conspiracy to look for these larger patterns and a huge crime like this. i don't know what to make. it's disturbing to me because no matter where you stand on the conspiracy question there is absolutely no question that ray was there and he admitted he was there to the day he died he said he bought the weapon, bought the scope, she was there at the crime scene. they are stuck with james earl ray being there and yet a member of the family shook his hand and said you didn't do it, you have nothing to do with this. it's disturbing to me why they did that. that's their question, that's their business, and i think it has a lot to do with wanting that airing of the new trial that would have come if it had been possible. but by that point, he was dying of liver disease, there was a movement to try to get him a new liver. he was way down on the list because he was a convicted criminal and i think that, you

know, maybe members of the king family thought they could just get him a liver transplant it would be possible to get him back on trial and really finally here what he had to say because i think that in the and that is the most frustrating thing about this guy is that he went to his grave as the king family and everyone knows what a lot of secrets. secrets that we may never have all the answers to. thanks for your question and so much for listening tonight. [applause] ..

>> up next from the new york public library in manhattan, thanassis cambanis talked about the rise and popularity of hamas in lebanon. >> that's a pleasure to be here. thank you for coming. it's an exciting period of time to be someone that focused on the middle east. that sort of alarmed me to realize that i have been doing this for a decade. which makes me start to feel old.

this last month and a half has been a tremendous time of change in the arab world and the the region that i've been focusing on for a long time. it sort of expands the ambet of what we're talking about when we talk about hezbollah and the idea that it's been successful. it's spreading throughout the arab world. by way of my introduction to hezbollah, i came from a slightly different vantage point than most people that focus on the arab's conflict. i was living in iraq for three years after the invasion and focusing most of my coverage as a reporter on the rise of shiite parties. and the years that i spent with street activist who were building youth organization time and time again people would say to me, our model for what we're doing is hezbollah in lebanon. you know, the way we're organizing our political party,

the social movement we're putting together, our new health care system, all of the things that we're trying to build. we're trying to do what hezbollah has done in lebanon here in iraq. i started traveling further in the arab world. hearing this over and over in context far removed from that of hezbollah. so sunni islamist in egypt, or in jordan, west bank, gaza, constantly citing the shiite group in lebanon. to me it was really represented by the act of violence from the 1980s that were sort of sered hezbollah on the consciousness. and it's solidified it in my mind as the shadowy fringe group that did a lot of high provile inside bombings and sort of reseeded from my awareness during the years of the iraq war. i was rebinning to threat this sense that -- get this sense

that there was something more to hezbollah than i had understood. and something that was making it create probably the single most dynamic and appealing idea in the arab-islamic world. in these states, these states some of which were watching today, there was really a vacuum of politics and a vacuum of fresh ideologies against that backdrop, hezbollah had successfully created and sold this idea of resistance. islamic resistance, but a unifying islamic resistance that was open to people who were neither religious or muslim. people that weren't lebanese and didn't care about lebanese politics. i was fascinated and curious to know what it was all about and why the group that had begun as

the hostage taking barracks bombing underground splinter, cellar group had somehow emerged as the author of the most successful idea in the arab middle east. i had my chance to start getting a closer look at hezbollah when war broke out in the summer of 2006. now as a war correspondent, the misfortunes of others are always also opportunities. and in this case, the sudden explosion of war which, you know, from one day to the next went from a border skirmish from all out war. i went as fast as i could, took a cab from damascus, and had to play a good price to get someone

to drive through the bombs to take me there. my single goal, my main goal was to find out as much as i could about hezbollah and the rank and file supporters president the thing that i was most curious about was not the ideology. who were the people that had turned it into this popular, massive, and in it's own community successful forest. i had after simple, simple strategy when i got there. and that was to drive to the border and look for guys with cargo pants and beards. this was my sort of simple recipe for trying to get to an organization that i expected to be hard to approach, especially at a time in which it was engaged in an all-out war with

israel. i realized what a silly plan that might be when i learned that no one in lebanon wanted to work with me while i did this. [laughter] >> eventually, i rented my own car and i paired up with an american reporter who spoke arabic. he thought it was a perfectly fine idea. we headed south. and began doing what reporters do in wars. which is going to morgues and cemeteryies and hospitals and finding out where conflict was occurs and where we might go to find active hezbollah fighters during this time. it took a few weeks or it took a few frustrating reversals. we did find a mosque full of guys who looked quite scary with their beards and cargo pants. we asked them if they were in hezbollah.

