
Beirut, Also the Site of Deadly Attacks, Feels Forgotten - caberus
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/world/middleeast/beirut-lebanon-attacks-paris.html
======
whatnotests
Like nobody is shocked when yet another tornado rips apart yet another trailer
court in the Midwest.

I am numb to reports of violence in the Middle East. It seems that every day
someone is getting blown up over there for no reason at all except for
ideology.

~~~
perlgeek
At least the bombings in Iraq didn't happen before the invasion from the US
and allied forces, so even though we're numb, we should at least accept some
amount of responsibility.

~~~
omginternets
I'm still waiting for the US to accept a non-trivial amount of refugees for
this precise reason. (Not going to happen...)

~~~
lmz
I think if the US didn't have an ocean separating them from the Middle East
they would do things quite differently there.

~~~
omginternets
I think so too, and it says a lot about the 51% of them that voted for Bush a
second time.

If the EU had a sense of humor, they'd ship the refugees to South Carolina.

------
dijit
I'm not entirely sure what people expected.

France is EU therefore considered "the west" by many.

Which is the worse tragedy to you: the death of your wife, or the deaths of
100 faceless strangers whose life you cannot empathise with 3.000KM away.

I mean, it's a shame, and a horrible tragedy, but most people with empathise
more with the French who are considered to be living in comparable safety to
those who live in Beirut. (which has been a volatile zone for as long as I've
been alive).

~~~
mbrock
That's exactly the problem.

People in "the West" or "Europe" are compared to loved ones while people
across the Mediterranean are "faceless strangers whose life you cannot
empathise with."

~~~
louhike
The thing is you can expect the same from people in Beirut, they will lack
empathy with people in the west. It needs effort to have equal empathy to
someone you have nothing in common than someone having the same kind of life
than you.

~~~
mkempe
For context, people danced and celebrated in the streets of Lebanon and
various other Arab countries when the towers were destroyed in NYC.

~~~
cholantesh
Specifically, a lot of Palestinian Arabs celebrated. The most widely aired
footage was from a Lebanese refugee camp that houses Palestinians. In many
other places, mass vigils were held, most notably in Tehran.

------
mbrock
Do we really need to have a thread for every news article related to terrorist
attacks?

From the guidelines:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
> evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or
> disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's
> probably off-topic.

~~~
mschuster91
> unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon

Terrorism, war and violence in Europe is definitely a new phenomenon, at least
in this scale, I'd say.

As for media reception of said violence, I believe this to be HN-worthy as
well...

~~~
arethuza
"Terrorism, war and violence in Europe is definitely a new phenomenon"

There is a war going on in the Ukraine that has killed over 8000 people, the
Madrid train bombings in 2004 killed 191 people, the Northern Ireland Troubles
killed 3,530 then there were the wars in the former Yugoslavia which killed
over 140,000.

There have been wars and conflicts in Europe pretty much forever - the recent
ones aren't on the scale of the terrible wars of the past but to think that
Europe has been completely at peace doesn't seem quite right.

------
Brendinooo
From an United Statesian perspective, I think there are a lot of factors in
play:

1\. Most Americans could find France on a map. Lebanon? Not so much.

2\. France is America's "oldest ally" \- lots more common ground.

3\. Many Americans have been to Paris; much fewer to Beirut.

The article points to some other things:

4\. The perception that this happens all the time in Lebanon, even though "it
had been a year of relative calm."

5\. Network effect (perhaps I'm misusing that term a bit) - FB activated their
stuff because people were interested in it, which gets more people interested
in it. I know I went straight to the TV after seeing my Twitter feed light up
about it; had it just been a buried headline somewhere I might not have been
as gravitated toward it.

