The following is a continuation of my record from watching Hizbullah’s
Al-Manar t.v. here in my hotel room in Beirut. It’ds a
contiunuation from this earlier
record, which provides more background on the occasion. Lebanon’s time is two hours ahead of GMT; seven hours ahead of the timing used in our records here at JWN.
11:35. Split-screen view of Ashoura in Kerbala and and Beirut;
later, Baalbek and Beirut.
The speaker talks about Khomeini and readiness for the long
confrontations ahead
11:40 Okay, finally– Here is Nasrallah at the podium.. In
contrast to the preceding speaker, whose voice was harsh and shrill, he
starts off in a low, reassuring voice. He has the distinctive
inability to say his “r”s. He grips the podium and appears quite
calm.
He says that now, as in Hssein’s day, the choice is between
“continuation or humiliation.” (Al-silla
aw al-zilla.) The one presenting us with this choice today
is, he says, mainly George Bush who showed on his recent visit to the
region that he wants to keep the racist Zionist settler entity in place
and strong and occupying our holy places there and oppressing and
besieging our Palestinian brothers; who wants to keep the occupation
going in Iraq for decades including the occupation of our holy places;
who threatens Iran and Syria; who sent the Israeli planes against
all of Lebanon in 2006.
(Please note that my rendering of all
this is necessarily very flawed because I’m watching it on t.v.,
listening to the sound-track, translating it in my head and writing
this down in as near real-time as I can.)
Talked about the attack of the Zionist airplanes in 2006… and with
all the help they had from the whole world they didn’t succeed, after a
battle of 33 days they didn’t succeed in wiping out our resistance..
The following is my rough rendering
of the rest of the speech:
resist all his schemes.
Secondly, we need to resist all attempts to confiscate our holy places
We need to undertsand who is our enemy, Bush is trying to
persuade our leaders and peoples that Iran is the enemy but it is
not. It is our neighbor and our supporter.
Bush announced continued war against our brothers in Gaza and against
the Palestinian people in general. Even while Bush was in the
region the Zionist planes were attacking Gaza and killing the people
there and escalating the siege that tries to impose hunger and death on
the people.
We say to the Arabs we don’t ask anything from you. We in Lebanon
don’t ask anything from you because we are resisting. What we ask is that you lift the
siege on Gaza. If the siege continues, without you Arabs
doing anything to lift it then you will be revealed to everyone as
corrupt. The whole ummah is called to take serious steps.
Thirdly, about Lebanon. Raising the question of our citizens who
were kidnapped by Israel. If this happens to even one Israel, the
Security Council meets and makes a big fuss, but this happens so
frequently to our people being kidnapped by Israel…
I don’t judge that Israel right now can muster the political or
military leadership to wage a war against us; but we must not be
surprised for the future so we must continue the resistance.
We do not want war but we reject that anyone wages war on our country.
Fourthly, we say that that Israel is acting as it is because it is
weak, as was shown particularly in the war of July. So I say to
the Zionists: your army lies to you. They say they never
leave the bodies or body parts of your soldiers on the battlefield … but
we have heads of Israeli soldiers, we have hands, and feet; we have
nearly whole bodies as well. So what did the army say to the
families of those soldiers? They are so weak that they left the
parts of numerous bodies– not just one or two or three– on the
battlefield.
He talks about Aml founder Musa Sadr
some.
Fifth, at the Lebanese level… He mocks/criticizes the Arab League
intervention a bit.
Showing who is the “majority” and the “minority”…
The Arab intervention has been working night and day to liquidate the
resistance in this country.
We shall continue our efforts to negotiate a resolution to this problem
in spite of their attempts to “internationalize” the Lebanese question
and their threats to do so.
They have tried every year to impose a liquidationist settlement on us
from inside the country. 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and now
2008. But they never succeeded.
Haihat minna al-zilla.
(popular shouts.)
Starts to talk about the price of bread and the “electricity
discrimination”… We are
not behind people’s hunger or unemployment or oppression… The
solution to this is the formation of a truly representative government
linked to the people not one linked to private interests and private
banks.
Our negotiator seeks justice and rights. And we won’t leave
Lebanon to the American project.
Every Ashoura we stand here and recommit oursleves to justice and to
struggle for sake of justice We stress our resistance here
in Lebanon, and our commitment to resistance in Palestine, and in Iraq.
Even if they destroy our houses we will stay with you, Hussein. (Shouts
from the crowd.) Even if they kill our children and our women and
our old people and our men, as they did for 33 days during the war of
July, we will stay with you….
12:25, he’s coming to an end. He ends up greeting “the most noble
of people, the most dignified of people… ” The broadcast stops
fairly abruptly.
Every Ashoura we stand here and recommit oursleves to justice and to struggle for the sake of justice. We stress our resistance here in Lebanon, and our commitment to resistance in Palestine, and in Iraq.
Well, OK, Your Eminence, yet surely that is only half the story, especially since 1979.
What becomes of the Justice of the Imámiyya when you find yourselves running a régime instead of resisting one? How does the Husaynic Struggle for Justice work when one has a bureaucracy and an army and a secret state police at hand as instruments rather than obstacles?
I presume that the ‘Ithná‘Ashariyya do not recommit themselves annually to being underdogs forever.
(Am I mistaken to presume that?)