“A Politician in My Country Should Serve as a Pillar in Our Daily Lives“

   Extracts from an interview of May Menassa, journalist at An-Nahar, on OTV, on 2008, March, 5

“A Politician in My Country Should Serve as a Pillar in Our Daily Lives - Instead, the Politician Has Become a Fountain of Curses, Hatred, and Threats”May Menassa: “Let me start with Lebanon, because I am a Lebanese woman, and I have always been proud of being Lebanese - so far. I don’t know how long I will continue to be proud of this, because things are really dismal.    “I look around, and all I see are threats and curses. In my view, a politician in my country should serve as a pillar in our daily lives. Instead, the politician has become a fountain of curses, hatred, and threats. Morning, noon, and night, and at every moment in our lives, all he talks about is the ‘civil war’. We no longer hear anything but this talk about a civil war.    “I would like to ask the politicians: Why do you want a civil war? Does this woman talking to you want a civil war? Do the women, from whose wombs men are born, want a civil war? What do men want? Do they want war? If so, they should enter the fray by themselves, and let our children be. We are not wombs that give birth for the sake of death. We give birth for the sake of life. My country does not understand this logic anymore. We, the women and our children, want life, not death.    [...]   ”Look at what happened in France in World War II. Who brought about stability and peace in France? It was the women, who joined the Resistance. All women joined the Resistance. A woman would say: My son and my husband went to war. It was imperative during the war. When the German armies went in, you couldn’t stay at home, and say: I’m against war. “Back then, there was no choice but to wage war. Instead of hiding and keeping silent, they conducted that great resistance. Today, our role is to conduct resistance.”