Educational Media Reviews Online

The Hezbollah stemmed from the Shiite community, one of 17 in Lebanon. Its existence was based on its resistance to the Israeli occupation of South Lebabon and grew stronger throughout the civil war. Filmmaker Maher Abi-Samra returns to the neighborhood of his youth, Ramel el Ali in Beirut's southern suburb to reveal the lives of two women committed to the cause.

The tone of this documentary is clearly one of providing a historical perspective from which the viewer can distill a clearer picture of the nature of the Islamic Party of God, the Hezbollah. The voice-over narration explains the major historical and political events of the last forty years that have contributed to the emergence and sustainment of the Hezbollah and relates them to the lives of two women, Zeinab and Khadige (Hajje Khadige Hirz), thus putting a face of human emotion to a topic often foreign to Western, non-Muslim audiences.

Like many women revolutionaries in the Middle East, Khadige left her husband from an arranged marriage when she was 14, to seek a political and intellectual life. The Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982 touched her personally and she was imprisoned for a year. Her religion and total surrender to God helped her through the ordeal. Zeinab was a teenager in 1985 when the Hezbollah fought against other political parties in the areas it controlled, deciding what was licit and what illicit, imposing Islamic moral standards and offering promise of immortality through martyrdom. Now a mother of young boys she takes one along to an art exhibit where politico-religious portraits are shown. Art, it appears, serves only the function of realistic documentation of religious figures and those who martyr themselves for the opportunity of achieving political fame through religion.

Martyrs are the heart of the Hezbollah system. Khadige laments that "God is not satisfied with me because none of my children has died as a martyr." Another mother whose son's suicide video is shown while the family watches it with pride, expresses her delight that her son died in the "right way".

Yet, there is a sense of a contradiction between religious belonging and national identity and while both women embrace Islam and Khadige believes that what happens to her is entirely God's will while Zeinab has organized her life according to Islam, they both admit the fierce inequity of men and women in their society. Khadige believes that it is important to liberate Palestine first and then work on conflicts between men and women while Zeinab acknowledges that women are treated unfairly and is embarassed when her young sons reveal that they want to be doctors when they grow up so that they can purchase big houses and Mercedes cars.

This portrait of two women in the Hezbollah is a very well balanced look at the various factors of their commitment and an excellent historical primer on the social and political conditions contributing to this culture. Highly recommended for Academic areas revolving around Political Science, Middle-Eastern Studies and History, Women's Studies, and certainly for non-academic areas as it is culturally enlightening.

Highly Recommended