As a Palestinian, there are stories that make the words “thank you” feel painfully inadequate.
The story of Hussein al-Muqdad is one of them.
And to understand Hussein, you have to understand the school that raised him.
He was raised and formed under Hajj Imad Mughniyeh—a man whose name became inseparable from the history of the Lebanese resistance. Hussein was one of the young men shaped in that environment: discipline, secrecy, patience, sacrifice, and an attachment to Palestine that did not recognize the border between Lebanon and our occupied homeland.
Hajj Imad did not raise a generation to love Palestine from a distance.
He raised men willing to walk toward it.
And Hussein walked toward us.
He entered occupied Palestine on a mission, knowing that he might never return. Before the operation could unfold as intended, the explosive device he carried detonated prematurely.
When Hussein finally awoke in an Israeli hospital, his life had been transformed forever.
His sight was gone.
Both of his feet were gone.
His left hand was gone.
Only two fingers remained on his right hand.
His hearing and sense of taste were taken from him.
And then came captivity.
For nearly two years, this Lebanese man—already carrying catastrophic wounds—remained a prisoner of the occupation before eventually returning to Lebanon in an exchange.
Think about that for a moment.
He was Lebanese.
The village waiting for him was Lebanese.
The family waiting for him was Lebanese.
Yet the land upon which he sacrificed his eyes, his hands and his feet was Palestine.
That is why, as a Palestinian, I cannot look at Hussein’s photograph without seeing something much greater than one man’s story.
I see what Hajj Imad planted in an entire generation.
He taught men that Palestine was not someone else’s wound. That Jerusalem was not someone else’s responsibility. That a border drawn between Lebanon and Palestine could never become a border around the conscience.
Hussein al-Muqdad became one of the living proofs of that education.
He returned without his sight and without his limbs, but the occupation could not take his dignity. He continued his life and his education, carrying wounds that testified every single day to where he had been and what he had been willing to give.
For years, he lived as what many called a living martyr.
And now that his long-delayed martyrdom has arrived, I want to say something from the heart of a Palestinian to Lebanon:
How could we ever forget you?
How could we forget Lebanese sons who walked toward Palestine while knowing the price?
How could we forget the mothers who watched them leave?
How could we forget men like Hajj Imad, who raised a generation to understand that the blood of a Palestinian child and the dignity of Jerusalem were worthy of sacrifice?
And how could we ever forget Hussein—who left pieces of his own body upon our occupied land?
Hussein lost his eyes for Palestine.
He lost his feet on the road toward Palestine.
He lost his hand carrying Palestine’s cause.
He endured imprisonment because Palestine had become inseparable from his own destiny.
What can a Palestinian possibly give back for something like that?
شكراً يا لبنان is not enough.
So instead, we promise remembrance.
We will tell our children that there were Lebanese men who did not ask whether Palestine belonged to them before sacrificing for it.
We will tell them about Hussein al-Muqdad.
And we will tell them about the school of Shahid Hajj Imad Mughniyeh that raised men like him.
Some debts cannot be repaid.
They can only be honored, remembered, and passed from one generation to the next.
رحم الله الشهيد حسين المقداد.
From Palestine to Lebanon:
Your wounds are written into our history.
Your martyrs are written into our memory.
And your sacrifices for Palestine will never be forgotten.
@IKON1436 You guys are like Zoinists. First do attorcity and then play victim card. Your Isis bastrads killed thousands of innocents and then when they were confronted you start weeping. You are all Muslim zoinists