By Liz Sly

Chicago Tribune

NABATIYEH, Lebanon

Imad Mughniyeh was hardly a household name in the United States, even though he topped the FBI's most-wanted list of terrorists for nearly a decade until he was eclipsed by Osama bin Laden in 1998.

The shadowy Hezbollah operative also was little-known in his native Lebanon before his assassination in February in a car bombing in Damascus, Syria. The attack was widely blamed on the Israeli intelligence service Mossad.

A new exhibition in a parking lot in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh, staged by the Shiite Hezbollah movement, aims to fill that gap, at least in Mughniyeh's homeland, by publicizing his presumed role in Hezbollah's fight against its archenemy , Israel.

The entrance is beneath a giant green hat, a replica of the military cap Mughniyeh wore.

Visitors cross a "Bridge of Victory" into a "Square of Humiliation" strewn with tattered Israeli boots, helmets and other detritus allegedly collected from the battlefield, all designed to create the impression of a defeated, trampled Israeli army.

The exhibition makes no mention of the events in the 1980s with which Mughniyeh was closely associated and that put him at the top of America's most-wanted list: the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner, the suicide bombing at the Marine barracks in Beirut and kidnappings of Americans.

Instead it seeks to portray Mughniyeh as the mastermind of Hezbollah's fight against the 22-year Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000, and against Israel's effort to crush Hezbollah during the summer of 2006 - though the precise role played in those events by the elusive Mughniyeh, who is said to have spent most of his time in Iran and Syria, is also unclear.

Thunderous explosions echo from loudspeakers as orange lights glow from the wreckage of a captured Israeli tank, supposedly re- creating the battles fought in 2006 as Hezbollah held back advancing Israeli forces and showered northern Israel with rockets.

One of the glass display cases features the clothes Mughniyeh was said to have been wearing when he was killed : a tattered black suit and a pair of scuffed leather shoes. Nearby is the desk from which Mughniyeh purportedly worked.

"For 25 years he was unknown to the people. He was the unknown leader, the winning secret," said Imad Awada, the exhibition's director. "But when his blood left his body, he motivated our entire community."

It would all add up to little more than a display of militant kitsch, a propaganda effort aimed at Hezbollah's Shiite constituency, if it weren't for the threat of another war still looming across the region.

Though a cease-fire was declared in 2006, there was no peace settlement, and tensions continue to simmer along the border where Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers triggered the 34-day war.

A giant slogan on the wall of the exhibition hints at one possible trigger for a future war: Hezbollah's pledge to exact revenge for Mughniyeh's death.

"The blood for the martyr Imad Mughniyeh will sweep them out of existence, God Willing," it says, in reference to the Israelis.

Both Hezbollah and Israel are under domestic constraints not to start another war soon, said Timur Goksel, a veteran of the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon who teaches at the American University of Beirut. Hezbollah also cannot be sure it was the Mossad that killed Mughniyeh, who may have fallen victim to internal squabbles in Iran and Syria.

The final section of the exhibition is intended to demonstrate, however, that dying for the Hezbollah cause is not such a bad thing. Inside a cavernous tent, a carpet of fake flowers depicts the paradise that "martyrs" who die in battle will encounter.

A wax mannequin of a dead Hezbollah soldier reclines on the flowers as a video plays defiant speeches by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, and footage of Mughniyeh purportedly directing rocket strikes against Israel.

In the gift shop at the show's exit, where mugs, clocks, key rings, caps and other items bearing the images of Nasrallah and Mughniyeh are on sale, visitors said they had learned a lot.

"This exhibition teaches us morals about Islamic resistance that we can pass on to our children," said Shawki Makhader, 35, a plasterer attending with his wife, his 3-year-old daughter and his 11-month-old son . "It's beautiful."

Originally published by BY LIZ SLY.

(c) 2008 Virginian - Pilot. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.