As part of our Radical Reads series, we talk to Elia Ayoub about his article, ‘Hezbollah: 10 Things You Need To Know’.
Welcome to the second installment of our Radical Reads series, where we discuss political texts – both old and new – that have either influenced the WCH project, or texts that we generally think that people involved in radical and working-class movements should be engaging with, discussing, and using to inform their activism.
In this episode, we talk to Elia Ayoub, a Lebanese activist and scholar of Palestinian heritage, about his recent article, ‘Hezbollah: 10 Things You Need To Know‘. In this article, Elia gives a fantastic insight into Hezbollah’s origins and its position within the various conflicts and connections that make up politics in the Middle East.
We discuss how Hezbollah came out of the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, the social and class composition of the organisation, and its relationship to other regimes in the Middle East as well as the Lebanese left and social movements.
Episode
- E97: Radical Reads – ‘Hezbollah: 10 Things You Need To Know’ – Available exclusively for our Patreon supporters
Listen to a preview of the episode below:
E97: [TEASER] Radical Reads – ‘Hezbollah: 10 Things You Need To Know’ – Working Class History
More information
- Read Elia’s article: ‘Hezbollah: 10 Things You Need To Know‘
- Check out Elia’s website: hauntalogies.net
- Listen to his fantastic podcast, The Fire These Times
- Timeline of people’s history stories about Lebanon
Glossary
- Sunni and Shia: the two main branches of Islam. Sunni Islam is the far larger of the two. Sunni Islam is the official religion of Saudi Arabia while Shia Islam is the official religion of Iran
- Hassan Nasrallah: former general-secretary of Hezbollah until his assassination by Israel earlier this year
- Bashar al-Assad: President of Syria since July 2000, when he took over from his dad, Hafez al-Assad, who had himself been President since 1971. Within these 50+ years of dictatorship run by father and son, Syria occupied Lebanon for almost 30 years, which Elia will speak more about. The occupation spanned almost the entirety of Hafez’s reign, starting in 1976 and only ending when Bashar withdrew in 2005
- The PLO: Palestine Liberation Organisation. Made up of a number of largely secular nationalist groups and is the official representative of the Palestinian people recognised by the UN and Israel. However, while in the past the PLO called for the dissolution of the State of Israel and took part in armed actions against it (and some constituent members still do), it is often seen as having been coopted due to it official renunciation of political violence and recognition of Israel in the nineties. Notably, Hamas is not a member of the PLO
- The Muslim Brotherhood: a transnational conservative Sunni Muslim organisation originating in Egypt. In Palestine, the Muslim Brotherhood was fundamental in creating the institutional basis for what would become Hamas. In Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood is represented by a political party called the Islamic Group, which has its own military wing
- Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Syria: individuals and their descendents who were expelled from Palestine by Zionist paramilitaries during the 1948 war (also known as the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe; we cover this in more detail in our podcast episodes 86 and 87). There are around 174,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and 438,000 in Syria, all refused the right to return home by Israel and with diminished rights in their host countries (and, in the case of Syria, victims to a number of massacres at the hands of pro-Assad forces during the Syrian Civil War, such as the Yarmouk massacre in 2014)
- Sabra and Shatila massacre: 1982 massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut. Over forty hours, between 2000 and 3500 Palestinians were killed by Lebanese Christian forces. Done with the full support of the Israeli army, who had surrounded the camps to block Palestinians from leaving and allowed the Christian militias to enter at which point they carried out acts of murder, rape, and torture against the civilian population, including children as young as three or four
Acknowledgements
- Thanks to our patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Jamison D. Saltsman, Fernando López Ojeda, Jeremy Cusimano, and Nick Williams.
- The episode image depicts Hezbollah fighters at a ceremony. Credit: Ali Khamenei website (with additional design by WCH). Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
- Edited by Jesse French
- Our theme tune is Montaigne’s version of the classic labour movement anthem, ‘Bread and Roses’, performed by Montaigne and Nick Harriott, and mixed by Wave Racer. Download the song here, with all proceeds going to Medical Aid for Palestinians. More from Montaigne: website, Instagram, YouTube.
Subscribe
Listen and subscribe to WCH in the following ways: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Anchor | Castbox | Google Podcasts | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Podbean | Radio Public | RSS | Stitcher | TuneIn
