Hezbollah: An outsider's inside view

book.

Chapter 1

Why bother?

A home in Dahiya, southern suburb of Beirut

Sunday, 13 August 2006

They thought it was finally over. They had stayed in their Dahiya home for the first sixteen days of the war. They had stayed until the heavy, sickening booms they could hear outside their windows drove them to seek refuge in the town of Chiyah. There, with the boys’ grandfather, they waited. There, for two weeks, they telephoned friends and family to reassure themselves that they were all getting by. Then Chiyah too was bombed. For the next few days the mother, 38-years old, and the father, 40, looked at their sons and thought back to when they too had been young and nervous of the Israeli bombs blasting Beirut. And then finally the UN called for a ceasefire. The Lebanese had agreed. And today the Israelis had agreed. It would be official by morning.

Eager to return to Dahiya, the father suggested that they should all go to their home for a family meal. A simple engineering mechanic, the father had four sons—Mohamad, 20, Yasser, 18, Sam 16, and Ibrahim, 13. He now hoped that they would be able to return to school in September after all. But today was the day to enjoy being together. He looked at his weary wife and asked Mohamad to go to a nearby shop to get some grilled chicken for dinner.

They lived on the top floor of the apartment building. It was a typical, ten-story building with each floor divided into three homes. Mohamad stepped into the persistent afternoon sun. He felt somehow different. He checked to make sure he’d brought the money and walked on. He’d gone no more than a couple blocks when a massive thundering noise slammed against him. He lurched forward as though he had stumbled over an unseen rift in the pavement. He breathed in thick, foul dust. He staggered back a few paces. A roaring panic filled his ears as he looked back. He stood in disbelief, unable to think of which way to turn or what to do. He swallowed hard against what he knew.

He knew, but he could not comprehend that the home he had left not two minutes earlier was now a shifting, smoking stack of rock. They had dared to be hopeful, and now they were dead. His parents and his brothers were dead. And Mohamad stood alone, fingering the money in his pocket to buy their dinner.

A Neighbourhood Visit

I first heard Mohamad’s story in December 2006, as I stood before the gaping pit in Dahiya that had been the site of his home just months before. I was in Lebanon to see for myself the effects of the July War. I was accompanied by Sheik Taher, a man who had been working with the foreign relations department of Hezbollah for several years. We climbed over leftover piles of rock and rubbish, and stood beside a short cement safety wall Hezbollah volunteers had built along the edges of the pit.

I had seen hundreds of photos of the war damage, so I had thought seeing such sights would be rather familiar. But the magnitude of what lay before me was astounding. It reminded me of the eerie disorientation I had experienced years before, having only ever seen mountains in photographs, when I first stood engulfed by the Swiss Alps. There was just no comparison. Now, the scene of the ravaged neighbourhood before me at once left my curiosity tinged with disquiet.

Taher pointed across the street to where a sweet shop had been re-opened on the ground floor of a building whose side looked as though it had been ripped off. He pointed to an area cluttered with flattened, distorted cars. Clearance was slow as the roads had been broken or clogged or both. It had taken weeks, he explained, to haul away the heaps of debris that had so recently been people’s shops and homes, that had been the offices of doctors and accountants.

Still, amidst the enormity of the destruction that stretched in all directions, there were men sweeping up little patches and pushing wheelbarrows of rubble. Over the last four months, they had shifted from collecting the bodies to hauling away broken buildings to sweeping the dust-coated clutter. As Taher related the tales of Dahiya, there seemed to be a pain in his tone, despite the matter-of-fact delivery he attempted.

He pointed out a shoe shop that the owner had recently re-opened. I insisted on stopping. I had to meet him. I went in and was warmly welcomed by a small, elderly man who was busy tidying boxes. He helped me find a shoe size. Were it not for the ever-present dust, the shop could have been anywhere, any day.

