Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East (18 page)

The Israel-bashing continued. I was used to this from other Lebanese youth, but the way Hezbollah talked about Israel was particularly violent. They always made it sound like self-defense: the suicide bombings, the kidnappings, the senseless rocket attacks; they believed that they were the victims. They felt constantly under attack by Israel and believed it was their duty to take them out at all costs.

The metaphors they used to illustrate their points were bizarre. At one point in the conversation Mohammad compared sexual harassment with being pro-Israel. He tried to reason that if you stand beside a girl and someone insults her, the natural response is to want to attack him no matter how big he is. OK, I understood this logic. But he then went on to suggest that Israel was the male bully and the Palestinians were the metaphorical girl being victimized. Besides being a strange analogy to draw, it didn’t make any sense.

What would a conversation with Hezbollah be without a candid discussion about suicide bombing? Always feeling awkward to bring this up, I introduced the topic by suggesting that a lot of scholars and journalists have described this practice as immoral and contrary to Islam.

Bashar chose to field my inquiry. He suggested that as a people under attack, they have two options: sit down or go and fight. In his view, choosing to fight was a kind of suicide because you could likely die in battle. But he was careful to tell me that whether someone dies in battle or by detonating himself as a bomb, “We do not believe this is suicide because your goal is your country, your God, and your dignity.”

Eager to get his point in, Karim added that Hezbollah strongly disagrees with the idea of using weapons on its own people. It still wasn’t clear to me whom they viewed as
their
people: the Shi’a? Lebanese? Muslims? He explained that their people are the Shi’a and the Lebanese and recalled that even when they were fighting against their historical Shi’a rival group Amal, they did not employ suicide bombing. In a strange acknowledgment, he then went on to say that “we only kill ourselves for the special situation when we cannot do anything else against Israeli soldiers.” He elaborated by describing how Israel has radars and weapons and all they have is their bodies and explosives. I didn’t buy this, but I listened. It was difficult for me to believe that in all the years of conflict in Lebanon, Hezbollah had no other Lebanese blood on their hands. Armed with missiles and rockets as well as funding from Iran, the organization is the most substantial military force in Lebanon. And if they don’t believe in killing their own, this seems to contradict the very idea of suicide bombing.

It is because of Hezbollah’s known and diverse weaponry, rather than its capability as an organization that can employ suicide tactics, that make it especially dangerous. UN Resolution 1559 called for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias. Hezbollah believes that despite the UN resolution, it cannot disarm. So long as it continues to believe it is the defender of Lebanon’s borders and the militia for the Lebanese people, this is unlikely to change.

Feeling true to their duty, other members of Hezbollah raised doubts about whether or not Israel would stay out of the South even after they disarmed. They often explained that they are on constant alert because they must exist as a moving presence or Israel will attack them. His mention of the mobile presence is a key characteristic of Hezbollah. Its arms, offices, and stations are scattered throughout its territories. Its weapons are in the private homes of its members and supporters. All of its weapons caches are underground or clandestine. Hezbollah wants to create the aura of an unlimited weapons supply that potentially includes weapons of mass destruction (WMD), yet it wants the true nature of what it possesses to remain a secret. The reality is that the weapons are scattered in so many places that they themselves probably don’t know exactly how much they have.

It all sounded very scary to me, with the potential for a minor border skirmish to escalate if the right buttons were pushed.

I heard from them time and again that their weapons are not for the Lebanese people and that they would not attack any Lebanese movement, only Israel, and only in self-defense. As the world would learn a year later, however, Hezbollah’s tactics in its war with Israel would ultimately lead to the deaths of the innocents Hezbollah pledged to leave unharmed. I don’t think that these youth realized that Hezbollah was in fact looking for a fight. If the Hezbollah youth were talking this way, then they were duped by an older generation that wanted something different than the protection of Lebanese borders. My instincts were right. The Hezbollah-orchestrated kidnappings that sparked the July 2006 war with Israel showed the world a militia looking for a fight. This fight enabled the older generation to hijack the goals of their youth and quash any hope that a more progressive youth would drive the organization away from terrorist activity and into a role that would see them as an internationally recognized part of Lebanese politics.

At the fast-food lunch, I asked the group of beef-kebab-eating Hezbollah members how they felt about the world viewing them as terrorists. I thought they would be agitated by this question, but instead they sought to clarify that it wasn’t the world, it was just America and its allies. He explained to me that they are also against terrorism, at which point he noted that Hezbollah is against Osama bin Laden and sees 9/11 as an example of terrorism. However, Ali, always eager to share his expert Hezbollah opinion, also noted that they do not view Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas as terrorist groups, because they are resisting within a country that is rightfully theirs. From his standpoint, they simply want to go home to Palestine. Whether I spoke to Ali, or one of his Hezbollah colleagues, it was always the same focus on motives, rather than tactics. It was as if they believed that motives rendered even the most barbaric practices justifiable. Every time I brought up suicide bombing or targeting innocent civilians, their answer was always in the motive.

