The Resistance
When westerners, particularly Anglophones, imagine the membership of Hezbollah two tired stereo types are likely to jump to mind. One is of the mad mullah, spitting venom at the west from his podium in the mosque's main hall or maliciously plotting in a dark room somewhere in its back chambers. The other is the desperate young man from the village or the slum with nothing to loose who, one day, upon hearing the demagogic preaching of such a mad mullah slings a Kalashnikov over his shoulder and decides to take his frustration, building through a lifetime void of opportunities and direct it at the world wide Capitalist Jewish Conspiracy.
I am about to meet one of its members, and a very active one at that. I am waiting for him at Starbucks, his suggestion. The young man I am waiting to meet, Mahdi Berjaoui, is not only a member of Hezbollah - he is the leader of their group on campus at the Lebanese American University. He arrives and approaches me with a confident stride, an easy smile, and a firm manly handshake. He is wearing a fashionable orange polo shirt, blue jeans, trendy sneakers and a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. He hasn't shaven for the last few days but he certainly does not have a beard. We take a table and he suggests an iced mocha as it is far too hot for a latte, and then insists, in the great Lebanese tradition of hospitality, on paying for it.
Upon prompting Mahdi rattles off some of the achievements of Hezbollah at LAU. They campaigned successfully, with the other political groups on campus, to lower tuition fees, hosted a photographic exhibition on the history of their of their organisation, and a (peaceful) protest against the Iraq war organised to coincide with a visit to the campus by the US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman.
Mahdi, though cheerful, is old beyond his nineteen years. He was born during the eighteen year Israeli occupation of Lebanon and members of his family had died at their hands. He talks about the humiliation that comes from living in an occupied land -the check points, the arbitrary raids, searches and curfews the sense of powerlessness. It was Hezbollah who changed all that. It was Hezbollah who liberated Lebanon from the Israeli occupation.
In the two week onslaught that has begun his family's weekend and summer house in a village in the southern mountains has been destroyed, as has their main residence in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh, where as the new local joke has it, the Israelis are digging for oil, bombing the same area repeatedly reducing it to rubble. According to the Israelis this is to destroy the network of tunnels and bunkers that Hezbollah has build between and under its buildings in the area in preparation for such a strike (this is not the first time since their withdrawal in 2000 that the Israelis have bombed Lebanon). According to many others however this is a ploy to scatter the intense of support Hezbollah enjoyed in this densely populated and predominantly Shi'a suburb where their head quarters were located by destroying the homes of their supporters. These objectives however, are far from mutually exclusive.
Mahdi's two houses were not bombed because he is a member of Hezbollah, he and his family were simply unlucky. Like hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have been made homeless in the last two weeks.
Still, however, he is neither desperate nor fanatical. He's just staying with relatives for the moment. What's more, with a degree in economics and international relations to finish, a girlfriend called Samar and a healthy social life, demonstrated by the scores of people who interrupt our interview to shake his hand, ask after his family and insist he call them so they can go for a beer soon, he still has everything to loose. He talks about the current situation in purely political and strategic terms. I ask him what the goals of Hezbollah will be after this war ends, he replies "the same as they have always been: to protect our people and our land" and then adds quickly, "and of course, now, to repair the new damage that has been done".
He, like most Lebanese, holds no one but Israel responsible for the destruction wrought on their country, since the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers two weeks ago by Hezbollah. The operation was justified, according to Mahdi by the hope of a prisoner swap which would return three Lebanese nationals held in Israeli prisons. None of whom, Mahdi is quick to point out are from Hezbollah, or even Shi'a. Such prisoner swaps have happened before and much larger numbers of prisoners, and have included Hezbollah guerrilla leaders among those released. Indeed one of the men released in such a prisoner swap has a son who studies with Mahdi at LAU.
The hostage taking, according to him, and most Lebanese, is just an excuse for the Israelis to pursue goals held previously - to keep Lebanon weak when it was for the first time in decades on the path to prosperity.
