Remade Militant Group Learns Press Kits and Web Sites Have Their Uses

        By JOHN F. BURNS

            BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 11 -- Within three hours of
            the killing of the latest Israeli soldier, smiling
        officials of Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Party of
        God, summoned fresh cups of Turkish coffee for
        Western reporters, handed out a communiqué about the
        attack and released a freshly printed sheet of statistics,
        complete with a pie chart, listing all seven Israeli
        soldiers killed by Hezbollah in the last 18 days.

        Proudly, the Hezbollah men noted that the Israeli losses
        were the heaviest inflicted by their group in a similar
        period since 1998.

        All in all, the gathering
        in the Beirut information
        center was a smooth
        demonstration of what
        might be called
        Hezbollah 2000, the
        media-friendly,
        computer-savvy, mobile
        phone-equipped,
        multiple Web site
        version of the Islamic
        militant group that
        bludgeoned its way into
        the American
        consciousness in the
        1980's.

        By almost any measure,
        the attack that killed
        Zachi Yitak, the Israeli
        soldier, set off a serious
        crisis. Diplomats said it
        could further widen the
        breach that has hobbled
        peace talks between
        Israel and Syria, the
        dominant power in
        Lebanon and the patron, along with Iran, of Hezbollah.
        But in the Hezbollah office, in a ramshackle building
        not far from the Beirut airport, it was evident that the
        Hezbollah of today wears a new face.

        In the 1980's Hezbollah rose to the top of the United
        States' list of terrorist organizations, with a series of
        attacks that included the bombing of the American and
        French embassies in Beirut, the 1983 bombing of
        American and French marine barracks in which 241
        Americans and 59 Frenchmen died, and serial
        kidnappings that made hostages for years of American,
        British and other victims.

        But Hezbollah today has a new populist image, with
        representatives forming the largest single-party group
        in the Lebanese Parliament. It also has an impressive
        network of schools, hospitals and welfare centers that
        cater to tens of thousands of families, and an
        information network that may be unrivaled anywhere in
        the world, at least by an organization that many Western
        nations still list as a terrorist group.

        Among other things, Hezbollah has one of the most
        watched television stations in Lebanon, which nightly
        broadcasts footage of Hezbollah strikes on Israeli
        forces, taken from hand-held video cameras. The
        broadcasts, showing young guerrillas striking at Israel
        on the last active Arab-Israeli combat front, have
        attracted an enthusiastic audience across this nation of
        3.5 million people. Among them are many who
        previously shunned Hezbollah for what they viewed as
        a militant Islamic posture ill attuned to the
        cosmopolitan society on which many Lebanese pride
        themselves.

        Any Western reporter wanting to write about Hezbollah
        must first make contact at the information office in the
        suburb of Haret Hreik, a mile or so from the airport in a
        heavily crowded area that has a concentrated
        population of Shiite Muslims, the largest of Lebanon's
        population groups and the base of support for
        Hezbollah. It was from this area in the 1980's that
        Hezbollah, or one of its front organizations, mounted
        many headline-grabbing operations, including the
        kidnapping in 1985 of Terry Anderson, the Associated
        Press bureau chief who spent nearly seven years as a
        hostage.

        But these days, the emphasis is not on taking Western
        reporters captive but on welcoming them and
        persuading them of the legitimacy of the Hezbollah
        cause. Escorted trips are arranged to southern Lebanese
        Hezbollah strongholds like Nabatiye, near the site of
        the attack on Beaufort Castle, the ancient Crusader fort
        where the Israeli soldier died in today's attack. Videos
        are made available of the latest Hezbollah assaults,
        with officials proudly pointing out that many of them,
        including a missile attack earlier this week that killed
        another Israeli soldier at Dabshe, near Nabatiye, end up
        being shown on Israeli television.

        This afternoon Abvu Muhammad Alameh, a Hezbollah
        spokesman, brandishing a personal organizer to check
        his facts, was especially eager to point out that his
        group had its own bulletin on the Beaufort Castle attack
        prepared and printed before the attack was confirmed
        by Israel. The bulletin, in Arabic, was headed, as
        always with Hezbollah communiqués, with quotations
        from the Koran. "In the name of God the most merciful,"
        it said. "With God on your side, no one can defeat you."

        The text of the statement was, it must be said, old-style
        Hezbollah, with little public relations polishing of the
        style or grammar.

        "In our continuing operations to end the occupation of
        southern Lebanon and liberate the land of our people,"
        it said, "and in accordance with our goal of inflicting
        heavy losses on the Israeli forces and kicking the last of
        them out of our nation, in a manner that leaves the
        occupying forces with no chance of withstanding our
        Islamic fighters, the fighting unit known as Martyrs of
        Farouk Ismail with God's help today at 11:55 a.m.
        attacked with rockets and machine-gun fire the main
        Israeli stronghold at Qalat Ashrif." Qalat Ashrif is the
        Arabic name for Beaufort Castle.

        The accompanying information sheet distributed by Mr.
        Alameh was much closer to the button-down, corporate
        style of the new Hezbollah. The sheet gave figures for
        the casualties inflicted in all of Hezbollah's attacks in
        the six weeks since the start of the year, and included a
        column giving Israeli figures for the same incidents,
        mostly the same as Hezbollah's. The pie chart, giving
        percentage breakdowns for casualties among the Israeli
        troops and the South Lebanon Army, the Christian
        militia force allied with Israel in the occupation zone,
        said that 24 percent of the 77 dead and wounded among
        the two forces since the start of the year have been
        Israelis, 74 percent members of the Christian militia
        force and 2 percent members of "joint patrols."

        There were no figures for Hezbollah casualties, either
        on the two-month casualty sheet or from the officials,
        although Hezbollah fighters near Nabatiye had told
        visitors on Thursday that "hundreds" of their men have
        been killed during the 22-year Israeli occupation, and
        "dozens" in recent months. Roadsides in the area are
        dotted with metal billboards bearing the images of
        bearded young "martyrs," mostly young, who have been
        killed in fighting with the Israeli forces, and every
        reporter's visit includes a supervised talk with a
        martyr's widow.

        But in the Hezbollah office in Beirut, the emphasis is
        kept firmly on the positive. Mr. Alameh, the
        spokesman, seemed especially proud that the bulletin
        on the operation that killed the Israeli soldier today had
        been issued within 35 minutes of the strike, before the
        attack was confirmed by Israel. Along with other
        Hezbollah officials, he made it plain that he shared
        none of the concerns of other Beirut residents about
        new Israeli air strikes.

        When he was asked if he expected new Israeli bomb
        attacks on targets around Beirut and other population
        centers, Mr. Alameh, 47, a grizzle-bearded Lebanese
        who worked for years as a sales manager for an
        American oil company in the Persian Gulf, smiled
        broadly.

        "Everything is open," he said -- including, it seemed,
        the possibility of an air attack on Hezbollah's television
        station, the jewel in its crown. A proposed visit to the
        station by two Western reporters would have to be put
        off for a day, at least, he said, still smiling, because
        Hezbollah would not want to put visitors at risk.

Links:

The Official Hezbollah Web Site.

Web site of the Embassy of Israel in Washington.

Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The official State of Israel Web Site (in Hebrew).