Beit al Ankabout

There was a charred Israeli helicopter frozen in a nose dive in the middle of the gallery. Adjacent to the rows of six foot boards detailing the tank, aircraft, and helicopter arsenal of the Israeli military, a flat screen featured excerpts from SPECIAL FORCES 2. It's like the James Bond video game, except the setting is the Lebanese-Israeli border and there are tanks. Roasted TVs and a blasted mini-radio tower stood before a photographic backdrop of the blown-out Al Manar headquarters. The voice of a frantic journalist rang from the corpsed radio tower. Inside the fractured television set, there was another smaller TV reeling continuous Al Manar broadcasts from last summer's war. The time stamp was 3:56pm. I pulled out my cellphone: 3:58pm. At the center of this media peninsula in Beit al Ankabout (House of the Spider, or Spiderweb) was an architect's rendering of the Dubai-esque Al Manar headquarters—probably already under construction somewhere in Haret Hreik, much of which the IDF demolished last summer.

With massive limbs of Israeli tanks nestled into the ground and Hizbullah yellow banners festooned outside, the structure of the entrance outside echoes a kitschy Florida golf course. The path leads "underground" through bunkers with costumed mannequins in what amounts to a Hizbullah dorm room, complete with laptop, book shelf, and a poster(s) of Hassan Nasrallah. The floor of the main exhibition hall is spotted with windows into the earth: embedded glass cases with numbered Israeli helmets, guns, walkie talkies, uniforms, and camcorders. At eye level we gaze upon a series of photographs of protests against Israel's invasion of Lebanon in Paris and of a bride and groom forcing smiles as they pose before ruins of their home in post-war Dahyeh.

In Beit al Ankabout, the story of the Israeli military in the 2006 war is discrete and linear. It falls to Hizbullah, its ghosts entombed beneath our feet. On the other hand, the story of Hizbullah is teleological and multi-dimensional. We journey through the museum from training bunkers to media peninsula to SPECIAL FORCES 2 to the grand finale in the audio-visual hall: like spectators at the Bellagio watershow, we stand against a balustrade while clips of exploding tanks and grieving Israeli soldiers flash on the vast screen. Every so often, the screen would go to black while the booming sound and light show illuminated what was between us and the screen: another embedded Israeli tank, but this time with some faceless, left for dead uniformed mannequins. There was a full crowd of families, couples, friends (free admission); and, when the montage concluded with a crescendo of a victorious Nasrallah (only his 2nd appearance in the museum), everyone applauded.

The chills ran down my spine, and my stomach fell to gravity. I looked at my friend V, and she was recovering from a similar phenomenon. The exploding soundscape (and obviously the imagery) of the grand finale shook up a hurricane of war memories—visceral and fresh. The tension climaxes, and Nasrallah thunders into the scene. Just as he launches the emotional wave into a tsunami, he ends it.

He ends it. Nasrallah ends it.
And we walk back out into the humid sunlight to resume our normal lives.