In a war crime designed to sabotage the peace process and drive both Lebanon and her ally Iran onto a war footing, the loathsome Israeli settler regime of Netanyahu assassinated the founder and leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, hero and now martyr of liberty and anti-colonial liberation struggle Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah has elements of theocratic-sectarian and ethnic identity politics with which no friend of democracy should be comfortable, especially in light of their relationship with Iran and arguably part of the Iranian Dominion which includes control of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen; but Hezbollah is also the most viable, stable, and possibly the longest running stateless and transnational anarchist collective and Autonomous Zone in modern history, which serves many of the social welfare, healthcare, education, and hunger relief functions of a government which in Lebanon has been hollowed out and rendered powerless due to the history of Occupation and the imposed conditions of struggle, and the revolutionary vanguard of a new kind of human society free from carceral states of force and control, and forged in glorious and heroic struggle against imperial conquest and dominion as the mirror of light to Israel’s darkness.
All of this is largely due to the genius and vision of one man, Hassan Nasrallah, and it will survive him as an ideal beyond national identity, unbounded and shining with Solidarity so long as humankind remembers.
Hezbollah and her leaders including Hassan Nasrallah and many others assassinated by Israel in the recent mass terror against the peoples of Palestine and Lebanon, like those of so many other Resistance networks of alliance, were born and forged with me in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the Siege of Beirut and in forty two years of liberation struggle since.
We will fight on for forty years more, or forty thousand.
That tyrants and states of terror like Netanyahu and Israel can kill us is without meaning; that we can Resist and refuse to submit to our dehumanization and our enslavement means everything.
And our victory is inevitable if we disobey and disbelieve authority, if we run run amok and be ungovernable, if we make mischief for tyrants and those who would enslave us whenever opportunity arises, if, as the Oath of the Resistance goes, we surrender not and abandon not our fellows.
For we are many, we are watching, and we are the future.
As written by Jason Burke in The Guardian, in an article entitled Hassan Nasrallah: Hezbollah’s leader inspired adulation and bitter enmity – they will find him very hard to replace; “The killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the veteran leader of Hezbollah, on Friday marks a turning point in the conflict in the Middle East. Both Nasrallah and the organisation he led were hardened by successive decades of conflict within Lebanon, against Israel and, latterly, in Syria. Both were powerful political and social forces with very significant regional and local influence.
Through more than three decades in charge of Hezbollah, Nasrallah built up a fervent personal following, steering the Shia Muslim movement through a number of transitions, balancing the demands of its military role with those of its expansive social welfare systems, building a political wing and negotiating the various crises that broke across the region. He earned adulation from supporters and bitter personal enmity from foes.
Nasrallah was born in about 1960, the son of a Shia vegetable seller in a poor, mixed neighbourhood of Beirut. Despite their growing numbers, Lebanon’s Shia people had long been marginalised politically and economically. Nasrallah was inspired by the new Islamist ideologies spreading across the Middle East and by a moderate Iranian-born cleric, Musa al-Sadr, who sought to mobilise Lebanon’s Shia to win greater representation and more resources. He joined Amal, a Shia militia formed shortly before the brutal civil war that broke out in Lebanon in 1975.
Four years later, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power following the Iranian revolution. This seismic event sent a wave of energy coursing through Shia communities everywhere in the Middle East. Nasrallah had became close to Khomeini when studying in a seminary in Najaf, the Iraqi holy city, where the radical cleric had been exiled. In about 1981, like many other young recruits, Nasrallah left Amal to seek more radical alternatives.
When Israel sent an army into Lebanon in 1982 in response to cross-border attacks by Palestinian militants, a coalition of Islamist groups was formed with Iranian sponsorship and direction. Nasrallah was an enthusiastic early recruit. Under the name “Islamic Jihad”, this coalition went on to launch massive suicide bombings against the invaders and then against US and French peacekeepers, killing hundreds. Three years later, the coalition had been melded by Iran into an organisation called Hezbollah, the party of God. In 1985, Hezbollah published its main manifesto, lambasting the US, the USSR and calling for the destruction of Israel.
A qualified Islamic scholar, effective public speaker and competent organiser, Nasrallah gained leadership experience during the long battle against Israeli troops and their local auxiliaries in the south of Lebanon. In 1992, he was chosen as the movement’s new secretary-general after Israel assassinated his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi. Months later, Iran used Hezbollah networks and operatives to execute a massive bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina, killing 29.
In 2000, Israel’s humiliating and chaotic withdrawal from Lebanon’s south brought Hezbollah and Nasrallah acclaim in the Middle East and broader Islamic world, despite historic sectarian animosity between majority Sunnis Muslims and the minority Shia. The victory came at personal cost to Nasrallah: a son was killed in a clash with Israeli troops.
