Terror Tour

After Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers last week, cross-border violence has escalated, with Israel conducting air strikes in the Hezbollah-controlled southern region of Lebanon. In 2001, Negar Akhavi chronicled her travels through “Hezbollahland” for Slate. She visited the Hezbollah Museum, formerly the Khiam prison run by the South Lebanese Army, where wounds from the country’s brutal civil war remain fresh. At the museum’s gift shop, stocked with yellow Hezbollah memorabilia, Akhavi found herself reluctantly financing the organization: “The children’s section (yikes!) featured coloring and comic books, one of which I had to bring home. … Inside was a child’s poem about Al-Quds (Jerusalem) with an illustration, as if drawn by a child, that depicted a little boy throwing a rock at a soldier who is wearing a helmet emblazoned with the Star of David. The soldier has a large, bandaged hook-nose, and he’s wincing in fear.”