Ola and Maha on Manar TV

Forgot to mention! Speaking to Ola and Maha in Barometres after the Wednesday workshop and they said they'd been doing an interview about the work of Samidoun in Dahieh on Hezbollah TV that morning.

Apparently it's all hush hush. They meet you and they don't tell you where you're going beforehand, so the two were taken to a big furniture showroom 'somewhere in Dahieh' and sat and told to wait. Finally the film crew arrived and at 8.30 in the morning they started the interiew, sat on these big overstuffed sofas (though I think they got to choose the sofas they wanted to be sat on.

Their interviewer was a woman, well made up and in hijab, Ola thought rather over-made up, and though she hadn't even been briefed on their names she had a string of questions about their work as social psychologists in the area.

Hezbollah are smart. They don't reject anything out of hand. Is this openess? I don't know. But it certainly isn't Moscow 1975...

I asked if going on Manar TV was a weird thing for them both. They said no. I asked them if any of their friends had seen it. They said yes, they'd got a lot of calls. We saw you on TV! I asked them if their friends thought they were falling under Hezbollah's spell. They said no. They were there to help the children. If it meant talking to Hezbollah, then, so be it.

They were just amazed that so many of their friends were just flicking channels at 8.30 in the morning and just happening to notice what was on Hezbollah TV.....

Images of Al Manar TV obviously taken BEFORE the Israelis bombed their studios... And all the buidings round about.