Lebanon

This morning I woke up feeling all tight and sick in the stomach. Dreamt of Israel and Lebanon after watching the news updates yesterday night. The more I read, hear and see, the angrier I become. One is so powerless, caught in this political entanglements, listening to one party saying this and another saying that. Sometimes it's Israel that's bad and then again it's the Hezbollah, which more often than not becomes confused with Lebanon.
I must admit that I have been rather ignorant concerning the middle east over the last years and in no way expected any of this to happen. But now I find myself surprised by the ignorance of politicians as well. While somehow I can't believe that an educated person, elected and paid to understand and deal with these things, which a foreign secretary or minister certainly must be, I find them proving otherwise every day in the media. Which awakens suspicions they are maybe not so ignorant after all but acting out of political hypocrisy, which is called diplomacy then, of course. Surely they can't be as blind as believing that this war is actually about Lebanon in the long run. That finding a way out of this so-called 'crisis' (what a diplomatic understatement!) can be reached by ending the momentary bombing-raids between the Hezbollah and Israel. From my - insignificant, I know - point of view, Lebanon is merely housing a war that is not really it's own, at least if one separates between the Hezbollah and Lebanon in general.
The majority of people in Lebanon surely wants peace more than anything else but they are those who suffer now. Of course there's always a number of people made to believe what radicals want them to believe and I guess it's not too difficult to make a dissatisfied or uneducated person (or a person educated to a certain religious or political opinion) believe in an enemy that has been deliberately provoked to prove one. Make my enemy become your enemy and quickly there is an ally and supporter ... Not only radical islamists, no, radicals (and politicians) of all religions and political views all over the world use this tactic (though it's mainly the former kind pulling the strings here I guess). The arms (which I really meant as in 'hands' but now realize the other form of interpretation is maybe more accurate here) of Iran are numerous and manifold and fighting the Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Hamas in Palestine will not lessen the danger in the long term. To think of the consequences of all this is nearly choking me and I become so enraged reading the latest political statements from all western nations. The UN seem to be helpless as well. And all the time innocent people become victims of this terror. It's sick, sick, sick. It's sick to count in numbers only those dying right now. After all, everybody there is a victim now, loosing a life, an existence, not only in the physical sense. I could throw up whenever I read about how many more 'civilians' have been killed by military. It's people killing people and it's an abstract concept of God making people accept and tolerate this. What kind of a God would that be? Yet I know that wondering about religious motivation is even more senseless than wondering about political motivation, for there is no rationality in religion.
What strikes me as being extremely sad is the fact that the sufferings of the people there remain unreal to most people here. Watching the news, seeing places go up in smoke, it still doesn't really touch the masses. How could we become so uncompassionate, so indifferent? The mid east is too abstract for most of us who have no connections there. What do you think would happen if those pictures were showing Paris instead of Beirut? Would it be emotionally affecting us westerners then? Isn't it absolutely strange how every nation seems to take an interest mainly in it's own people? Sympathy seems to be difficult if there is no identification, which still seems to be a question of sharing a cultural background. It brings a line from a Sting song into my mind: 'we share the same biology, regardless of ideology' ... but who cares about it? Isn't it almost ironic, how things keep repeating themselves? And though there is a lot of proof that politics and military solutions do not show any effect, it's still the only way people see. And again I must admit to this disturbing feeling of being powerless, a mere bystander ...

There is this extremely touching blog from Beirut. Whoever wants to get an impression of what it is like to be there now, to hear it from an everyday point of view, close to your own way of seeing the world ... go have a look, follow the link below. I'm sure it won't leave you cold: "War diaries of a 30 year old woman ... with love from Beirut."