As I left, I could spot a man in the distance busy with his broom. I wondered at the steadfast determination of this community—and this was surely a community, not a militant stronghold, as the media had so casually dubbed it. Here were ordinary people who hurt, but who would not be beaten down. I thought of young Mohamad, who had seen and heard and felt the force that had crushed his parents and his brothers to death. Had he despaired?

Meeting Mohamad

In January 2009, I asked Mohamad myself. After nearly two and a half years, for the first time since the war, Mohamad had agreed to share his story with a Western journalist. I wondered if he had been too angry or too distraught to talk about the death of his family. Or, I wondered, had the tragedy turned him cold and bitter and bent on revenge?

When I met him, Mohamad smiled. He was a bit nervous. With determined effort he spoke to me directly in his limited English. I explained that I had brought along a translator, but Mohamad looked at me intently and recounted his story in English as best he could.

His family were six people, he said, and the four brothers were students. He paused to make sure I understood this, his first and later repeated observation. Yes, they lived in Dahiya. But they were not fiercely armed militants, as portrayed in the Western media. Yes, they supported Hezbollah. But they were just a family. The father was a mechanic; the four boys were students. At least they had been.

And so we drank tea and introduced ourselves. We talked of common matters. The conversation gradually turned back to the topic that had brought us together. Mohamad struggled for words to describe the fateful day. He looked directly at me for a moment and then spoke.

After I’d left two minutes, 200 meters, first I couldn’t believe it. I heard the sound of the bomb, I couldn’t believe it. Two minutes earlier I had been in my house. Then the mujama was destroyed. Eight buildings, every building ten floors, every floor three houses, homes. So 240 homes.

In the midst of relating his personal loss, he recognised that there had been many others who had also fallen victim to the Israeli bombing. There he sat before me, a young man awaiting my next question in his shyness. I knew I could obtain statistics from a number of sources. What I really wanted to know, though, was what he had done with his grief. I asked Mohamad if he would show me photographs of his family. He turned to the woman in whose home we were meeting and said a few words. She left the room and came back with a wallet-sized photograph. She handed it to me.

The background of the image was a sunset. Superimposed were the five faces of Mohamad’s family, along with the faint representations of a Hezbollah emblem, an open Quran and five doves flying toward the horizon. It was a martyr’s portrait. They all had Mohamad’s dark brown eyes. Yet they were not smiling, as Mohamad so naturally did as he talked with me. I thanked him, but asked if he would share some photos in a natural setting, perhaps at a birthday celebration. He shrugged his shoulders and apologised he could not. All of the family photographs had been in the home that was demolished.

He went on to explain that the martyr’s portraits were most often made using photographs from the files of agencies that issued national identity cards and passports. That is why the martyrs were not smiling. It was not that they had been stern individuals. It was just that their identity card photos were too often all that was left. He looked away for a quiet moment.

A question had been pressing itself on me. At the risk of seeming impertinent, I asked him frankly: had he ever wished that he had not escaped the building only to suffer forever the loss of his family? Did he regret not having been martyred alongside them?

Mohamad smiled slightly, without speaking. He then looked at me directly and answered with a slow, steady tone. The Shia of Lebanon they think that if anyone dies, his soul goes to Allah and to Jena (paradise/heaven). Nobody is crying for anybody who dies, he is crying for himself. There is no crying for another one.

At first, he went on to explain, he had been merely numb. He had felt disjointed. But he was sure his family were in Jena, and in that knowledge he believed he would one day follow them. One day. But another day.

I asked Mohamad what, if given the chance, he would say to the Israelis. He replied, There are no words, they don’t work. The Zionists have killed the prophets, killed so many people, children, women. Now the Zionists have killed my own family. They started this. They attacked our country, raped our country; it is our duty to get our country back.

His resentment may have been personal, but his position was reasoned. He had not said that he wished to avenge the horrific deaths of his mother, his father, his three brothers. Instead, he said that he knew the Zionists—not Israelis, not Jews, but Zionists specifically—to be rapacious murderers. His tone intensified as he spoke, so much so that he began to lapse into Arabic. He said that his experience made him understand that the wrath of the Zionists was void of conscience and so they had never been talked down, and would never be talked down.

