Comments on: Ethiopians mourn in Beirut

By: Mikael Wolde Semay

Mikael Wolde Semay — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:52:29 +0000

Ethiopian girls should not go to tiny insignificant countries such as that place next to Israel, you know which took on the role of David in that nth remake of doomed wars against a tough and resilient people. By the way I think the socalled Ethiopian jews and the Solomonic dynasty and so on are just fabrications of the crafty Israelites who meant “see, how can we be anti arab, we have imported Black ethiopians from Africa”?
Our brother from Germany thinks we make dumb and racist comments and another one confused Yemenis who love to chew khat with Lebanese who are more frenchified than these Arabia Felix tribesmen!
Beirut is not China, we have nothing to lose by not sending our poor girls there to suffer abuse daily.

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By: Werner2010

Werner2010 — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:02:55 +0000

I am an Ethiopian living in Germany, and I am often outraged by the horror stories about abuse and discrimination of Ethiopian migrant workers in Lebanon. The Ethiopian government has not banned its citzens from seeking jobs there for no reason. http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2008/05/ethiopia_bans_i.php
The initial reaction of the Lebanese reporters and authorities was also painful and totally inapropriate to the tragedy at hand. Thank God, it appears that everyone is learning something from this tragedy.
Fortunately, I happen to know a very gentle and friendly Lebanese family here and I remember how worried they were back in 2006 because of the conflict with Israel. On the other hand, it is also shameful, that some of my Ethiopian compatriots make dumb and racist comments about Arabs in general and Lebanese in partikular.
PS: @ lebnene: “If you don’t like it here, go home” is simplistic statement. You may not know it, but surely hundreds of Lebanese immigrants hear day by day all over the world. Racism or abuse are topics a society should face and overcome.

By: Austin

Austin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:55:10 +0000

I wonder, how many people commenting are actually black people who have spent time in Lebanon or elsewhere in the Arab world? I’m an African-American and have spent nearly two years of my life studying and traveling in the Middle East (specifically, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Egypt and Lebanon). I can say without the slightest reservation that I have never been made to feel as aware of my skin color as I was in the Arab world. The consistent attitude gap among Arabs in receiving my white counterparts with warm hospitality and oft-times irritating deference versus the barely veiled conceit and suspicion with which I or any of our Asian-American friends were regarded was awkwardly amusing at best, indescribably maddening at worst. The most annoying thing is that they seem to be totally unaware of it, but I’d like to give kudos to the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar for tackling the issue of racism/classism head on.

Most infuriating of all is when they try to deflect criticism and point fingers at the US. For some reason, my attempts to explain my personal experience as a black person who has spent all of his life in America with extended interludes in the Mid East, and has only rarely felt racism in the former compared with near daily incidents in the latter, fall on deaf ears.

By: des

des — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 05:49:28 +0000

How could a tiny country like Lebanon be so bad? There were Lebanese migrants in Ethiopia during the Selassie era. However they were pushed out due to competing aggressive merchants from the Gurague Ethiopian tribe. They look like any Arab people I know, they are devout Muslim people, they seemed to have bad teeth as I remember from my youth and always upto chewing something. They seemed nice and didn’t bother anyone. Lots of them used to have shops in the Mercato area in Addis Abeba.

Ethiopians have a culture of respecting foreigners, migrants or others. Its hard for me to understand why people mistreat defenseless migrants who are dependent on you, who work and sleep in your home. Burn with boiling water? I don’t think that is racism, I think these Lebanese housewives are mistreated themselves, made to feel powerless, made to feel useless, captive, insignificant and ugly. There had to be some self-worth issues for people to act so aggressive against those who can’t defend themselves.

By: austin

austin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:09:28 +0000

to make my point clearer… he never said other countries weren’t racist… surely we all know it happens around the world…

By: austin

austin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:08:01 +0000

I read your whole article… i wouldn’t have commented otherwise… but im not convinced of any substantive difference in the claims made… yours just seems more bloggy, his more article-y….

any how good luck to both of you

By: cassel

cassel — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:15:47 +0000

Austin, if you read the rest of the the paragraph where I say “many Lebanese are racist” (and for reasons unrelated to the plane crash that I allude to in the previous paragraph), you’d notice that I do so in order to highlight how racism against those with darker skin is an issue in much of the world, and not only in Lebanon. The focus of this post is not Lebanese “racism”, but rather the plight of migrant domestic workers who we (in Lebanon, the US, Europe, and elsewhere) are all responsible for mistreating either directly or indirectly. Your friend, on the other hand, uses this timely event to make a sensationalist claim about “large parts” of a society based on their reaction to a tragic plane crash in which its citizens were the majority of those killed. Don’t get me wrong, the treatment of Ethiopian friends and family of those killed in the crash has been appalling, but it’s hardly this event alone that warrants the racist label for “large parts” of Lebanese society. If anything, this plane crash reinforced the fact that the mistreatment and abuse of migrant domestic workers continues to be a very serious problem in Lebanon. Galey’s article would’ve been much more effective and less sensationalist had it been framed in this regard.

By: justin

justin — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:59:49 +0000

lebnene,

Here is the link where I first read about the genetic tests – I think he was accurate in his reporing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patrick-galey/flight-et409-exposes-leba_b_438196.html

By: justin

justin — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:41:23 +0000

lebnene,

Initially they did refuse to give the Ethiopians the genetic tests. It was even reported in one of the Lebanese papers. I believe they reversed course after all the negative coverage. It’s all good if they learnt from it – to err is to be human.