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Since ongoing tensions between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon boiled into open conflict, Israeli planes have occasionally substituted other messages in place of bombs and missiles. Propaganda leaflets and fliers now flutter to the ground as if Lebanon has momentarily found itself in a perverted tickertape parade. It's just that so few people seem to be celebrating.

Days back, Israeli planes dropped fliers on the soccer field at the American University-Beirut. One of the canisters that was supposed to open in mid-air and scatter the info far and wide came down intact with a thud. Many of the Americans raced after the fliers, while their Lebanese classmates mostly just stood there with indifference. Perhaps before she even knew what she was doing and why she was doing it, one of my friends had managed to collect a bunch, and she passed one along to me. I feel this flier goes a way toward illustrating the stark contrast between life in Beirut proper, where it is still possible to have typical, peacetime moments in any given day, and life in the bombarded South, where it just isn't.

The leaflet is pink and depicts Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, as a snake amidst a field of cowering people. Incidentally, Israel's artists must have sat this one out, because it looks like it was drawn while inside a moving fighter jet. The text above the picture poses the question, "The resistance protects the nation...?" And then answers, "No, it is hurting the nation!!!"

The people of downtown Beirut, although certainly enduring legitimate hardships, were given a cartoon and a rhetorical question. But the people of the southern cities and towns of Sidon, Tyre and Nabatiyeh and Beirut suburbs like Dahiyeh have been given a lot more than that.

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Maps:

Israel vs. Lebanon, popular places

Tags:

tactics , propaganda , lebanon , information , war , israel , beirut , flyers