In the rubble of the Hezbollah stronghold bombed by Israel: ‘We have been taking blows and rising up again for centuries’

A persistent plume of black smoke makes it difficult to approach the rubble. It rises from the remains of four residential buildings bombed that same morning by Israeli military aircraft, in a dynamic that would have seemed unthinkable just a week ago but has now become commonplace in Dahieh, a suburb in the south of Beirut. This former hive of people, cars and motorcycles now looks almost like a ghost town. Every night, the head of the Arab media division of the Israeli Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit, Avichay Adraee, distributes three maps with marked buildings, and he orders people who live nearby to evacuate immediately and move at least half a kilometer away. Half an hour later, the bombings begin, visible from the capital. The pit left here by the collapse of the buildings a few hours ago is enormous. A fire truck makes its way to finish extinguishing the fire.

This is the new reality of Dahieh, a stronghold of Hezbollah, which on Wednesday organized a visit for the media in which it tried to convey a message of strength after sustaining the biggest blows in its four-decade history. It is the first tour it has organized in different parts of Dahieh since the airstrikes began. Because it is an unusual event, and because entering Hezbollah’s strongholds as a freelance journalist implies, in these highly sensitive days, that one might be seen as a potential spy, dozens of national and international media outlets have joined the visit.

In the streets, all the stores are closed. In addition to the buildings that were attacked (some were burned but are still standing, others have turned into a mass of cement, furniture and appliances), the effects of the blast waves can be seen on the sidewalks and building facades. The windows are shattered, the parked cars are a total wreck, the awnings are half burned, the shops shutters twisted by the explosion… The Party of God (the meaning of the word Hezbollah) has placed flags on the rubble with the face of its leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated by Israel last week, and a phrase: “We will be definitively victorious.”

Between the bombed buildings, there are hardly any people to be seen, and certainly not families. Thousands of people have left in haste in recent days, seeking refuge in other parts of the Beirut region or the country. They are mainly surviving in apartments owned by acquaintances (or strangers who are helping them), and in schools that have been converted into shelters, or else they have fled to Syria or Iraq.

On the tour, there is an official message, and another one that emerges more spontaneously from the hearts of the young people in the area who have clear sympathy for Hezbollah. Some take advantage of the presence of the cameras to climb what used to be walls to insult Israel. The anger is also directed against Arab countries that are considered accomplices (either by action or omission) in the massacres in Gaza. “One day they will regret it, when they realize that we are simply the first line of defense against the Zionist enemy,” says Ismail al-Najjar, a researcher and journalist who feels very close to Hezbollah. Here, the country that gets respect is Iran, the great ally that has just launched 200 missiles against Israel, in revenge ― among other reasons ― for the death of Nasrallah and the bombings on Lebanon. That same night, in fact, as videos of missiles hitting Israeli military bases without being intercepted by anti-missile defense systems began to circulate, celebratory gunfire in the air in Dahieh could be heard in the surrounding area.

Hezbollah’s media chief, Mohammad Afif, took part in the visit and insisted on two ideas, precisely because there are many who doubt they are true. One, the state of a headless and infiltrated Hezbollah. “Our forces are ready. We have enough weapons and enough ammunition to confront the enemy.” The other: who will pay for all this, once Israel finishes its attempt to reconfigure the Middle East. “We will rebuild it more beautiful and better than it was before,” he said in front of one of the buildings turned into rubble. This is certainly what happened after the 2006 war, but Hezbollah, Iran ― and the region in general ― were different then.

A “heroic battle”

Afif also spoke like this because he had an ace up his sleeve. He claimed that “resistance fighters” had fought a few hours earlier “a heroic battle” against Israeli troops in two towns in the south of the country, Odaisseh and Maroun al-Ras, the “results” of which we would see and which prove the militia’s good health. The Israeli army had not commented on the matter at that point, but it would later end up announcing the death of eight soldiers in ambushes. This is a high number (well below the casualty figure during fighting with Hamas in Gaza, and more in line with the 2006 war, in which Hezbollah ended up as the moral victor). Even more so, it happened on the second day of Israel’s ground incursion. “It’s only the beginning,” threatened Afif.

Hosein Mortada, a well-known journalist close to Hezbollah and other resistance groups in the Middle East, picks up a damaged camera lens from the rubble of the building that housed the headquarters of Al Sirat (a pro-Hezbollah television station), to stress that it was, after all, just a media outlet and that the residents were civilians. The Israeli army claims that the militia stored weapons under the building.

Another local supporter of the militia, Bilal Soulani, points to two spots to illustrate that Hezbollah is more than the sum of its members. One spot is his heart: “Hezbollah is here,” he says. Then he points at the smoking sinkhole over which the bombed-out buildings stood, and adds: “Not there.”

Ali Qasem also comes to tell us proudly that he has four children and that he has put them all “at the service of the resistance.” “Taking blows and rising up again is something we have been doing since the days of Kerbala,” he says, referring to the Iraqi city that in the 7th century witnessed a key battle in the schism within Islam between Shias like himself and Sunnis. “Yes, the Israelis have planes and technology. But now that they have entered the south, I hope they get what they deserve.”

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