His words were bold. But there was no hint of anger in his manner; there was only certitude. Before I met Mohamad, I wondered why he had not spoken with other Western journalists. He answered me simply: no one had asked. He wanted me to know and understand, he said, that he held no grudge against me as a Westerner. And although I was probing his temperament, I noted to myself, he continued to speak frankly about the topic at hand.

By chance, the 22-day war on Gaza, Palestine, had come to a ceasefire just days before I met with Mohamad. I asked him how he felt when he saw the reports from Gaza. He answered without hesitation, in Arabic. Although his command of English had grown significantly as he had warmed up his language skills in the earlier stages of the interview, so too had he grown more involved with the topic.

It is a linguistic phenomenon that when people discuss a topic that touches them fundamentally they will most likely lapse into their primary language patterns. For instance, when a linguist doing field study wants to record regional dialect, he will often lure the speaker into a discussion of strong, personal emotion. Within such context, the speaker becomes distracted by the topic and momentarily forgets the standardised patterns and pronunciations he has learned. Pure emotion tends to be expressed in the purest mother-tongue.

In the couple of hours we spent talking over tea and sweets, Mohamad’s English went from good to better; it then started fragmenting back into Arabic until he was speaking completely in Arabic again. By the end of the conversation, he seemed oblivious to the fact that my translator had noticed the shift and was softly and simultaneously translating at my side.

When I asked Mohamad what he felt when he saw images of Gaza, he said it felt as though the war—the July 2006 War in Lebanon—was continuing. Even so, he said, like us, the Palestinian Resistance will stand strong. We are a people, he explained, we are a people who are used to injustice, to destruction, to death, to becoming refugees. But we believe in God. We are a people who will win, who will prevail because of our will, our determination and our belief. We are all mujahideen, fighters of the resistance. We are not the invaders. We are the owners of the land. We are the owners of the cause. It is our cause, our land and our dignity.

Resistance and confrontation

The statement We are all mujahideen is apt to set off danger alarms in the mind of the Western reader. It will set off alarms because he has been conditioned to hear alarms. As we will explore, there has been a systematic campaign built against Hezbollah since the party became known to the Western world. The American-led campaign strikes against the concept of resistance to the Zionist project. Hence the proponents of that project—primarily Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom—have stoked that campaign in order to garner popular and legislative support for Zionism on the one hand, and condemnation of any opposition to Zionism on the other.

Hit the snooze button. Turn off the danger alarm. Evaluate for yourself whether that alarm can remain turned off. Look, listen and reflect. Consider the puzzle of confronting resistance and resisting confrontation.

We are all mujahideen. Who is the we to whom Mohamad refers? He moved seamlessly from pointing to the Palestinian Resistance, to the Lebanese Resistance, to the commonality of the culture of resistance. He spoke without hesitation. With an intense focus propelling his words, he stated a conviction that had developed through a lifetime of experience as direct as it comes. Mohamad had the uncanny ability to be able to see his own loss not as distinctive, but as a symptom of a condition greater than himself. He instinctively accredits this perspective to his faith.

But notice how he explains the role of faith. We have suffered, he says, but our faith gives us the will to overcome the pain so that we are not victimised. His faith is a tool, a vehicle, an integral part of understanding his life. His faith, then, is process. Throughout this book, you will find this viewpoint also consistently voiced by the members of Hezbollah.

Such a stance holds that to resist injustice—and surely, for instance, the cold-blooded, anonymous murder of Mohamad’s family was unjust—to oppose the forces of that injustice is inherent in the way of God, who is the epitome of Righteousness and Dignity. This fundamental characteristic of Islam overrides any superficial differences between Sunni and Shia, between Palestinian and Lebanese. When Mohamad says that We are all mujahideen, fighters of the resistance, he says that to feel the ache of injustice is to feel the compulsion to confront it.

