[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Hezbollabilia

[Ricky Baldwin]

Here's more from my friend, who is, yes, still in
Beirut.
> 
> Ceasefire? Well, kind of. We're still under siege;
> Israel hasn't lifted 
> the naval bockade, and most people here ask me
> anxiously if the 
> "cessation of hostilities" is going to last. (They
> seem to think I have 
> some kind of inside line on what's going to happen.)
> The other question 
> people ask me is if there's going to be a civil war.
> I used to scoff and 
> tell them no. Now I'm not so sure. I
[...]
> 
> The one thing I do know is that this war has
> strengthened Hezbollah 
> immensely. I have to laugh when I read the
> well-placed propaganda 
>
<http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008847>
> claiming 
> that Arabs are "beginning to turn" against
> Hezbollah. Maybe in the Land 
> of Lincoln Group, but here in Lebanon,
> unfortunately, they're stronger 
> than ever. That may change--they may be enjoying a
> little postwar bounce 
> before the depression sets in--but I wouldn't put
> money on it just yet.
> 
[...her two latest articles pasted below...]
> 
> 
> Beirut Dispatch
> Tour de Force
> by Annia Ciezadlo
> Post date: 08.24.06
> Issue date: 09.04.06
> 
> Who says Lebanon's tourism industry is dead? Come to
> Beirut these days 
> and you can take a guided tour of Hell, with
> Hezbollah as your escort. 
> Every day, the Party of God welcomes visitors to
> Haret Hreik, in the 
> heart of the city's mostly Shia southern suburbs.
> Once home to 
> Hezbollah's headquarters and Beirut's most densely
> populated 
> neighborhood, Haret Hreik is now a smoking swath of
> wreckage. For the 
> thousands of families who used to live here, the
> devastation is almost 
> unimaginable. But, for Hezbollah, the ruins of this
> once-bustling 
> neighborhood have become a tourist attraction--and
> an invaluable 
> propaganda tool.
> 
> Hezbollah began offering tours of Haret Hreik during
> the war, assembling 
> every morning at eleven o'clock. I went on the first
> of these excursions 
> on July 20, along with the bulk of the international
> press corps--about 
> 100 correspondents, from well-known TV anchors to
> grubby freelancers. 
> Longtime Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Naboulsi showed
> up with his 
> entourage and delivered a running patter of outrage.
> "On a daily basis, 
> they come here and turn buildings into rubble, as
> you see," he shouted, 
> in his frantic, high-pitched voice. "This is where
> we live! If the 
> Israelis dare to confront us face to face, let them
> do it on the border, 
> not come with jet fighters from high above in the
> sky, and just hit 
> civilian targets!" He strode off into the wreckage,
> still shouting, and 
> we scrambled to keep up.
> 
> Every once in a while, as we marched through the
> rubble, a man (never a 
> woman) would pop out of a destroyed building to
> shout with carefully 
> rehearsed rage. All of these appearances were
> orchestrated by Hezbollah 
> for our benefit. Al Arabiya, a Saudi-funded
> satellite channel that many 
> Lebanese view as U.S.-backed propaganda, even
> merited its own personal 
> heckler. "Where is Al Arabiya?" demanded a short,
> angry man, flailing 
> his arms in the middle of the street. "I have
> something to tell them." 
> When a microphone with the station's logo appeared
> in front of him, he 
> shouted, "The Saudis want this to happen! These
> missiles were made in 
> USA, made in Saudi Arabia, made in Jordan, made in
> Egypt!"
> 
> A telling omission from this litany of oppressors
> was the country that 
> had actually fired the missiles: Israel. (The Saudis
> don't make 
> missiles, after all.) You can always rely on
> Hezbollah leaders for 
> anti-Israel rhetoric. But, ever since the war ended,
> they've been less 
> fixated than usual on their neighbor to the south.
> Instead, they're 
> cultivating hatred for a larger, more world-historic
> enemy: the United 
> States. By focusing on the Great Satan, Hezbollah
> can avoid the delicate 
> subject of who, exactly, started this particular
> war--and promote itself 
> instead as a defender of the Muslim world against
> U.S. aggression and 
> the West generally.