W
hen I would return
to Beirut from later trips to Palestinian refugee camps and Iraq, the Hezbollah members whom I had told I was Jewish several months prior over Happy Meals were all of a sudden less than cordial to me. They became totally unresponsive and I began to wonder why. In the past, I’d provided some of these Hezbollah youth with copies of my passport; admitting me to Hezbollah strongholds required official permission from the Hezbollah higher-ups. They had my name, place of birth, passport number, photo, and whatever else was on my passport. They also knew that I had studied at Stanford and at Oxford and that I was a Jewish American. None of this ever presented itself as a problem while I interviewed them. But when I returned to Lebanon from Iraq, these same Hezbollah members stood me up on several occasions, ignored my phone calls, and refused to respond to my text messages. They wanted nothing to do with me. The silence was actually ominous. My suspicions were confirmed when I received a cryptic text message from one of them indicating that they would not meet with me anymore. I wrote back, called, and talked to friends of mine who knew them. They wouldn’t see me and they wouldn’t give a reason.

I knew that I was now on their bad side. While I had felt safe around Hezbollah so long as they were cordial to me, knowing I had somehow pissed them off was a different story. Was it possible they had done a Google search and found the photo of me holding an Israeli flag at a 2002 protest at Stanford? Had they found out about my internships at the Department of Defense and the State Department, information that could also be obtained in articles written about me on the Internet? Or had they gone so far as to check with the Iranians, who would obviously tell them that I hadn’t been allowed back in the country? I was curious, but I didn’t feel like staying around to find out.

LEBANON (PALESTINIAN CAMPS), 2005

B
efore I left Beirut the first time, I met someone who would help me get to the Palestinian refugee camps, in particular the notorious Ayn al-Hilwah. The opportunity to visit a Palestinian refugee camp presented itself to me rather unexpectedly in Beirut. On one Thursday afternoon, I was eating lunch with a group of friends, mostly Sunni Muslims, in the cafeteria at the Lebanese American University. The cafeteria was like a food court at any American college, with a few minor differences: In addition to Snickers bars and hamburgers, a student at Lebanese American University could dine on chicken kebab. Four of us sat at a plastic square table, sharing stories about the previous evening. Each one of us had spent the evening at a different bar or club. Some had met girls, others had encountered exes, and one or two others appeared to have had too much to drink the night before. As we were talking, a rather heavyset and scruffy student approached the table to say hello to Juliana, one of my friends at the table. She stood up and they exchanged three kisses on the cheek, the standard greeting in Lebanon. She then gestured to me, and said, “Achmad, I want you to meet my friend from America.”

He reached out to shake my hand and asked me if I was the American hanging out with some Hezbollah guys and others our age. When I told him I was, he insisted that I must talk to
his
people. I wasn’t sure who he was talking about, so I asked.

“The Palestinian people,” he said, with tremendous pride. Almost immediately, he turned stern, and admonished me not to neglect the Palestinian people in my research and travels. I was already self-conscious about how I reacted when students told me they were Palestinian. I had made no effort to hide my religion and background at the universities and was actually rather forthcoming in offering the information. I saw opportunity in straightforwardness. Most of the Palestinian students in Beirut had never met a Jew; I felt a simple, genuine interaction could go a long way toward correcting popular misconceptions that Jews and Palestinians don’t mix.

“You cannot write about the Middle East without talking to the Palestinians,” he said. “The Palestinian people are integrated in all aspects of the Middle East and we have the greatest challenges of all. How can I get you to come and talk to my people?”

“I’ve had trouble getting permission to enter the Palestinian camps,” I replied. Entrance permits to Palestinian refugee camps for inquisitive American students weren’t exactly growing on trees in Lebanon. Though I had not yet actually looked into this in any depth, I wanted to convey my eagerness, as well as advertise my need for someone to facilitate my travel into the camps. “But if I can find a way to go, I’d be eager to speak with youth in the camps. Is it safe?”

Bypassing that specific question, Achmad nonetheless jumped at the opportunity to assist me. Like the youth of Hezbollah, like the Sunni, Shi’a, and Allawi youth that I had met throughout Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, he wanted to open his world to me. I was moved by this. Youth are so frequently neglected by the media, their governments, and the West. I had once again found that even a mere demonstration of curiosity seemed to result in a young person’s going above and beyond to help.