Commonality

We are all Hezbollah said the placards in London during July 2006. Amongst a great variety of flags, signs and slogans displayed, it was this particular phrase that seemed to attract keen attention. It was promptly censured by mainstream media, which gasped at the seemingly blatant evidence of the Islamic revolution underfoot. The demonstrations were dubbed anti-Israel rallies.

But having myself attended all of the massive demonstrations held in London, I knew this was a gross distortion of their actual theme: the demand for an immediate ceasefire. Demonstrators carried just as many signs showing photographs of the victims of the on-going conflict. Somehow, though, the images of dead children seemed less shocking to the major media and to their blogging groupies than the mere statement of solidarity with Hezbollah.

Nonetheless, the phrase gathered popular appeal. Independent media and demonstrators of varying age, faith and nationality picked up on the phrase We are all Hezbollah as an expression of commonality. In many instances the phrase was taken up not as a voice of political solidarity, but as a voice of shared humanity.

While I myself had seen the diverse popularity of the placard during the English demonstrations in July and August 2006, I contacted the placard’s designer, the UK-based organisation Innovative Minds. Their spokesperson Abbas confirmed that the phrase pre-dated the July War, having been in popular use at least as far back as Quds Day 2002.

Innovative Minds designed placards featuring the phrase and images of 2006 Lebanon for use in the public demonstrations. Abbas recalled:

"On the day of the 22 July 2006 demonstration, the [London Metropolitan] police tried to confiscate the placards, both the Hizbullah and the Sayyed Nasrallah ones, as well as the Hizbullah flags we had made, but we stood our ground and challenged them on the legality of their action and they backed down. The placards were a great success with everyone, Muslim and non-Muslim happy to hold one.

I think its success was in part due to the different meanings the phrase on the placards can have. It could refer to the children in the placards’ photographs, victims of Israel’s attack, and Israel’s claim that it was only attacking Hizbullah. It could refer to our solidarity with the oppressed when they are attacked, like we were all ‘Vietnamese’, etc. Or it could mean that we ARE all Hizbullah, that we support them ideologically. And you could see on the day people took different meanings - many people were not happy with just the slogan and were looking for versions which had a photo of Sayyed Nasrallah on the other side to show their support, while others specifically put the placard down when they saw the other side had Sayyed Nasrallah, so I found them one which had we are all Hizbullah on both sides and they were happy to carry that."

Between the Here and There

The struggle over the English phrase we are all Hizbullah has been both multi-faceted and longstanding. This spirited response within the Western world reflects a basic confusion over the relationship between us and them. We can easily attribute the dichotomy of reaction to conflicting opinions on what Hezbollah represents.

When considering the confusion, though, we must also acknowledge the murky nature of the we in this equation. Consider as example a placard-bearing Englishman whose own war years sparked an empathy with the Lebanese Resistance. In this instance we are the populace who, as expressed by Mohamad, feel the ache of injustice and strive to confront it. But consider another example: a young woman blogging her objection to the Resistance from her flat in central London. In this instance we are the general English-speaking public made nervous by a development in a foreign land, a development known only through the media.

In both instances, though, there remains a fundamental question left virtually unstudied. Why are we addressing the issue at all? After all, we the general public of the English-speaking world, do not routinely concern ourselves at length with the business of small countries on foreign continents. Why Hezbollah? Who are these people to us? Is there a need for concern?

In answering such questions, both our empathetic war veteran and our sceptical young blogger hazardously begin with their respective predispositions. As each looks at the phenomenon of Hezbollah from his own perspective, each attempts to assess second- and third-hand, largely pre-digested information. Most Westerners, despite their curiosity, are not going to pop on a plane for Beirut to see for themselves whether Dahiya is indeed an ominous militant stronghold, or whether Dahiya is, on the other hand, a straightforward community. And so they rely on their ability to sift through the dubious estimations of others.

