Hezbollah chief Nasrallah becomes Facebook star

Agencies
Beirut: Love him or loathe him, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has earned himself celebrity status – at least on Facebook, where a good 20 forums are dedicated to the Lebanese leader.
Many are favourable to Nasrallah but others are extremely hostile to the controversial figure, whose organisation is claimed by Israel to have a stockpile of 40,000 rockets.
“May God bless you Nasrallah,” “Nasrallah deserves to burn in hell,” “God is with you, oh symbol of dignity and the resistance,” and “Nasrallah is a … Nazi” are just some of the comments posted on forums dedicated to the charismatic 49-year-old, who has headed Hezbollah since 1992.
He has not appeared in public for over a year and resides in an undisclosed location in Beirut but his visibility on the social networking site could hardly be higher.
The Facebook groups have titles ranging from “Fans of Hassan Nasrallah” to “Support the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah,” and they are loaded with fervent comments in English, French, Hebrew, and Arabic, many from subscribers identifying themselves as Lebanese or Israelis.
In July 2006, Israel launched a devastating 34-day war against Hezbollah after the militant group kidnapped Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in a cross-border raid.
Three years on, the “July War” remains a hot topic for the online forums.
Visuals, too, send strong messages: some groups show a softer side of the Shiite leader, posting pictures of the child Nasrallah smiling in a garden by a bowl of fruit, or carrying a little girl in his arms. Others display cartoons of Nasrallah at the centre of a target.
Hezbollah maintains that people are “free to express what they want. If they want to express their love for Syed Nasrallah, the party will not forbid them to do that.”
The Lebanese themselves are divided on how they feel about Nasrallah.
For some Facebook members, the Hezbollah leader is “fighting to protect the fatherland against Americanisation, Zionism.”
“He is the cedar in our Lebanese flag, the master of all,” reads one post, in a reference to the symbolic tree of Lebanon.
But on a forum called “Hezbollah out of Lebanon right now!” members using screen names openly express their hostility towards the group, which they say is “a major threat to Lebanon”.
Israelis, too, have much to say on Hezbollah, which is blacklisted as a terrorist group by the Jewish state and Washington though its political wing forms a bloc of 13 MPs in Lebanon’s 128-seat parliament following elections in June.
“Look, before 2006, Lebanon was booming,” writes Avi. “Your economy was good, many tourists came and so on. After 2006 Lebanon was wasteland because of Nasrallah.”
A rush of heated reactions flowed in moments after Avi’s post surfaced, accusing his country of having “destroyed Lebanon” and slamming Israel as Lebanon’s “first” enemy.
“Avi, shut up and find yourself a hole where you can hide! May God protect Nasrallah!” writes Nihal. 

Courtesy of gulfnews.com