Question to America
by Hind Kabawat

June 1985, I celebrated my 21st birthday away from my home in Damascus, a
student in America. My first boyfriend took me to the Statue of Liberty in
New York. "This is America." he whispered in my ear.
America to me then was a place of freedom, where human rights and liberty
were valued and where the democracy that I could not find in my homeland was
a reality. Later, America also became the home of my godchildren, good
friends,  and my best friend, an American rabbi. America was Marc Twain,
jazz and blues, and Broadway. As I grew older it was also where I took my
children for vacations to Disney World and where I had my school reunion.

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March 2003. I have always been a pacifist, so of course I was against the
war in Iraq. But after the fall of Hussein, I believed that there was a
possibility of a democratic Iraq. I dreamed that a successful and
self-sufficient democracy in Iraq would herald the coming of democracy to
other parts of the Arab world. Even when the situation in Iraq began to
deteriorate I made excuses for America, telling my friends that of course
there was suffering involved in political change.

March 14, 2005. When millions in Beirut were calling for Lebanese
independence and relations between Syria and Lebanon were at their most
strained, I stood with my Lebanese friends and supported their right to
demand the kind of freedom that they wanted. I was proud that my American
and western friends were supporting such political change from within, and I
hoped it was the beginning of a real shift in the politics of the region.

It is now July 2006, and my Lebanon is being destroyed. Women and children
are dying, and my American friends have forgotten that little country that
they thought was so important such a short time ago. The Paris of the Middle
East is being burned to the ground while the Arab nations and America both
watch from a distance and do nothing. My American friends do not even
condemn the enormous and disproportionate attack that killed so many
children in Qana.

I went to a march in Toronto this past week to ask for a cease-fire and an
end to the killing of civilians in Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. As I
walked with so many other, I thought of my first boyfriend whispering in my
ear as we stared at the Statue of Liberty, and I realized that America right
now is not the same country that I have such fond memories of. It is no
longer the place were speaking up about what you believe is the most
important thing, and it is not a place where human life is valued above all
other things. I am watching now as religious fanaticism and anti-American
sentiments grow stranger and stronger in the face of America's criminal
indifference. That indifference is not only killing the Lebanese, it is
killing the hopes of secular and moderate Arabs in the region, who now see
our calls for democracy met with pictures of Qana. If I could, I would ask
America if this is really who she wants to be.

Hind Aboud Kabawat
August 2, 2006
Toronto, Ontario