Six years later, Nasrallah led Hezbollah into a new confrontation with Israel, when he ordered an attack across the contested border that killed eight Israeli soldiers and captured two. This war was less conclusive, and Nasrallah turned his attention to a more political strategy, emphasising his movement’s Lebanese nationalist credentials and building a portfolio of businesses, many illicit. Any residual project of creating a Khomeini-style Islamic regime had long been shelved. Imposition of conservative codes in the swaths of Lebanon controlled by Hezbollah was, on the whole, lax.
Reconciling this new role with the demands of Iran, Hezbollah’s principal sponsor, was a complex task and Nasrallah only reluctantly agreed in 2013 to send thousands of his fighters into Syria at Tehran’s behest to bolster the regime of Bashar al-Assad. This helped tip the balance in the brutal civil war in the neighbouring country, but hurt Hezbollah at home. So too did Nasrallah’s fierce resistance to political reform in Lebanon.
There is no evidence that Nasrallah knew what Hamas had planned for 7 October, but he reacted to the bloody raids on Israel with what must have seemed fine judgment. Hezbollah did not launch a major offensive but began firing some of its vast stocks of rockets and missiles into Israel in a bid to maintain its “resistance” credentials. Nasrallah probably believed the conflict would be short and he could avoid further escalation. On both counts, he was fatally wrong.
The consequences of the killing of Nasrallah are hard to gauge. Pessimists will predict massive escalation, as Iran seeks to reassert its power and avenge the death of a leader who was one of its most important overseas assets. Optimists may argue that it has effectively removed a key player from the conflict, deterring Tehran and opening a way to some kind of diminution of, if not an end to, hostilities.
Finding any replacement will be very difficult for Hezbollah and Iran. Even without the elimination of key lieutenants by Israel over recent months, there is no one in the movement who has anywhere near Nasrallah’s regional stature, experience or influence. It is now clear that Israel is capable of gathering critical, timely intelligence from the very heart of Hezbollah, and of acting on it effectively. The life expectancy of any new secretary-general is likely to be extremely short.”
As written by Peter Beaumont in The Guardian, in an article entitled Hassan Nasrallah: the man who has led Hezbollah to the brink of war with Israel; “Twenty-four years ago, on 26 May 2000, Hezbollah’s general secretary, Hassan Nasrallah, arrived in the small Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil a few kilometres from the Israeli border.
The day before, Israel had withdrawn its forces from southern Lebanon after a years-long occupation in which it was harried by Hezbollah and other groups. Thousands of supporters gathered there under Hezbollah’s yellow banners.
The cleric, then 39 and wearing his familiar black turban and a brown robe, gave one of the most famous speeches of his career.
Addressing the Arab world and the “oppressed people of Palestine”, Nasrallah claimed that Israel was “weak as spider’s web” despite its nuclear weapons. The themes in his speech that day would come to define Nasrallah’s worldview in the decades that followed, fusing notions of Shia theology and liberation rhetoric, and founded on the belief that authentic resistance can overcome a far superior military force.
Since then Hezbollah has been transformed, both as a fighting force and in its relationship with the fragile Lebanese state, becoming a political and social powerhouse. But while Nasrallah’s rhetoric may have remained unchanged, his appreciation of the fragility of power, even for the world’s most powerfully armed non-state actor, has mutated and he has led Hezbollah to the brink of its potentially most serious conflict. It has sent rockets and drones into Israel, as Israel hits Lebanon and Hezbollah targets with airstrikes.
When Nasrallah makes a speech these days, it is not before the huge crowds that once greeted him, arriving in buses from Lebanon’s Shia heartlands. At carefully choreographed events, including memorial services for fallen Hezbollah commanders, Nasrallah appears not in person, but on a television screen. At one such event earlier this year, Hezbollah MPs in attendance explained to the Guardian, as they declined to comment, that Nasrallah’s words were not to be interpreted by them. For everyone else, however, Nasrallah’s long and often repetitive speeches have become the subject of endless exegesis in the past eight months of war in the Middle East.
While often painted as Iranian proxies, Nasrallah and Hezbollah are more than that. They are important regional players in their own right, despite the deep connection to Tehran.
And as Israel and Hezbollah have drawn ever closer to all-out conflict, two questions have collided: what does Nasrallah want, and how far is he in control of any outcome?
Nasrallah’s policy in the first weeks of the cross-border clashes that began on 8 October, a day after Hamas’s surprise attack on southern Israel, was ostensibly designed to relieve pressure on the Palestinian armed group in Gaza, a strategy that appears to have been more significant on the diplomatic than on the military front.
