Imad Mugniyah

 

Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 Revolution creates an Islamic state in Iran. In that year, Imad Mugniyah, a 17 year-old growing up in Beirut was a member of the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization. By 1982, he shifts his affiliation to Hezbollah, the Party of God. Two of the primary goals of Hezbollah are to expel Westerners from Lebanon and and establish an Islamic state. Mugniyah probably helped plan the U.S. Marine barracks bombing in Beirut that killed 307 people including the two bombers on October 23, 1983. The Marines, unaware of having enemies, were not prepared for a suicide bombing. Within four months of the attack, the Marines were pulled out of Beirut. Osama bin Laden is said to admire Mugniyah for getting the United States out of Lebanon. Mugniyah was kliled in a car bomb in Damascus, Syria on February 12th.

In 1979, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua ignited my own youthful dreams of revolution. The revolution wasn’t televised but it was on the radio. I listened with great interest as I painted in my studio on the Upper West Side. When my friend Sarah suggested visiting Managua as part of an artists’ delegation in 1984, I jumped at the idea. We went as tourists to that war-torn country. I was thrilled by the adrenaline surge of entering a pitch-black bomb shelter or walking up to the edge of a smoking volcano. Upon our return to New York, the Central American Solidarity Movement provided the feeling of belonging, for which I longed. The world was divided between the haves and have-nots. I knew which side was right.