Absolutely astounding pro-Hizballah propaganda, reported from the terrorist viewpoint at Reuters by Arab writer Yara Bayoumy: Lebanese families praise Hizbollah ‘martyrs’.

NABATIYEH, Lebanon (Reuters) - In the sheltered porch, women in headscarves and long robes weep gently, whisper verses of prayer and mourn a teenager as a “martyred hero.”

The women are mourning the death of a 17-year-old who fought for Hizbollah against Israeli forces in south Lebanon. The mood is a mixture of sadness and exhilaration, and one of unusual calm as they are convinced that their martyr will go to heaven.

Emad Haj Ali is one of at least 100 fighters who died in the 34-day war, sparked when the grassroots guerrilla group seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border attack on July 12 in order to exchange them for a release of prisoners.

“Martyrs love God. They are not scared of anything. They are heroes. They terrified the United States and the whole world. God chose them to be martyrs,” said Ali’s mother, Ghada, 40, as she rocked back and forth mourning her son’s loss.

“He was martyred … God destroy Israel,” she said.

Dozens of women sat huddled in the small porch, and each had lost either a son, a cousin, a brother, or a nephew during Hizbollah’s long history of fighting with Israel.

After the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war, Hizbollah was the only Lebanese faction which kept its guns on the grounds it needed them to fight Israeli occupation.

Impatience with Israel drove the group to fight a war of attrition until the Jewish state was forced to withdraw from southern Lebanon in 2000. The group’s status grew as the only one able to take on Israel.