Hezbollah: An Outsider’s Inside View offers an alternative approach to answering these questions. This book offers the Western reader the next best thing to boarding that plane for Beirut. Within these pages I have recreated many of my own encounters as a Westerner getting to know Hezbollah. Over the last few years, I have been welcomed to see where and how and why the people of Hezbollah have prevailed against all odds. For every personality you will meet in these pages, there are many more I have come to know. While their sheer numbers prevent me from including them all individually in this book, these encounters have helped to shape my understanding of Hezbollah. I have been able to share their lives, discovering both the ordinary and the extraordinary elements that define who they are.

Within this book, then, I provide the words and manners of the people themselves—translated into English and explained according to Western cultural norms. I also provide contextual background to ease the gap in experience between the here and there. Lastly, I provide third-party documentation of the development of Hezbollah and of our understanding of who they are. Together these pages form a study of relationship and mutual perception. Why do we address the issue of Hezbollah? Because when political paths cross, so do the people.

Chapter 2

Impressions

Connections

I have travelled extensively throughout the world and have had interesting conversations with the full range of humankind—young and old, religious and atheist, tradesman and academic, commoner and royalty. Whether the person was a random shopkeeper or a celebrity politician, I have made it a point to listen to the person beyond his or her status. Our global society is dependent on basic human interaction. There may be defined roles to play, but the ultimate health of our continued existence depends on a fundamental level of cooperation.

Picture yourself sitting alone in the doctor’s waiting room and, after a few minutes, another patient comes in and sits down. The awkwardness of suddenly being in a small room with a stranger is at once alleviated when you look up from your magazine and perhaps nod and offer half a smile. The newcomer will likely respond in kind. And then the two of you sit comfortably in your acknowledgement. If significant time passes, one of you may venture a comment on how the doctor must be running late, or how loud the wind is blowing outside. Chances are the two of you will never meet again. Nonetheless, this basic interaction reinforces a respect for the social order—we are all in this together.

One of the most prevalent criticisms of Hezbollah has been that its supporters live in a cocoon of religious fervour. It is said that these extremists shun interaction with anyone outside their realm. Inevitably, a female journalist from the West will proffer a handshake with a Hezbollah Sheik, and thereupon become indignant when he declines her hand. How rude! she shudders scornfully, thinking he is better than I am. In her Western world, of course, the unaccepted handshake is indeed a snub. In his world, however, the alternate gesture of touching hand over heart is an act of respect for her, for himself, and for their professional relationship.

Such daily idiosyncrasies may be mere cultural differences, perhaps misinterpreted by those unfamiliar with the customs. In Muslim societies, the guidelines for social interaction may have originated from the Quran. They may also have evolved from a given society’s own perception of suitability. From a Western perspective, it is quite difficult to separate the two.

In the case of the troublesome handshake, there is indeed Quranic instruction restricting physical proximity. While there is scholarly debate about the particulars, generally the devout Muslim, whether man or woman, will decline physical contact with any non-familial member of the opposite sex. This guideline is indeed observed amongst the people of Hezbollah.

Such customs can be uncomfortable to the Westerner. They can also lead to confusion when perceived amidst the varying social circumstances across the Muslim world. I experienced this matter of misconception, for example, during the July 2006 War. Like many Londoners, I joined the many public demonstrations in support of the Lebanese people being brutally bombarded. As the days wore on, like many demonstrators, I would carry a Hezbollah flag as a symbol of that support—they were, after all, the ones under fire. While I received several approving nods or thumbs-up, I also received several scornful looks from passers-by.

One young woman, a beautiful British blonde, approached me in Trafalgar Square. I’m sorry, she said, but as a woman, how can you hold that flag, when Hezbollah treats women as second-class citizens? She went on to assert that Hezbollah made women, even young girls, cover completely in black robes and veils, and that they denied women educations and the right to work.