By explicitly making any demand to stop firing on Israel’s north contingent on an end to Israeli hostilities in Gaza, Nasrallah has woven in outstanding territorial issues on the Lebanese border including over the Israeli-occupied Shebaa farms, which Syria also claims, while framing the fighting in terms of a wider rejection of US-led policies in the Middle East.
The reality on the ground has created a far more complicated picture.
In casting aside the status quo between Israel and Hezbollah that held since the end of the month-long second Lebanon war in 2006 that brought huge destruction to Lebanon, Nasrallah has rolled a dice. It belies the deliberate ambiguity of his statements, which hover between threats to Israeli cities and the insistence that his group does not want all-out war.
“To some extent, what Hezbollah has been doing,” Heiko Wimmen, the director of the International Crisis Group’s Iraq, Syria, Lebanon project, told the New Arab in the first weeks of the war, “is to underline that they are ready to pay a price.
“But are they ready to pay the ultimate price? Nobody knows that because this is part of the constructive ambiguity mentioned by Nasrallah.”
In the subsequent months the escalating dynamics of the war have stretched the considerations that saw Nasrallah enter the conflict, to breaking point. A “managed conflict” has become increasingly unmanageable as Israel has targeted senior Hezbollah officials and Hezbollah has fired on Israeli military and civilian targets, and more recently threatened Haifa and other cities.
“It’s important to understand Hezbollah’s worldview,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and north Africa programme at Chatham House. “What many actors like this are good at is understanding adversaries through quiet repeated and deliberate observation … strategic patience is part of their outlook: knowing that adversaries have different pressures in democratic societies.”
Nasrallah has cited US opinion polling on Israel’s war in Gaza as evidence of the success of his broader strategy. “I think it is also key to understand that while Nasrallah’s leadership is very personal, the effectiveness of the organisation is that it’s not run as a personal fiefdom,” Vakil said, suggesting it would survive his removal.
She also expressed doubt that assumptions prior to the current conflict about Nasrallah and Hezbollah’s appetite for conflict held true as the war has reduced the room for both sides to exit an escalation. “We are making a lot of guesses and assumptions, but we’re not accessing the inner network to understand the decision-making processes.”
Nasrallah’s ideological origins
What is clearer is how Nasrallah’s worldview has been shaped by his personal history. A teenager amid the sectarian violence of the Lebanese civil war, he briefly joined the Shia Amal militia at 15 before going to study at a seminary in Najaf, Iraq from where he was expelled with other Lebanese students by Saddam Hussein in 1978.
Under the influence of his mentor, the prominent cleric and co-founder of Hezbollah Abbas al-Musawi, who he first met in Iraq, he joined Hezbollah in 1982 after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, when the group split away from Amal. When Israel assassinated Musawi in 1992, he replaced him as Hezbollah’s general secretary.
In an interview in 2006 with Robin Wright of the Washington Post, Nasrallah described how his beliefs had been forged as he and his peers watched “what happened in Palestine, in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip, in the Golan, in Sinai”, teaching them that “we cannot rely on the Arab League states, nor on the United Nations … The only way that we have is to take up arms and fight the occupation forces.”
What is often unspoken is that Nasrallah’s ideological and much reiterated attachment to “resistance” requires conflict with Israel – or the threat of it – to give it meaning and to justify Hezbollah’s existence and the power it has accumulated in Lebanon. Conventional wisdom has suggested that Nasrallah would be constrained by Lebanon’s dire economic circumstances to resist behaviour that could invite full-scale war and undermine its own support. But in recent months Hezbollah – like Israel – has shifted its understanding of where that threshold is.
In an essay for the Atlantic Council earlier this month, David Daoud and Ahmad Sharawi described the dynamic. “The group believes this threshold is not fixed. Instead, it rises as Israeli operations in Gaza deepen, which prompts Hezbollah to act while Israel’s attention and resources are concentrated elsewhere,” they wrote. “But when these Israeli operations create growing US dissatisfaction which uniquely restrains Israel … Hezbollah feels it has more freedom of action, and thus increases the depth and lethality of its attacks.”
All of which suggests that space on either side to reverse out of the crisis is diminishing.”
What does this mean? As written by Patrick Wintour in The Guardian, in an article entitled The killing of Hassan Nasrallah leaves Iran with a fateful choice and the US humiliated; “When Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, told reporters in New York on Friday that the coming days will determine the future path of the Middle East, he could not have been more prescient, even if at the time he was hoping that Hezbollah and Israel could be persuaded to step back from the brink.
