A letter from Lebanon, written by Sarine Khatchikian, a member of the 120-thousand Armenian community. via Armenian@yahoogroups.com.
Hear Our Cry! Enough Is Enough!
I am a citizen of Lebanon living in this biblical land. Currently being one of those who is living and witnessing the ongoing horror in my beautiful country, I am enraged, angered, sad, distressed and confused as to what to do. I am sick and tired of people taking advantage of my country, carrying out their own wars on my land, cleaning up their dirty laundry at the cost of my fellow citizens. I am not a supporter of any political party; I am with the land of “Milk and Honey” as the Bible states. My rage is against Israel, Hezbollah, Bush’s USA, Iran, Syria and the previous Lebanese government.
How dare they, under selfish pretexts, which I do not even wish to discern, exploit our country to settle their horrendous accounts.
Saida, LEBANON: Lebanese boy Ali Ghraieb, 09, who lost his right eye during the Israeli attack on the civil defence center in Tyre, lies in his hospital bed at Hammoud hospital in the southern coastal city of Saida, 22 July 2006. With Israel massing thousands of soldiers near the Lebanese border in apparent preparation for an invasion, diehard residents of southern Lebanon who had been defiantly staying put were finally joining the exodus north. AFP PHOTO/ANWAR AMRO
Hezbollah claims to be defending its land. I used to admire that group during the years when Israel had occupied the South, being the only ones to defend the land. After the occupation, they should have joined the Lebanese Army if they really intended to defend this land. They have no right to compel the people of Lebanon to pay the price for their selfish moves!
Bush (yes, Bush, not even Mr. Bush!) has declared himself as nothing short of the next Messiah who has taken under his ‘wings’ the duty of bringing justice to the world, stopping terror from the globe!!! What a noble and kindred spirit! Shame on him! What right does he have to violate the privacies of other countries? Before meddling internationally, one should clean up the national disorder. What about the homeless in the USA? What about the educational standards in a number of public schools? What about the crime rates in the states? What about substance abuse rates? What about tempered rights of children? What about the youth landing home in coffins from Iraq?
Israel! Shame on you for using “God’s Chosen People” as a slogan for every inhumane action in the world! God’s chosen people should be setting examples for the rest of the world, not violating every single humanitarian decree! What will you tell God about the innocent children whose lifeless bodies are hanging out from their parents’ cars as they are fleeing your bombs? What will you tell the children whose parents are lying dead in front of them with their intestines bulging out of their bodies in front of their tiny innocent eyes? What will you tell students when they find their schools completely destroyed and leveled to the ground? How can you justify bombing ambulances and humanitarian workers when they are selflessly and nobly trying to fulfill their missions of evacuating people and caring for the wounded? How can you hit
homes and not allow people to remove their dead from under the rubble? THEIR DEAD! You took their lives, at least leave their dead bodies to their families!
Syria and Iran! It pains my heart to see those two beautiful countries who have throughout the history of mankind been pioneers in almost every aspect of existence (long before the Western world had even woken up) now taking a back seat in the vehicle of modernizing the world. There exist noble people in those countries who have now been classified as terrorists because of the dark leadership ruling them. If that is the way they want their countries governed, they have every right to do so! But keep Lebanon out of it!
We are not savages, we are not beasts! We are a civilized nation. We do not accept to have others recklessly run our country. It is time that we have a strong governing body that prioritizes the needs of its nation above others.
What we are facing today is Hurricane Katrina and the last Tsunami combined and then multiplied! Yes modern world, that is what we have! There are around half a million refugees all around Lebanon having taken shelter in schools, and yes, even on so-called safe “streets” sleeping on sidewalks. Do we really understand what that means? 500,000 people sleeping on the icy ground, with no blankets, no mattresses, nothing to eat but a bite of bread once a day! Do we really know what it means to have 200 people use 4 toilets and not have a single drop of water to flush it? Do we? Let’s just face the bare facts for a moment. We read and hear the media say “war” and “refugees”. Now, picture one of our local schools with your entire family in it, with your newborn baby crying for milk, with your young son shaking from fear not grasping why he is sitting on the floor while his father or mother is bleeding to death in front of him and the ambulance is not coming!
What would you do? Wouldn’t you spit at the face of this unjust world?
Enough is enough! The Lebanese are a proud and noble nation, who after 30 years of destructive war caught up with the rest of the world and proved to everybody that they can be the best in any professional domain.
Let us be, let us help the world with our potentials, allow us to our basic human rights so we can live and be able to welcome you on our biblical land and share with you the “Milk and Honey” that God has bestowed upon us.
Sarine Khatchikian
School Director
