I scanned websites, news sources, anything I could find that might list the names. His name wasn't among them. And as I breathed that sigh of relief, I knew that somewhere, someone else was scanning the same list of names and her life would never be the same.

Too many lives will never be the same. In less than three weeks, Israel has killed more than 700 Lebanese, the vast majority civilians, and driven up to a million more from their homes. It has bombed milk factories, wheat silos, power plants, roads, bridges, the airport and nearly destroyed entire villages. This second deadly attack on children in Qana, the village where Jesus is said to have turned water into wine, is particularly horrifying.

Israeli soldiers and civilians too are dying; their families' lives no less altered, no less destroyed.

In the Arab world -- from Cairo to Damascus, from Nablus to Beirut -- people are speaking of Qana and of the television imagery of small, innocent bodies being pulled from the rubble. Where will the outrage be channeled? And how are we any closer to peace?

Margaret Zaknoen spent six years engaged in US-funded democracy-building projects in the Middle East. She is currently employed at the Institute for Middle East Understanding.