Fri 9 May 2008
Beirut, again the blood flows
Posted by dvarisco under Ethics , Iraq War , Terrorism , Lebanon , Arab-Israeli Conflict1 Comment

Smoke billows from burning tires as a Lebanese boy flashes the victory sign at a blocked road leading to the international airport in Beirut (AFP)
The Middle East is in turmoil again. Today West Beirut was “taken over” by Hezbollah. In historical terms the violence in the region has never stopped. Where shall we start? Even in myth Cain killed Abel in the biblical beginning. Hammurabi, the great law giver, was a despot who fought against his foes between and beyond the Tigris and Euphrates, as they fought against him. His law code sits in a museum, a relic of what might have been. But the blood of all the victims in his reign simply seeped into Babylonian mud, the same clay that literalists of the three hegemonic monotheisms claim as the creative design for all humanity. Perhaps it is less tasting the forbidden fruit than thinking we spring from dirt that damns much of eternity’s religious rhetoric as a foil for political self interest. How else can rational beings make sense of the diversity of hate and fighting that constantly armageddons a region reduced to more than an Oriental curiosity since Napoleon aggrandized it into a war over property rights? Arabs vs. Israelis, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iranian nukes, Taliban stonings, Egyptian protests, Yemenis fighting Yemenis, the ongoing rape of Iraq, Kurds vs. Turks, and once again fallen limbs from the cedars of Lebanon. (more…)



















