Muslim News (UK): "'Hizbullah rockets' for sale in Jiddah!"

This is credited to Arab News, and it is an interesting illustration of terrorist groups and leaders becoming trendy popular symbols:

Walking near the Bab Makkah area of Jeddah’s historic center during Ramadan this year, it is quite common to hear somebody offering to sell you some Hezbollah rockets.

“We’ve got Hezbollahs,” said one young man in a thick Yemeni accent to the passing crowds of Ramadan shoppers. “We’ve got it all. Good prices, too.”

If you happen to hear this, relax. The guy is just trying to sell you some meter-tall rockets — the kind you fire into the air in celebration rather than the other kind.

Thanks to this summer’s clashes in Southern Lebanon, “Hezbollah” has become the fashionable nickname for the largest and most expensive of the fireworks that you can buy in downtown Jeddah: One rocket costs SR150, and if the “Hezbollah” is a little too big or expensive, the firecracker pusher might also have some smaller “Bin Ladens” available.

While these toys aren’t weapons, they are quite formidable by firecracker standards. A meter-long stick of wood with an explosive charge the size of a stick of dynamite sounds pretty darn close to something you might hear in an actual battlefield when exploded.

“You stick the wood in the ground and light it here,” said an illegal firecracker dealer after escorting this reporter to his secret location, which felt like a den of ill repute. “It goes up, and then it goes boom with many colors.”

Tags: Saudi Arabia, Hizbullah, fireworks