"I return to Mr Ben Dov. He noticed the sort of thing so simple and obvious, that it would escape the attention of most intellectual observers. It was about Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, born and raised in the village of al-Bazuriya -- whose great grandparents might easily have sheltered Mr Ben Dov’s grandparents. It was that Nasrallah wears a Persian turban, and Persian clothes. His ancestors would have worn their own version of kaffiyeh and awal (the headcloth and cord), and sharwal (baggy trousers). Nor would his women have worn veils.

The people of Shia villages in southern Lebanon are still Shia, to be sure; but they have been transformed, under the influence of a vicious ideology, into agents of fanatics giving orders from far away. And the new clothing is only the outward manifestation. Their religion has been changed within them, from time-honoured custom to something hateful and unspeakably aggressive.

What is their future? For we are, or at least I am, hardly concerned exclusively with the future of the Israeli Jews, or the Lebanese Christians. Their leaders have led them into the valley of the shadow of death, and cannot lead them out again. I truly can’t imagine how they can recover, or how any outsider can help."