The two brutal attacks that took place last week resulted in the deaths of scores of innocent people in Paris and Beirut, and ISIS has claimed responsibility for both.
Yet strangely, international media has focused on just one attack, the one in Paris. A worldwide display of solidarity has been seen, from the French tri-colors projected on Sydney’s iconic Opera House, to similar displays on landmarks across the world.
The news media seemed to downplay the two suicide bomber attacks in Beirut as being just another of the many bombing seen in the Lebanese capital over the years. The Thursday attacks in Beirut took the lives of 44 people, leaving dozens more injured.
Lebanese citizens of countries all over the world noticed the media slight, and many are taking to social media, asking if the West values Arab lives less than they do Europeans. They are also hurt that Lebanon is being depicted as a country where violence is a way of life.
The Christian Science Monitor acknowledges Lebanon is no stranger to terror. It is pointed out that while Beirut’s attacks on Thursday were the deadliest since 1990, the country has been a terror target for a long time. Between July 2013, and June 2014, there have been 14 bombings that killed over 100 people.
Newspapers, including the New York Times, were openly sympathetic in their headlines after the Paris attacks, one reading “Paris attacks kill more than 100, border controls tightened.” Reuters‘ headline read, “Disbelief, Panic as Militants Cause Carnage in Paris.”
But any terror attacks in Beirut often are laced with words and phrases that put geography and politics center stage, rather than talking about the victims killed or injured. Again, the New York Times Tweeted, “Deadly Blasts Hit Hezbollah stronghold in Southern Beirut,” while Reuters followed with, “Two Suicide Bombers hit Hezbollah bastion in Lebanon.”
Elie Fares is a Lebanese doctor who has a website called “A Separate State of Mind.” On November 14, after hearing from friends in Paris about the terrorist attacks there, he blogged, “When my people died, no country bothered to lit up its landmarks in the colors of their flag. When my people died, they did not send the world in mourning. Their death was but an irrelevant fleck along the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world.”
Paris, the capital of France is known as “the city of lights. Beirut, Lebanon is described as “the Paris of the Middle East” because of its rich history and culture. Beirut is also the capital of one of the most religiously diverse countries in the region, a country where Christians and Muslims live and work together.
Lebanese people just want the world to take the terrorism going on in their country as seriously as the world is taking the terror attacks in Paris, or for that matter, terror attacks in other countries outside the Arab world.