As we were talking, it dawned on me that there would be some real moral dilemmas I could face in this journey. I knew some of what I would hear would enrage me and that this would be as much an exercise in self-restraint as it would be a quest for knowledge. Would I lie about being Jewish if it meant ensuring my safety? I remembered what had happened to Daniel Pearl, the Jewish journalist beheaded in Pakistan, and really questioned my sanity. Daniel had very nobally chosen not to lie about being Jewish. The camps were bastions for propaganda and extremism. What if someone asked my opinions on Israel? I believe in a two-state solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict, but I didn’t exactly think that sharing these views would resonate positively with Fatah, Asbat al-Ansar, and other Palestinian militants. Questions like these plagued me every night in the days before I left for Ayn al-Hilwah. Where was the balance between safety and morality?

Achmad assured me that he would take care of everything for me. He explained that he would spend the weekend arranging the details of my trip to Ayn al-Hilwah. I was placing a lot of faith in one kid I had just met, but for some reason his intentions seemed genuine. In the same way that I hoped people would trust me, I could see him reaching out in a similar fashion. He assured me that I would meet everyone that I needed to as well as his family. Achmad then asked me, “Did you know that we are the family of martyrs?”

I, of course, had no way of knowing that, but I recognized the opportunity at hand. When I asked if I would be able to talk to his family, he responded with jubilance:

“Will you be able to? You will stay with my family. You’ll talk to my mother and we’ll show you pictures of my brother who is a martyr. You will come and see where we live and the conditions we are raised in. When you see the young people in my town and in the camp, I think you’ll be surprised at how different they are from what you see on television. I hope you’ll come with me and when you return home you’ll tell people the truth about the Palestinian people.”

He explained that we would go to his hometown of Saida in southern Lebanon, the closest city to the Ayn al-Hilwah Palestinian refugee camp. Even before I met Achmad, Ayn al-Hilwah had appealed to me for several reasons. As the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, it was home to some of the most extremist youth in the country, young men who boasted membership in militant Palestinian groups as well as international terrorist organizations linked to Al-Qaeda, but more than anything, I wanted to learn the perspectives of other segments of the 350,000 disenfranchised Palestinians living in camps throughout the country. I eventually visited several Palestinian camps in Lebanon, but Ayn al-Hilwah was the most significant, serving as a base of operations for several notable Palestinian leaders in Lebanon.

Achmad’s home was the top apartment in an eleven-story building. He was proud to show me all the different rooms, the television, and all of their latest electronics. Outside one of the bedrooms, there was a string of drying laundry draped over a long wire. From the apartment window, there was a spectacular view of Ayn al-Hilwah. In the evening the sun set through the clouds, casting beams of light that formed a cage around the vast refugee camp. The walls were freshly painted, with photos of the family hanging crooked. In the corner of the living room, I found Achmad’s mother sitting in a chair, her head fully wrapped in a head scarf and the TV blasting.

Traveling into Ayn al-Hilwah, even by invitation, was a risk. It harbored members of just about every single militant Palestinian group present in Lebanon. In particular, it housed the leader of the Palestinians in Lebanon and head of Fatah, Brigadier General Mounir Maqdah. Unfortunately, I had quickly learned that for every dangerous, extremist group in a country like Lebanon, there’s often a group that’s far scarier. General Maqdah and his followers were certainly dangerous, but they were not my primary concern. What I found far more threatening was the presence in Ayn al-Hilwah camp of Asbat al-Ansar, a primarily Sunni terrorist group with known links to Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The group, which has more than three hundred fighters, claimed responsibility for a slew of bombings throughout the 1990s. In 2003, they were behind a series of high-profile bombings of fast-food restaurants in various parts of Lebanon. And Ayn al-Hilwah was their base of operations. It did not calm my nerves when friends of mine in Beirut would joke that I might come back in a body bag. Even some of the youth I knew from Hezbollah told me to be careful, an admonition that left a truly bad taste in my mouth. When extremists are warning you about other extremists, you know you’re taking a risk.

I believed that if I could find members of Asbat al-Ansar and talk to youth in Fatah—and manage not to get killed in the process—I would obtain two very useful perspectives from within the Palestinian community. I hoped that my apparent willingness to take the risky trip in the first place would win me respect and, more importantly, restraint vis-à-vis the militants. Talking to Palestinians was not difficult in Lebanon, but meeting and speaking with the extremists in Ayn al-Hilwah proved to be so, and was only made possible by the help of Achmad, who organized dozens of meetings and gatherings for me.

I
wasn’t exactly sure
why I had to run, but at the moment, stopping wasn’t really an option. In dangerous situations, terrified confusion can prove nearly as valuable as adrenaline. As my bodyguard yelled at me in broken English to keep running, I was propelled forward by little more than a sense that even the slightest hesitation would land me in a Lebanese prison—or worse.

