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As for the "real" profile of your so-called "terrorist," come with me to the Beirut suburbs or to the villages of South Lebanon or to some parts of the Bekaa Valley. I will introduce you to many of my friends who eat the same food you do, watch the same movies, share your humanity, and yet happen to be staunch adherents to a group called Hezbollah. Contrary to many corrupt and double-faced political entities and ideologies in the Middle East, Hezbollah have been active in their social and educational programs, coherent in their message, and uncompromising in their political and militant stance. Whatever one's opinion is of the group—and I, for one, am not a fan—in a country where war and occupation have often left a vacuum in entire regions of government, it is these characteristics of Hezbollah that have made it so popular to a majority of the most underprivileged, who happen also to be the most sizeable community in the Lebanese population: Shiites. The reality is that practically every man in almost every family in these regions belongs to the militant group that was first born in an effort to resist Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon in 1982. After having breakfast with them in Beirut, you and I would then sip on a strong black coffee on the plastic chairs of a sidewalk café in the Beirut suburbs and reflect on the tragedy that when Israel and some Western nations promised to get rid of Hezbollah, they effectively vowed the extermination of about a third of the Lebanese population! About 700,000 have been displaced from the South, the Bekaa Valley in East Lebanon, and the Beirut suburbs, and have taken refuge north and east of Beirut. Seven hundred thousand out of a total Lebanese population of 3.5 million, 20 percent of the population, mostly Shiites, are now being cared for and given refuge by mostly Christian schools, churches, and other humanitarian organizations. This is the story of the Good Samaritan at a mega scale! And to think that this is the outcome of a strategy that meant to rouse anti-Hezbollah feelings among the Lebanese population and government. Talk about a failed strategy! Of course, this has happened so many times before that any thoughtful tactician would have learned the lesson by now, but military muscle is always too hedonistic and narcissistic to listen to the voice of reason and history.

Let me get apocalyptic for a few lines. Last week, David Gushee noted the "disturbing," yet apparently "reliable," reports that Iran's president, Ahmadinejad, adhered to "an apocalyptic form of Islam that envisions such massive destruction as a prelude to the return of the hidden Imam who will then guide all humanity." As a matter of fact, mainstream Islamic eschatology can be read in numerous classical Islamic works. Aall agree that at the end times the "hidden Imam" or "expected Mahdi" will return, accompanied by Prophet 'Issa (the Qur'anic name for Jesus), and standing over Jerusalem, together they will establish the "true religion," punish unbelievers, and rule over God's "faithful." So the fact that Ahmadinejad would believe this is not surprising. What is frightening, however, is that, as Gushee points out in his "Open Letter" of July 21, the "apocalyptic messianism" of an astounding number of evangelical Christians also involves "elaborate end-times scenarios that conveniently involve apocalyptic warfare in the Middle East," and these scenarios are playing right into the hands of Israeli politics (to use a neutral term). Looking at these two currents in parallel, we actually get the impression that we are watching two screenwriters attempting to outwit one another, by giving free play to their imagination in developing the gloomiest scenario possible. Unfortunately for those of us living in the Middle East, the part we are given is to be mere props in this massive nightmare production.

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July (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50