Saint Joseph University: Yearning For the South

By Zahraa Abrari

The student council at the Saint Josef University in Lebanon organized a field trip for all its students - of all the different sects and religions- to the southern part of Lebanon on Sunday 16th of May. This trip, with the title of "Alhawa janoubi" (yearning for the South) was the third of its kind for the university and came one week before the memorial of the "Israeli" withdrawal from South Lebanon in May 2000.

More than 400 students from different Lebanese sects and backgrounds participated in this event which was of big interest to different media outlets and news agencies which accompanied the trip.

The students were escorted from Beirut city to the Iqleem el Tufah -Nabatieh- where they hiked up the Al Rayhan Mountain to meet with Islamic resistance members. During this special meeting the students had a glimpse of the stages and history of the resistance, the harsh times and tasks the fighters had to bear to protect the Lebanese land, as well as a short tour showing the different weapons used during battles.

This part of the trip intrigued many of these students who came up with statements of affection for what they had learned: "I wanted to learn how the resistance fighters lived during the 2006 war and how they could face the ‘Israeli' occupation" " this trip for me is educational because I learned and knew who defended my territory and gave me back my territory" "I learned how the resistance has been created and has been developed through the years" "I realized how much these people tired to protect us ... they always put wrong ideas in the minds of the teenagers because teenagers play a big role in Lebanon, they say that Hizbullah always fights and it doesn't have the right, but when we see a man like Sayyed Hassan who sacrificed his child, we hope we can learn from him as a good example for us".

Another important stop during the trip was the "valley of Hujair" where the students discovered the importance of this valley during the battles of the 2006 war.

The students were then taken to "Majdalselm" for lunch, before taking off to "Maroun Elrass" which is a strategic point in Lebanon which give a wide view of the Palestinian occupied territories, and which had the most intense battles at the begging of the summer war in 2006. Upon the mountain a group of students formed a human word that says "Zionism" in Hebrew.