Speaker 2
Yeah, right. And you know, open casket. Oh, but yeah,
Speaker 1
exactly. And what you start noticing is that you have martyrs who are being, you know, rushed down the street and they have three headbands on or they have two headbands on. You know, one will have an Islamic Jihad one and right above it, you'll have a lions den headband. And people begin saying like, whoa, what's what's happening here? That takes absolutely no sense. Because these factions look for the better portion of the last 20 years, these factions were always aligned or associated with some broader or bigger political body or a body that would promise some sort of big end. And here lines and was saying, we're going to do the exact opposite of that. And so when I interviewed, I recently interviewed a guy who sells weapons to lions den. And he told me that, look, basically, he says, I'm Fatah. I was born Fatah. He says, I drink the milk of Fatah. I drink it for my mother's breast. But I don't like Abbas. And so I go to lines den and he says, listen, if they tell me, for example, in Alakse-Martis regays that I can't shoot at Jews, then I go to lines den. And he says, that's because it's a completely non hierarchical sort of collection of lone wolves. I'm not entirely sure that it's completely non hierarchical, but it's definitely scattered and they definitely refuse any kind of political alignment.
Speaker 2
It's very interesting that they have managed to keep that going as long as they have. And I'll be honest, I found lines den extremely interesting in that when they started, they said that's what they were going to do. But I guess my cynicism, which in my opinion is kind of quite well placed considering history. I kind of was cynical. I thought, well, give it like six months. There's going to be another group is going to take over. They're going to just basically become a kind of proxy for whatever. But I was talking to a Palestinian reporter recently who got good access there. And he was saying to me, look, when you see all these other factions claiming them, kind of what you've just said, he was like, they're not them. He was like, they're lions den first. You know what I'm saying? So it's very interesting that they have managed to stick to that. And that from what I understand is making them very popular still, right? Yeah, I mean, look, you have to look at the
Speaker 1
name itself. Where does the name lions den come from? And the name lions den comes from, I mean, on the one hand, lion lions usually operate by themselves. Or at least that's what the guy was speaking to, it tells me. So he says every lion to himself and his freedom. And that's how he explains the lion's part. But the den, the den, it sounds like it's a merely metaphorical. It's a little bit of aesthetic flourish. But it's not that. If you go into the Elias Mina quarter, which is at the very, very tucked into the very back end of the old city, Nablus, what you'll notice is that it's basically a collection of caves, old Byzantine tunnels. And so you really, some as white as the average human waste. And so when you get to notice that every lion is for himself and also these lions are operating primarily out of this network of tunnels, this dense thick network of dens. And so they are completely local. And I think they had a pretty good tactic, which is, I think, I don't know if it was a conscious decision. But at some point or another, they decided that we are going to limit ourselves to Nablus. And all of their attacks, mind you, are usually in the immediate vicinity. They're on checkpoints that are on the outskirts of Nablus or on the settlements that are on the hills overlooking Nablus. You know what I mean? And when you go to Nablus itself, you start to realize how they... So there's a few things that have changed in Nablus. First of all, all of the martyr photos that were once Alaksa Martyr brigades are now lions dead. And what was one year ago a single lions dead flag as you reached the end of the old city entering the Elias Mina quarter, now the entire stretch of the market is filled with lions dead. And what's more, they've become a kind of vigilante group. Essentially, they've become a veritable vigilante group. They walk around the city. If they see someone who's foreign, they'll ask for your ID. If they don't like the look of you, they'll tell you to get out or they'll search your bag. And this all culminated about two months ago in an actual execution. They executed someone in the middle of the city. They execute one of their own, right? He was...