His calmness, however, does not mean he is dispassionate, he has both friends and family fighting at the front and, he makes clear several times during the interview that if it comes to the point where it is necessary, which would be when Hezbollah feels its well armed and well trained guerrilla units are stretched thin, he is prepared to fight and die there himself. Like young men world wide, he is prepared to die for his country if he feels it under threat. For the moment he is happy to spend his days volunteering at what was until recently one of Beirut's best law schools, but which is now the temporary home of around a thousand refugees.
A Google search for news articles containing the words "terrorist group Hezbollah" produces three hundred and twenty one stories printed since the beginning of June, and indeed Hezbollah is listed as an official terrorist organisation by America, Australia, the Canada, and Israel. The United Kingdom and Netherlands make a distinction between Hezbollah proper, which they do not consider a terrorist organisation and its armed wing, the External Security Organization, which they do. The United Nations, the European Union and every other nation in the world however, are yet to accept this definition for either the group as a whole or its armed wing. However, t he European Union has gone so far as to identify Imad Mugniyah , Hezbollah's senior Intelligence officer, as a terrorist individually.
To the Lebanese however, to use such a term to describe the Hezbollah is an insult. Not just to the group itself or its widely respected leader Sheik Hassan Nesrallah, but to the Lebanese people as a whole. It was this group that fought and died to liberate their land from a despised occupier. To use such terms regarding those responsible for their freedom is to denigrate their freedom itself. They are Al-Muqawama, "The Resistance", or if you feel like being formal, Al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, "The Islamic Resistance". These are the words used in reference to Hezbollah in the Arabic press if they are not identified by name. They are never called terrorists.
The reason for this broad based support, extending well beyond (and not universal among) their coreligionist Shi'a, is not as simple as a hatred of Israel or a love of Islam. Hezbollah have not only been a military organisation. They have built and now maintain schools and medical clinics across the country, they have specific branches of their organisation responsible for the widows and orphans of those who have died in battle, they organise emergency food and shelter for the poor even in times of peace, and they have a specific organisation for the reconstruction of buildings and infrastructure destroyed by shelling and bombing. They even give university scholar ships to promising Shi'a students from poor backgrounds.
The religious aspect of Hezbollah is a much less prominent section of their platform than one might suspect. Hezbollah has openly and officially stated that the goal of an Islamic republic is unsuited to Lebanon's religiously diverse population. They are not the Lebanese version of Al-Qaeda, they are a much more garden variety political organisation who have survived and grown due to their ability to meet the needs of their constituents. Even now, in the middle of the conflict they are, in concert with a plethora of other organisations and the Lebanese population at large providing emergency shelter, food and medical supplies to those who were displaced by the war and have no where else to go. That is not to say they are altruistic, or "good" a term I would be loath to use for any politician. They know that providing these services will bolster their support in the future.
In the car-park of the Beirut mall, one of many places where those fleeing Israeli bombs have found temporary shelter they have set up a projector screen showing Al-Manar, Hezbollah's own TV station, so that the thousand or so refugees there can gather in the evenings to hear the speeches of the Sheik Hassan Nesrallah. They also sometimes show Tom and Jerry cartoons during the day, much to the delight of the children. In this car-park the support for Hezbollah was more vehement than most other places. Every one I spoke to, without being questioned on the topic, professed their love for Nesrallah. Abdullah, a middle aged man from the south whose whole family had been displaced by the bombing launched eagerly into a speech in which he declared that he would give his life for Nesrallah without hesitation. I asked Ali, a boy from a village in the north which had been bombed, who had volunteered to act as my translator what how he passed his days he answered that they played cards, read the Quoran and waited for Nesrallah to speak.