> 
> 
> 
> Today, the sea of mangled concrete that was once
> Haret Hreik is a 
> surreal fairground, complete with souvenir stands
> and parades. Backhoes 
> and cranes are busily clearing the roads, dumping
> detritus onto the 
> mountains of rubble that mark where buildings used
> to be. Hezbollah has 
> adorned most of these mounds with giant,
> red-and-white banners bearing 
> English-language slogans like new middle beast, the
> divine victory, and 
> made in usa (below which, in smaller letters, it
> says trademark). Of the 
> hundreds of signs in the shattered neighborhood,
> only a few mention Israel.
> 
> Now that the war is over, Haret Hreik is a popular
> day trip. If 
> Hezbollah's wartime press tours were all about
> obtaining sympathy from 
> the outside world, the current carnival is about
> stoking domestic 
> outrage. As the United States wades back into
> Lebanon, promising $230 
> million in aid, Hezbollah offers Haret Hreik up as a
> graphic reminder of 
> how the United States helped destroy their
> country--and of how Hezbollah 
> is rebuilding it. Hundreds of Lebanese walk through
> the rubble, some 
> with cameras and video recorders, many of them
> families with kids. Most 
> have come to inspect the ruins of their homes and
> businesses. Others, 
> including a few Christian families, are simply here
> to sightsee.
> 
> The main attraction is the headquarters of Al Manar,
> Hezbollah's 
> satellite TV station. To get to it, you pass through
> a little tent 
> Hezbollah has set up, with flyers directing people
> to eight registration 
> centers where the party will reimburse them for
> their lost homes and 
> possessions. There's even a bouquet of flowers on a
> little table. 
> Outside the tent, dozens of sightseers--all
> Lebanese, many wearing dust 
> masks--press up against a metal railing, pointing
> and taking pictures. 
> The mood is weirdly festive, with some people
> holding up their children 
> and others snapping photos with the latest cell
> phones. Between the 
> souvenir stands, the dust masks, the earth-moving
> equipment, and the 
> solemn air of commemoration, it's a bit like Ground
> Zero in the year 
> after September 11. The smell is the same, too:
> chalky and toxic, 
> utterly inescapable. It's the smell of the insides
> of things--pulverized 
> concrete, plaster, asbestos, burnt plastic, cordite,
> and acrid 
> chemicals. A few veiled women hold headscarves over
> their mouths to keep 
> out the dust.
> 
> The spot where Al Manar used to be is a mountain of
> charred cement, 
> topped with the remains of people's lives:
> children's books, pillows, 
> pieces of chairs, an ancient manual typewriter. The
> apartment buildings 
> from which all this flotsam fell loom above the
> rubble, ringing the site 
> of the station. Some were destroyed, but others only
> had their outer 
> walls sheared away so that you can see into the
> individual apartments: 
> In one, a TV set totters on the edge of the void,
> its back facing what 
> used to be a wall; in another, an old lady fills a
> plastic can with oil.
> Jutting rakishly from the wreckage, a
> billboard-sized banner touts the 
> staying power of Hezbollah's radio station--which,
> like Al Manar, never 
> went off the air despite numerous Israeli bombings
> of its offices and 
> transmitters. Al nour radio, it proclaims, a voice
> stronger than the 
> aggressor. "We've been broadcasting live from here
> all day, from ten in 
> the morning until three," says Ahmed Naeem, the
> Hezbollah functionary in 
> charge, with pride. "We had everyone! NGOs,
> ambassadors, even the 
> Turkish foreign minister." According to Naeem,
> Abdullah Gul, the foreign 
> minister, said the damage was worse than that from
> the Turkish 
> earthquake of 1999.
> 
> "We prepared for this," explains Naeem. "We never
> kept a lot of people 
> in the main building, even before the soldiers were
> kidnapped. We were 
> always prepared for attack without provocation. We
> have a couple of 
> different studios, and we evacuated all of them."
> 
> A handful of middle-age men in spotless suits
> clamber up the mountain: 
> It's the Beirut Chamber of Commerce, coming for a
> photo-op. Two days 
> later, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora would
> visit the bomb site 
> as well. Standing in the ruins, flanked by Shia
> politicians, he 
> denounced Israel's "barbaric acts against Lebanon."
> As usual, Siniora 
> was in a tight political spot: As a member of the
> U.S.-backed Future 
> bloc in parliament, he couldn't very well criticize
> the United States.
