Paint’s Blog

Hiba Qassir dreams of making movies. She’s ambitious and precocious enough. At 18, she’s taught herself how to edit video and sound on a computer, and has her sights set on directing gripping social and psychological dramas.

But if the movie business doesn’t work out, that’s OK. She has other dreams: perhaps to become a cop or a pilot. Or maybe a suicide bomber.

Parents bring children to walk through the exhibit, past the posters of martyrs and works of art commemorating their deeds, which usually involved ramming vehicles packed with explosives into Israeli positions. A preteen boy with a messy mop of brown hair takes photographs of mannequins of bearded Hezbollah fighters praying in the battlefield.

“This operation was done by Ibrahim Jamil Daher,” Hiba says, pointing toward one of the displays. “It was first a battle against a team of 22 Israelis. It wasn’t supposed to be a martyrdom operation. But when he found it was a good opportunity to make such an operation, he took advantage of the situation and did it.”