She seemed genuinely bewildered at what appeared to her to be my betrayal of womankind. At the outset of the July War my personal experience with Hezbollah had been limited to casual encounter and a fair amount of research, but during these long weeks of war I had been doing intensive research and had quickly learned enough to know that this stereotype of macho-men-power was unfounded.

I explained to my British inquisitor that we were holding the Hezbollah flags as a token of encouragement for those who were risking their lives to protect and defend their homes, their women and children who were being ruthlessly targeted. She remained standing there, hand on hip, evidently not content with my simple answer.

I thus continued to explain that, contrary to what she might have heard, Hezbollah left the choice of dress to the women; that many in their communities did choose to wear a headscarf, of varying styles and colours; others chose not to wear one at all. I explained that education for all, including females, was actually a key priority for Hezbollah, and that women routinely earned advanced degrees.

The British woman looked at me somewhat sceptically, but did not interrupt. So I continued to explain that Hezbollah encouraged women to contribute to the community, and that many women affiliated with Hezbollah worked in a variety of fields. At the Al Manar TV offices, for instance, women were not only employed in the production roles, but held public positions as reporters. While some worked as professional presenters, others had their own news shows in which they managed interviews on the toughest political issues.

The young British woman stood there, perplexed. What I said contradicted what she had been led to believe from the Western media. She mumbled a well, okay, then, and walked away, casually glancing back at me after a couple steps.

Perhaps she was taken aback by my confident rebuttal. Yet she was clearly curious and she was willing to listen. I found myself eager to explain. I felt sure of my ground because I had seen it for myself. I had spoken from having been to Lebanon, from having watched Al Manar TV, and from having met and talked with the men and women who supported Hezbollah.

This simple encounter became for me a challenge. It suggested that there was a gap between the reality and the perception of Hezbollah. I set out to determine the nature and the depth of this gap. Over the years that followed I was able to gain an increasingly inside view of the reality and was often astounded by the enormity of prevalent misconceptions. I did not, however, base my understanding of Hezbollah merely on its stated philosophies. As I met the people of Hezbollah, I watched and I listened for the alignment of principle and practice. I readily discovered that the two were inseparable. And I repeatedly discerned that one of the most prominent characteristics was a respectful acknowledgement that we are indeed all in this together.

Post-war visit

After the 2006 War, I went to Lebanon to see for myself the result of thirty-three days of bombardment. I went partly out of personal curiosity, partly out of my newly adopted role as founder of the Friends of Lebanon organisation, and partly because of the challenge that arose from my encounter with the young British woman. I made numerous trips, each time seeing and learning more.

Some of the worst hit areas in the South were difficult to navigate for two reasons: (1) roads and bridges had been destroyed and diversions had not yet been marked and (2) unexploded cluster bombs still littered the land. So on one occasion, I joined up with a group who would be travelling by mini-bus from Beirut to the villages of South Lebanon. The driver and several tour guides were all men of Hezbollah. They volunteered to show us Westerners the aftermath of their war.

We spent many hours on the bus together. Our guides easily intermingled amongst us, men and women alike, sitting beside us and pointing out the windows with explanations of what we saw. We would stop for coffee or such and our guides, again, would eagerly answer our questions and offer us more pastries and fruit than we could possibly consume. When we stopped to see significant sites, our guides invited us to take photographs. These men of Hezbollah walked alongside us as though we had been old friends, giving us the comfortable distance we needed to explore for ourselves, yet the closeness we needed to feel welcome. In no way did our guides discriminate between the men and women guests. In no way did they look askance at this gaggle of Western tourists. Instead, they apologised for their lack of English proficiency, despite many of them speaking the language admirably.

So, I wondered, was this a carefully selected group of men whose job it was to impress the Westerners with their public relations skills? Was it all a ploy to prompt us to tell the world how sweet and innocent they were? I watched them. I was as curious to see their reactions to the sites we saw as much as the sites themselves. As we stopped at various locations along the way, our guides would descend from the bus first to announce us to the local guides.

