Lebanon: Men, Women and Post-War Issues · Global Voices
Moussa Bashir

The Lebanese blogosphere keeps growing day after day. Rampurple, who is a member of the Lebanese Blogger Forum and who maintains the Lebanese Aggregator in addition to her own blog states that the total number of Lebanese blogs in the aggregator have reached 287 so far. This makes the task of a round up of blogs even harder; nevertheless the following is a sampling of some of these blogs starting with the non political posts.
Maya@NYC and Ana Min Beirut are back with the male-female debate. Maya@NYC started the deliberation like this:
In the morning, the reflection in my bathroom mirror is just a façade. It carries nothing in it. Just shapes, colors, forms. I am not there. I am in someone’s mind, on someone’s thoughts, in someone’s heart. In someone’s eyes. There are men that look you in the eyes. They look at you intensely and make every effort to hear your laugh.
To which Ana Min Beirut replies:
For us men, that experience is much much less philosophical or existential if you want. Of course we do look at the mirror to size up the shape of that ever growing gut and we pat it in and out trying to make it disappear or we can just turn half-way so that the angle is such that we see no gut. Of course we do stand and flex those muscles and say to ourselves: “Damn, those muscles put that Schwarzenegger dude to shame”.
Murphy’s laws may be well known but Ahmad mentions some lesser known dictums of Murphy:
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.
Perpetual Refugee is the Lebanese blogger who wrote about his experience while working in Israel. Perpetual Refugee stopped blogging for a while after the latest Israeli war against Lebanon. He returned to blogging this week with a post in which he says:
While bombs & rockets rained on the north, east, west and south, killing all in their path, I lobbed words. Emotions. Frustration. Trying to portray how an injustice was seen in the eyes of someone who was directly affected by it's consequences. In return, I was attacked. People were hurt by what I wrote. Not bothering to understand what it was I saw. Family members left homeless. Acquaintances killed. My country left in tatters. All because the rules of the ‘game’ changed. If conflicts were existent exclusively in blogs, made up of only words, then humanity would have evolved to it's full potential. But it's not the case. Bullets are the means in which we deal with conflicts. And innocent people die as a result.
[…] I'm committed to help in the rebuilding of my country. To bring hope to who I can. And in the meantime, I'll continue writing. And if the words ‘hurt’, try and remember what I wrote just a few months earlier. And try to understand what could have caused these lines on the screen. I don't apologize for what I write. To anyone. I'm back. Whether you like it or not.
Talking about the war, Sietske in Beiroet points to the panic in Lebanese homes after the war as a result of the shortage of maids:
Well, the Israelis may have bombed thousands of houses, damaged the Lebanese infrastructure beyond belief, created an oil spill from here all the way to Tripoli, and caused thousands and thousands of Lebanese and foreigners to run away, but nothing, and I repeat, nothing, was as disastrous, as what they did to the maids! The maids? Yes! The maids!
It’s Ramadan. Most blogs wish everyone well during this month. Jamal commemorates the occasion in his own way:
We're in Ramadan which means Kellaj season for me. Kellaj is basically a mixture of fat and sugar that's then deeply fried and deeply sweetened. Yummy. For others, however, it's “ask Jamal why isn't he fasting” month. While it's a clearly intrusive and inapropriate question, you have to be careful how to answer it because your answer might offend some Jesus freaks, Mohammad freaks, whatever, they would be offended in way that would make the 1400 years fight over the Caliphate look like a piece of Kellaj. They really want you to go to heaven. It's for your own good.
Jeha at Jeha’s Nail claims that the interactions among three types of Arabs is the reason why the Arab world is bleeding its best brains.
The importance of words and their meaning can not be overemphasized. And Sophia has compiled a short glossary of Zionist and Israeli terms. In addition to this she also comments on the concept of moderation in the Middle East with a post that starts with:
You kill a terrorist and you have another terrorist. This does not apply to moderates. Every time you kill a moderate you don't have another moderate but you rather contribute to the birth of a radical and a terrorist. Hassan Nasrallah is an exception to this rule. He is becoming a real moderate, I believe, and I will tell you why.
Finally, for today, Remarkz discusses the news that Israel is constructing infrastructure to draw water from Lebanese river. He is joined by Anarchorev who adds to this the issue of the take-over of the Lebanese town of Al-Ghajar:
[…]the Israelis continue to steal water from the Wazzani river and transport fertile soil from south Lebanon to Israel. But it doesn’t end there. Encouraged by the (political) battlefront that its under-the-table allies have opened in Lebanon, the Israelis have been finalizing their take-over of the Lebanese town of Al-Ghajar, half of which was handed to Israel during the drawing of the Blue Line.