Writing a memorial statement for an upright man such as Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is a task for which I feel eminently disqualified, and yet a task which brings me an immense amount of humility; indeed, I feel honored to have been asked. I want to begin by quoting Ayatollah Khomeini when he remarked on the martyrdom of Ayatollah Muhammad Beheshti: “for us, he is a nation”. This rings true when speaking of Sayyed Nasrallah; for us, Nasrallah is a nation, he is a mountain, and carries the dignified title of Shaheed Al Quds alongside General Qassem Soleimani, Yayha Sinwar, Muhammad Deif, Ismael Haniyeh, Abu Ali Mustafa and thousands more. According to Aurelie Daher, Sayyed Nasrallah “was born on 31 August 1960, in the Sharshabuk quarter of Beirut’s eastern suburbs…many of the poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of the capital were inhabited mainly by Shiites of humble means, the Nasrallah family among them.”

The cowardly Zionists destroyed multiple city blocks in their assassination of Sayyed Nasrallah. For years, their attempts on his life had been foiled, or failed. No Zionist soldiers could get near him, and no informants could get information to their paymasters fast enough to get to him. Thus, his martyrdom came in a blaze of fire. Just as his life began in the working class suburbs of Beirut, he was martyred among the Lebanese people. First joining AMAL, Nasrallah later joined the training camps set up by the Pasdaran in 1982; there he trained alongside the peasants, workers, and clerics who eventually made up the nucleus of Hezbollah. As they departed from Tehran after forming a leadership structure, Ayatollah Khomeini gave them a final message: “what is important is that you work…. many of you will not live to see the fruit of your efforts”.

Sayyed Nasrallah and all the other leadership of Hezbollah knew this would be their fate. This did not deter any of them, from leaders such as Sayyed Nasrallah and Imad Mughniyeh and their sons to the rank-and-file fighters, teachers, doctors, nurses, construction workers, and clerics. In 1993, after a wave of assassinations, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah became the secretary general of Hezbollah. This fighting force who trained in the North Bekaa started a wave of armed resistance against the Zionist occupation forces, which eventually expelled them in the year 2000. He served dutifully in the role of Secretary General until his martyrdom at the end of 2024. The Quranic verse which is placed squarely on the Hezbollah logo: “fa’an Hezbollah, humma Al Ghalibun” (certainly, the party of God, they are the victorious ones) is truly a testament to Sayyed Nasrallah and all of the Lebanese resistance forces.

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Landmarks in Sayyed Nasrallah's personality

Sayyed Nasrallah’s speeches were watched widely across the Arab and Islamic world, and even in the heart of the Zionist entity the settlers knew that when Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah made a promise, it would be kept. He fought tirelessly for the people of Lebanon, Palestine, and elsewhere in the Islamic world. He had a keen knowledge of geopolitics, religion, and history which he wove into his speeches seamlessly. In one famous speech, he retells the story of Abu Fadl Al Abbas at the battle of Karbala through the lens of the Palestinian people:

They say to us, leave this battle and you will have safety, abandon this battle and you will stay alive and you will be crossed off the terrorist list…terrorism to them is the resistance, the defense of the nation, the support of the Palestinian people, the defense of the dignities and holy sites of this nation. We say to them–and you are all witnesses to what I say…just as Abbas, the son of Ali said at Karbala…you offer us safety…and the fighters of Palestine have no safety, Al Quds has no safety, Al Aqsa Mosque has no safety…May the curse of God be upon you and your ‘safety’!

Sayyed Nasrallah also fought tirelessly against the Zionist driven fitnah between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims. He did this in his speeches, highlighting the hypocrisy and anti-Islamic character of the Wahhabi death squads unleashed on the region by the US, EU, and Saudi Arabia. He also did this by being a key figure in the Axis of Resistance, and building the capabilities of the Axis of Resistance. Photos and testimonies of Hezbollah fighters protecting priests and nuns from Daesh also show how much Nasrallah emphasized the Islamic character of resistance during his tenure in leadership–protecting all believers from the onslaught of imperialist violence. Alongside the Sunni Hamas and PIJ, the communist PFLP and DFLP, and the Shi’a in Iran and Yemen, Nasrallah fought to free the region from western colonialism, imperialism, and their attack dogs in “Tel Aviv”. He put it most concisely in an interview where he stated “we consider all borders in the region as fake and colonialist, and therefore doomed to disappear”.

The way Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah laughed and smiled on camera before launching a polemic, or explaining new laws and decrees in layman's terms to the base of Hezbollah added to his charisma as a man and a leader. The fact that he lost his own child in the struggle and never bowed to any tyrant or Zionist threat shows what an upright man he truly was. There are not enough words, nor enough sentences to describe the impact of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. There are no words eloquent enough to encapsulate his character and his ability to arouse the masses to action. There is no one like him. For us, he is a nation.

For us, he is a mountain. Yet despite all of this, and in respect of his insistence on this fact on multiple occasions, he was a man for his time and place, nothing more, nothing less. Thus, his spirit of martyrdom and his love of the people is alive today in every single one of us who is fighting for a free Palestine.