Residents of Rushdie Suspect’s Lebanese Village Say Incident Has Little to Do With Them

A view of the town of Yaroun, southern Lebanon August 15, 2022. (Reuters)
A view of the town of Yaroun, southern Lebanon August 15, 2022. (Reuters)
TT
20

Residents of Rushdie Suspect’s Lebanese Village Say Incident Has Little to Do With Them

A view of the town of Yaroun, southern Lebanon August 15, 2022. (Reuters)
A view of the town of Yaroun, southern Lebanon August 15, 2022. (Reuters)

Street-side signs in the southern Lebanese village of Yaroun, the ancestral home of the suspect in the stabbing of Salman Rushdie, bear posters of Iran's former supreme leader Khomeini who in 1989 issued a fatwa calling for the author's death.

The logo of Lebanon's Iran-armed Hezbollah group adorns small monuments to its fighters killed during decades of wars with Israel, which borders Yaroun to the east and south.

The mood in the small Lebanese village is apprehensive.

Few want to speak about Friday's attack on Rushdie or about Hadi Matar, the 24-year-old American suspect whose family originally hails from Yaroun, where Hezbollah has strong support.

Locals say the attack on the novelist at a public appearance in New York state has little to do with them.

"There is no information... He was born abroad in America and remains there," local official Riad al-Ridha told Reuters. "No one wants to talk about it because no one knows anything."

Matar, from New Jersey, has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault. An initial law enforcement review of his social media account showed he was sympathetic to Shiite extremism and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to NBC New York.

The IRGC is a powerful faction that Washington accuses of carrying out a global extremist campaign.

US authorities have not offered any additional details on the investigation, including a possible motive.

Matar's parents emigrated to the United States and he was born and raised there, but his father Hassan Matar returned to Lebanon several years ago, Yaroun Mayor Ali Tehfe told Reuters.

Residents of the village said Matar's parents were divorced and the mother continues to live in the United States.

After the attack, the father locked himself in his home and was refusing to speak to anyone, Tehfe said.

Reuters visited a simple cinder block building where Tehfe said Hassan Matar lived. Two people inside, including a middle-aged man, declined to speak.

Seven people from the town, including four living in the United States and Australia, also declined to speak when asked if they knew Hadi Matar or would condemn his attack, citing the sensitivity of the case and a lack of knowledge on its details.

Rushdie has lived with a bounty on his head since the publication of his 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses," which is viewed by some Muslims as containing blasphemous passages.

Hezbollah, which was founded in 1982 by Iran's Revolutionary Guards and classified by the United States and other Western countries as a terrorist organization, has said it has no information on the attack. Iran's foreign ministry said only Rushdie himself and his supporters were to blame.

Critics of Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon have condemned the attack even as others close to Hezbollah offer support for Khomeini's 1989 edict - a call previously supported by Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Journalist Radwan Akil, a writer for Lebanon's Annahar newspaper, said on Sunday that he supported the implementation of Khomeinei's fatwa against Rushdie. The newspaper said in a statement his opinion "is entirely inconsistent with Annahar's policies which calls for fighting words with words".

Former Annahar editor Gebran Tueni and columnist Samir Kassir, both opponents of Hezbollah and of Syria's dominance in Lebanon, were killed in 2005.



Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
TT
20

Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)

The Iran-Israel war has helped strengthen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu domestically and overseas, just as his grip on power looked vulnerable.

On the eve of launching strikes on Iran, his government looked to be on the verge of collapse, with a drive to conscript ultra-Orthodox Jews threatening to scupper his fragile coalition.

Nearly two years on from Hamas's unprecedented attack in 2023, Netanyahu was under growing domestic criticism for his handling of the war in Gaza, where dozens of hostages remain unaccounted for, said AFP.

Internationally too, he was coming under pressure including from longstanding allies, who since the war with Iran began have gone back to expressing support.

Just days ago, polls were predicting Netanyahu would lose his majority if new elections were held, but now, his fortunes appear to have reversed, and Israelis are seeing in "Bibi" the man of the moment.

– 'Reshape the Middle East' –

For decades, Netanyahu has warned of the risk of a nuclear attack on Israel by Iran -- a fear shared by most Israelis.

Yonatan Freeman, a geopolitics expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Netanyahu's argument that the pre-emptive strike on Iran was necessary draws "a lot of public support" and that the prime minister has been "greatly strengthened".

Even the opposition has rallied behind him.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is my political rival, but his decision to strike Iran at this moment in time is the right one," opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote in a Jerusalem Post op-ed.

A poll published Saturday by a conservative Israeli channel showed that 54 percent of respondents expressed confidence in the prime minister.

The public had had time to prepare for the possibility of an offensive against Iran, with Netanyahu repeatedly warning that Israel was fighting for its survival and had an opportunity to "reshape the Middle East."

During tit-for-tat military exchanges last year, Israel launched air raids on targets in Iran in October that are thought to have severely damaged Iranian air defenses.

Israel's then-defense minister Yoav Gallant said the strikes had shifted "the balance of power" and had "weakened" Iran.

"In fact, for the past 20 months, Israelis have been thinking about this (a war with Iran)," said Denis Charbit, a political scientist at Israel's Open University.

Since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Netanyahu has ordered military action in Gaza, against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as targets in Syria where long-time leader Bashar al-Assad fell in December last year.

"Netanyahu always wants to dominate the agenda, to be the one who reshuffles the deck himself -- not the one who reacts -- and here he is clearly asserting his Churchillian side, which is, incidentally, his model," Charbit said.

"But depending on the outcome and the duration (of the war), everything could change, and Israelis might turn against Bibi and demand answers."

– Silencing critics –

For now, however, people in Israel see the conflict with Iran as a "necessary war," according to Nitzan Perelman, a researcher specialized in Israel at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France.

"Public opinion supports this war, just as it has supported previous ones," she added.

"It's very useful for Netanyahu because it silences criticism, both inside the country and abroad."

In the weeks ahead of the Iran strikes, international criticism of Netanyahu and Israel's military had reached unprecedented levels.

After more than 55,000 deaths in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, and a blockade that has produced famine-like conditions there, Israel has faced growing isolation and the risk of sanctions, while Netanyahu himself is the subject of an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes.

But on Sunday, two days into the war with Iran, the Israeli leader received a phone call from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, while Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has held talks with numerous counterparts.

"There's more consensus in Europe in how they see Iran, which is more equal to how Israel sees Iran," explained Freeman from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that Israel was doing "the dirty work... for all of us."

The idea that a weakened Iran could lead to regional peace and the emergence of a new Middle East is appealing to the United States and some European countries, according to Freeman.

But for Perelman, "Netanyahu is exploiting the Iranian threat, as he always has."