Raising Martyrs in Southern Lebanon

'We are ready to strap explosives to our children and send them to Israel'
By Colin Freeman in Tyre
(Filed: 30/07/2006)

Nayfa Muhanna's childbearing days are long over, her husband having taken a second wife to produce the younger half of his huge clutch of 16 children.

Now, though, after Israeli -helicopter missiles destroyed the family farmhouse and wiped out their entire tobacco crop, she finds herself feeling broody again.

"It is our duty as mothers to start producing more boys to help the resistance," she said, to cheers from other residents in their refugee camp in the -southern Lebanese city of Tyre, where all 19 family members pitched up a fortnight ago. "We want them to be martyrs for their country in the fight against Israel."

Nobody could accuse the family of not doing its bit for the "Party of God".

Asked about the fighting in their village of Majdel Zoun, just a few miles from the Israeli border, Nayfa, 47, proudly mentions that her brother "disappeared" that day - not a suggestion that he is buried under rubble, but a coded way of stating that he has slipped off to join Hezbollah's forces.

The next time she sees him he may well be in a coffin. Yet, if so, there appears to be no shortage of family members willing to replace him on the front line. "I am very excited about defending my country," said her oldest son Mahdi, who is just 15. "If I do not, and others do not, then who will?"

After two weeks of Israel's military offensives on the southern Lebanese border, a whole new generation of youngsters like Mahdi is being groomed to follow in their uncle's footsteps.

Mahdi has dreamed of joining Hezbollah ever since he was 10, yet until two weeks ago the "enemy" has never been more than a vague presence at border fences.

Now, though, he and thousands of other children who are too young to remember the last major Israeli incursion 10 years ago have witnessed a new one first-hand, yielding a fresh crop of traumatised young minds that Hezbollah's propaganda machine can mould.

The Israeli army psy-ops leaflets airdropped into the border villages, which caricature Hezbollah leaders as cowardly snakes who send followers needlessly to the slaughter, are unlikely to win them over, especially not with so many of their parents spurring them on.

"We are ready to strap explosives to our children and send them to Israel," said Naim Mussalmani, 35, a farmer who fled the village of Shaitiah, on Tyre's outskirts. "My own brother exploded himself against the Israelis in 1998. Our women and children are ready to go out and fight if needs be."

In the past two weeks, the normally peaceful Mediterranean holiday resort of Tyre has been flooded with refugees fleeing the farming villages dotting the Israeli border as they become battlegrounds for fierce clashes between Hezbollah guerrillas and their Israeli foes.

The port city offers limited security as a safe haven: the crash of Israeli ordnance into the surrounding hillsides shakes Tyre's buildings relentlessly, and the sky over the deserted luxury marina hums constantly with jets and drone spyplanes.

Town Hall officials estimate that more than two thirds of Tyre's population of 270,000 have fled the city, leaving it more deserted than a rundown holiday resort in midwinter.

Shops are shuttered, rubbish lies festering in stinking piles, and the only signs of life are in the schools and government buildings where villagers from the border areas have sought safety.

With few humanitarian convoys able to reach them because of damage to the main road from Beirut, living conditions for the diaspora are grim. The luckier ones are crammed into long established Palestinian refugee camps, while the less fortunate are billeted in school classrooms, living off aid packages and with little access to washing facilities.

Worst off are those still trapped in the villages, unable to access even Tyre's meagre sanctuary because of the house-sized scoops that Israeli missiles have gouged in the narrow country roads.

Yet, despite the privations it has caused, there is little tangible sign of the Israeli campaign undermining support for Hezbollah.

Among those from the villages, where nearly every house flies a Hezbollah flag, nobody queries the movement's fateful decision to kidnap two Israeli soldiers, nobody blames it for the death and destruction it has provoked, and nobody even expects the organisation to look after them in the consequent chaos.

"The Government of Lebanon is not taking care of us properly," said Mr Mussalmani. "We have to look to our Palestinian brothers, who are refugees of Israeli aggression themselves, to help us out.

We do not ask Hezbollah for medicine or help. That is needed for their fighters, who are giving their blood for the nation. The whole of southern Lebanon are now ready to become martyrs."

The women standing around him in headscarfs shouted their agreement.