These speeches are not just heard and cheered by the unwashed masses huddled in bunkers and slums. In a trendy café not far from my house in the suburb of Hamra, which is home to the Lebanese American University, The American University of Beirut, The American University hospital, McDonalds, Dunkin' Donuts and the arguably best lingerie shopping in the Middle East, a large screen TV was installed to show the world cup. They have kept it in place to show the war which followed on almost immediately. Here I watched Nesrallah's speech on Tuesday night. It was a response to America's plans for "A New Middle East". The audience was captivated. Those who were eating put down their knives and forks. Conversation stopped. Every word was followed. People looked with annoyance at the noise coming from my table until they realised it was a friend of mine translating his words into English, of this they approved.
Whether you call them terrorists or a legitimate resistance movement, whatever the New Middle East looks like, Hezbollah and groups like it are likely to be a major feature for the foreseeable future.
I am about to meet one of its members, and a very active one at that. I am waiting for him at Starbucks, his suggestion. The young man I am waiting to meet, Mahdi Berjaoui, is not only a member of Hezbollah - he is the leader of their group on campus at the Lebanese American University. He arrives and approaches me with a confident stride, an easy smile, and a firm manly handshake. He is wearing a fashionable orange polo shirt, blue jeans, trendy sneakers and a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. He hasn't shaven for the last few days but he certainly does not have a beard. We take a table and he suggests an iced mocha as it is far too hot for a latte, and then insists, in the great Lebanese tradition of hospitality, on paying for it.
Upon prompting Mahdi rattles off some of the achievements of Hezbollah at LAU. They campaigned successfully, with the other political groups on campus, to lower tuition fees, hosted a photographic exhibition on the history of their of their organisation, and a (peaceful) protest against the Iraq war organised to coincide with a visit to the campus by the US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman.
Mahdi, though cheerful, is old beyond his nineteen years. He was born during the eighteen year Israeli occupation of Lebanon and members of his family had died at their hands. He talks about the humiliation that comes from living in an occupied land -the check points, the arbitrary raids, searches and curfews the sense of powerlessness. It was Hezbollah who changed all that. It was Hezbollah who liberated Lebanon from the Israeli occupation.
In the two week onslaught that has begun his family's weekend and summer house in a village in the southern mountains has been destroyed, as has their main residence in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh, where as the new local joke has it, the Israelis are digging for oil, bombing the same area repeatedly reducing it to rubble. According to the Israelis this is to destroy the network of tunnels and bunkers that Hezbollah has build between and under its buildings in the area in preparation for such a strike (this is not the first time since their withdrawal in 2000 that the Israelis have bombed Lebanon). According to many others however this is a ploy to scatter the intense of support Hezbollah enjoyed in this densely populated and predominantly Shi'a suburb where their head quarters were located by destroying the homes of their supporters. These objectives however, are far from mutually exclusive.
Mahdi's two houses were not bombed because he is a member of Hezbollah, he and his family were simply unlucky. Like hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have been made homeless in the last two weeks.
Still, however, he is neither desperate nor fanatical. He's just staying with relatives for the moment. What's more, with a degree in economics and international relations to finish, a girlfriend called Samar and a healthy social life, demonstrated by the scores of people who interrupt our interview to shake his hand, ask after his family and insist he call them so they can go for a beer soon, he still has everything to loose. He talks about the current situation in purely political and strategic terms. I ask him what the goals of Hezbollah will be after this war ends, he replies "the same as they have always been: to protect our people and our land" and then adds quickly, "and of course, now, to repair the new damage that has been done".
He, like most Lebanese, holds no one but Israel responsible for the destruction wrought on their country, since the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers two weeks ago by Hezbollah. The operation was justified, according to Mahdi by the hope of a prisoner swap which would return three Lebanese nationals held in Israeli prisons. None of whom, Mahdi is quick to point out are from Hezbollah, or even Shi'a. Such prisoner swaps have happened before and much larger numbers of prisoners, and have included Hezbollah guerrilla leaders among those released. Indeed one of the men released in such a prisoner swap has a son who studies with Mahdi at LAU.
The hostage taking, according to him, and most Lebanese, is just an excuse for the Israelis to pursue goals held previously - to keep Lebanon weak when it was for the first time in decades on the path to prosperity.