they showed us the door very politely. [laughter] >> but eventually we had our opening. halfway through the war when there was a temporary seize fire. at this point, if you have any recollection of that war, southern lebanon was a free fighter zone. the bombing was covering something like 1/3 of the country. something like half of the population of lebanon had been displaced from it's home in northern israel, the entire civilian population was in the mountains. we are talking about the entire countryside that was on fire and bombardment. there was a one-day break and cease fire that was called by israel to give civilians one last chance to leave the front before the leaflets put it, they

could consider every car south of the river a legitimate military target. we drove to a legendary village in the mythology of hezbollah. it's also a village that's assumed mythic proportions for israel as well. this town symbolizing really the heart of hezbollah's islamic resistance project. you might recall the name because in the fall when ahmadinejad traveled he gave a speech just over the border from israel. he picked that spot because it's a town where almost everyone in the town is active supporter. and it's a place that has been over and over destroyed and with much fanfare and enthusiasm rebuilt by hezbollah and the supporters. they call the town the capital of the islamic resistance. israel represents the

frustrating ability of hezbollah's army. they throw everything that they can in each war. by the sometime the war is over, it gets rebuilt and populated. it's something that they cut the head off of and it springs back twofold. so we went down to the village and saw an unbelievable amount of wreckage. something i've never seen any war zone. the entire commercial district was reduced to rubble, the streets were disconcernable because they were only about a foot deep. you could see the electricity poles, and wondering through the desolation, suddenly we beheld a man striding towards us from a great sense of purpose from between two piled that were collapsed houses.

we had a beard, he was wearing cargo pants, he had a walkie-talkie at his belt. he said, so, did you get your story? in perfect english. he bro -- he introduced himself, and told us why he had dedicated his life. his name was rani bazzi, was an upper middle class, educated kid that studied engineers and after college he decided his calling was to fight the resistance. he had chosen to settle down there, marry, start a family, while spending all of his

energies in the service of the epic struggle against israel. he was a essential hezbollah, he worked for the fighting military wing of the party. but he was the exempt recore. he was a guy in his community that led weekend trips for kids, he taught at the local community college, he also in secret trained fighters. he was much beloved by his neighbors and by the people. he was an odd mix of fanaticism and warmth of absolute

frightening simplistic thoughts coupled with a human and open sense. he talked to me at length about the koran obligation of every good muslim to dedicate as much of their life as possible to destroying israel by force. then he also talked about the holy struggle for good digestion, which he thought there was a koran that decades to live a healthy life and be the kind of parent that never yelled at his children. he could talk in one sentence about how much he had despised america, his relatives that live in deer born, he couldn't talk to them, and anyone that would live in the filthy country should be in contempt. then he says i hope you and your friends can join me and mien family for dinner after the war.

such a pleasure to talk to you. this was the violent contradiction of an inner party member of hezbollah. this guy turned to hezbollah for his ideas and everything. right, so he organized his politics around hezbollah and he organized his ideas about childrearing. he thought of hezbollah as his family. it was -- hezbollah was his political party, religious, family, it was his weekend activities. and his community. it was everything for him. and the way he described it, it was like a secret that anyone who wanted to be initiated into would be lucky to be invited to be part of. and just talking to him for one afternoon, one could sense how effective this man could be in his community at showing

friends, relatives, children, visitors from abroad that what he had was magical, fulfilling, and meaningful in a way that life with most others were not. life with hezbollah was less empty than life for everyone else. he became for me the benchmark of the ultimate sort of backbone of hezbollah. and it was quite an -- quite a sering introduction into the party of god's culture. it was really only a beginning of the answer that i needed in order to make sense of how hezbollah worked and how the pull was over the followers. hezbollah, as i mention, has about a million supporters. very few of them rise to the level of rani bazzi. hezbollah's actual relationship and men in arms is quite small. numbers in the thousands, maybe

the low tens of thousands. so that's the nucleus of the group. where does it get it's reach? who makes the ranks of the hezbollah. i talk about the few people as the war unfolded that helped complete that picture for me. the second most indicative person that i came to noel and spend time with during the war was a young women. she was a nurse, trilingual, she had studied at the american university of beirut, and ran the emergency room in one of the port cities, tahrir. one the port cities. when war broke out, he was in a conference. one the first thinged she did was hail a cab and head south in the opposite direction of all of the screaming hoards that were trying to escape. she felt her place was in the

war zone helping -- not only helping people, but helping east hezbollah's war effort. she felt this even though she had no official ties. she didn't work for the party. she didn't have a party boss. no one asked her to do this. this was her sense of patriotism coming into play. she viewed herself as a patriot in the society of hezbollah. here she was in her skirt, suit, and heels, literally wading through the river because the bridge had been bombed so she could get to tahrir and take up the position that she remained in the next 34 days, working in the hospital. now she didn't seem as first glance at all like one would expect a hezbollah partisan to look like. she had waist-length hair, she wore it uncovered, she was happy, delighted to talk to

foreigners, she had quite a flirtation manner, she enjoyed the company of her reporter, she was very open about her families affection for hezbollah and the role of the people in her village and working for the islamic resistance. she felt, basically, she had a very compelling story to tell. if she told it to as many foreign journalist as possible, the world would hear it and realize how fantastic hezbollah was. this sort of faith, again, was surprising. it's not what i expected from a group that has been at the top of america's list of sort of terrorists demons for three decades. and it was sort of dialus. she couldn't be anybody would think the best of the party. for her, the cars, the cycles of