I was struck numerous times by the manner in which they greeted the locals. I would have expected a brief, business-like meeting. What I saw from my window view, however, was the enthusiastic embrace of brothers. They would burst into smiles and linger over their greetings. It certainly did not appear premeditated business.

At one point we stopped at the intersection of three strategic, hence targeted, villages: Bint Jbeil, Maroun al Ras and Aytaroun. When we were all standing atop a grassy hill overlooking the site of a critical battle to turn back the invading troops, a village mayor was gesturing this way and that and relating the details of what had occurred during the July War. One of our guides translated. I glanced around at our other guides. Even though they must have known the story, even though they must have heard its telling numerous times with similar tours, they stood quietly, intently listening. There was no mistaking the look on their faces—it was respect. With focused attention they surveyed the vista before us, seemingly reluctant to move when the mayor had finished speaking.

Later we stopped at the town of Bint Jbeil and walked amidst the rubble that had so recently been village homes. Dust of demolition lay everywhere. Off to the side of our group, one of our guides motioned for me to enter what was left of someone’s home. Within its broken walls, there was a disarray of items left behind—a worn and broken table, a plastic jug, a Turkish coffee pot.

A putrid smell suggested a dead animal, maybe a stray cat, was hidden somewhere beneath the clusters of concrete, wood, and linens. I stared at the scene, willing my senses to detect a sign that this was a fabrication, that there hadn’t been as easily some old man crushed like the cat beneath the rubble. But the layer of undisturbed dust over the items left behind insisted that they had lain there for months, waiting to be bulldozed away when it was their turn.

I looked to the guide, expecting a tale. He just paced around the room and then, his eyes on the dusty floor, walked out without a word.

We continued our journey with a tour of Khiam Prison, which the Israeli forces had attempted to demolish in the July War. For it was at Khiam during the years of Israeli military occupation that people who were suspected of supporting the resistance were routinely held, tortured, and often killed. We were shown the realities of Khiam by a man who had himself been imprisoned there. I asked him how he could continue to relive that horrific experience. He explained that even if the Israelis had managed to bomb away the structure, they could never erase his memory. He believed the people needed to know the truth so that they could understand the need for resistance.

By chance, there was a reception being held nearby and we were invited to attend. Several local community leaders stood at the door to the hall. Standing with them was Sheik Nabil Kaouk. A significant leader of Hezbollah, he had escaped an assassination attempt during the 2006 War, just as he had escaped previous attempts. Yet there he stood happily greeting each person who arrived.

When I was introduced, Kaouk welcomed me warmly and thanked me for coming. I noted that he greeted me, a woman and a Westerner, with the same exuberance as he had first greeted my guide, a man of Hezbollah, who had made the introduction. Shortly after we were all settled inside with coffee and sweets, our little bus group was invited to sit with Kaouk. By chance he was chatting with Mohammed Haider, who was then a Hezbollah Member of Parliament, a bright and thoughtful man I had met on a previous occasion. There were introductions all around, and we sat and visited as comfortably as if we had been business colleagues meeting up at a conference.

The Western media is quick to accuse Hezbollah of religious racism, repeating that Hezbollah is blinded by extremist ideologies. The media assures us that Hezbollah denounces Westerners as infidels, and that it shuns cooperation with outsiders. Yet everything about this little tour suggested that these men of Hezbollah were eager to have Westerners get to know them. Even top leaders sat casually with random Western men and women and invited their questions and comments. Throughout this tour of destruction, it was clear there was only one culpable entity: the invading Israeli military. These representatives of Hezbollah actually reached out to Westerners, and with a gracious and natural respect, simply asked us to see for ourselves.

