In south Lebanon, resistance from cradle to grave

One family's allegiance to Hizbullah reveals much about the group's support and how it draws fighters.

By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the June 7, 2007 edition

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On the leeward side of Ait al-Shaab, a village in south Lebanon, the war between Hizbullah and Israel caused many sacrifices. Months later, both tears and triumph are plentiful.

Even after the Shiite "Party of God" sparked a war that killed three of their loved ones and battered most every house in the village, one family's steadfast allegiance to Hizbullah reveals much about the group's bedrock support and how it draws more fighters.

"You can't describe [the level of our commitment]," says the surviving mother of 13, dressed head to toe in layers of black. "After God, it is resistance."

Under their modest roof, nine children are boys, five of them fighting age. A poster of Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is taped inside the front door of the cinder-block house, a minute's walk to tobacco fields and citrus groves.

One son, a Hizbullah fighter, was pierced by shrapnel through the right hand. The grandparents, too weak to flee the Israeli shelling, were killed in a direct hit to their house.

The father, who refused to leave his parents alone, was struck with shrapnel and lived. But he died later, the family says, when Israeli jets hit the ambulance as it raced with him to the hospital. Israeli forces targeted ambulances and aid convoys numerous times in the war.

"Naturally, we love the resistance," says one son. "We predicted there would be a war, and always our salvation was Hizbullah. We count on them to save us; since childhood it is in our minds."

But he didn't join the Hizbullah fighters like his other brothers. And he had a hard time convincing his father – before his death – that he should avoid the front and help with food and evacuating the women. The father wanted all five sons to join the war.

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