The Life of Martyrdom

I arrived in New York City a week ago. I immediately went to a protest in Astoria, Queens. It started in “Little Egypt” and weaved through the immigrant neighborhood there.

It ended with a banner — “Glory Glory to our Martyrs” held up before a memorial in a waterfront park with Jesus Christ’s words etched in stone: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Above was a figure with sword in hand.

I then spent much of this week at the United Nation where “diplomats” talk and then talk about how talking doesn’t actually change anything and then cut self-serving deals they avoid talking about.

Hasan Nasrallah acted. He will be remembered long after virtually every other leader of our era is either forgotten or rendered despicable.

Indeed, the “international community” made “decisions” — like calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, without teeth. Hezbollah and Ansar Allah effectively see themselves as providing the teeth.

Nasrallah argued, only military strength can provide protection, since US and Israel disregard international law

Now some weep: “He is an immortal. … Living inside each one of us.”

And it was from the United Nations that Netanyahu, where diplomats walked out on him, would apparently order the bombing that slaughtered hundreds including Nasrallah.

Every time there is a legal move against Israel, it inflicts yet another atrocity.

The Shia of Lebanon, the poorest group of a tiny Arab country, produced Hezbollah. It has challenged Israel as Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf states sold out. His speeches, rigorous and full of wit, were listened to like nothing else and transcended sect.

He became leader of Hezbollah after a founder of the group, Abbas al-Musawi, was assassinated by Israel in 1992 and if anything he proved more capable. He was brilliant in 2006. I’ve had a mixed assessment of him since Oct; head and shoulders above other Arab “leaders” — but that’s not saying much. I sensed that if you’re going to poke Israel you have to hurt it. An all-out attack just after Oct 7 — by Hezbollah and Iran — may have compelled a sort of melt down in Israel. Just after Oct 7, you had immediate visits to Israel by Biden et al. telling Israeli Jews they had nowhere else to go. The Empire feared a mass migration out of Israel. I don’t know if Hezbollah (and Iran) could have acted in that moment to trigger that, history doesn’t give its alternatives.

Israel’s mantra that Iran is the author of solidarity with the Palestinians is a big lie, as As’ad AbuKhalil noted, Nasrallah’s attacks on Israel were contrary to the Iranian will that wanted to distance itself.

Part of Nasrallah’s doom was paved by loads of propaganda, conflating armed resistance with “terrorism”. Most recently Hezbollah was smeared as being responsible for a strike that killed Arab children on the Golan Heights. Even critics of Israel ignored Hezbollah’s recent strike on Israel’s assassination factory.

But it may not be doom. The ramifications of martyrdom could be unending.

I was not surprised by Nasrallah’s killing, having listened to his final speech which foreshadowed it. But he has had this refrain for many years. “A movement whose leader is martyred will not be defeated” he said in 1995.

Bashir Saade, author of Hizbullah and the Politics of Remembrance has said: “What I proposed to call the politics of remembrance is at the heart of the production of coherence, where Hizbullah produces understanding of its political environment and of itself by constantly rearticulating the past, but also by experiencing this conception of time in different ways. Hizbullah remembers its past legacy, its martyrs, through a series of commemorations during the year, and this human heritage haunts a present by providing ideological coherence conducive to community building. Hizbullah has a long tradition of Islamo-Christian dialogue that owes a lot to the social environment in which the party develops.”

I remember my dad telling me how Nasrallah, prior to his son Hadi’s being killed by Israel, would recount how he felt a measure of embarrassment when he would meet with the families of martyrs. His own son’s killing seemed to focus him.

The notion that the death of someone like Nasrallah creates many more like him is perversely embraced by Israel in its genocidal “logic” — they become more people to kill.

But I would say that some were guilty of a glorification of armed struggle. Equating “the resistance” to “armed resistance”. There’s lots of forms of resistance to oppression. Writing, organizing, protesting, etc.

And many martyrs.

Gaza is filled with martyrs, I know just a few — like Refaat Alareer. And now Lebanon.

When Ayşenur Eygi was recently killed by the Israeli military, the International Solidarity Movement quickly declared: “She is now one of many martyrs in this struggle.” But in its coverage of her killing, Democracy Now, for example, didn’t use the term.

Norman Finkelstein’s most recent book is titled Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom.

Nir Rosen’s book on Iraq is The Triumph of the Martyrs.

Rosen’s title echoes that of one of the most important books of the 19th Century: François-René de Chateaubriand’s The Martyrs, Or, The Triumph Of The Christian Religion. And of course there’s Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and much else. And obviously Jesus and other martyrs of the New Testament such as Stephen.

Nor is martyrdom unique to the religious. Nathan Hale is regarded by American Revolutionary tradition as a hero and a martyr. He is supposed to have said before his death, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” a remark similar to one in Joseph Addison’s play Cato.

Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” may as well be the national motto of Palestine.

Of course, the establishment hopes that martyrs will be forgotten or misused. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the Kennedy brothers were killed with insufficient understanding or ramifications as to why. So far.

The notion of martyrdom seems at odds with a modern age to some even though Christianity and the U.S. were arguably built on it. Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan would comment "I think in Christianity that something very great has been lost.” He was thinking of self-immolation, adding: “Jesus' death, I think, in a very deep sense can be called a self-immolation.”

One clear example of that is Matt Nelson, who immolated himself on Sept. 11 across from the Israeli consulate in Boston. The media attention to his immolation was trivial. And the Boston police effectively hindered any reporting on it.

I was falsely told that he was still alive by the Boston police on Sept. 18. In fact, he had died on Sept. 15. The false information put out by the Boston police was seemingly unending.

The Cape Cod Times reports: “Nelson, 45, lived in Centerville and Hyannis for much of his life, and attended Centerville Elementary School and Barnstable High School, according to a long-time friend Owen Flood. Most recently, said Matthew Bailey, another close friend of Nelson's, Nelson lived in Chatham, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”

Life is burned and demeaned by ignoring what sacrifice someone has made, and why. And life is honored by hearing of martyrs, for no one knows what might rise from their ashes.