Rethinking Terrorism: A Jewish American Crosses into Hezbollah Territory

Ghosts of buildings flit in and out of view as our minibus picks its way through the narrow streets of Haret Hreik, the Hezbollah neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs. First a broken building appears. Then, around a corner, an apartment block missing its top half. Then a towering complex, its concrete sloughed off to the side as if just poured.

A man on a scooter zooms around the bus, forcing us to the side. What are we doing here, a bus full of six American reporters and six Middle Eastern reporters. A Syrian and an Iranian. A Jew. A Palestinian.

......

We are in the heart of Hezbollah territory. The name, as it staggers off our president's tongue, is synonymous with terrorism. It often comes with other names.

Hamas. Taliban. Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda. Names or ideas meant to strike fear in Americans.

But here we are in Beirut's southern suburbs, driving past barber shops and pastry shops. Music blares out of car stereos. Girls walk hand in hand, some with heads covered, some in tight pants. They bow their heads, or stare intently into the bus, sometimes meeting my blue eyes even if just for a moment. Old men stand outside shops sipping from pink plastic espresso cups.

And then the buildings appear.

Israel laid waste to a dozen city blocks around Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's former home, once the administrative hub and "security zone" for the group.

A large tent is now used to greet reporters and other visitors. I step into the tent and am drawn to a series of political cartoons posted on its walls.

They caricature America's policies in the Middle East and Israel's perceived defeat in the month-long summer war. A mini George W. Bush marches roughshod across the globe, "democracy" stamped on the bottom of his combat boot. A ferocious Condoleezza Rice, with caricatured lips, delivers a bomb to Lebanon. Sobbing Israeli soldiers walk off the battlefield, their pants soaked in piss.

These pictures momentarily confuse me, but my Arab colleagues are unfazed. I understand that this powerful propaganda is just a mirror image of our own. But still, I feel somewhat alone, an American in Hezbollah's tent.

A few months prior this very spot was bombed by Israeli jets in a war that America ignored for weeks. A war that my country sanctioned, if not actively supported.

Now we, as journalists yes, but as Americans too, stand on this very ground. The rubble has mostly been cleared, or combed into neat piles.

But the ghosts of buildings remain.

I quietly digest the cartoons. I feel parched.

......

Like any other office, this Hezbollah press center/volunteer coordination tent is graced with a water cooler.

I ask a man standing around the water cooler for a cup. Drink a few sips.

So, I say, warming into pidgin Arabic, you work here?

He smiles, pours coffee. He is helping coordinate the rebuilding effort.

Ahlan wa sahlan, he says. Welcome.

I greet another, younger man. Where are you from, he asks. America, I say.

The man is bemused. He dials a cell phone and hands me the receiver.

Who's there?

It's his brother in Detroit.

I am standing in the Hezbollah volunteer center talking to a Lebanese guy in Detroit who is not happy to be on the phone. It's 5 a.m. in Detroit.

I tell him I'm from Boise. Nice talking to you.

.....

It's always been a slightly unnerving exercise. A yogic workout for my journalistic mind.

As I child I learned that Israel was surrounded by enemies.

So when I went there in my college years, I set about meeting these supposed foes.

I toured Gaza City in a United Nations van and, only at the end of the tour, as we observed open sewers running into the Mediterranean, did our Palestinian guide ask me about my T-shirt.

It was a well-worn memento of the Jewish olympics in Baltimore.

I turned the shirt inside out, but that was the last time I denied my heritage in Arab lands.