Apartment buildings turned to rubble, their hollowed-out corpses testament to the destruction wrought upon them; street corners covered with debris, a carpet of broken concrete and rocks.
Welcome to Dahieh, a southern suburb of Lebanese capital Beirut.
Meet Sheikh Moussa, 70 years old.
He refused to abandon his family home, his for 45 years, despite heartbreaking stories of loss from the predominantly Shia Muslim neighbourhood that has borne the brunt of Israel missile strikes.
Advertisement – Scroll to continue
More devastation rained down on Dahieh last week; a barrage of 100+ Israeli missiles, shrieks drowning out the US-Iran ceasefire’s call, slamming into the area. A “massacre”, Lebanon said.
Yet Moussa remained.
Tawakkul al-Allah – the Islamic concept of absolute trust on Allah.
Sheikh Moussa on the roof of his family home
In May 1982 Israeli aircraft attacked Lebanon and captured Beirut. Moussa remained. He led his family to safety, but he returned. The guardian of the family home and a treasure trove within, priceless artifacts and paintings, and hunting trophies, and a cabinet bursting with trophies from his time as a golfer.
“I am here… I’ve been here for almost 45 years. I am here… my family is here. Everything in this house, everything is a memory,” Moussa told NDTV. “Never really leave… never really leave.”
Moussa with a room full of stuffed and mounted animals
“Maybe one, two, or three days when I take my family (to safety). Then I come back,” Moussa, in a grey t-shirt and sitting on a comfy couch, said. He worked then for a West Asia-based airline.
Moussa woke one morning to hear of mass murder.
In September 1982 as many as 7,000 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese, were killed in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila areas. Refugee camps reportedly targeted by an Israel-backed Christian armed group.
Moussa with his cabinet full of golf trophies.
Israel’s stated aim for its Lebanon campaign is to completely dismantle the Hezbollah, a militia founded and funded by Iran. Part of its ‘axis of resistance’, including Houthis in Yemen, that which is helping Tehran stretch the battlefield.
Moussa was not convinced.
“Before Hezbollah… Hezbollah came in 1982… Israel is here. In 1978, no Hezbollah (but) Israel bomb all Lebanon, Dahieh.”
Forty-four years later, having seen off missile strikes, drone attacks, and ground incursions, he has had enough. “There should be peace now… but I don’t know. Nobody knows what Israel wants. This is the problem of Israel.”
The Dahieh doctrine
Sheikh Moussa’s home. The Dahieh neighbourhood. These stand, what is left of them, as proof of Israel’s controversial Dahieh doctrine, a military strategy that says ‘kill civilians, destroy civilian infrastructure’ in a war.
Created by ex-Israel military commander General Gadi Eizenkot, who said: “Israel should target economic interests and centres of civilian power” so the enemy is forced to sue for peace.
A missile strikes a building in Dahieh. Photo posted on X by @anadoluimages
It was so-named after the Israel military pounded Dahieh almost to oblivion in the 2006 war, another episode in the ruin of Beirut that Moussa has seen off.
The doctrine has been called out. Richard A Falk, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights, as “an (obvious) violation of the most elementary norms of the law of war and of universal morality” and as a “doctrine of violence that needs to be called out by its proper name: state terrorism”.
Sheikh Moussa, standing on the roof of his family home, looked out over rubble-strewn Dahieh, awaiting the next round of Israeli missiles.
Dark days, horrific memories. “Tawakkul al-Allah… tawakkul al-Allah,” Moussa repeated to NDTV, thanking Allah for seeing him through these horrors and allowing him to smile.
🚨 BREAKING: Watch the full clip here ➤