His calmness, however, does not mean he is dispassionate, he has both friends and family fighting at the front and, he makes clear several times during the interview that if it comes to the point where it is necessary, which would be when Hezbollah feels its well armed and well trained guerrilla units are stretched thin, he is prepared to fight and die there himself. Like young men world wide, he is prepared to die for his country if he feels it under threat. For the moment he is happy to spend his days volunteering at what was until recently one of Beirut's best law schools, but which is now the temporary home of around a thousand refugees.
A Google search for news articles containing the words "terrorist group Hezbollah" produces three hundred and twenty one stories printed since the beginning of June, and indeed Hezbollah is listed as an official terrorist organisation by America, Australia, the Canada, and Israel. The United Kingdom and Netherlands make a distinction between Hezbollah proper, which they do not consider a terrorist organisation and its armed wing, the External Security Organization, which they do. The United Nations, the European Union and every other nation in the world however, are yet to accept this definition for either the group as a whole or its armed wing. However, t he European Union has gone so far as to identify Imad Mugniyah , Hezbollah's senior Intelligence officer, as a terrorist individually.
To the Lebanese however, to use such a term to describe the Hezbollah is an insult. Not just to the group itself or its widely respected leader Sheik Hassan Nesrallah, but to the Lebanese people as a whole. It was this group that fought and died to liberate their land from a despised occupier. To use such terms regarding those responsible for their freedom is to denigrate their freedom itself. They are Al-Muqawama, "The Resistance", or if you feel like being formal, Al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, "The Islamic Resistance". These are the words used in reference to Hezbollah in the Arabic press if they are not identified by name. They are never called terrorists.
The reason for this broad based support, extending well beyond (and not universal among) their coreligionist Shi'a, is not as simple as a hatred of Israel or a love of Islam. Hezbollah have not only been a military organisation. They have built and now maintain schools and medical clinics across the country, they have specific branches of their organisation responsible for the widows and orphans of those who have died in battle, they organise emergency food and shelter for the poor even in times of peace, and they have a specific organisation for the reconstruction of buildings and infrastructure destroyed by shelling and bombing. They even give university scholar ships to promising Shi'a students from poor backgrounds.
The religious aspect of Hezbollah is a much less prominent section of their platform than one might suspect. Hezbollah has openly and officially stated that the goal of an Islamic republic is unsuited to Lebanon's religiously diverse population. They are not the Lebanese version of Al-Qaeda, they are a much more garden variety political organisation who have survived and grown due to their ability to meet the needs of their constituents. Even now, in the middle of the conflict they are, in concert with a plethora of other organisations and the Lebanese population at large providing emergency shelter, food and medical supplies to those who were displaced by the war and have no where else to go. That is not to say they are altruistic, or "good" a term I would be loath to use for any politician. They know that providing these services will bolster their support in the future.
In the car-park of the Beirut mall, one of many places where those fleeing Israeli bombs have found temporary shelter they have set up a projector screen showing Al-Manar, Hezbollah's own TV station, so that the thousand or so refugees there can gather in the evenings to hear the speeches of the Sheik Hassan Nesrallah. They also sometimes show Tom and Jerry cartoons during the day, much to the delight of the children. In this car-park the support for Hezbollah was more vehement than most other places. Every one I spoke to, without being questioned on the topic, professed their love for Nesrallah. Abdullah, a middle aged man from the south whose whole family had been displaced by the bombing launched eagerly into a speech in which he declared that he would give his life for Nesrallah without hesitation. I asked Ali, a boy from a village in the north which had been bombed, who had volunteered to act as my translator what how he passed his days he answered that they played cards, read the Quoran and waited for Nesrallah to speak.
