A young girl on horseback during the "Proud Dahieh" festival organized in the southern suburbs of Beirut, on Sept. 4, 2026. (Credit: Emmanuel Haddad/L’Orient-Le Jour)
At the back of Ashoura Square in the Sainte-Therese neighborhood of Beirut’s southern suburbs, boys race down a red-and-blue slide in Superman’s colors, laughing as they go. The girls favor an all-pink, unicorn-shaped slide or ride toy horses.The playground sits beneath portraits of Hassan Nasrallah and Hachem Safieddine, the two Hezbollah leaders whom Israel assassinated in quick succession during the 2024 war, alongside a portrait of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whom Israel and the United States killed on Feb. 28, 2026, on the first day of their war on Iran.Next to the boys’ slide, a portrait of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hangs at the end of a shooting range. A young man takes aim with a paintball gun, hits the portrait in the forehead and turns around, satisfied. In the news Israel’s new roads in south...
At the back of Ashoura Square in the Sainte-Therese neighborhood of Beirut’s southern suburbs, boys race down a red-and-blue slide in Superman’s colors, laughing as they go. The girls favor an all-pink, unicorn-shaped slide or ride toy horses.The playground sits beneath portraits of Hassan Nasrallah and Hachem Safieddine, the two Hezbollah leaders whom Israel assassinated in quick succession during the 2024 war, alongside a portrait of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whom Israel and the United States killed on Feb. 28, 2026, on the first day of their war on Iran.Next to the boys’ slide, a portrait of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hangs at the end of a shooting range. A young man takes aim with a paintball gun, hits the portrait in the forehead and turns around, satisfied. In the news Israel’s new roads...
