SOUTH LEBANON - The “greater Middle East” that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heralded during Israel’s war on Lebanon in July 2006 is no different from the “new Middle East” that Benjamin Netanyahu dreamed of before Hezbollah’s drones invaded his sleeping room in the occupied Caesarea.

Over the past decades, there has been much talk in Washington and the capitals of the imperialist West about this Eurocentric colonial project, which divides Asia as the largest continent into the Near, Middle, and Far East. After a savage war that has just ended and two months of legendary steadfastness in the frontline villages in southern Lebanon, this “new Middle East” however will be nothing but what the indigenous inhabitants of the land aspire to.

The new era in our region will not resemble the previous colonial eras as we are owed to the martyrs, those who have refused to remain silent seeing the Palestinian people being ethnically cleansed. They have confronted, stood firm, and sacrificed what was most precious to them. Those heroic knights have firmly rejected the threats of the satanic US embassy in Beirut, which sought in vain – day and night – to weaken the resistance after the failure of its military aggression.

Hezbollah martyrs’ mothers will teach the generations of mothers how to defeat the colonial killing machine. They are the ones who have orchestrated a “new Middle East” for which they sacrificed the precious blood of their beloved sons.

One of these mothers is Hajja Umm Ali, who has sacrificed seven of her children to defend the dignity of the Lebanese nation. Among them is a martyr paramedic, who has gone missing. The paramedic had left Germany to attain martyrdom along with his heroic uncles. She is an exceptional mother in every sense of the word.

In his last speech, Hezbollah Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassim praised her steadfastness, saying: “You are people of patience, you are people of faith, you are people of resistance, the resistance cannot be victorious without your sacrifices ... We hear the husband of a martyr says, ‘I want to upbring my children in the same way as my husband’ and the mother of seven martyrs say, ‘We are ashamed of the sacrifices of Sayyedah Zainab (SA) as we have offered only a little’. What a great community! Our opponents are confused from what they hear from them, from their sacrifices, their steadfastness, their patience.”

Indeed, the West can possess the latest modern technological killing machine, but it cannot and will not be able to weaken the unbreakable revolutionary spirit of brave mothers. Historians say that nine mothers in Karbala pushed their children to jihad and martyrdom. 

Today, the mothers of the martyrs of the resistance are proud of their martyred sons and express their readiness to give more on the path of resistance because they are at the peak of faith, patience, and devotion. They have taught their sons that victory does not come with empty slogans but with great sacrifices. They taught their sons that homelands cannot be shielded unless they are watered with the blood of their best heroes.