From Rasha in Beirut: "Today was a particularly strange day for me..."

[kpete]

From Rasha in Beirut

..................

Today was a particularly strange day for me because I was granted an opportunity to leave tomorrow morning. I hold a Canadian passport. I was born in Toronto when my parents were students there. I left at age two. I have never gone back, for lack of opportunity and occasion, no other reason.

I have the choice to sign up for the evacuation, but the European and North American governments have been so despicable, so racist that I don't want to subject myself to a discrimination of that sort. The Swedes, the Danes and the Germans have evacuated their patriots with blond hair and blue eyes. The immigrants that were given shelter to their countries "out of the kindness" of their governments have been systematically left behind; and the guest workers who stayed to enliven their economies and their babies who adjust the dynamism of their demographies, were left behind to fend for shelter under the shells. But I digress. The point I set out to make is that I refuse to be evacuated as a second tier denizen.

I had the opportunity to leave tomorrow by car to Syria, then to Jordan and from there by plane to wherever I am supposed to be right now. For days I have been itching to leave because I want to pursue my professional commitments, meet deadlines and continue with my life. For days I have been battling ambivalence towards this war, estranged from the passions it has roused around me and from engagement in a cause. And yet when the phone call came informing me that I had to be ready at 7:00 am the next morning, I asked for a pause to think.

much more at:
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/07/from_rasha_in_b.html


note from kpete: I do not take sides, I want truth, I want peace...

[ovidsen]

1. There are no winners here

None.

[DELUSIONAL]

2. Those words sum up war.

[fooj]

3. Wow.

This is one of the most recurring mistakes that the IDF makes. This is how we see things: THEY have destroyed this country, THEY are taking an opportunity to turn it to rubble and to usher us into oblivion, if there is ambivalence vis-a-vis the wisdom of Hezbollah's capture of the two soldiers, there is unambiguous, unanimous solidarity to stand in the face of Israel's barbaric arrogance.

[Igel]

4. That's strange.

Yesterday I was reading in some MSM source how the Lebanese Danes (Danish Lebanese?) were raising eyebrows in Damascus: they'd been bused in, and they were being evacuated. They interviewed locals, impressed that the Danes, even after their embassy was burned, would still evacuate Arabs with Danish citizenship.