> 
> 
> 
> Curious to see where all the colorful bunting comes
> from, I go in search 
> of Hezbollah's graphics unit. I find the army of
> artists relaxing under 
> a tent, sitting in plastic chairs, while a team of
> young men pass out 
> posters. These are the guys in charge of the banners
> and signs that hang 
> everywhere. They've also designed the bright-red
> trucker hats that many 
> Hezbollah employees are wearing. In Arabic script,
> the hats declare: 
> nasr min allah--literally, "Victory from God," but
> also a play on the 
> name of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. They've
> been cranking out the 
> Hezbollabilia the whole time, even while the bombs
> were falling, 
> preparing for their divine victory ever since the
> war began.
> 
> "The slogans--we've been getting them from the war
> itself," says Ghassan 
> Darwish, one of the graphic designers. "They're the
> slogans that the 
> Americans and Israelis are using." In his hands, for
> example, 
> Condoleezza Rice's "New Middle East" becomes the new
> middle beast, with 
> the word beast splattered across the poster like
> blood. I ask Darwish 
> why so many of the signs are in English. "It's
> normal for them to be in 
> several different languages, because there are
> foreign journalists here, 
> asking questions," he replies.
> 
> I ask him how people are reacting to the giant
> signs. "People knew 
> during the war that these were American bombs
> falling on us, in Israeli 
> hands," he says. "People were receptive to
> it--especially made in usa."
> 
> Annia Ciezadlo is a Beirut-based writer.
> 
> 
> BEIRUT DISPATCH
> Crying Shame
> by Annia Ciezadlo
> Post date: 08.21.06
> Issue date: 08.28.06
> 
> During the war, most of Lebanon's days and nights
> were dominated by 
> Israeli bombs, Hezbollah missiles, or both. But
> Monday, August 7, 
> belonged to Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. A
> grim-looking career 
> banker, Siniora has been in office for just over a
> year, and this war 
> came at him the same way it hit everyone else: like
> a sucker punch. For 
> three and a half weeks, he shuttled from meeting to
> meeting, trying to 
> enlist allies for his war-torn country. That Monday,
> he finally managed 
> to gather in Beirut the foreign ministers of the
> 22-member Arab League, 
> some of whose key members had pointedly snubbed his
> earlier appeals for 
> help.
> 
> His voice shaking, Siniora delivered a passionate
> speech to the 
> ministers, who sat around a table looking
> uncomfortable. He called on 
> them to keep Lebanon from being Israel's "punching
> bag" and alluded to 
> his country's longsuffering status as the
> battleground for regional 
> wars. He spoke of massacres, martyrs, and the
> destruction of the 
> country's infrastructure; at that point, some 500
> Lebanese civilians and 
> 35 soldiers had been killed. And then he broke down.
> Weeping, he said he 
> had just heard of another Israeli bombing, in a
> village called Houla, in 
> which 40 people were believed killed (it turned out
> to be only one). The 
> Arab foreign ministers bowed their heads, either
> from courtesy or shame.
> 
> If Lebanon's strength is its weakness, as the old
> saying goes, then 
> Siniora's moment of weakness was his strength. His
> tear-filled plea was 
> all anybody could talk about that day. "When I saw
> him crying, I could 
> tell he had a big heart, that he felt the same pain
> we all do," 
> exclaimed my newspaper vendor, Khalil Youssef,
> placing his hand on his 
> heart. Until the war, middle-class Lebanese like
> Youssef loathed 
> Siniora. As a former finance minister and
> technocrat, he was a national 
> Scrooge--the man who inaugurated the country's
> value-added tax (VAT) and 
> tried to raise it again this May.
> 
> As the war ground on, however, that changed. Siniora
> turned out to be an 
> unexpected statesman for Lebanon, producing a
> masterful seven-point plan 
> for ending the war. With his fervent speeches, he
> began to emerge as a 
> counterweight to Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah,
> Hezbollah's charismatic 
> leader. Nasrallah rejoiced in the battlefield
> sacrifice of his own son; 
> Siniora wept over the deaths of children who weren't
> even his own. 
> "Gradually in the crisis, up to this speech with the
> Arab leaders, he 
> has certainly become a very viable prime minister,"
> says Jamil Mroue, 
> the publisher and editor-in-chief of Beirut's
> English-language Daily 
> Star newspaper.
> 
> But now that the war is over--or at least in
> remission--Siniora's real 
> work begins. Lebanon's safety, as well as Israel's,
> depends on him. The 
> question is whether he can manage the peace as well
> as he handled the 
> war. Can he control Hezbollah and hold his broken
> country together? Or 
> will it keep exploding into armed conflict? To find
> the answer, which is 
> not encouraging, you have to understand how the
> weakness of the Lebanese 
> state has only strengthened Hezbollah.
