‘Miracle’ tree brings world to Hezbollah

A dead, shellacked poplar trunk somehow had sprouted leaves after it was adorned with the names of the 43 fighters for the militant Islamic group Hezbollah. They were killed in the war with Israel last year, a conflict that left hundreds of Lebanese dead and destroyed huge swaths of the country’s Shiite Muslim heartland, perhaps setting the country’s most economically disadvantaged sect back even further.

“Can you have any doubts now?” the well-educated, trilingual professional asks as she stares, eyes aglitter, at the bright green leaves wiggling out of the dark brown tree trunk.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah declared the war a “divine victory” for Lebanese guerrillas fighting against one of the most powerful armed forces in the Middle East. With Tuesday’s anniversary of the war’s end approaching, Hezbollah pulled out all the stops in reinforcing its version of history.

In mostly Shiite Southern Beirut, a ruined district of the capital subjected to Israeli airstrikes last summer, Hezbollah has opened a museum called the “House of the Spider” to celebrate the “divine” victory and demonise Israeli armed forces.

It includes the re-creation of a Hezbollah guerrilla base, with mannequins in camouflage uniforms looking at maps of northern Israel and punching Israeli grid coordinates into laptop computers. Visitors navigate past the wreckage of Israeli tanks, captured Israeli walkie-talkies, a downed helicopter and bloodied boots. A TV screen loops a video game in which a Hezbollah fighter hunts down enemy armour. Footage of exploding Israeli tanks and crying soldiers plays inside a darkened theater.

And then there is the miracle tree. A Hezbollah official, who gives his name only as “Abu Mohammed,” stands on a stage inside the chapel and tells the story of the tree as visitors walk in.

Hezbollah officials, he explains, commissioned an artist to make a monument for the war dead of this border town. The artist carved their names on wooden placards and nailed them to the tree trunk. He sprayed it with chemicals and a placed it on a block.

Suddenly, about two weeks before the one-year anniversary of the war, the monument began sprouting leaves, even though it wasn’t getting any water or sunlight, Abu Mohammed says.

Exactly 43 leaves sprang to life, one for each of the town’s combat casualties, he maintains.

Hezbollah’s Al Manar television began spreading word of the extraordinary phenomenon, and the visitors flocked to see a miracle.

“Let this be proof to all those who doubt the divine victory,” Abu Mohammed says over the public address system. “The pure blood of the martyrs has watered the Earth.”