Osa Archivum Catalog

The Women of Hezbollah

Summary: Settled in the 1950's by the mostly Shiite community from the villages of southern Lebanon and the Beka Valley, Ramel el Ali and its community grew on the rubble of the civil war. By the early 1980's it had become one of the strongholds of the Hezbollah, an organization better known in the U.S. for its terrorist activities than the community service it provides to local Arab communities. The filmmaker returns to Beirut's southern suburb to examine the personal, social and political factors of two women’s commitment - Zeinab and Khadjie - to Hezbollah, the Islamic Party of God. Khadjie, who was raised in the Shia-dominated South, says she was only aware of two religious identities when she was young: Muslim and Jewish. Her impression of Jews was formed from parental threats. Forced by her mother and brother into an unhappy marriage, "an act of aggression, of rape," Khadjie bore six children before divorcing her husband. She then found intellectual stimulation and a passion for liberation in Islamic politics. Hezbollah provided the emotional fulfillment and identity she found nowhere else. Through interviews and other glimpses into the lives of these two women, Abi-Samra puts a human face on a topic largely unknown to Western audiences.

Item Type	Current Location	Call Number	Status	Shelving Location	Public Note
DVD-ROM	OSA Film Library	FL Record 2583	Available	-	-
Digital film	OSA Film Library	FL Record 2583 (HU_OSA_00004198.mp4)	Available		Access Copy, MP4 format