> 
> 
> 
> Born in 1943, Siniora came of age during the 1950s,
> the golden age of 
> Arab nationalism. He remains an ardent Arab
> nationalist to this day, say 
> friends and family--a lover of his mother tongue who
> memorizes verses by 
> the 10th-century poet Al Mutanabbi. He attended the
> American University 
> of Beirut (AUB), then a hotbed of progressive
> pan-Arab ideals. "Those 
> were times of big dreams and great hopes of things
> changing--mass 
> movements, demonstrations. People could change
> regimes at those times," 
> says Fawwaz Traboulsi, a professor of history and
> political science at 
> the Lebanese American University, who attended AUB
> with Siniora. "And 
> he's very much related to that tradition."
> 
> But post-civil war Lebanon was a far cry from the
> pan-Arab dreams of 
> Siniora's youth. Syria had assumed control of a
> political system that is 
> inherently weak: Instead of a simple majority, it
> requires a government 
> of squabbling factions to reach a consensus before
> making any decision. 
> In 1992, then-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri tapped
> Siniora, a close friend 
> from the same hometown, as minister of state for
> finance, and then 
> finance minister. In both positions, Siniora's job
> was to tighten his 
> boss's purse strings.
> 
> An expansive, free-spending tycoon who often greased
> his negotiations 
> with cash, Hariri was adept at navigating the
> fissures between rival 
> sects. As the leader of the Sunnis, he could
> negotiate with 
> Nasrallah--the leader of the Shia--as an equal. But
> Siniora's attempts 
> to modernize the Lebanese economy pitted him against
> Hariri's political 
> foes, and the only significant economic reforms he
> managed to impose 
> were ones that squeezed the country's disappearing
> middle class. By the 
> time Hariri left office in 2004, Lebanon had a $36
> billion public 
> debt--at 170 percent of GDP, one of the highest,
> proportionally, in the 
> world.
> 
> Siniora became a national symbol of government
> heartlessness. After he 
> imposed the country's 10 percent VAT, a popular
> Lebanese talk show 
> invited him to appear on a Christmas special and
> then staged a scene 
> straight out of A Christmas Carol: The host took the
> finance minister to 
> the home of a very poor Christian family (with a
> disabled son) that was 
> having trouble making ends meet. Confronted with
> this tableau, Siniora 
> did something that convinced viewers he was either a
> kindhearted man or 
> a weak one: He cried.
> 
> In February 2005, Hariri was assassinated in a
> massive bombing, a 
> violent coda to a decade-long cold war between him
> and Lebanon's 
> pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud. By then, Siniora
> had already 
> returned to his first career, that of a private
> banker. "He decided to 
> get out of politics," his son Wael told me. "He
> doesn't want it anymore; 
> he never wanted it in the first place." For the next
> several months, 
> young Lebanese camped out in downtown Beirut, and,
> through mass 
> demonstrations and international pressure,
> eventually forced Syria to 
> withdraw its troops. After elections in June, the
> new anti-Syrian 
> parliamentary majority appointed Siniora.
> 
> As prime minister, he got a second chance to pursue
> economic and 
> political reforms. He pledged to revise Lebanon's
> electoral law and to 
> finally get the country into the World Trade
> Organization. But, once 
> again, Lebanon's consensus-based political
> system--even more fractious 
> without the powerful Syrian tiebreaker--foiled
> Siniora's attempts to 
> push through changes.
> 
> Unlike Hariri, Siniora doesn't have billions of
> dollars or thousands of 
> votes to dispense. He's not the representative of a
> religious sect, like 
> Nasrallah, or a zaim, one of the hereditary
> lordlings who make up most 
> of Lebanon's political class. He's not even the head
> of his own party: 
> That role goes to Saad Hariri, Rafik's son. "Siniora
> does not have a 
> power base; he's not a member of parliament, he's
> not a zaim," says 
> Traboulsi. "So real power is somewhere else. ...
> That's a very fragile 
> situation for someone like Siniora."
> 
> Hezbollah took full advantage of Siniora's weakness.
