“Between us and Israel there are mountains, rivers, extinguished eyes, amputated hands—and a deep revenge.”
In this powerful episode of Women of Resistance, host Sakina Datoo brings us the story of 27-year-old Zeinab Al Mistrah, an interior designer and entrepreneur from Beirut whose life was shattered in a single instant by the pager massacre—yet whose defiance burns brighter than ever.
Zeinab chose her field because she loved colour. “I chose this field because I love coordination and colours,” she says, “and I love to bring life out through colours.” At 19 she founded her own event-planning company; seven years of hard work built her name and her dreams.
Then came 17 September 2024. At 3:23 pm, her laptop battery died, and she crossed the room to grab the charger. The pager exploded right next to her.
“I wasn’t even holding it,” she recalls, “and I was critically injured.”
The blast took her left eye entirely; it was removed. Her right eye retains only ten percent of its vision—she sees shadows now. Three fingers of her right hand were amputated. Fourteen operations so far, seven more ahead. And because the injury is to the retina, medicine “has reached its limit”: a retina, unlike a cornea, cannot be transplanted.
The enemy took more than her sight. Her business collapsed. The marital home she was preparing as a bride-to-be was destroyed during the war. “But then Israel killed my business,” she says, “along with the rest of the dreams I had.”
Yet she refuses the darkness. “To the Israeli enemy I say: you may have killed that dream I had, but you’ve invoked other dreams in me.” Next month she enrols at university again as a first-year student, searching for a new major her injuries will not forbid.
Her roots sustain her. Zeinab is from Taibeh, one of the border villages with occupied Palestine—the only girl among three brothers, raised on sand, family gatherings and mischief. Hearing her parents speak of eighteen years exiled from their village, she once wondered why it mattered. “Until this war happened, and we truly felt what it meant to have an occupation steal your memories.”
In her testimony, womanhood itself becomes resistance. She speaks of the woman of Kafr Kila who stood before a Merkava tank:
“This war proved that women have a role—be it as an injured person, a martyr, or using her voice to resist.”
In the studio, protest artist Douglas Crabtree joins Sakina against the backdrop of the rubble to reflect on art as witness—how image, symbol and creative protest carry the stories of the wounded beyond borders, and why solidarity must be practised, not merely proclaimed.
The massacre was meant to break a society. Instead, Zeinab says, it hardened it:
“Those wounded became more determined and resolute.” And her faith is unshaken: “Whoever supports God, God will support him.”
In Zeinab’s hands—hands missing three fingers—resistance is more than survival. It is memory, faith, and defiance. And as long as she can see even shadows, the world cannot say it did not know.
