Interview with anarchist militants in Lebanon

IndyMedia broadcasts an interview with anarchist militants who undertook organizing and delivering aid to villages in southern Lebanon. Their action took place before the ceasefire and in the interview they speak of being made targets by Israel and, mistakenly, by Hezbollah.

The interview shows both courage and dedication on the parts of the R.A.S.H. militants, and stands as a concrete example of independent, autonomous, and libertarian solidarity.

From interview introduction:
“7 Lebanese youth working with the R.A.S.H., the antifascist Red Anarchist Skinhead collective in Europe decided to return to Lebanon to help with relief work as the death toll in their country mounted. Within a few days they were risking their lives walking through southern Lebanon with 80lbs of food and water on their backs to arrive at villages near the Israeli border that humanitarian organizations had deemed unreachable. With Israeli missiles falling all around them, they supplied food to starving people unable to evacuate their villages.

21 year old Hassam is a part of the group who on their own in spontaneous acts of mutual aid continued to provide aid in the most dangerous regions of Lebanon.”

In the interview Hasam states aspects that motivated their collective’s effort,

“There were people who weren’t able to leave (the southern villages). And those were the people with the most need… We choose to do this on a volunteer basis to show the people who we were helping that we are not expecting from them anything, were doing this really to help. It’s not like if we are doing this for political conditions like it’s happening in Beirut…we wanted people to see that there was still hope… there are people who are accepting to take risks, accepting to sacrifice their life…”

“It’s about standing up and doing something. Everyone can do something… people in the USA can do something, they can make a stand…to show that they wont support Israel or send military stuff… all our lives we are having jobs we hate to buy stuff we don’t need, there’s people dying everyday there are tragedies all around the world…”