People in South say, ‘We are Hezbollah!’

One thing you soon learn in South Lebanon is that the people don’t just support Hezbollah.

“We are Hezbollah,” says Nur, a 22-year-old artist in the town of Nabatiyeh. Her studio was destroyed by Israeli bombs. She lost 60 of her paintings but was able to repair a dozen others. “It is not two societies. Hezbollah is the people, and the people are Hezbollah.”

Almost the same words were used by Ahmad, a shoe seller in Bint Jbail. It is a village of 6,000 where shoemaking is the main industry. “Here the people are 100 percent Hezbollah. Hezbollah is the people, and the people are Hezbollah,” he tells us.

It is the people of South Lebanon that Israel sought to annihilate. That is clear in village after village reduced to rubble by U.S.-made Israeli bombs, missiles and artillery shells, fired from U.S.-made planes, helicopters and cannons. If you want to judge the hypocrisy of U.S. “outrage” over assassinations in Lebanon, look at the ruined villages of the South.

“They destroyed the town center. They wanted to destroy the life, our economic resources,” says Lubna, a young English teacher whose home was destroyed. Much of Bint Jbail lies in rubble. But resistance fighters stopped Israeli troops from entering the town.

Ahmed’s son’s house was completely demolished, as was a store his family operated. He and his family spent nearly three weeks sleeping in the mountains to avoid the bombing.

“The minute the bombing stopped we immediately returned,” he tells us. “Fifteen townspeople were killed, and many more injured by bombs and missiles, helicopters and artillery. But Israeli soldiers never got past the town’s outskirts.”

“Hezbollah was heroic,” he continues. “Eighteen fighters stopped them. For 33 days they held off the powerful Israeli army. The government did not defend us, we defended ourselves.”

Lubna and her husband guide us through street after street of ruins where people once lived. Amid the shattered cinderblocks and twisted reinforcing rods, we see broken furniture, a scorched children’s book, a teddy bear.

“Our houses are destroyed, but that’s not the most important thing. We are surviving with our principles, and we believe the resistance was right to do what it did. We will support them all our lives because of what they did for us.”

Hezbollah, the Islamic resistance, led the fight against Israel’s U.S.-paid army. But others came as well. The Lebanese Communist Party sent over 100 fighters, 15 of whom were martyred.

The area of Aital Shaab was a particular target of Israeli fury. That was where the resistance intercepted an Israeli raiding party, killing three soldiers and capturing two. Israel claimed the action happened on the soil of occupied Palestine, allegedly justifying the war. But locals tell us Israeli troops often raid South Lebanon, sometimes kidnapping young men for interrogation.

The Israelis lost over 30 soldiers and 12 armored vehicles trying to capture Aital Shaab. Then they airlifted in bulldozers to destroy as much as they could.

The current crisis in Lebanon has raised the specter of renewed Israeli attack. A resistance fighter tells us, “If they come again, we are ready. This summer’s war made us stronger, and if they attack again we will get stronger still. We will win like the people of Vietnam.”

—Bill Cecil, Lebanon