wars that had occurred i have five years of her entire life was simply a basic part of the need of the lebanese people to engage in self-defense. she was born and grew up in israeli-occupied lebanon, and hezbollah that restored her town to her and her part of the country to her by waging a guerrilla war that eventually forced it to pollenate -- to pull out in 2000. to her, and other people like her, hezbollah was what they had instead of a country. it was the force that kept them safe, protected them frommist rail, and -- from israel, and protected their lives. she didn't view the wars, the one that hezbollah invoked as military aggression. to her, they were simply what a

dignified and powerful movement duds in order to protect itself from a far more powerful enemy. the other really chi -- key insight that i got from her, the sense from her vantage point and vantage from hezbollah's partisan, their way of life was always hanging in the balance. they saw what limited freedom they had since the year 2000 as hanging by a thread. and at any moment, enemies, could be israel, or could be the u.s. ally government to beirut, it could be other rival, political, or militia movements inside lebanon. there were all of the forces in her view, a raid to try to take away the hard-earned independence that hezbollah had hammered out through years of blood and toil. so seeing it that way, she was able to forgive virtually

anything as long as hezbollah maintained the commitment to that perpetual war, as long as hezbollah was there to defend her and her village against outside threats. she was willing to forgive them in their ways, or if they squelched political dissent, or didn't alaw her and her friends to organize their own secular summer camp, because they refused to let the slightest amount of civil society that was independent from hezbollah. for her, hezbollah was a belief system. it didn't motivate her to the extent that it did rani bazzi. she didn't choose to work for the party. it was her creed, religion, idea, and it was her political philosophy. and to a similar extent, it was a way of life. she completed for me the picture

of the second layer. what i call the soccer moms or the middle class of hezbollah. these are the activist who form really the movement activist who form the core of hezbollah's activist base. they are not members, they are not paid, but in times of crisis, they will do what the party wants even if not directly asked to. they view their own interest as synonymous with the parties. they number a few hundred thousand. they are the middle class of hezbollah that has turned it into the prosperous and really powerful and dominant force inside of lebanon. still doesn't get us close to a million. it's like 1/3 of hezbollah's base. what takes us up to the million and to the size that has turned hezbollah into a threat that we care about, into a force that

has become agenda setting in the region? well, that's a layer that was incarnated to me on a personal level by a man named dergham dergham. he was introduced to me because i was looking for a translator willing to go to the places that were getting bombed and still 25 days into the war, nobody wanted to do it. somebody said i know a guy. he knows good english. he doesn't know anything about journalism. but he's fearless. he will do whatever you want. i'm introduced to dergham, he comes to meet me and he starts rattling off to me in this heavy, heavy southern accent, and i said dergham he said where did you learn that english? he said, you want to know, man?

i said, yes. he looked at me and he said, i used to be a drug dealer in atlanta. he proceeds to tell me with great pleasure of story of the decade or so he spent in atlanta. he described himself as the middleman that used to draw on the lebanese connections to find suppliers, and he would ferry cocaine from atlanta to new york. i don't know how much of the specifics are true, but given what i know about dergham, it sounds close to the truth. he eventually got arrested and deported, sent back to lebanon. he really missed the strip clubs in atlanta. he talked about them with great affection. his american wife game with him briefly. she said i cannot live here. i cannot live in hezbollah controlled, i cannot wear a head

scarf. she returns to atlanta. he stayed. he was anything but hezbollah. he was nothing like these other characters that i've described to you. if he were sitting at a table with rani bazzi, they would have nothing to say to each other. and his brothers who had stayed behind in lebanon became religious while dergham was gone. dergham was atheist. making fun of the religious, they take themselves so seriously, they are up tight, they are into the religious thing. it seemed ridiculous to them. but no surprise, he loved and admired their militant struggle against israel. that to him was fantastic. because hezbollah was successfully resisting israel, standing up to the regional dynamo and winning. he liked that.

that's no surprise, right at -- a guy who likes guns and drugs and strip clubs is probably going to like guerrilla militants that shoot guns. but the surprise was that hezbollah welcomed dergham's support. and that's what really made them different from any other movement that i ever encountered. here's the group that has built itself on an ideology of committed, holistic islamism, and perpetual war. right they have the two-step ideology, self-betterment, self-improvement through total commitment to islam, and sort of mobilizing that belief through a perpetual, endless cycle of wars against the jewish faith. now this is a pretty heavy and intense and often destructive set of ideas; right?

