Simona Foltyn:
Another Hezbollah fighter is laid to rest near Lebanon’s Southern border, one of more than 100 killed since the group reopened this long-simmering front with Israel after the October 7 attacks.
Ali Moussa Barakat was killed in an Israeli strike. In Hezbollah’s words, he was martyred on the path to Jerusalem. His death is celebrated, rather than mourned, in a struggle they consider holy. There have been almost daily funerals like this, and they’re very public.
That’s in part because of Hezbollah’s deeply rooted culture of martyrdom, but also to show that the group is doing its part in supporting its ally Hamas in the war with Israel.
With every death, defiance grows towards Israel and its closest ally, the United States. “Death to America,” they shout, as they vow to fight on. Public expressions of grief are not welcome.
Monah Khalil, the mother of the slain fighter, does not shed a tear.
“We’re Hezbollah until our last breath,” she tells me, “and Israel knows the meaning of these words.”
Just like for Palestinians, for Lebanese too, this conflict didn’t start in October. Before Ali, Monah lost two other sons, the youngest when Israel last invaded Lebanon in 2006, old wounds torn open again and again in a decades-long war that doesn’t seem to end.
“They know that this is our land and we are within our rights,” she says, before another mourner jumps in.