Now, with the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah confirmed killed, the region, after 11 months, has finally stepped over the brink and into a place it has truly never been before.
All eyes will turn to the response by Tehran. It faces the fateful choice it has always sought to avoid and one its new reformist leadership in particular did not wish to make.
If it simply angrily condemns Israel for the destruction of the centrepiece of the axis of resistance that it has laboriously built up over so many years, or calls on others to take unspecified action, Iran’s credibility is in jeopardy.
But pragmatism may lead Iran to advise Hezbollah to absorb the losses and accept a ceasefire that does not also bring about a ceasefire in Gaza, Hezbollah’s stated objective.
If on the other hand Iran instead launches a direct military reprisal against Israel, it has to be meaningful. It knows it will be going into battle against a military that has proved the deadly value of its vastly superior technological and intelligence capabilities. Israel’s intelligence has clearly penetrated deep inside Hezbollah and may have done the same in Tehran.
For the new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, elected on a ticket of lifting economic sanctions partly by building better relations with the west, Nasrallah’s death could not come at a worse time.
His foreign minister, Sayeed Abbas Araghchi, had just spent a full week in New York on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, meeting European politicians such as Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock and the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, in an attempt to persuade them to reopen talks to restore the nuclear deal that was sealed in 2015 – and Donald Trump tore up in 2018.
Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN nuclear inspectorate, had been impressed by what he heard from the meetings, saying: “I think this is the moment when it is possible to do something about the nuclear issue. The advantage of Mr Araghchi is that he knows everything about this process so he allows it to move faster”. Nasrallah’s killing makes it that much harder for the reformists to persuade the Iranian military that an olive branch still makes any sense.
Pezeshkian had already been complaining that he had received little in return for listening to western-inspired pleas not to seek immediate revenge for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader assassinated by Israel in Tehran.
Pezeshkian said he had been promised that a Gaza ceasefire deal that would see the release of hostages and Palestinian political prisoners was only a week or two away. The deal never materialised because, in Iran’s eyes, the US refused to put the pressure required on Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire terms.
Let down once, Pezeshkian is hardly inclined to believe US vows that it had no prior knowledge of the plan to kill Nasrallah – and, anyway, Netanyahu might have sanctioned his death from a hotel bedroom in New York, but it was US-supplied bombs that exploded in Beirut.
In what is likely to be a holding statement, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on Muslims on Saturday “to stand by the people of Lebanon and the proud Hezbollah with whatever means they have and assist them in confronting the … wicked regime [of Israel]”.
For Washington, this is a diplomatic humiliation and a display of its inability, or refusal, to control its troublesome ally.
Netanyahu hopes to have played American diplomats for fools in New York. The US state department insists it had a clear understanding on the basis of conversations with Ron Dermer, Israel’s strategic affairs minister, and Netanyahu that Israel would accept a 21-day ceasefire, and yet as soon as the plan was announced, Netanyahu reneged on the deal.
In some ways, it is the culmination of nearly 12 months of an American strategy that now lies in ruins. Time after time since the 7 October attacks by Hamas, the US has asked Israel to adopt a different strategy over the delivery of food into Gaza, protection zones, a ground offensive in Rafah, the terms of a ceasefire and, above all, over avoiding conflict escalation.
Each time, Netanyahu acknowledged the US position, sidestepped a clear response and then ultimately ignored Washington. Each time, the US – vexed and frustrated – has expressed misgivings about Netanyahu’s strategy, but each time it has continued to pass the ammunition.
With a presidential election near and Netanyahu enjoying a surge in domestic popularity – as well as few Arab states shedding tears about Nasrallah’s demise – the US appears to have few options available. Netanyahu insists he is winning and on course for total victory.
At the moment, unless Iran proves to be more decisive than it has been so far, it is Netanyahu the great survivor who is in the driving seat.”
Of my origins in the Siege of Beirut I have written in my post of In my post of July 31 2020, A Useful Past: What is Antifa? I wrote; I offer you the Oath of the Resistance as it was given to me in Beirut in 1982 by Jean Genet; here is the story of how it happened, and of my true origin.
During the summer before my senior year of university in San Francisco, I had set out on a culinary Grand Tour of the Mediterranean, learning to cook the food I loved, and was in Beirut when Israel invaded Lebanon and trapped me in a city under siege. Feral bands of soldiers were roaming the streets like packs of savage dogs, committing atrocities; one such unit of the Israeli Defense Forces set some children on fire, laughing and making bets on how far they could run screaming before they fell into pools of blackened ruin and their screams became silent. I found myself fighting them; others joined me, and more joined us. From that day forward I was part of the defense of Beirut against the siege.