These speeches are not just heard and cheered by the unwashed masses huddled in bunkers and slums. In a trendy café not far from my house in the suburb of Hamra, which is home to the Lebanese American University, The American University of Beirut, The American University hospital, McDonalds, Dunkin' Donuts and the arguably best lingerie shopping in the Middle East, a large screen TV was installed to show the world cup. They have kept it in place to show the war which followed on almost immediately. Here I watched Nesrallah's speech on Tuesday night. It was a response to America's plans for "A New Middle East". The audience was captivated. Those who were eating put down their knives and forks. Conversation stopped. Every word was followed. People looked with annoyance at the noise coming from my table until they realised it was a friend of mine translating his words into English, of this they approved.
Whether you call them terrorists or a legitimate resistance movement, whatever the New Middle East looks like, Hezbollah and groups like it are likely to be a major feature for the foreseeable future.
posted by Austin Gerassimos Mackell at 10:38 PM
2 Comments:
Hey mate its David,
Good to know your ok but having been through the Jakarta riots of 98 I know that the death and destruction that the news loves to cover doesn't really give much of an image of the size or scope of the continuation of everyday life on the ground during conflict apart from when it is torn apart. Its good to get a perspective from the ground because as usual I am flipping between bbc/cnn and occasionally fox until its "fair and balanced rhetoric" approach infuriates me too much. As usual Oz has sided with the US again and I was dismayed by Downer's remarks that sending troops would be a suicide mission. I thought he would be able to speak a little more intellectually on the subject with his previous experience than that but I guess thats what Condi told him to say. From your perspective what is the likely reception of a international force in Southern Lebanon? Originally I approved of the Israeli action as it was necessary to show a strong hand when both Hamas and Hezbolah attacked sovereign soil. And I still feel that there is some validity to the notion that once concessions are made to seemingly(as portrayed by western media) unprovoked attack more power and support gathers behind them. The election of Hamas and growing aggression I feel is evidence of this. However over the last weeks my views have changed dramatically as Israel's punishment surmounted to war crimes. There has been barely a cursory mention made of the core issues of historical problems escalating the conflict.(some of which you hit upon) Israel now seems to be the weakly chained pitbull incapable of understanding of its superior position economically and politically in the region and sadly the US invasion of Iraq has given precedent to the use of unabated unilateral decision making. Working in "if only's" Israel could have/ should have involved the international community sooner and its blatant targeting of public facilities such as the airport (which it has constant surveilance of anyway) and refinaries shows a blatant disregard for the people and state of lebanon. The killing of 4 UN workers just the other day wasn't accompanied by an apology but rather "regretted" by Olmert. Israel thinks it is in the right and is painting a new face for itself that only helps provide sympathy for the more extreme wings of the resistance. I as a westerner find myself almost supporting their crusade in the face of obvious tyranny and so its obvious that local people will have no trouble picking sides. Its just sad that the West have become cowboys unable to take the social high road even though they hog it so selfishly in economic, military and political terms. One question however is that the katyusha rockets that are fired seem to be targeted at Israeli civilians(albeit targeting systems are severely inhibited) and filled with ball bearings to cause civilian casualties. What is the feeling on this and on the recognition of the right of Israel as a state to exist among the lay-people in Lebanon? In addition what do the people on the ground think about having arms in their residential areas as it draws Israeli fire? The news paints them as victims of circumstance unable to stand up to Hezbolah which I fail to see as the full truth. Finally, being in Indonesia, the support for palestine and now lebannon is not obvious but runs as an undercurrent in the 98% muslim society. Israel before this crisis was a dirty word and now I feel will be fuel for further radicalisation as clear sides are taken in the conflict. As the US failure in Iraq moves to civil war and Israel's nose is bloodied on international TV is there a growing feeling on the ground of animosity towards westerners and religion or a noticable labelling of the two? As a ardent atheist its this correlation of Arab-muslim Western-Christian etc, that disturbs me and is there a noticable aggression towards them both now. If so in the future when the US finally tries to appear the good guy in rebuilding what will be the reception?
Keep up the good work I look forward to the news from the other side. I wish Al Jazeera would hurry up with its international news upgrade.
David (riiko)
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