Resistance Camp

During the autumn of 2008 I was able to get permission to visit a site in Southern Lebanon used by the Resistance for training and observation. Just as a corporation might monitor visitors to its various facilities, so too did Hezbollah safeguard its workplace. I was accompanied by Ahmed and Fadi, who served as guides and interpreters. As we drove through the scenic hills, they chatted about where we might stop for lunch later and how green everything looked thanks to all the rain there had been the last week. While I knew that getting permission for me—a Western woman—to visit an active Resistance site was for security purposes quite a serious matter, I was struck by their casual, even jovial friendliness.

After a lengthy drive, we stopped in a stunning wooded area and were welcomed by two of their colleagues. While they spoke amongst themselves for a few moments, I waited off to the side. The sun was warm. Their subdued voices fell into the background as I focused on the sound of a slight wind rustling through the trees. The sound played against the silence of the landscape.

Had I not read allegations that the Resistance hid themselves amongst the civilian populations as shields? Was that not the justification cited for bombing civilian communities? Here I was on the threshold of a Resistance camp, and there was neither sight nor sound of any civilian. The birds were their only companions.

We walked on through the trees. The man on duty did not give me his name, but he did give me a warm smile and led the way farther down the path. (We’ll call him Abbas for ease of description.) He pointed to an observation tower, from where the men could survey the area. He invited me to climb up and see. Of course I did. Alone atop the tower, I scanned the surrounding countryside. I looked down at the men. Ahmed and Fadi were apparently talking to each other, and Abbas was looking toward me. I wondered if he was keeping out a watchful eye for security’s sake, or whether he wanted to see me discover from his vantage point the exquisite beauty of the land he was protecting.

Abbas showed me the areas where the men lived and where they trained. He let me walk slowly, taking it all in. It was quiet. I saw no one else other than Abbas’s colleague we had left farther back. Yet the place seemed well used, with worn paths here and there. I noticed burnt charcoal in a small grill tucked beneath a rock ledge. Nearby was a shooting range, where there were many spent casings on the ground. Abbas turned to talk to me. Not to the interpreter, but to me.

He spoke slowly and directly, as if willing me to understand with my broken Arabic. We are not the attackers, he said. We are here only to defend our families, our homes, our villages. We must stand between them and those who invade our land. I nodded that I understood.

We continued walking and talking. I was struck by the fact that he did not saunter about like the guide in a museum who moves from exhibit to exhibit with practiced speech and gesture. Quite the contrary, Abbas looked me in the eye and explained his work. They would alternate time spent with their families and time spent here. He smiled when he spoke of his children. I half expected him to pull out a photo of them to share. It was his general need for privacy to ensure their safety, no doubt, that held him back.

I found it ironic that the Western media stated time and again that the men of Hezbollah despised and shunned all things Western. They were supposed to be half-serious, half-crazed men full of hate and judgement. Yet here was a man at the heart of the Hezbollah Resistance, and he talked to me with respect and with kindness. His entire demeanour showed that my presence was welcome. He invited my questions regarding his work and happily prolonged the conversation with such mundane topics as pointing out the tree they had recently planted or where the water would collect when it rained.

Wasn’t he suspicious of me? I dare say that, had I been in his place, I would have been. If he was, though, there was no sign of it whatsoever. Either he was not suspicious (or resentful or hateful or judgemental), or he did an excellent job of hiding it. And if he did go to such lengths to hide any negative emotions held toward me, then it would have been done either, one, out of sheer courtesy and consideration (which would speak highly of his character), or two, out of some devious plot to con me into reporting good about them. This last possibility, however, was highly implausible.

Why would they go to great lengths to con me? I did not represent major media, or a governmental office, or an international ngo. Why risk security on some internet activist doing research? They could have limited my excursions to some of the disused caves I’d visited with other activists. That would have been a reasonable balance to my visible potential in reporting good about them. Why bother to put on a show that was sensibly avoidable?

Perhaps, then, it was not a show. In the hour or so I spent with Abbas, I found him to be sincere in his presentation of his work. "We are not the attackers—we are here only to defend