Behind us, two soldiers from the Lebanese army, the de facto police force in Lebanon, chased closely, screaming in Arabic. I couldn’t understand exactly what they were saying, but the message was pretty clear. If it weren’t so chillingly real, the setting would have been perfect for a chase scene in a movie: We were weaving through the labyrinth of alleys that make up the border between the Ayn al-Hilwah Palestinian refugee camp and the Lebanese city of Saida. The alleyways were extremely narrow and the ground was of a rough dirt surface; enormous piles of garbage seemed like they had been strategically placed to impede my progress. I couldn’t help but thinking that I’d stumbled upon a terrible third-world, life-or-death obstacle course.

Strings of electric cables formed a ceiling above the alleys. In this neighborhood, as in many other poor neighborhoods across the Middle East, the entire community shares electricity, Internet access, and cable television. The consequent splicing and resplicing of the wires—the means by which this community received and shared information with the rest of the world—formed the canopy above us.

With the Lebanese forces in hot pursuit, my bodyguard continued to yell. I had placed all my confidence in a man whose name I didn’t even know, not the most reassuring situation in which to find oneself when fleeing from two screaming members of the Lebanese military. In fact, the one thing I did know about my bodyguard/guide/protector was that he had a handgun tucked into his blue jeans. But he had been appointed to me on the spot by Achmad as if he were the only available tour guide at some ancient ruins. As was often the case with casual displays of weaponry in this part of the world, his pistol was largely symbolic. If the moment came, it would be impossible for him to draw the weapon from his jeans and still fire with a clear shot in time to protect me. I knew it was naïve to assume his pistol offered any sort of real protection, but I was willing to take reassurance where I could get it. With the sound of the pounding boots of the Lebanese army in my ears, I had no choice but to follow my bodyguard.

After about six or seven alleys, the Lebanese soldiers stopped chasing, and I’d safely made my way into one of the most dangerous, lawless places in the world.

I was never clear on whether the Lebanese soldiers were trying to catch me or merely chase me into the camp. Though there was nothing to mark the spot, my unnamed bodyguard and I had clearly reached the point where the Lebanese soldiers drew the line between enforcement and containment. The Lebanese government, though claiming responsibility for all security-related matters in Lebanon, does not actually exercise jurisdiction over entrance into the Palestinian refugee camps. The militias—Fatah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Asbat al-Ansar—control the camps, providing services and either maintaining or, as is often the case, disrupting order. The Lebanese military only contains the camps, keeping disturbances from spreading outside of the small but densely populated slums.

In Lebanon, there are twelve Palestinian refugee camps. The vast majority of these sprang up when Christian and Muslim Palestinians fled to Lebanon during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. As Israel gained its independence, between 250,000 and 500,000 Palestinians fled their homes to set up what they thought would be temporary residence in Lebanon. When the Arab states suffered a devastating defeat during the Six Day War of 1967, it became clear that the Israeli state was only growing stronger and that the temporary residence that many Palestinians had envisioned in Lebanon had in fact become their permanent home. Between 1968 and 1969, the Palestinians demanded the authority to police their own camps. The guerrilla tactics of the Palestinian militants rendered the already weak Lebanese army ineffective, resulting in an agreement between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Lebanese government. Under the terms of what became known as the Cairo Agreement, Palestinian camps would be moved away from civilian centers and the Palestinians would be responsible for their own security.

The terms of the Cairo Agreement remain in effect. Each of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon polices itself, has its own government in the camp, and acts as a virtually autonomous entity. Out of necessity, I’d been willing to put my life in the hands of a bodyguard. This made me uneasy, especially considering the fact that he had offered his services as a favor to my Palestinian friend and was not receiving any money. I knew my guard was there to provide a false sense of security, but in the case of real danger, who would protect me in Ayn al-Hilwah? Neither of the two major groups that exercised influence in the camp—Fatah and Asbat al-Ansar—has shown much interest in distancing itself from terrorism. I wouldn’t classify either of these groups as an ideal guardian angel for an American Jew.

It didn’t help matters that there was no record of my entry into the camp; nobody knew I had been there. I was denied a permit to visit the camp and just days before I ventured to Ayn al-Hilwah, terrorists inside the camp were identified by the Lebanese government as the extremists who had carried out a high-profile car-bombing attack on the outgoing Lebanese defense minister, Elias Murr. The camp—never quite a picture of calm—was especially on edge at the time of my visit, with tensions between rival Palestinian groups escalating to dangerous levels. Days earlier, there had been reports of heavy gunfire in parts of the camp, the rumblings of a serious confrontation between rival militant groups.