‘Once we were beggars’; Hezb steel from dignity restored

[bemildred]

TYRE, Lebanon (AFP): In his spacious sun-splashed apartment in Tyre’s old city, surrounded by a dozen grandchildren and feasting on generous portions of lamb, Tawfiq Bahr, like many of his Shiite brethren, has seen his lot improve since his youth. “We Shiites used to be beggars,” Bahr, 62, recalls, “Now our people have started to live comfortably.” For many of Lebanon’s Shiite Muslims, militant group Hezbollah, currently waging a bloody conflict against Israel, deserves much credit. It has won support by providing much-needed social services and health care.

It is the secret to its popularity among Shiites and its ability to pose problems even for the Israeli army, the mightiest in the Middle East. At age four, Bahr was an orphan. His mother died when he was two, and his father was killed while shuttling Palestinian refugees from Haifa to Tyre during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. He was raised by his aunt, who cleaned the homes of Tyre’s well-to-do. Instead of an education, at age 10 Bahr went to work for a shoe cobbler for one Lebanese pound a week.

“I couldn’t even buy bread,” says Bahr, now the proud patriarch doted on by his eight children and dozen grandchildren. “I never went to school. There was nobody to help me get an education.” Not so for Khadija Farraj, a 30-year-old mother of three, reclining on a stoop in Bahr’s neighborhood, quietly watching the children of the alley chase around a deflated soccer ball.

Her husband, an over-the-hill boxer, is now unemployed. When their kids needed money for text books last year, they found their savings wouldn’t cover the costs. “We went to them,” she says, “them” being Hezbollah. “We said we need help. They gave us a piece of paper and said, ‘Take it to the book store, they’ll give you what you need.’” Bahr’s own family has also benefited from Hezbollah’s help. When his granddaughter Amani, 21, needed an operation, Bahr’s son-in-law Abbas Hassan didn’t have the 1.8 million Lebanese pounds (1,500 dollars)

Arab Times

[Dhalgren]

1. This is why Hezbollah cannot be called a "terrorist" organization.

They function on an entirely different level and in a completely different mode from any "terrorist" group. Hezbollah is a "subnational" organization, in every meaning of the phrase. If Hezbollah could be really integrated into the Lebanese structure, it would be good for all concerned. What is needed right now is peace, but the crazy Americo-Israelis don't want peace...

[megatherium]

3. Maybe "terrorist" is not quite right.

But if I recall correctly, the UN has called for their disarmament.

Perhaps the most accurate description of Hezbollah is as a subnational organization (representing the 1.3 million Shiites in Lebanon polically and militarily). Their "terrorism" is best understood as unlawful acts of war, a low-grade war calibrated to do the most damage to their adversary with the weapons they have available (a conventional military assault of Israel being entirely impossible). Israel for its sake has responded with its own unlawful act of war, a large scale mliitary operation against Lebanon/Hezbollah that appears to be an attempt to break the decades-long asymmetric war against it. I find this both morally symmetric and very ugly.

[Double T]

2. Ummm.........Sounds like the work of guerrilla terrorists to me???

The 'good guys' turned out to be anything but good and the 'bad guys' apparently are NOT so bad. Propaganda has a funny way of skewing the truth.