A fabulous café that had the best strawberry crepes in the world lay on the far side of a sniper alley, which my friends and I made an extreme sport of dashing across to reach breakfast while the occasional bullet impacted the wall behind us. One day we arrived in our usual high spirits when an elegant gentleman sat at my table, and speaking in French began a conversation with, “I’m told you do this every day, race against death for breakfast.”
To which I replied, “Moments stolen from death belong to us, and set us free. It’s a poor man who has no pleasures worth dying for.”
He smiled and said, “I agree”, and so began our conversations at breakfast in the last days before his capture, unforgettable days for this is where he set me on my life’s path of struggle for liberty against tyranny and autocracies of state force and control, for equality against racist violence and injustice, and against the fascism which combines both state tyranny and racist terror.
He introduced himself as a former Legionnaire by the name of Jean, was mischievous, wise, immensely learned in classical scholarship and possibly had once been educated as a priest, and filled with wild stories about the luminaries of modern European culture. I was stunned when I discovered days later that my strange new friend was one of the greatest literary figures of the century. I had quoted The Thief’s Journal in refutation of something he said, which he found hilarious, while we were discussing Maurice Blanchot’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra as compared to that of Jung, a conversation which remained unfinished as he couldn’t stop laughing. Eventually he sputtered, “I myself am Jean Genet.” To me he remains a Trickster figure and part of my historical identity and personal mythology.
There came a day when the barricades were overrun and our neighborhood along with it, one of our last days together. With the streets suddenly filled with Israeli soldiers running amok in a sack of murder, arson, and other vileness of terror and inhumanity, our building set on fire by soldiers who were calling for people to come out and surrender and were stealing the children of those who did to use as hostages and human shields, and the discovery of our only weapon being the bottle of champagne we had just finished with our strawberry crepes, I asked my breakfast companion if he had any ideas. To this he replied with an apologetic shrug and another question, “Fix bayonets?”
We laughed, and he elaborated; “When all hope is lost, we are free to do impossible things, glorious things.” This advice I find necessary to recall from time to time, and which I recommend to you all.
Then he asked, “Will you surrender?’
To which I replied, “No.”
“Nor I,” he said, standing. “As I share with you now, pass to others at need; this is an oath I devised in 1940 from the one I took as a Legionnaire, for the resistance to the Nazi occupation. It may be the finest thing I ever stole.”
And so I offer to all of you the Oath of the Resistance as it was given to me by the great Jean Genet in a burning house, in a lost cause, in a time of force and darkness, in a last stand and an act of defiance beyond hope of victory or survival; “We swear our loyalty to each other, who answer tyranny with Liberty and fascism with Equality. We shall resist and yield not, and abandon not our fellows.”
To fascism and the idea that some of us are better than others by condition of our birth there can be but one reply; Never Again.
We escaped capture that day because we were led through the checkpoints of the encirclement by an unlikely ally, a figure who materialized out of the background at the far end of the alley and walked over to us grinning. This was the sniper whom my friends and I had been playing our games with for two weeks, who had been utterly invisible and had outwitted every attempt to track, trap, ambush, or identify him, and who had in fact besieged the city from within.
He held out his hand to me and I shook it as he said, “Well played, sir. I’ve tried to kill you every day for fourteen days now, but the Israelis being inside the city changes everything. We have a common enemy, but they don’t know that, so I’m in a position to help you though I can’t fight them alone. Maybe we could help each other. Want a partner?”
So began a great adventure and friendship, which I share with you now in the context of the nature of antifascist resistance because it illustrates something which can never be forgotten by anyone who does this kind of work; human beings are not monsters, are deserving of human doubt, and are never beyond redemption.
The struggle between good and evil in the human heart often pivots and balances on the differences between the purpose of the use of force; to punish transgression when inflicted by authority as an act of subjugation and repression against the powerless, or to seize power and to protect the powerless as a duty of care.
Be very sure you know which cause your actions serve.
Finally, I cannot now imagine Beirut under the Israeli rain of death and terror without remembering the cataclysm of the post explosion years ago. As I wrote in my post of August 4 2024 Madness Death Illumination Transcendence: A Song of Beirut
O my brothers and sisters, our universe is not always rational or meaningful from our perspective; it is chaotic, absurd, and often hostile. We need meaning and value, but all we have is the meaning and value which we create and impose on our nothingness. The Infinite mocks us, but also beckons and challenges us to become better.
As I wrote on this day four years ago in my post of August 4 2020; A horror beyond imagining has transpired in Beirut, which lies in ruins. Civilization dispersed throughout the Mediterranean from here thousands of years ago, uniting Europe, Asia, and Africa in a community of humankind which resonates through our consciousness today.
