"There are no candlelit vigils, no global movements of solidarity, or even the most simple signs of compassion. Silence, too, is a sign. In moments where acknowledgment and empathy are necessary in healing, their absence and elision signals indifference. An indifference that was deeply felt by the victims of the terrorist attacks that took place in Baghdad and Beirut.
An indifference that was made even more pronounced by the opposite reaction that took place a day later as Paris experienced a similar strike. Only moments after blood was spilled, those healing signals of solidarity came, but not for them. In this moment of vulnerability Paris was not alone. Those buried in Baghdad and Beirut, however, remained forgotten lives and unmournable deaths.
Like a broken record, a tragedy strikes a city like Paris and the world rushes in, while citizens of a country on the peripheries of power remind the international community — and sadly find themselves trying to convince it — that they too matter.
They have attempted to decry what the Atlantic’s David Graham has pointed out to be a consistent “empathy gap” in global reactions — but particularly from those in the West — to similar tragedies taking place in their homes. Those homes are not some faraway wastelands inhabited by violent barbarian tribes who ‘if pricked do not bleed.’
Sadly, while the killings in Paris were depicted- rightly so — as acts of terror, the victims of the Beirut bombings were framed in many outlets as the inhabitants of a “Hezbullah stronghold” and the losses in Baghdad as just another outbreak of violence in a country where such news is unfortunate but expected.
Despite all being victims of the same perpetrator, ISIS, there were no statements that Baghdad represented all humanity and no monuments were lit up for Beirut. There was, in fact, little acknowledgement of these tragedies and those caught in it before Paris."
