Resistance: My Life for Lebanon [Paperback]

Whether you think of Suha Beshara as a freedom fighter or a worthless terrorist, there is one truth about this woman: that she sets a precedent in women's role in the Arab world. She stood up for her beliefs as she ended the male monopoly of all kinds of military activity in the oriental societies.

Suha, a supporter of the Lebanese Communist Party, was recruited during the days of Israeli occupation of Lebanon to assassinate her compatriot, Antoine Lahad, who defected from the army and formed his own pro-Israeli militia known as the South Lebanese Army (SLA).

The assassination attempt failed and Suha was eventually detained and taken to the notorious Khiam Prison, where SLA detectives tortured their subjects causing the death of many of them. Evidently Suha survived.

The book is written in a chronological context and is concluded by the time Suha was released in 1998. It would have been very much in place, however, had Suha decided to look back at her violent activity and her decade in prison and gave her assessment in retrospect. Suha claims that her violent experience later changed her into a peacenik while her stay in prison taught her the love of life and patience.

Despite the drawback, the book is a primary source and a firsthand account of a witness who once contributed to the making of news in Lebanon and Israel in the 1980s.

Suha's book brings to the forefront the perspective of a silent South Lebanese population that had lived under Israeli occupation.

Unfortunately, there is very little literature about what these southern Lebanese locals thought and believed at the time away from the divergent claims and perspectives of the two contending parties mainly Israel and Hizbullah. This volume covers particularly this area.

Having grown up in the war in Beirut I was particularly fascinated reading about Soha Bechara's experiences, in part because they were so utterly different from mine--though very traumatized by the war, I was nevertheless sheltered in that I did not participate in it. I think this book is a powerful and compelling evocation of life in war and the process of transforming a young, idealistic pacifist into a murderer. (I use the word murderer because as much as I myself hated the SLA, the occupation, all of it, I cannot bring myself to call shooting a man point blank in the chest after months of planning, anything other than murder, no matter the cause.) This is where for me the book is missing something essential, and that is self-reflection--she describes the events of her life and evokes the difficulty and confusion of entering this violent world, but she does not look back from her new vantage as someone living in Paris and writing a book. Does she still rue limiting herself to only 2 bullets? Does she believe her operation made a difference, and why? Does she believe it wouldn't make a difference? Does she have any regret, or does she still feel as passionately as she did at 16, when she was striving so hard to join the resistance? I was left wondering who she is now. As someone who abhors violence as much as she claims to throughout the book, I needed to hear about how she reconciles that stance with what she did and even more particularly what was done to her--the accounts of her torture are not followed by any reflection on its effect, and one gets the impression she went in and came out the exact same person, which I find impossible to believe. I needed to understand how she reconciles everything she did and all that happened now, in the present, in her entirely different life, for the book to feel complete.

That is not at all to say I wouldn't recommend this book; I read it in one sitting, riveted.

Soha Bechara's story, "Resistance: My Life for Lebanon" is a fascinating account of a young girl's life of war and brutal imprisonment in Lebanon.

Soha was born in 1967 in Deir Mimas, a village in South Lebanon. Growing up, she was an energetic, enthusiastic and cheerful girl - a "lover of life", as she describes. Life was beautiful for the Becharas in her childhood years - merry family gatherings, extravagant parties, and the enjoyment of the picturesque country side of Deir Mimas. However, the commencement of the civil war in 1975 transformed such a gifted life into years of madness and bloodshed.

Her father Fawaz was a loyal and steadfast member of the Lebanese Communist Party. Soha adopted his philosophies on politics and nationalism. Throughout the frenzy of the civil war, with the Muslims and Christians clashing, something had become clear to her: "Lebanon had only one real enemy, one occupying power: the state of Israel. To my mind, the civil war was just a consequence of this situation". In 1982, she decided to actively join the resistance against Israel.

At first, Soha helped with intelligence gathering and logistics support. In 1986, she was assigned the mission of assassinating Antoine Lahad, head of the South Lebanon Army - the collaborators of Israel and traitors of Lebanon. She managed to win the trust of Lahad and Lahad's wife, Minerva, by posing as her aerobics instructor. On the night of the operation, while having coffee at the Lahad house, Soha took her handgun from her purse and shot Lahad twice in the chest. She was arrested and taken to Khiam prison, Israel's illegal torture den of resistance fighters in South Lebanon. There she spent 10 years of her life, six in solitary confinement.

"Resistance: My Life for Lebanon" is an interesting, memorable book that certainly puts things into perspective. It simplifies the political issues of Lebanon during the 80s - the issues were not complex; the overwhelming problem was Israel. For a person new to Lebanon's political history over the last 30 years, I think the book provides a good overview of the events that unfolded, and why.

I would have liked to read more about Soha's emotions while in Khiam, and especially after being released. Did her experience change her as a person? What was her opinion of the Lebanon Israel conflict after Khiam? Is she still proud of what she did? I certainly am, and I am sure many, many Lebanese today feel the same.

I strongly recommend this book - it's an amazing, inspirational story that will keep you turning the page in anticipation.

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