We seek meaning in the catastrophes and life disruptive events which flesh is heir to, yet as in the disaster in Beirut such causes are often beyond our understanding.
Herein I refer now to Sura 18 of the Holy Quran, called The Cave, verses 60-82, an allegory wherein Khidr, the Islamic Trickster figure who is an immortal and is symbolized as green as an embodiment of the Garden of Paradise, who acts as a guide of the soul through the puzzles of the labyrinth of life which leads toward it, and who speaks to us through dreams, visions, and signs.
I consider it a narrative form of Godel’s Theorem; a proof of the necessity of faith and of the existence of the Infinite, of the limits of human knowledge and the Absurdity of the human condition. Such an interpretation aligns with that of the great scholar and translator Abdullah Yusuf Ali.
As with the foundational thought experiment of one of Plato’s contemporaries, the Spear of Archytas, which defines the horizon of the known as it is thrown and marks a boundary in landing, which we repeat endlessly in scientific revolutions, the unknown remains as vast as before, conserving ignorance. This is the first principle of epistemology; the Conservation of Ignorance.
The canonical story recapitulates themes of the Sacrifice of Ibrahim which I would say forms the basis of Islamic faith, and in the streets of Beirut long ago I saw it unfold once again.
In this story the Green Man instructs Moses by doing three things which are criminal and nonsensical, things which can be understood only through the foreknowledge of prophecy which is not ours. As with justice, foresight does not belong to man, for the universe is nondeterministic, limitless, and our possible futures are always in play.
The relevant passage is this; فَأَرَدْنَا أَن يُبْدِلَهُمَا رَبُّهُمَا خَيْرًا مِّنْهُ زَكَاةً وَأَقْرَبَ رُحْمًا, or “So we intended that their Lord should substitute for them a better son than him in purity and nearer to mercy,” a classic changeling substitution. It also represents a point of bifurcation on which possible futures turn.
I have hope for the future of humankind because of what I witnessed when this primary story was played out before me forty years ago, and because of it I have never despaired.
Such a gate stands or once stood in Beirut, like Rashomon Gate or a gate to the Infinite and to limitless possibilities of human becoming. It may now be dust and memories, or like Schrodinger’s Cat both exist and not exist at once; this I cannot answer for you.
But I can speak as the witness of history that something remarkable happened there in its shadow, which like Khidr exchanging the young man for another to prevent a greater evil from occurring in the future, a time travel paradox if ever there was one, struck me with the force of revelation.
It was an insignificant thing in the scope of the Siege of Beirut, one atrocity among many which was averted by the innate goodness of a single man whose name remains unknown, a tragic hero whom I will never forget, an unwilling conscript in the service of his government like so many others, who said no to authority and to the seduction of evil. The existence of humankind pivots on the balance of such individuals, and they are very few.
This Israeli soldier refused to commit violations and depravities upon the person of a Palestinian girl, about twelve years old, who had been captured for this purpose by the lieutenant of his platoon, a common loyalty test and initiation. He blushed at the first demand of his officer to the tauntings of his fellows, there in the street before the Gate of Decision we must all face, then became angry in refusal when he realized it was not a joke, that the Occupation was about terror and plunder and not as he had been told. His commanding officer murdered him where he stood with a single shot to the head as the girl escaped.
I have returned to this spot throughout my life to touch the stones stained with his blood, for I am reminded that we are not beyond redemption, and that so long as we resist unjust authority we are free, and there is hope.
A Map of My Beirut, what remains of it and the ghosts of what it was
https://maps.app.goo.gl/DK5WSVe3V47jXogW7
Here a great nothingness has swallowed the voices of the past
Yet they live within us, songs of ourselves and the limitless possibilities of becoming human
How can we answer the terror of our nothingness
The flaws of our humanity
And the brokenness of the world?
Here among the ruins of a lost grandeur
Fallen empires and the ghosts and legacies of
Beautiful and terrible histories
I wail in grief, I roar defiance, I demand justice
But my words are devoured by silences
I swear vengeance for a lost history and a ruined city
Without an enemy to bring a reckoning to
For this hammer blow of fate was the act of no saboteur
But only a consequence of our common greed and responsibility shifting
And the labyrinthine bureaucracy that misfiled records
Of a derelict ship full of fertilizer quietly degrading in harbor for years
How many such forgotten existential threats
Now lie waiting to seize and shake us?