but they were happy to have anyone's support as long as that person wasn't going to stand in their way. a guy like dergham could make fun of their religion and support their war, and as long as he wasn't going to be a security threat or a political disdense, they didn't care. they were happy to have him. this was really the key to understanding how hezbollah had risen from small group, tiny group of dedicated foot soldiers into the massive political movement. it began to explain why they were able to, in times of peace, rely on the inner core like rani bazzi, who was driven all the time, and in moments of crisis, ball on the dergham of the followers and call on their undivided support, or moments of

unrest, violence, street clashes, or the times of war. this turned out to be a really enduring and winning formula. and the other thing that distinguished hezbollah from any other movement that i encountered was the tirelessness with which their ideology and religion to their followers. so dergham week in and week out would get visitors who would say do you want to come pray? you ever thought about drinking? we don't mind you living the life that you live. we know you go to the strip clubs when you think we don't know. that's fine. have you ever thought of changing your ways? ten years later, still working on him. this kind of persistence, and i mean, you know, the movement activist, they mean it. it pays off. over the years, even just the five years that i've been closely following hezbollah, i've seen people that i know and

talk to become more and more devote, not only in the political commitment, but over time in the religious and ideology commitment to hezbollah. in fact, dergham, when i first met him, talked with a lot of humor and goodwill about how the d.a. caught up, that's why he got kicked out of america. by the time in 2010 rolled around, he had recast his memory of what happened in political terms. he told the story of being persecuted after 9/11. that's why he was forced to leave america and, you know, the evil state of america had been so cruel they were willing to divide his family and force him to live, you know, across the sea from his wife. i said dergham, that's not the story that you told me. you told me your wife didn't want to live with you. he had already written a new chapter that fit in with hezbollah's narrative of dispossession, of resistance, and sort of righteous islamic

force standing against the union of the west in israel. you can imagine how compelling this set of ideas are, especially when you take a step back and you look at the poverty of political ideas in the middle east. i mean this is a region where since the '50s, there's really -- there's been an endless cycle of wars between israel and it's neighbors. and the only ideas going in the mainstream in the political world has been arab nationalism, which was a drastic failure, and then there are a long time, really nothing. i mean there were small pockets of religious activism, and small pockets of religious activism, and nobody articulated a compelling idea. that's where hezbollah stepped in and was able to really take advantage of this vacuum and use

it's message to appeal to the whole savue of people, and the person that helped me understand the hag was ali fiyad. i met him after the war was after when i scrapped the cargo pants and beard strategy to find a new way to talk to people. i approached some of my lebanese friends and i said do you think you could arrange one the under ground meetings to get in the trunk of a car and go to a secret place and meet a dude from hezbollah. they said why don't you call the

press office? so i got the number. i called hezbollah's press office. when i told them one the things i was interested in was putting together the things that i'd learned from the rank and file members and try to understand what was the bigger ideological project they were being deployed in the service of. they said go see our think tank. hezbollah has a think tank. at the time it was fun by ali fiyad. their office was bombed during the war, but they removed the library and reconstituted it in a new place on the airport highway. when i went into the office, the first thing he said, he apologized through a translator, i should be able to do the interview in english. it's to my shame i cannot. i am currently studying. god willing the next time we meet, i'll be able to talk to you in english. turned out to be true. he is now completely fluent in

english and he holds forth in quite lofty academic terms about islamic philosophy of state building and whatnot. that's the kind of cadre that hezbollah has, organizing the upper project. so ali sad down with me and behind him for shells. hezbollah position papers on everything. everything from why there should be no jewish faith to how to best improve sewage and water treatment in lebanon. they had blueprints from the reform and how to change the lebanese voting system to make it look more like englands, and then, of course, he had the bowl of never ending grievances against israel. which began with some of the ones that you might have heard about. the occupied part of the farms on the mountain.

and it ended with incredible demands, number 30 through 50 were obscure things that no one in lebanon had never heard of and won't until the first 30 get resolved. and i asked him, i said, it sounds to me like your approach to israel is that you have specific problems that sound resolvable. but it's an infinite list. he looked at me quizzically and said, as you know, we are dedicated to there being no jewish state in the middle east. i thought you were just asking about the details, i didn't realize you were asking about the big idea. the big idea is israel gone. you know, we make no beans about that, we're able, he said, to talk about these short-term details. that doesn't change what our long-term aim is. and that was -- interesting to me in a context in which islamist that i talked to often

try to soft pedal the parts of their belief system they thought would be alarming to the west especially when they talk to western reporters. it's never the case with hezbollah. they are quite open and comfortable with all of the elements of their platform. the ones that make them sound good, and the ones that make them sound destructive. they are quite at ease with themselves and their beliefs. and that -- it was refreshing coming from iraq and the west bank where it was often hard to tell what people really thought. when i talked to ali and other people in hezbollah, i usually felt confident that they were telling me the truth about their beliefs, often because the things they were telling me weren't necessarily flattering to themselves. so this -- what is the project that hezbollah is engaged in?

