Loubna Mrie: “When Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed last month, my social-media feeds lit up with images and videos from Syria, my home country. In some areas, including Idlib and the suburbs of Aleppo, residents celebrated late into the night, blasting music and raising banners calling for Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator, to be next. People handed out sweets; celebratory messages, memes, and phone calls flooded my WhatsApp. But the news channels broadcasting from just across the border captured something else: a wave of grief sweeping southern Lebanon. [https://theatln.tc/jsZjyEGg](https://theatln.tc/jsZjyEGg)
“The jubilation on one side of the line and the mourning on the other reflect our region’s deep complexity … The Syrians who welcomed Nasrallah’s assassination were not exactly celebrating the Israelis who carried it out. But many of us felt that for once, the world had tipped in our favor … Assad—and his father, the dictator Hafez al-Assad, before him—had made Syria the crucial geographical and political link between Iran and Hezbollah. The Lebanese Shiite militia could not have survived without the weapons, fighters, and funds that Tehran supplied by way of Syria. But in 2011, circumstances in Syria threatened this arrangement. Peaceful protests challenged the country’s autocracy; Assad met them brutally, and the country’s opposition transformed into an armed rebellion. Nasrallah saw little choice but to defend his supply line and political network. Hezbollah justified this intervention by framing it as a war against extremists, a fight against chaos, and a defense of Syria’s sovereignty against Western-backed militants. But on the ground, Hezbollah wasn’t just fighting armed factions; it was waging a war against the Syrian people.
“….Many who endured the siege of their cities, only to have Hezbollah agents mock and question their suffering before international eyes, have little ambivalence about celebrating Nasrallah’s death. They view the Hezbollah leader’s fate with a tragic sense of justice: Finally, someone whose hands were stained with blood, and who seemed untouchable, was killed.
“But as the prominent Syrian intellectual and dissident Yassin Al Haj Saleh often admonished, looking at the world solely through a Syrian lens only isolates us. For many of us Syrians who were active in the uprising and now live in exile, that warning has resonated since Nasrallah’s death. Both on social media and in private conversations, we question whether the justice felt in Nasrallah’s demise should be tempered with concern for the broader regional suffering. We ask: Is it moral to welcome Nasrallah’s killing if the cost is the destruction of Lebanon—a country already reeling from economic collapse, political mismanagement, and the Beirut port explosion just a few years ago? Nasrallah is dead—but for many Syrians who oppose Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed thousands of civilians, the manner of his death made the event hard to celebrate.
>But in 2011, circumstances in Syria threatened this arrangement. Peaceful protests challenged the country’s autocracy; Assad met them brutally, and the country’s opposition transformed into an armed rebellion.
“Peaceful” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. If the writer can’t even acknowledge some of the unsavory aspects of the “armed rebellion,” does she have anything of value to say? Surely it’s at least worth mentioning, considering the biggest benefactor of the “uprising,” Washington, subsequently backed off over fears of supporting militant jihadists and other assorted extremists.
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Loubna Mrie: “When Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed last month, my social-media feeds lit up with images and videos from Syria, my home country. In some areas, including Idlib and the suburbs of Aleppo, residents celebrated late into the night, blasting music and raising banners calling for Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator, to be next. People handed out sweets; celebratory messages, memes, and phone calls flooded my WhatsApp. But the news channels broadcasting from just across the border captured something else: a wave of grief sweeping southern Lebanon. [https://theatln.tc/jsZjyEGg](https://theatln.tc/jsZjyEGg)
“The jubilation on one side of the line and the mourning on the other reflect our region’s deep complexity … The Syrians who welcomed Nasrallah’s assassination were not exactly celebrating the Israelis who carried it out. But many of us felt that for once, the world had tipped in our favor … Assad—and his father, the dictator Hafez al-Assad, before him—had made Syria the crucial geographical and political link between Iran and Hezbollah. The Lebanese Shiite militia could not have survived without the weapons, fighters, and funds that Tehran supplied by way of Syria. But in 2011, circumstances in Syria threatened this arrangement. Peaceful protests challenged the country’s autocracy; Assad met them brutally, and the country’s opposition transformed into an armed rebellion. Nasrallah saw little choice but to defend his supply line and political network. Hezbollah justified this intervention by framing it as a war against extremists, a fight against chaos, and a defense of Syria’s sovereignty against Western-backed militants. But on the ground, Hezbollah wasn’t just fighting armed factions; it was waging a war against the Syrian people.
“….Many who endured the siege of their cities, only to have Hezbollah agents mock and question their suffering before international eyes, have little ambivalence about celebrating Nasrallah’s death. They view the Hezbollah leader’s fate with a tragic sense of justice: Finally, someone whose hands were stained with blood, and who seemed untouchable, was killed.
“But as the prominent Syrian intellectual and dissident Yassin Al Haj Saleh often admonished, looking at the world solely through a Syrian lens only isolates us. For many of us Syrians who were active in the uprising and now live in exile, that warning has resonated since Nasrallah’s death. Both on social media and in private conversations, we question whether the justice felt in Nasrallah’s demise should be tempered with concern for the broader regional suffering. We ask: Is it moral to welcome Nasrallah’s killing if the cost is the destruction of Lebanon—a country already reeling from economic collapse, political mismanagement, and the Beirut port explosion just a few years ago? Nasrallah is dead—but for many Syrians who oppose Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed thousands of civilians, the manner of his death made the event hard to celebrate.
Read more: [https://theatln.tc/jsZjyEGg](https://theatln.tc/jsZjyEGg)
>But in 2011, circumstances in Syria threatened this arrangement. Peaceful protests challenged the country’s autocracy; Assad met them brutally, and the country’s opposition transformed into an armed rebellion.
“Peaceful” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. If the writer can’t even acknowledge some of the unsavory aspects of the “armed rebellion,” does she have anything of value to say? Surely it’s at least worth mentioning, considering the biggest benefactor of the “uprising,” Washington, subsequently backed off over fears of supporting militant jihadists and other assorted extremists.