Here was once a gate to the Infinite and a shrine of the Impossible
In bloodstains which offered hope and redemption
Where now not a stone stands upon a stone
And the light of Beirut become
Vast and fathomless chasms of darkness
Arabic
خارطة بيروت بلدي وما تبقى منها وأشباح ما كانت عليه
هنا ابتلع العدم العظيم أصوات الماضي
ومع ذلك ، فهم يعيشون في داخلنا ، أغاني من أنفسنا وإمكانيات لا حدود لها في أن نصبح بشرًا
كيف يمكننا الرد على رعب العدم لدينا
عيوب إنسانيتنا
وانكسار الدنيا؟
هنا بين أنقاض العظمة المفقودة الإمبراطوريات الساقطة وأشباح وموروثات
تواريخ جميلة ورهيبة
أبوح حزنًا ، وأصرخ متحديًا ، وأطالب بالعدالة
لكن الصمت يلتهم كلامي
أقسم بالانتقام لتاريخ ضائع ومدينة مدمرة
بدون عدو لجلب الحساب إليه
لأن ضربة القدر هذه كانت فعلاً غير مخرب
ولكن فقط نتيجة لتغير جشعنا المشترك ومسؤوليتنا
والبيروقراطية المتاهة التي أخطأت في ضبط السجلات
من سفينة مهجورة مليئة بالأسمدة تتحلل بهدوء في الميناء لسنوات
كم عدد هذه التهديدات الوجودية المنسية
الآن تكمن في انتظار الاستيلاء علينا وهزنا؟
هنا كانت ذات مرة بوابة إلى اللانهائي وضريح المستحيل
في بقع الدماء التي أعطت الأمل والفداء
حيث لا يوجد الآن حجر يقف على حجر
ويصبح نور بيروت
منوعات الظلام الشاسعة التي لا يسبر غورها
The killing of Hassan Nasrallah leaves Iran with a fateful choice and the US humiliated
Hassan Nasrallah: Hezbollah’s leader inspired adulation and bitter enmity – they will find him very hard to replace
Hassan Nasrallah: the man who has led Hezbollah to the brink of war with Israel
Iran vows vengeance after assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah
Khidr in Sufi Poetry: A Selection, by Paul Smith
Where the Two Seas Meet: Al-Khidr and Moses—The Qur’anic Story of al-Khidr and Moses in Sufi Commentaries as a Model for Spiritual Guidance, by Hugh Talat Halman
Arabic
27 سبتمبر 2024 شهيد الحرية والنضال ضد الاستعمار: في ذكرى
في جريمة حرب مصممة لتخريب عملية السلام ودفع لبنان وحليفتها إيران إلى حالة حرب، اغتال نظام نتنياهو الاستيطاني الإسرائيلي البغيض مؤسس وزعيم حزب الله في لبنان، البطل والشهيد الآن من أجل الحرية والنضال ضد الاستعمار حسن نصر الله.
إن حزب الله لديه عناصر من سياسات الهوية الطائفية والعرقية التي لا ينبغي لأي صديق للديمقراطية أن يشعر بالارتياح معها، خاصة في ضوء علاقته بإيران وربما جزء من الهيمنة الإيرانية التي تشمل السيطرة على لبنان وسوريا والعراق واليمن؛ ولكن حزب الله هو أيضاً الجماعة الأناركية عديمة الجنسية العابرة للحدود الوطنية الأكثر قابلية للحياة، والأكثر استقراراً، وربما الأطول عمراً في التاريخ الحديث، والتي تخدم العديد من وظائف الرعاية الاجتماعية، والرعاية الصحية، والتعليم، وتخفيف الجوع التي تقوم بها حكومة تم تفريغها في لبنان وإضعافها بسبب تاريخ الاحتلال والظروف المفروضة للنضال، والطليعة الثورية لنوع جديد من المجتمع البشري الخالي من دول القوة والسيطرة، والذي تم تشكيله في نضال مجيد وبطولي ضد الغزو والهيمنة الإمبريالية كمرآة للنور لظلام إسرائيل.
كل هذا يرجع إلى حد كبير إلى عبقرية ورؤية رجل واحد، حسن نصر الله، وسوف يبقى بعده كمثال أعلى يتجاوز الهوية الوطنية، بلا حدود ومشرق بالتضامن طالما أن البشرية تتذكر.
إن حزب الله وقادته بمن فيهم حسن نصر الله والعديد من الآخرين الذين اغتالتهم إسرائيل في الإرهاب الجماعي الأخير ضد شعبي فلسطين ولبنان، مثلهم كمثل العديد من شبكات المقاومة الأخرى، وُلدوا وتشكلوا معي في غزو لبنان عام 1982 وحصار بيروت وفي اثنين وأربعين عامًا من النضال من أجل التحرير منذ ذلك الحين.