what is it that rani bazzi and dergham dergham and ali fiyad are working towards? what is the message that the leader of hezbollah has convinced them to dedicate much if not all of their lives to serving? it goes back to the two principals that i mentioned. holistic islam, perpetual war. this is more of a message than it sounds. because they welcome into the society of islamic resistance, christians, atheists, shiite, muslim welcomes sunni allies, nonmuslims, nonarabs, and the sort of central innovation in hezbollah's project is that they have been able to pair their

religious values with a very generic political project that energizes i would say almost the entire -- the entire arab public that doesn't sympathize with america and israel's aims. there's the whole ground swell of opposition to america's project in the middle east as it's perceived. and there's really one alternative out there. and that's this access of resistance that hezbollah talked about. they have in their leader an incredibly charismatic exponent for this idea. in a region where you have people like hosni mubarak making speeches that can hardly be called charismatic, and this is what passes for leadership.

and then you have hezbollah coming out and telling hour-long speeches, telling jokes, admitting mistakes that he made, changing and adapting his policies when he sees they are failing. this gains enormous traction throughout the world, and made him the most popular leader in the entire region. i think a lot of the people that his with hezbollah, the party of god haven't really considered the imply cases of hezbollah's project, because hezbollah does not have to create an islamic state in lebanon. they have eliminated that. they build islamic practices into their own community, they don't force them on anyone outside of it. but the implications of the project are clear. one is society becomes almost entirely built around religious values and religious

institutions. secondly, society in the service and endless cycle of war. that's the part of hezbollah's ideology that people should make no mistake about. it is a corner stone of hezbollah. it's not the main activity. it's who they are. they are islamic, they are ready to fight. at all times. and so there's no way in my view to imagine hezbollah that somehow becomes a normal political party. they are sort of required by design to be poised for this cycle, the endless cycle of wars. the other thing that's happened to hezbollah in recent years, and we've seen it very recently, they have designed themselves as the defenders of the under dog. they are the party of the dispossessed. they have become the most powerful party and one the most

influential movements. so they fashion themselves as tribune of the dispossessed. meanwhile, they have literally bottomless budgets to draw on from iran, they have an incredible growing arsenal of rockets and weaponry at their disposal, and increasingly, they've decided that they are willing to play a direct role in controlling politics rather than the dominant, but behind the scene role that they had preferred historically. so in 2006, hezbollah was on its heals, somewhat being called into question by people in lebanon that thought why should the party be able to drag us into war whenever it wants. hezbollah starts the war, at the end of the war, half of lebanon is leveled, hezbollah is being criticized, has been criticized at that point by opponents

inside lebanon, outside lebanon, all over the world. within two short years, hezbollah has bounced back to be the dominant player in lebanese politics. some thought they would be finished by the 2006 war and at times it was unclear how it would turn out. in the book i've written, i chart how they have pulled off the examples and the strategic choices they had made. by 2006, they showed they were able to use maneuver and if that failed, brute force to crush their rivals and make sure that nobody could challenge their ability to run a militia, make decisions on war and peace, and function as a state in it's own right. they were content with that status quo for a few years. until last month and they came under threat again from -- not from israel, not from the united

states, but an international tribunal supported by the lebanese government to find the people that murdered a nebraska 2005. they are about to diet member of hezbollah from something that took place five and a half years ago. they view this as a threat. that was what caused the events of january when hezbollah essentially went to the prime minister of lebanon and said you got to do everything in your power to derail this judicial process. you got to stop it in your tracks. it was your fault he was murdered, we don't care. make it stop. the guy, he didn't exactly said no. he said, i will, but not right away. and he took too long for hezbollah's taste. they toppled his government.

they were able to do this, because they had more votes in parliament than the prime minister did. they didn't do it by a cue, they did it by having the mps vote against the prime minister. they picked a new one, a prime minister that they liked. so for the first time in history that hezbollah directly used the political power it's amassed along with the cultural and military power to actually directly design the reigns of government. so what they have today is a prime minister, he's not from hezbollah, he's from an independent sunni party, because he was mistakeingly allied. this isn't a radical shift, it's another step in a process that's been under way for decades, where sentiment and the political center of gravity has shifted towards groups and people who view themselves as part of a resistance access and

not of what they call an accommodation access. i mean it's people we would call moderates and we call them moderates mainly because they support american policy. not because they are moderate when it comes to things like civil liberties or freedom or torture. in america, we call these people moderate because they support our policy aims. and they are discredited in the arab world. and when hezbollah has tapped into and really been a big part of creating is an alternative world view. and in my opinion, there are really well positioned to tap into the ground swell of public anger that we see now in egypt, in tunisia, to a lesser extent in jordan, syria, yemen, all over the arab world, people are rising up in the last month and

a half and really it's unprecedented -- it's an unprecedented and surprisingly peaceful mass expression of rage at this rule. and if you look at what side of the uprising hezbollah is on, they've been on the side of the anti-mubarak demonstrators since day one. while the united states is trying to chart the awkward course to being friendly to the dictator who's people hate him, hezbollah has been railing against mubarak for years, literally. and now they can claim opportunistically, perhaps, and also truthfully, they've been on the right side of the issue the whole time. and i have to say that's an awkward position for secular, nonmilitant supporters of the

