By Mazin Sidahmed for The Daily Star
Lebanese women throw flowers as Hezbollah supporters carry the coffin of Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of Imad Mughniyeh, a top Hezbollah operative assassinated in 2008 in Damascus. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
GHOBEIRI, Lebanon: Beirut’s southern suburbs were swarmed with people Monday paying their condolences and showing support during the funeral parade of Jihad Mughniyeh, who was killed during an Israeli airstrike in the Golan Heights in Syria the previous day.
“Goodbye you martyr, son of Imad,” Hezbollah official Ali Abbas bellowed at the crowd gathered in Ghobeiri. “Let the entire world see how we bid farewell to our martyrs!”
The 25-year-old Mughniyeh’s death held symbolic weight with the party as he is the son of the deceased Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, a revered figure.
Thousands of people participated in the march. Abbas rallied the crowd from the back of a van mounted with loudspeakers, as Mughniyeh’s coffin – draped in the Hezbollah flag – was carried above the sea of people following.
The stream of chants never wavered as Abbas seamlessly moved between screaming, “Death to Israel!” into “We will do anything for you Hussein!” – referring to revered Shiite figure and grandson of Prophet Mohammad, Hussein Ibn-Ali – with Hezbollah anthems woven in-between.
The procession carried an air of pride and defiance. Very few tears were shed and the attendees seemed almost joyful. “Today is an honorable day for us,” a man who did not wish to be named told The Daily Star. “When we have a martyr we become stronger. We grow. Of course there are costs to this fight, we will obviously take hits, but we thank God.”
Confetti and rice rained down on the parade from the overhanging balconies as Hezbollah flags held by fighters wearing military fatigues ruffled in the afternoon wind. Brief moments of celebratory gunfire were peppered throughout.
Taming the crowd proved a difficult task for the security in place as more and more people tried to get closer to the coffin. Security officials – some all-black clad wearing keffiyehs and scarves bearing images of Mughniyeh and his father draped around their necks – locked their arms and formed lines to try and bring order to the march.
Many in the crowd were certain that Hezbollah would strike Israel back for this.
“There’s no doubt that this was a cowardly act carried out by the Zionist enemy,” Samir Shakar told The Daily Star. “But this act will be reversed on the land of the Zionists.”
Mughniyeh follows in the footsteps of his father and both his uncles – Jihad and Fouad Mughniyeh – who were all killed by Israel. His uncle and namesake Jihad Mughniyeh was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs in 1984.
His father Imad, who was on the United States’ most-wanted list for attacks on Israeli and Western targets, was assassinated in a car bombing in Damascus in 2008.
Imad Mughniyeh was revered highly by Hezbollah supporters and his funeral procession was one of the largest in the southern suburbs in recent history.
Following in his father’s footsteps Jihad Mughniyeh was also heavily involved in the party.
Mughniyeh led Hezbollah’s student body when he attended the Lebanese American University and his university friends described him as a sociable, charismatic leader who was always intent on fighting for the party.
“Everybody has plans A and B and C for his life but for Jihad, martyrdom was the plan A, B and C,” Mahdi Berjaoui, a close friend of Mughniyeh’s and representative of the Hezbollah student party at LAU prior to him, told The Daily Star.
Mughniyeh wasted no time working toward his goal. A profile of him that aired on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV showed him performing weapons training during his university years.
He was killed alongside five other Hezbollah fighters and a senior Iranian military commander, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali-Allah Dadi, by an Israeli helicopter attack in the Golan Heights. Al-Manar TV reported that they were carrying out a reconnaissance mission to explore cooperation between the Nusra Front and Israel.
The parade ended with Mughniyeh’s coffin being carried into the Rawdat al-Shahidayn cemetery, where he was buried alongside his father and two uncles.
The young Mughniyeh’s desire for martyrdom was echoed by many of the funeral goers.
“We all ask for martyrdom, this is what we want,” a man named Youssef told The Daily Star during the procession. “This is like a wedding day for us. This is an open war. The goodness is coming.”