> Last December, when 
> the government made a key decision by majority rule,
> not consensus, five 
> Shia ministers--all members of Hezbollah or its
> ally, Amal--stalked out 
> of the Cabinet. They refused to return until Siniora
> declared that 
> Hezbollah was not a militia--thus protecting it from
> being disarmed 
> under U.N. Resolution 1559. After nearly two months,
> Siniora made a 
> statement worthy of Gertrude Stein: "We have never
> called, and will 
> never call, the resistance by any other name but the
> resistance, and it 
> is a national resistance, and we will not use any
> other expression to 
> describe it but national resistance," he said. This
> tortured statement, 
> said Hezbollah parliamentarian Mohammed Raad, was
> "synonymous with what 
> we demanded."
> 
> As the year dragged on, Hezbollah continued to keep
> the new prime 
> minister in line: At the Arab League summit in
> Khartoum, in late March, 
> Siniora tried to rewrite a statement supporting
> "Lebanon's 
> resistance"--a clear reference to Hezbollah--to the
> more ambiguous 
> "Lebanese people's right to resistance." Lahoud
> erupted into a tirade, 
> and Siniora lost face yet again. And, in May, when
> Siniora tried to 
> impose an economic austerity program, which would
> have raised the VAT 
> and gasoline taxes, Hezbollah and its allies staged
> a huge rally in 
> downtown Beirut. The protest was mainly a show of
> strength: The 
> government had already rescinded the most unpopular
> of Siniora's 
> proposed changes.
> 
> As soon as the August 14 cease-fire took effect,
> Nasrallah, with great 
> fanfare, pledged to help people rent apartments,
> rebuild their homes, 
> and even furnish them. But, after Israel's
> relentless bombing of 
> Lebanese infrastructure, Siniora's government is
> more broke than 
> ever--leaving the Lebanese with no question of whom
> to thank and whom to 
> blame. "Our government, they take the VAT and they
> give nothing back," 
> says Qassem Youssef, a stocky 34-year-old shopkeeper
> from Tyre. "This is 
> not our government. This is the government of a
> different country. But 
> it is like ice: It will melt soon. It will be
> water."
> 
> 
> 
> In a small hotel room in West Beirut, the
> Rikans--one extended family 
> among close to a million Lebanese who fled the
> Israeli bombing--are 
> taking refuge. Two pretty, curly-haired daughters
> flit around the room, 
> playing with plastic dolls and eating peanuts. Their
> father, Khalil, 
> perches on the cabinet next to the television, which
> silently flashes 
> with pictures of Siniora, George W. Bush, Israeli
> Foreign Minister Tzipi 
> Livni, and other faces of the war. The Rikans
> haven't gotten much help 
> from Siniora's government, and they don't expect to.
> "Our government is 
> bankrupt; they don't have any money," says Muhammad
> Rikan, Khalil's 
> father, who is propped up in bed in his pajamas.
> 
> "If they get money from outside, maybe they'll give
> us a little of it," 
> says Khalil with wry hopelessness.
> 
> "We're not expecting anything from them," says his
> father. "We'll be 
> very happy if they don't take our house!"
> 
> But, for all this, Nisrine Salih, the girls' eager,
> talkative young 
> mother, was moved when she saw Siniora cry; she
> identified with him. "We 
> saw that he was in the same situation as the
> people," she says. 
> Siniora's tears showed the Shia that somebody in the
> government--a 
> Sunni, no less--gave a damn about them. The Rikans
> see Siniora as like 
> them: helpless.
> 
> Siniora's impotence is a product of the Lebanese
> political system, not 
> any personal weakness of character. As a technocrat,
> he's exactly the 
> kind of leader Lebanon needs; unfortunately, the
> country's political 
> system makes it almost impossible for this kind of
> man to be effective. 
> His tears won him respect, even affection, from the
> Lebanese. But 
> getting people to like you isn't power--especially
> in Lebanon, where 
> votes matter less than behind-the-scenes deals. As
> the idealistic Arab 
> nationalist who cried for the Shia, Siniora has the
> personality to 
> transcend the sectarian limits of Lebanese politics.
> But he doesn't--at 
> least, not yet--have the power.
> 
> "He's very good--obviously he has a very lovely
> personality. The people 
> liked him when he cried," says Khalil Gebara,
> co-director of the 
> Lebanese Transparency Association, an
> anti-corruption watchdog group. 
> "But he is very unlucky, because he's to blame for
> everything that 
> happens, especially for things beyond his control.
> Who's to blame for 
> the VAT? Who's to blame for all the corruption and
> all the debt? 
> Siniora. Now who's to blame for everything in the
> war? Siniora. Everyone 
> blames him for everything. So he cries."
> 
> Annia Ciezadlo is a Beirut-based writer.
> 



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com