The commemoration programme was built on the traditional Arab format of the condolence visit (ta’aziya). All participants were invited to wear mourning clothes, and behind the whole area hung an obituary notice, an eighteen-foot-long banner inscribed with words: ‘The sisters of the children of Baghdad and their families, and the paternal uncles of the families of Mosul, Al-Nasirya, Jenin, Rafah, and Nablus, and their kin living in the Arab world and abroad, mourn with deepest sorrow their dearly beloved deceased: The victims of American and Israeli aggression, cut down in their childhood, and their youth, and their prime, members of humanity’.” Rosemary Sayigh reports from Beirut on a symbolically charged protest action.