democratic nation to find themselves on. one would hope that there would be a, you know, a movement that is authentic but also not in favor of perpetual war, let's say. and as the events in the arab world unfold in the next year or two, whatever happens in the short term with the power struggle in egypt, whatever happens with the u.s.-backed regimes around the region that are currently to thering, we're going to see the new dialect, and new dialogue inside the arab world about what politics should sound like and look like. hezbollah's ideology, the ideology of resistance and the things that come with it, perpetual root and deeped rooted religiosity is a part of the

dialogue. i'm not saying israel is about to take over the middle east. not at all. as we start to listen to authentically arab politics taking shape, a lot of the language and ideas are going to be shaped by the movement and the ideological juggernaut that hezbollah has created over 30 years. so i think we can look forward to a lot of changes. some of them are going to make america nervous. some of them are going to make people's lives better, i think, some of them are going to make them worse. it's a really exciting time during which no expert should dare tell you they have any confidence about how it's going to turn out. there's no way that anyone can know the authority, who's going to win and what kind of forces are going to shape the arab world of tomorrow. we know what some of the key

stakeholders and key ideas. we're going to have to use our best brains to try to figure it out as it unfolds. so thank you very much for your attention. i'll be happy to take your questions at the mike up front. [applause] [applause] >> my name is scott. i want to ask you if israel had the opportunity to take out this -- right. would they do it? because i see he gives speeches on the cover and all of that. >> i mean i think israel has killed leaders of hezbollah in the past. they have been in charge in 1992. at this point, i'm not sure israel could do it. the security precautions, during the war in 2006, israel certainly wanted to strike and kill them. they didn't manage it. in the past, i think there was a time when they decided, they

kept getting worse and worse deals. each time they'd kill the leader, they get someone that was better. they'd kill the predecessor who had already begun to authorize, and then they got someone who turned hezbollah into the force that we know today. at one level, i don't know if israel makes it worse. at this point, i don't think they have the choice. how important is the person of nasrallah. certainly he's without peer in arab politics today. if he were to disappear from the scene, it's hard to imagine that

whoever replaces him could very quickly duplicate the rapport and authority that he has. one the stories that's instrumental in the views of the followers in 1998, his son, his teenage son was killed in a raid against israeli troops. and the night his son was killed, he was scheduled to give a speech. he gave the speech as scheduled and halfway through it broke out for three or four minutes into a little diversion about his son who had just died. what he said was, for the first time i can look at my followers without shame, because i know also have given a martyr from my family. i can look at the other parents of the martyrs and no longer be embarrassed. that's all he said about it. that's something that everyone i talk to is one the reasons they

identify with him and the party. throughout the rest of the middle east, leaders send their kids to paris, new york, london to live out comfortable, and wealthy young lives until their fathers die or get killed. then they come and take over the family business of running the political party of the country. people really relate to nasrallah as different. >> i also want to ask you as a person who's a foreigner that had boots on the ground, were you ever given the thought you might be abducted. they are rough with foreigners. >> thank you. thanks for the question. the -- hezbollah has kidnapped journalist since the '80s. now i have no doubt if circumstances changed and they decided that foreign journalist were a threat, i would be under a threat. for the time being, you know, the worse thing they do is shut us out and not talk to us. which i got a fair amount of. be i was never -- the only

threat that i was under was during the war from the gunfire and bombing during the war. and for the time being, you know, in the years that i was working in hezbollah, uncovers hezbollah, it was simply, you know, dealing with somewhat totalitarian movement and the hazards that affords. >> since you mention hezbollah's goal is to eradicate israel. if they succeed, what do they do after the encore. is it going to change their lives, going to improve it? that's number one. number two, hezbollah has been reported to have upwards of 40,000 rockets available for attacking israel. at what point, if any, do you think there would be an emmetous to use the pockets? >> i don't think there's any

chance of wiping hezbollah off of the map. they are going to have their enemy for a long time to come. the question, of course, is if the more relevant way of putting that is what if the palestinians and the israelis actually reach the peace treaty. what would hezbollah do? i think a huge amount would vanish. they would have a lot of trouble saying we're going to fight the war against israel until the last man while the people who actually live on the same land as israel have made a deal with them. now i also don't think there's any likelihood of that happening any time soon. we're not going to have the pleasure of worrying about that. i wish we would. but for the foreseeable future, they are going to their enemy. what about the next war?

what is the next war likely to see? for the last few years, israel and hezbollah have enjoyed the deterrent balance. hezbollah has you mention, upwards of 40,000 rockets. they have rearmed far beyond the levels they had in the 2006 war. israel, as well, has completely revamped it's defenses and has repaired a lot of the wholes in it's northern defenses -- they became apparent during the 2006 war. so neither side has a sort term incentive for a war just now. but both sides have a really deep incentive for a war. from israel's perspective, they believe that a properly executed war could really conclusively degrade hezbollah's capacity to pose a threat.