Not necessarily saying any of these things are good or bad. Sometimes I feel
like people take on an accusatory tone when bringing up topics like this, so I
wanted to explore some explanations.

~~~
TheCondor
It's really messy business comparing tragedies and ultimately trivializes
aspects of them. Like what was worse the holocaust or American slavery? It has
no answer.

Comparing empathy responses is just as messy. Should we make character
judgments based upon the number of visitors to ones funeral? I think not.

Just out of curiosity, could flying an American flag in Lebanon, maybe nearer
the Syrian border, potentially cause you some problems? What about the French
flag? They'd had a rather intertwined history together. Seems odd to try and
read in to ones empathy based upon such things.

Maybe if they fixed all the damaged buildings from their last civil war the
rest of the world might start to forget their recent violent past. It wouldn't
hurt. Regardless of how peaceful it might be now, it's a very recent thing in
Lebanon and there are reminders everywhere of the violence. It hard for people
to not factor that in. I feel bad for their victims, but I suspect it is
similar to how the rest of the world feels about American gun violence
victims; they don't fly our flag after every school shooting, and I don't
expect them to or need them to do so.

------
saiya-jin
Same logic could be applied to some 3000 persons that died on 9/11, reaction
to it considering relatively small amount of people was/is extremely
disproportionate. People are dying daily in more or less horrible way, left
and right, and general population is caring less and less.

But we humans are emotional and irrational all the time, and harm to somebody
in any way "closer" to us is felt much stronger compared to unnamed faceless
victims just somewhere out there. So all is usual, as per our human
standards...

~~~
Brendinooo
When I studied abroad in Australia I lived in a house that included two Sri
Lankans. When the other American in the house and I talked about how much 9/11
affected us, they brushed it off. Sure, they'd heard about it, but they said
their reaction was more like, "Welcome to the world, America." A 40-year civil
war was just ending in their country (I'm probably being charitable to my
countrymen to say that maybe 10% of Americans knew that; I certainly didn't),
and one of them said that everyone knew someone who had been around a bombing,
or had been affected by one themselves.

This is all anecdotal, but it's meant to support your point - while 9/11 was
certainly one of the deadliest and probably one of the most costly (monetarily
speaking) single attacks ever, it was hardly something that put us on equal
footing with places like Israel and pre-2010 Sri Lanka. But it mattered to all
of us a lot more because we had never seen it here, we didn't think it could
happen here, we knew where NYC was, we knew those skyscrapers, etc.

------
pmorici
The difference is that the people perpetrating the attacks in places like
Beirut have strong political support from the population in that country
(Lebanon). Violence is part of their political culture and has been for a long
time.

The French attacks were from an outside element, ie: an element that isn't a
part of the established political structure. That is the difference.

~~~
_petronius
Except that we already know that some (if not most) of the attackers in France
were French nationals, so that argument doesn't really hold up.

I also think it is alienating (and rather offensive, to be terribly blunt) of
you to argue that "they are used to violence" as if that means it somehow
affects the population of cities like Beirut, the sense of loss felt by the
families of victims, or any of the other human emotional elements.

Beirut is as much a large, cosmopolitan, vibrant city as any in Europe. It is
no war zone. And it would do everyone good to remember that the very real and
visceral trauma that the Paris attacks constitute is something many people
feel on a weekly (or more frequent) basis, and that doesn't diminish the
subjective horror of it.

~~~
pmorici
I don't think you understand what drives the violence in Lebanon. It isn't a
handful of radical citizens. It is national level political parties that draw
strong support from the population. If you can find any French political party
or ruling faction that had a hand in the attacks then I would agree with you
but I doubt that is the case.

I'm also not arguing that they are used to violence there for it is alright.
I'm saying that they support violence or at least the use of it by their
politicians to achieve their political goals there for they get what they
promote.

~~~
anandr2013
Firstly, these attacks were not perpetrated by any national level political
party. Your line of thought, as the article puts it, portrays "a busy
civilian, residential and commercial district as a justifiable military
target."

However, the more important point is that it is always a radical fringe.
Saying it is otherwise is terribly offensive and suggests a fundamental lack
of understanding.

~~~
pmorici
I haven't looked into this specific incident but historically an example is
Hezbollah who participates in the Lebanese government and is known to have
supported any number of similar incidents in the past. They are a national
level political party in Lebanon, and while radical by American standards I'm
skeptical they are viewed as "fringe" in Lebanon.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lebanon#Cedar_Revol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lebanon#Cedar_Revolution_and_2006_War_.282005.E2.80.93present.29)

~~~
cholantesh
This incident has been linked to ISIS, so none of that is especially relevant
in this context.

~~~
pmorici
It's relevant to why people don't bat an eye when yet another thing explodes
in Lebanon. Even if this time was different in the details.

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pmontra
Please don't post urls that require logins. Post this instead
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Google Translate, paste URL, from English to a random language then click the
button for the original version.

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neals
Never been there, don't know anybody there, don't care. That's not harsh,
that's human. Come on, stop milking it.

~~~
mikegerwitz
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_..](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_..).

