just wanted to share this post on Elza Maalouf’s blog here with you.
It was much easier for me to think rationally about the war in Iraq. Like others who are interested in the Middle East or come from it, I was able to analyze the situation in Iraq to the best of my ability, discuss the issue with Iraqi friends or on the various listserves, and try to use developmental theories to justify certain decisions made by the US or by the Iraqis.
With this Lebanese tragedy, I find myself struggling not to scream at people who don’t see the situation from my perspective. All the socio-political, psychological and spiritual theories are reduced to a reactionary thinking on my part. I guess that the loss of souls and the pain of so many people with whom I share history, roots and DNA made me regress to a narrow ethnocentric mindset. Nothing is wrong with that, I know. However I wonder why I don’t feel the same intensity when I read about the genocide in Darfur, and the famine that the world can prevent in Niger.
When I say I have a worldcentric view, I know that I mean it on a ‘good day’…not when Ali, Fatima, George, Mohamad and Marie from Southern Lebanon, Beirut or the Bekaa Valley are displaced, wounded or in pain.
I do feel for every Israeli and Lebanese mother suffering for a child, a husband or a brother. They have nothing to do with politicians, militias and war. They just happen to be there living with hopes and dreams of a happy family and a better future…
(Source)