israel would like at some point that they knew strategically, to have a war in which they could destroy hezbollah's infrastructure and minimalize the threat. hezbollah is slightly different. in my opinion, hezbollah's biggest incentive for war, is the legitimacy that it gets from war. by definition, hezbollah sort of wins every war with israel. all they need to do to win is survive. when a war happens, at the end of it, hezbollah will still be standing and functions and still have its supporters. you know, house that is have been bombed can be rebuilt, weapons that have been destroyed can be reported. you know, what i've seen in the last few years, lebanon is mind blowing. it takes me half as long to get where i'm going because of the brand new roads that have been built since 2006.

they have revamped the infrastructure in the entire area under their control. it's better than it was before. and the message to the people, don't worry. if there's another war with israel, even if it's ten times worse than the last one, we'll rebuild it better than before. it might take a few years. we can do it. for hezbollah, the impetus when they are under threat by their own constituents. that's why i'm nervous right now about the property spects of war. with the tribunal at some point that's going to name the members, and when it does, there's going to be a crisis. for hezbollah, one of their central sources of legitimacy is that they are not sectarian lawyers. they don't hurt other lebanese and arabs. they fight the israeli enemy, that's it. they protect their fellow arabs. if it turns out they were

involved in the murder of this popular sunni prime minister, it's going to be very hard -- there's no way really to explain that while keeping their sort of ideology purity. that's why the narrative they have come up is actually israel killed the prime minister, and set up the tribunal with all of the fake evidence to make it look like we did it. it's a crazy story. it works with hezbollah's followers. hezbollah's followers believe it. and, however, if it comes to a crisis point, which it well might, the only way out is a war with israel. because once there's a war with israel, as i saw in 2006, no one can criticize hezbollah. once bombs are falling on beirut and on the villages of lebanon, nobody no matter how much they

despise hezbollah or disbias war is going to say a single thing critical of it. that's their get-out-of-jail free card. >> they want to sacrifice their country to save their face? >> in their view, they are restoring the pride. the thing is -- that's the view of about half of the lebanese people. that's why -- that's why it keeps working. they are not voicing this idea, they are not a small minority voicing the idea on a majority that hates it. they are internally legitimate force representing, i'd say, about half of lebanon and voice the idea on the other half that you are destroying our country for your project. but it's that -- it's that grassroots support they have that enables them to do it again and again. >> okay. thank you. >> thank you. :

>> they speak politically about all these issues. they don't want to, you know, direct piece of the conflicts. they have -- they proceeded themselves as a bridge at a time when the muslim world is really

riveted by a split of shia and sunni muslims and fashioned themselves as a group that chose you can be, you know, what they try to show is they can be islamists and yet share a bond with other muslims from other sex and even with nonmuslims, and their whole idea is sort of, you know, if you support resistance or if you are godly, you have so much in common that the sectarian stripe is sort of secondary importance. i think that's incoherent because if you spend time with them as i have, it's clear they are a shia movement and others who subscribe to beliefs about a particular kind of the end of the world coming soon where the body will arrive.

it's a very particular brand of thought. it's hard to be that and at the same time a nationalist logical movement. they managed to take office over by succeeding. as long as they keep beating israel on the battlefields, the audiences will overlook the fact that that doesn't really make sense, but in the long term i think unless they somehow to manage to never stumble, there's going to be unraveling over these internal contradictions. i think we'll take one or two more questions after this and wrap it up bought i don't want to keep you too late. >> good evening. i don't know if this relates or not, but what part does the christian my lang play in this

and were you going to address the willingness of the women in the hezbollah to die for their beliefs or is that included in your remarks they are all willing to die. >> a key part of the remark i forgot to make. [laughter] your first question, the christians fit into this -- well, that's interesting to bring up. in the west, people look at lebanon as fa gnat ticks on one side and the moderates on the other side. the moderates, pro-western, march 14th coalition that until recently controlled the government is made up of a lot of parties that to me look pretty fascist. none of them are democratic, parties whose leaders inherited the leadership from their dead

fathers and never had an internal election. they have zero respect for several liberties or plushism or rule of law. they are corrupt and they really reek of an old civil war militia ethos and that plays into the war they wage. if you are lebanese, you look at the choices, and on the one side you have a lot of the leaders in march 14th whose rhetoric is muslims are coming to kill us, and our only hope, you know, is to band together and fight them off, and it's this sort of horrifying bloody rhetoric, and then on the other side it's the resistance. it's not a choice between moderation and fanaticism. if any, it's a choice -- it's less than animal --

