Here’s Annia Ciezadlo at the New Republic on Hizballah’s staging of news from Beirut: Exploring scenic South Beirut, the Hezbollah way.

Who says Lebanon’s tourism industry is dead? Come to Beirut these days and you can take a guided tour of Hell, with Hezbollah as your escort. Every day, the Party of God welcomes visitors to Haret Hreik, in the heart of the city’s mostly Shia southern suburbs. Once home to Hezbollah’s headquarters and Beirut’s most densely populated neighborhood, Haret Hreik is now a smoking swath of wreckage. For the thousands of families who used to live here, the devastation is almost unimaginable. But, for Hezbollah, the ruins of this once-bustling neighborhood have become a tourist attraction—and an invaluable propaganda tool. 

Hezbollah began offering tours of Haret Hreik during the war, assembling every morning at eleven o’clock. I went on the first of these excursions on July 20, along with the bulk of the international press corps—about 100 correspondents, from well-known TV anchors to grubby freelancers. Longtime Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Naboulsi showed up with his entourage and delivered a running patter of outrage. “On a daily basis, they come here and turn buildings into rubble, as you see,” he shouted, in his frantic, high-pitched voice. “This is where we live! If the Israelis dare to confront us face to face, let them do it on the border, not come with jet fighters from high above in the sky, and just hit civilian targets!” He strode off into the wreckage, still shouting, and we scrambled to keep up. 

Every once in a while, as we marched through the rubble, a man (never a woman) would pop out of a destroyed building to shout with carefully rehearsed rage. All of these appearances were orchestrated by Hezbollah for our benefit. Al Arabiya, a Saudi-funded satellite channel that many Lebanese view as U.S.-backed propaganda, even merited its own personal heckler. “Where is Al Arabiya?” demanded a short, angry man, flailing his arms in the middle of the street. “I have something to tell them.” When a microphone with the station’s logo appeared in front of him, he shouted, “The Saudis want this to happen! These missiles were made in USA, made in Saudi Arabia, made in Jordan, made in Egypt!” 

A telling omission from this litany of oppressors was the country that had actually fired the missiles: Israel. (The Saudis don’t make missiles, after all.) You can always rely on Hezbollah leaders for anti-Israel rhetoric. But, ever since the war ended, they’ve been less fixated than usual on their neighbor to the south. Instead, they’re cultivating hatred for a larger, more world-historic enemy: the United States. By focusing on the Great Satan, Hezbollah can avoid the delicate subject of who, exactly, started this particular war—and promote itself instead as a defender of the Muslim world against U.S. aggression and the West generally.