سنواصل القتال لمدة أربعين عامًا أخرى، أو أربعين ألفًا.
إن قدرة الطغاة ودول الإرهاب مثل نتنياهو وإسرائيل على قتلنا أمر لا معنى له؛ إن قدرتنا على المقاومة ورفض الخضوع لنزع إنسانيتنا واستعبادنا يعني كل شيء.
إن انتصارنا حتمي إذا عصينا السلطة وكفرنا بها، وإذا انطلقنا في فوضى وأصبحنا غير قابلين للحكم، وإذا ألحقنا الأذى بالطغاة وأولئك الذين يريدون استعبادنا كلما سنحت الفرصة، وإذا لم نستسلم ولم نتخلى عن رفاقنا كما يقول قسم المقاومة.
لأننا كثيرون، ونحن نراقب، ونحن المستقبل.
Hebrew
27 בספטמבר 2024 קדוש מעונה של חירות ומאבק אנטי-קולוניאלי: לזכר
בפשע מלחמה שנועד לחבל בתהליך השלום ולהעלות גם את לבנון וגם את בעלת בריתה איראן לבסיס מלחמה, משטר המתנחלים הישראלי המתועב של נתניהו התנקש בחייו של מייסד ומנהיג חיזבאללה בלבנון, גיבור וכיום מעונה של חירות ואנטי-קולוניאלי. מאבק השחרור חסן נסראללה.
לחיזבאללה יש אלמנטים של פוליטיקת זהות תיאוקרטית-כתתית ואתנית שאף ידיד דמוקרטי לא צריך להרגיש איתם בנוח, במיוחד לאור יחסיו עם איראן וללא ספק חלק מהדומיניון האיראני הכולל שליטה בלבנון, סוריה, עיראק ותימן; אבל חיזבאללה הוא גם הקולקטיב והאזור האוטונומי האנרכיסטי חסר האזרחות והטרנס-לאומי הכי קיימא, היציב ואולי הכי ארוך בהיסטוריה המודרנית, המשרת רבים מתפקידי הרווחה, הבריאות, החינוך וההקלה ברעב של ממשלה שבלבנון יש נחלל והפך חסר אונים בשל ההיסטוריה של הכיבוש ותנאי המאבק שנכפו, והחלוץ המהפכני של סוג חדש של חברה אנושית משוחררת ממצבים קרסראליים של כוח ושליטה, ומחושלת במאבק מפואר והירואי נגד כיבוש אימפריאלי. שלטון כראי האור לחושך ישראל.
כל זה נובע במידה רבה מהגאונות והחזון של אדם אחד, חסן נסראללה, והוא ישרוד אותו כאידיאל מעבר לזהות הלאומית, בלתי מוגבל וזוהר עם סולידריות כל עוד האנושות זוכרת.
חיזבאללה ומנהיגיה, כולל חסן נסראללה ורבים אחרים שנרצחו על ידי ישראל בטרור ההמוני האחרון נגד עמי פלסטין ולבנון, כמו אלה של כל כך הרבה רשתות התנגדות אחרות של ברית, נולדו ונרקמו איתי בפלישה ללבנון ב-1982. המצור על ביירות ובארבעים ושתיים שנות מאבק לשחרור מאז.
נילחם עוד ארבעים שנה, או ארבעים אלף.
זה שרודנים ומדינות טרור כמו נתניהו וישראל יכולים להרוג אותנו חסר משמעות; שנוכל להתנגד ולסרב להיכנע לדה-הומניזציה שלנו והשעבוד שלנו אומר הכל.
והניצחון שלנו הוא בלתי נמנע אם אנו לא מצייתים ולא מאמינים לסמכות, אם אנו משתוללים ונהיה בלתי ניתנים לשליטה, אם אנו עושים רע לרודנים ולמי שישעבדו אותנו בכל פעם שתצוץ הזדמנות, אם, כפי שאומרת שבועת ההתנגדות, לא נכנע. ולא לנטוש את חברינו.
כי אנחנו רבים, אנחנו צופים, ואנחנו העתיד.
Lebanon, a reading list
Beirut, Samir Kassir
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7966167-beirut?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_12
Lebanon: A History, 600 – 2011, William W. Harris
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13687123-lebanon?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_50
Memory for Forgetfulness: August Beirut 1982, Mahmoud Darwish
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/142583.Memory_for_Forgetfulness?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_62
Concerto al-Quds, Adonis, Khaled Mattawa (Translation)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34746502-concerto-al-quds?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_21
Torch of Liberty 