analytical. it confuses the issue especially for the people in lebanon who are moderates and nationalists because they have nowhere really to turn. women in hezbollah, that is one of the most interesting aspects of the society that hezbollah managed to create. i like to say that the women of hezbollah are really the cornerstone of the movement and what has turned into something that has such an enduring and resilient bedrock, so each time there's a war, and 1993, 1996, 2006, there is massive amounts of destruction. people's homes destroyed every time, kids get killed, and for it to happen once, you know, anything can happen once, but for people to be willing with good cheer and high energy to

volunteer again and again for this requires something that hezbollah managed to do which is to buy in at the level of households at home. the women in the households they learned to reach, teach, and implicate into their view, and these women become the bedrock of the ideas and of the willingness to fight for them, so i write about this a fair amount in the book. these mothers, martyrs for example, have a very different flavor say or psychological profile than mothers of martyrs i met in gaza or the west bank. these people i met in lebanon, they with respect grieving their -- weren't grieving. they said i'm proud. i'm proud, and i would send another kid to do it, and they

work quite insidiously with their surviving children to instill in them a since of pride of the martyrs in their family, and it's the thing that makes -- that makes hezbollah's people who are willing to die such a stable part of the movement that they can count on, and, you know, it's really -- in some ways it's breathtaking the sophistication of the social network that hezbollah built up around this idea so when a young fighter let's say dies and becomes a martyr, the party sends psychologists and social workers around to the family to work with them, make sure that they deal with their depression, make sure the kids are doing okay and adjusting and succeeding at school, and this is for two reasons, one is

because they care and they want them to be okay, and seconds, they want the people in the society so see the family with the martyrs are the ones who thrive the most. the martyr's foundation makes sure the surviving kids go to the best school, encourages the widow to remarry, someone of high status within the party, often another fighter, and the result is that they build an elite and at the core of the elite are the mothers and the widows of these martyrs who sort of exem my my the society, and people say, oh, this is the way to climb to the pen kl of my society which is to be willing to give my life this way, and if

i'm chosen to die, then my family will be even more blessed. it's an incredibly effective -- last question. >> i think the librarian said that hezbollah was the -- [inaudible] >> yes. >> when i was a student years ago, many wars on both sides and what they were doing was in the name of god rntion so how are they defining god? you know, hezbollah, how is it defining god, a definition. thank you. >> of course, how does hezbollah define god, and the implication of the question is there anything about the way they do it that makes them different from every other religious party that we've ever heard of. i would say the main thing that distinguishes hezbollah as the party of god from all the other

parties that build themselves on the religious idea, including a number of parties in the arab world that have the name hezbollah but not related to he has hezbollah and lebanon. the difference is hezbollah seems to really mean it. i mean, they seem not to be using the religious creed as an excuse to have a militia with an endless war, but believe sincerely in a and in the endless war, and that's why nearly 30 years after their founding, they are still growing and the fever of their followers is still growing. i point to the fact that they really take time and spend money and energy in the religious instruction part of what they do. you know, they've never sidelined that. that's the first thing they do. any service, military training,

health care, anything they do begins with and ends with a religious lesson. it's not expedient. they mean it. they believe it. that's really bled into their community, that's a bed metaphor, but it's really sort of spread into the fan cations of their community and become part of their daily belief structure, and it's made them, you know, it's made them sound a lot like evangelicals when they are not talking about endless war, they spread the good news about how great it is to be good with god. it's always a little jarring because they switch gears from one to the other in a blink of an eye, and it's the sincerity of that belief that's made them so effective. >> [inaudible] [inaudible]

the money is spent into a welfare type program and military, how about the college and the capitalism that to the brick india and china has little money and natural resources, but they are able to come up and we got brazil and russia with natural resources pushing them up, and i think they are just wasting a lot of opportunity. >> that's a great question, and i'll answer quickly because we are out of time. the question is where do they get the money, and is it a waste. well, they get the cash from iran which is oil money, and they get a lot of cash from their own supporters, the network of sheer religious people who give to hezbollah. you know, setting aside the normal question of is it a waste, most of the money they spend is not on armorments.

the war they wage is very inexpensive. rockets are cheap, ak-47s are cheap, and most of the money they spend is on building houses, hospitals, running services, and, you know, building roads, all the stuff they do in lebanon, the schools they run, the social networks they run, that's where the money goes, and to salaries, paying people's salaries. it's not going down the sink hole of the defense establishment. now, you can argue, and i think there's a good position to take, well, it doesn't matter how much you build if you keep every five years a war destroys it, but nonetheless, the activities they are engaged in week to week are where they are spending the money and stuff -- it's very capitalist, and they are very capitalist in their practice in theology and invest and have private investment, encourage people to get rich, they are in

favor of values as long as they don't contradict the islamic resis tension, so they like prosperity. they are all in favor of it. thank you very much for your time. have a good night. [applause] >> he reported from lebanon for the boston globe and new york times. visit thanassiscambanis.com. >> the googlization of everything and why we should worry. the first words on the cover flab are in the beginning, and there's two chapters, the gospel of google and render untoe caesar. why so many biblical references? >> i was concerned that too many of us consider this to be a