I’ve been in Beirut since Monday and this afternoon went to the Dahiya, the city’s Shiite southern suburbs, where Lebanese families are flocking to an exhibition called the House of Spiders (Beit al Ankaboot), an elaborate commemoration of Hezbollah’s fight against Israel last summer. Love ‘em or hate ‘em the Hezb puts on a great show.
A grassy park, a rare patch of green in the dun-colored suburbs, has been fenced off. Vendors sell inflatable zoo animals to children outside the entrance. Inside the fence there are four captured Israeli tanks from 2000, a T54 tank, an M5 half track, and an armored personnel carrier among them. There are the rotors of a downed Israeli helicopter. Visitors walk along the path between the looted armour and enter what resembles a sandbagged bunker. A large, elaborate, well-designed and thought out museum awaits inside.
The first exhibits are two reconstructed Hezbollah bunkers. One looks like some sort of command post. There is a manikin dressed like a Hezbollah fighter in fatigues with an AK47 slung over his shoulder. He’s eyeing a wall map of “Occupied Palestine”. There’s a desk with a laptop computer, a walkie talkie, a phone and two korans. On the other side of the passage way there is another reconstructed bunker, this one made to resemble the rooms where Hezbollah fighters sleep. There are two manikins here, one kneeling in prayer, the other relaxing on a mattress on the floor, a koran in his right hand, his left resting casually on an AK47. A radio blasts old Al Manar news reports from the front lines of last summers war, mixed with martial anthems.
Visitor move on and enter the main hall of the exhibit. The first display is a series of six foot tall portraits of US and Israeli leaders with quotes from last summer’s war underneath each picture.
A picture of Rumsfield has the quote in Arabic and English: “Israel should ignore calls for a ceasefire.”
Condi’s picture is accompanied by the quote: “This war is part of the birth pangs of a new Middle East.”
The picture of Bush shows him clutching a Thanksgiving turkey, presumably before the traditional holiday pardon. His quote: “Our nation is wasting no time in helping the people of Lebanon.”
Over a picture of Olmert is the quote: “We won’t stop firing until we get the two prisoners and strike the military structure of Hezbollah.”
Peretz’s photo is the notorious picture of him gazing through binoculars with the lens caps on. The quote reads: “Hassan Nasrallah won’t forget the name Amir Peretz.”
Army chief of staff Dan Halutz is pictured with the quote: “We will eradicate Hezbollah within three days.”
The next wall has a long list of quotes by Israelis. There is a quote by the noted Haaretz defense correspondent Zeev Schiff saying: “The Israeli deterrent has been shaken.” There are passages from the Winograd report: “The goals declared were over ambitious.” And quotes by Israeli soldiers no doubt culled from the media: “They were firing at us from every side” and “The Golani Brigade fled Bint Jbeil frnatically and aimlessly.”
A picture of a young Israeli girl signing a bomb and a picture of a rabbi pumping his fist into the air in front of a tank is titled: “This is their culture, this is their belief.”
An exhibit of artillery shells and mortar rounds sits next to a baby crib and teddy bear. The exhibit is backed by pictures of burned and scarred Lebanese children.
Throughout the main hall there are display cases in the floor, covered in thick glass. Inside are all kinds of assorted battlefield paraphernalia looted from the Israelis: helmets, M16 rifles and larger caliber machine guns, night vision goggles, radios and other communicaiton gear, grenades, tefillin, oxygen tanks, and iPods. I couldn’t help but wonder if the night vision goggles were the same pair that two Hezbollah fighters found with me during a visit to a Bint Jbeil battle site during the brief ceasefire midway through the war.
They have a display of all the different weapons possessed by Hezbollah that were employed during last summer’s war, including anti-tank rockets, and the various missiles that were fired at Israel. That display is contrasted with pictures of every type of aircraft in Israel’s inventory. Hezbollah seems intent on showing off its knowledge of Israel. Another pair of wall charts claim to list the complete makeup and hierarchy of the Israeli army, including how many divisions of infanry, armour, etc the IDF has.
A display on the Merkava tank, which Hezbollah wreaked havoc on with their Syrian supplied anti-tank missiles, is titled “The Myth of the Enemy’s Army.” There are tank treads, tank wheels, charred side panels, and a hatch all on display.
There is a massive piece of metal siding from an Israeli aircraft and the rotor of a CH53 Sea Stallion Helicopter, known in Hebrew as the Yas’ur.
