My calendar tells me that today is April 24, 2007

The day is still young, but I am not hopeful that the first genocide of the 20th century will be recognized anytime soon.

Another year goes by where the spill of my ancestors’ blood, the beheadings, the raping of little girls and women and the way very pregnant women had their beautiful bellies slashed is ignored amidst Turkish intimidation and prevailing oil and other business interests.

What will I tell my children about the stain that this vehement propoganda has had upon our culture, history, and collective consciousness?

What will I tell my weary soul?

The nation that was once dubbed the Switzerland of the Middle East once again finds herself at the mercy of its neighbour’s offensive invasion. Lebanon once welcomed displaced survivors of the Armenian Genocide with open arms which allowed my ancestors to eventually flourish and make a life for themselves. However, Lebanese refugees will soon require sanctuary, but will the global stage be listening?

As news reports gradually become a disturbing reality, people across the world express their sadness and outrage while others meekly sympathise and move on with the business of life. For some of us, another lifetime flashes in front of our lives when the Lebanese people were subject to offensive bombardments and abject misery, except we will not have another philantropist, another Rafik  Hariri to stand his ground and rejuvenate his beloved Beirut.

Hence, Israel destroys my country while the world sits idly by. Israel proceeds to destroy Lebanon again while the world’s only superpower, its number one ally stands by without any admonishments nor restraints. In fact, Condoleeza Rice gives Israel another week to continue the air raids. Am I hearing this right? She will sit by while countless innocent people perish for another week? Is the life of a Lebanese so worthless that the survival of this people cannot possibly be spared? How long till Israel completely destroys every single infrastructure in the country? How can the world stand by while airports, bridges, hospitals, and homes are turned into rubble yet again? 

When will Israel’s audacity wane and when will my beloved Lebanon cease to be used as everyone’s favourite battleground?

I have been reading Joseph Nye’s The Paradox of American Power: How the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone for the past month and I finally finished it tonight along with a succint review that I posted in Reading Blog. Now, I am on to Samuel P. Huntington’s classic Us vs. Them The Clash of Civilisations: Remaking of the World Order. I wonder if I read those books so passionately and attentively when I was studying Political Science! Truth be told, I absolutely love it and my bookcases are covered with quasi-political and international economics (particularly micro-credit case studies) books and occasional papers. Now, my political perceptions may easily be divulged by who keeps me company, but that is not always a bad thing.

Update: I have enough family in Lebanon, particularly in West Beirut to be worried out of my mind. So far, silence ensues from their end, but hope is not lost. I am getting angrier by the minute for unlike the rest of the world, we know the reasons and the raison d’être of the calculating instigators that are Hezbollah and Israel and let’s not forget Syria. The impending war is playing in my mind’s eye like a bad, bad film right now; only it is not a film, but rather a repeat of history, the history of my life from literally being born in a bomb shelter to growing up within.

There is a lot that is not right with us and I cannot help but be pessimistic about our imminent future. In this post-9/11 world, I feel as helpless and outraged as everyone else. I am disillusioned and pissed off about the effects of the invasion of Iraq and the escalating ramifications of our actions in that region; the rampant terrorism within our borders and overseas makes me angry and it is all too reminiscent of my own childhood. On top of it, our neglect of our physical resources will bite us in the ass sooner or later and the term climate change will be more than token symbiotics. Eventually, we will be as concerned about environmental refugees as political refugees, but it might be far too late.

If love and peace so strong
Why are there pieces of love that don’t belong
Nations dropping bombs
Chemical gases filling lungs of little ones
With ongoing suffering
As the youth die young
So ask yourself is the loving really strong?
So I can ask myself really what is going wrong?*

Israel’s invasion of Lebanon makes me sick at heart which is to be expected. As I watch news reports, I now see and understand how the rest of the world viewed what used to pass for our lives in Beirut in the ’70s throughout the ’90s. We have seen odd bombs explode on Lebanese turf before and after Prime Minister Hariri’s assasination, but the events that are unfolding this week are certainly unprecedented and I feel my senses engulfing me with terrible, terrible doom. For the uninitiated, it is important to note that Israel’s usual arrogance shines here and Hezbollah’s insolence makes me sick. 

Once again, Lebanon is caught between the mightier powers that be who play in her playground: being caught in the Palestinian-Israeli-Syrian conflicts that tore my country apart, but it is also important to note that Hezbollah has hijacked the Lebanese society and the population and most of the government are as powerless as I feel here in Montreal. Still, I feel outraged that Israel feels that Palestinian and Lebanese lives are, as usual, nearly not worth the life of an Israeli and thus, it all begins anew, but this time, they have the audacity to target the country’s sole airport, bridges and water pumps that will mean severe civilian devastation over time and cultural, physical, and emotional invasion that may last another two decades. I feel sick to my stomach and I can only question where all this hostility and strife will lead. In fact, one can lump the future of Iraq along with this new, deadly development because they are not all that different.

Thus, the world will concentrate on the old conflicts that become new again while millions of Africans starve and die of AIDS and malnutrition, but once again, our eyes are turned elsewhere, somewhere where today’s world powers have more of a vested interest in than in the African heartland.

So, I ask you: where the fuck is our love for humankind?

*Where is the Love? lyrics by Black Eyed Peas