Massive rally celebrates victory over U.S.-Israeli siege

A quarter of all the people of Lebanon rallied on Sept. 22 to celebrate their “divine victory” over Israel and its U.S. backers. It was a mammoth, passionate and jubilant show of Lebanese support for their resistance organization, Hezbollah.

The giant rally in a suburb of Beirut, which just a few weeks ago had been reduced to rubble by Israeli bombing, was attended by “an estimated 800,000 people,” reported the Sept. 23 Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, which is no friend of the Lebanese people.

Al-Manar, Hezbollah’s television station, called the rally “the biggest referendum on the resistance choice.”

While Lebanon suffered much from 34 days of Israeli bombardment and ground invasion, Hezbollah ground forces held back Israeli soldiers, who made no gains. Every day that Israel bombed Lebanon, Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in retaliation—4,000 in all. Tel Aviv’s military withdrew without meeting any of its loudly stated goals: to stop Hezbollah rocket attacks, to get two Israeli soldiers released and to push the Lebanese resistance away from Israel’s border.

As rally participant Ali Sahhar explained, “Everyone thought the Israeli army was unbeatable. This was not true and today we are declaring the victory the resistance achieved.”

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah told the huge crowd, “There is no army in the world capable of making us drop our weapons as long as there will be people who believe in this resistance.”

Hezbollah would not disarm, Nasrallah said, because to do so would leave Lebanon too weak to withstand Israeli attack. He said that Hezbollah’s weapons “are not Shiite weapons, but the weapons of all the religions and the Lebanese and will protect Lebanon’s independence and sovereignty.”

The Lebanese resistance would not release the two Israeli soldiers, Nasrallah stated, until Lebanese prisoners were released. He announced that Hezbollah had rearmed, now had 20,000 missiles and “is now stronger than it was on July 12” when the Israeli bombing began. Hezbollah forces, he said, remain deployed on the border with Israel.

Days before, Nasrallah issued a call to the people of Lebanon “to participate in a victory rally, your victory ... in the southern suburb, the suburb of honor, glory, faith, steadfastness and victory for the whole country. Let us renew our covenant and declare our joy at the divine victory to the whole world.” (aljazeera.net, Sept. 22)

Lebanese responded. Thousands of buses, mini-vans and cars came to Beirut from the South and the eastern Bekaa Valley. Members of Christian parties and pro-Syrian groups in northern Lebanon also traveled to the capital to participate in the rally.

Hundreds of Hezbollah supporters from across southern Lebanon marched to Beirut on foot, jamming the streets of that city with thousands of people chanting Nasrallah’s name and waving Lebanese and Hezbollah flags.

What had been a pile of rubble only a few weeks earlier had been cleared and transformed into Victory Square. The rally area had to be expanded to two other squares in order to accommodate the throngs of people.

The Sept. 23 New York Times called the crowd “mammoth, packing nearly every corner of the 37-acre square . … There was a plastic chair for nearly everyone, and a baseball cap for protection from the sun.”

Nasrallah told the crowd, “We don’t want to keep our weapons forever and they will never be used against anyone inside Lebanon.” He explained that disarming Hezbollah under the present Lebanese government “means leaving Lebanon exposed before Israel to kill and detain and bomb whoever they want, and clearly we will not accept that. When we build a strong and just state that is capable of protecting the nation and the citizens, we will easily find an honorable solution to the resistance and its arms.”

Nasrallah vowed that the enlarged United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) would not affect Hezbollah’s ability to stock weapons. “Blockade the borders and the sea and the skies,” he said. “This will not weaken the will of the resistance or the weapons of the resistance.”

He warned UN forces deploying in the South not to seek a confrontation with Hezbollah. “Your mission is not to spy on Hezbollah or to disarm the resistance,” he said.

Regarding Lebanese Prime Minister Sahora and the pro-imperialist “March 14” forces that want Hezbollah disarmed, Nasrallah called the current Lebanese cabinet weak and incapable of defending Lebanon against Israel. The Hezbollah leader also expressed doubts on the ability of the Beirut government to reconstruct what Israel destroyed.

It should be noted that the “March 14” leaders either left the country or got far out of harm’s way when Israel was bombing Lebanon.

“We don’t want to eliminate the presence of anyone from public life. What we are calling for is a national unity government. This is not a slogan, this is a serious project we will work for very hard,” Nasrallah stressed. Hezbollah has two representatives in the Cabinet.

Nasrallah criticized reactionary Arab leaders who collaborate with imperialism—like those in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia—for not being willing to fight Israel. “These Arab leaders prefer to protect their thrones as opposed to protecting Palestine,” he said.

Israel started the 34-day war after Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in an attempt to get Arab prisoners released from Israeli jails. Israel used its U.S.-supplied bombs to demolish Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, expecting this would make the Lebanese people blame Hezbollah for the war. But this huge rally showed just how badly this strategy has backfired. The people of Lebanon clearly blame Israel and the U.S. for the war, and view Hezbollah as their only defender.

Hossain Zebra said it took him 24 hours to walk from his home in the South to the rally. “We came to show the American administration, the British administration, the French administration that the resistance population is increasing, not decreasing.”

“This is good, good,” said Fatime Saad, whose son, Kassem, had been killed in the war. There was no hint of sadness in her bearing, according to the Times: “‘I am very proud,’ she said as she patted a picture of her son pinned to her chest. ‘He was 20 when he was blown up.’”

Ahmed Hussein, 78 years old, made the trip from the southern village of Kafr Kila. He said his house and most of his neighbors’ homes were destroyed, but that Hezbollah gave them tents and water tanks to help them get by. “All of us whose houses were destroyed, we came here for Nasrallah, to tell him what we lost is nothing.”

The Lebanese people have much to be proud of. Their people’s resistance shows the potential of all working people, and gives hope. The Lebanese struggle and their resistance organization, Hezbollah, are an inspiration to all workers and oppressed people.

Quotes and paraphrases from Nasrallah’s Sept. 22 speech are based upon the translation in the Beirut Daily Star, Sept. 23.