Young boys crowd around an animated film shown over and over called “Special Force 2: Tale of the Truthful Pledge.” It’s basically a first person shooter video game where the shooter takes out distant tanks with some sort of RPG and charges after the enemy with his AK47. It’s shown to heavy opera music resembling Carmina Burana.
The exhibit’s main hall channels into a final room. There is a semi-circle platform overlooking a pit with a Merkava tank in the bottom. There are dummies made up like dead Israeli soldiers slumped over the hatch and lying on the ground. There’s a movie screen behind the tank. The lights go off and a red light blinks inside the tank. Smoke pours out of the hatch. The movie is about ten minutes long and includes some quite frankly amazing footage of Hezbollah fighters in the thick of the fight, launching katyushas, firing off anti-tank rockets, and running through the brush. It culminates with Nasrallah’s victory speech and everybody watching started clapping.
At the gift shop inside a small tent on the way out you can buy Hezbollah DVDs, Nasrallah perfume and Raad-1 cologne, named for the mid-range missile.
23 responses so far ↓
1 Danny // Aug 1, 2007 at 11:56 pm
I can’t believe that people still go for such cheezy, ’50s style propaganda nowadays…
2 Mahmud // Aug 2, 2007 at 12:13 am
^^ I ask my self the same question while reading alot of the right wing blogs out there.
Do you know if this is going to be a perminant museum or just a temporary exhibition? It sounds weirdly appealing…
3 Charles Levinson // Aug 2, 2007 at 6:06 am
Mahmud — it’s temporary i believe. Friday is the last day.
Danny — every single tourist shop in Israel is stocked with one-sided accounts on DVD of 1967, 1973, Israel’s wars, the Israeli Air Force, etc. They’re cheezy propaganda too and are snatched up at souvenir stands across the country. And certainly war museums anywhere tend invariably toward unabashed propaganda. Have you visited Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem? Every state’s treatment of its army is awash with propaganda. While I don’t disagree with you, I don’t think it’s all that exceptional to Hezbollah.
4 Abe Bird // Aug 2, 2007 at 6:55 am
Every corrupt terror organization has the need to glorify itself in any way and means, mainly by false drawing the reality. The Hizb’Allah is just another fictions’ producer. They have the urgent need to cover their defeat from their own people’s eyes
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1185893683874&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull .
5 Abe Bird // Aug 2, 2007 at 7:06 am
Charles Levinson ,
I wonder if you really were in Israel some time. Israel hasn’t any woe’s weaponry exhibitions or some museums to show their enemies’ character and measures. They have only memorial sites to honor their brave soldiers.
Ammunition Hill is a battle field site and not just a “museum”, and it’s the real place and stand where the IDF fought its enemy ant it is observed as it was in 1967 to show reminiscence of history before all Jerusalem is covered with roads, gardens and buildings.
6 Linda Grant // Aug 2, 2007 at 7:14 am
I wouldn’t call the Haganah or Etzel museums in Tel Aviv particularly balanced and objective accounts of 1948.
Though Ben Gurion eau de parfum is an interesting idea.
7 issandr // Aug 2, 2007 at 8:55 am
Nice one Charles. Enjoy Beirut!
8 The Arabist » Hizbullah’s House of Spiders // Aug 2, 2007 at 8:58 am
[…] Charles Levinson visits a Hizbullah exhibition on last summer’s war: The first exhibits are two reconstructed Hezbollah bunkers. One looks like some sort of command post. There is a manikin dressed like a Hezbollah fighter in fatigues with an AK47 slung over his shoulder. He’s eyeing a wall map of “Occupied Palestine”. There’s a desk with a laptop computer, a walkie talkie, a phone and two korans. On the other side of the passage way there is another reconstructed bunker, this one made to resemble the rooms where Hezbollah fighters sleep. There are two manikins here, one kneeling in prayer, the other relaxing on a mattress on the floor, a koran in his right hand, his left resting casually on an AK47. A radio blasts old Al Manar news reports from the front lines of last summers war, mixed with martial anthems. […]
9 Kebz // Aug 2, 2007 at 10:14 am
Interesting stuff. Was the video game/show a locally produced one? Must have been primitive compared to the all action bunker busting, nuking war games we have in the West.
10 Abu Muqawama // Aug 2, 2007 at 12:28 pm
How much longer are you going to be in Beirut, Charles? I get into town next Wednesday.
11 Charles Levinson // Aug 2, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Abu Muqawama — drats! looks like i’ll be out of dodge monday, tuesday at the latest. nothing set in stone though. I’ll shoot you an email if i’m going to be around longer.
chrs,
Abu Mufawadat
12 Ria // Aug 2, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Charlie,
Head over to Le Chef for lunch. In Achrafiye. Lazeez awi.
13 Abu Muqawama // Aug 2, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Too bad. Have fun — and I second Ria’s lunch recommendations. Also, shoot me an email if you head south and see anything I should check out when I visit the border.
14 Gregor // Aug 3, 2007 at 3:33 am
Marx was wrong about practically everything, but he was right about this: Religion IS the opiate of the masses.
15 Cassandra // Aug 3, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Pomo wouldn’t know the difference between the goulag and summer camp if they fell over them. Let alone telling facts and propaganda apart.
16 rina // Aug 3, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Charles,
I mean no disrespect, I really don’t, but I wonder about you - and other western journalists - reporting from places like Hezbollah strongholds. These guys will only take you where they want you to go and show you things they want you to see. Does that not make you an (unwitting, but still) tool of their propaganda machine?
People complain that Lisa and Rinat made it more difficult for all journalists in Lebanon – but so what? What is the value of reporting from Hezbollah-controlled territory if there cannot be free, independent inquiry there anyway?
I’m sure there must be some debate about this in the journalistic circles and I’m curious to hear what you think about it.
Many thanks.
17 Bram // Aug 3, 2007 at 11:59 pm
I just visited Bayt al-Akkabout yesterday. Having read Charles’ post before going gave me a good idea of what I was walking into. In terms of being a memorial, it’s one of the most powerful ones I have ever seen. At the same time, Hezbollah’s glorification of violence was also disturbing. I’ve posted some pictures from my visit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bramhubbell/sets/72157601202864913/
Just to put my visit to Bayt al-Akkabout in perspective, this evening I visited the US Embassy in Beirut. When you walk in there is “a memorial to all the American victims of terrorism in Lebanon” according to one of the officials. The names of all the marines who died in Lebanon are listed. In the middle of the memorial in big letters, it says “They came in Peace.” The US can do propaganda just as much as Hezbollah.
18 South Beirut « The Classroom and the World // Aug 4, 2007 at 7:52 am
[…] walking around Dahiya, we headed over to the Web of the Spider (Bayt al-Akkabout). Before visiting, I had read Charles Levinson’s blog about the memorial, so I had an idea about what I was getting into. The site is designed to commemorate […]
19 Kebz // Aug 4, 2007 at 10:52 am
We Westerners just don’t glorify violence at all do we? Most of the time our hypocrisy is staggering.
20 Cassandra // Aug 4, 2007 at 11:20 am
For crying out loud! Vocabulary contains just one sort of ‘violence’, he? Ever heard of defense? Ever heard of defending friends? Ever heard of fighting evil … yes … violence for violence sake and religously and politically justified violence as per Messrs Marx and Rousseau! Never mind: pens are also violence, as are sound waves, as are my fingers touching the keyboard, wishing every Pomo to infernity for the infantile lunacy they’re proliferating! Very responsible, if you have a public information job!
21 rina // Aug 4, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Kebz :
“We Westerners just don’t glorify violence at all do we? Most of the time our hypocrisy is staggering.”
This is a strange argument. The “West” is an awfully big place and there are all sorts of things in it. If someone in the west (e.g., neo-nazis) also glorifies violence, does that mean it is hypocritical of all of us to criticize the glorification of islamic violence?
And can you provide any (current, mainstream) examples of a western culture which sanctifies hatred or glorifies violence towards a particular nation or group of people, codifying it in law and teaching it to its kids?
22 ldw // Aug 4, 2007 at 3:24 pm
funny, isn’t it, how sooner or later everything becomes an image, from our most intimate moments to the most grotesque oppression or suffering, and we wind up arguing over who, by employing these images most effectively, distances himself the most from reality.
23 Kebz // Aug 4, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Try watching a few Hollywood films and seeing who the ‘bad guys’ are. Try and spend a week at a western army barracks. Try and play some video games which delight in bombing faceless enemies and terrorists. Try watching young US soldiers delight in describing how they massacred Iraqis and raped Iraqi girls. It is not just neonazis who delight in violence. The neocons and zionist lobby delight in calling for the bombing of more muslim countries each day. The democrats are just as bad. The indoctrination by western media that muslims =terrorist is bad enough. Violence is not glorified by islamists alone but is an integral part of western culture. It is bloody hypocritical of the west and especially of Israelis of all people because they don’t just glorify it, they actually do it which is a lot worse. Violence is not just bullets, it is missiles and bombs. Some people can’t see the wood for the trees. The islamists are bad but they are not even in the same league as the Western powers and their ally Israel.
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