Why not re-choose it over and over?
On December 12, 2005, Lebanon, and the world, lost the editor in chief of An Nahar, a journalist, an intellectual, and later an MP. Indeed, Mr. Gibran Tueni (48 years old) was coldly assassinated in a car explosion as soon as he returned to Lebanon from Paris where he left under death threats and a series of assassinations of intellectuals. He was a man of reason and unity, raised in a family full of love, talent, and with the richness of both religious and intellectual diversity (https://bit.ly/3PlURkk).
Among his famous legacy is his belief in freedom of expression, until he paid its ultimate price with his own life, and a popular oath of unity among all the pieces of the religious puzzle of Lebanon, namely mainly among Christians and Muslims. May his memory be eternal.
Mind you, today and more than ever, his memory is critically needed in his birth country; perhaps by extension here in Canada as well, but for apparently different and hopefully milder reasons. Different, did Bambi say? Yes, but yet coming to the same basic principle in any country: the need for increased unity among its people, instead of the divisiveness of sectarianism. In Lebanon, it may be the classical (i.e. religious-based) sectarianism. In Canada, it is a new form of sectarianism with much divisiveness in our collectively insane times, which is often recklessly encouraged by chief politicians or by the elites of our societies, including the mainstream media: being vaccinated or non-vaccinated; being observant of wokeism or criticizing its drifts, being to the right or to the left, or to a so-called alt right for whatever is not the extreme left (or vice versa), endorsing OR refusing to endorse any form of identity-based politics, including a so-called pro-diversity that does not hesitate to exclude, divide, and even cancel in the name of so-called equity.
Anyhow, to come back to Mr. Tueni and Lebanon, Bambi reported this story in an earlier post, using the the following words:
“… Bambi remembers the late and great Mr. Ghassan Tueni, father of another assassinated Lebanese intellectual/journalist, Mr. Gibran Tueni. At the end of the funeral service of his son, he spontaneously took the microphone and called for love, can you imagine?
He said: “Let’s bury hate and revenge” (later a title of a book he wrote a couple of years before his own natural death).
Bambi was visiting her parents in Beirut at the time of the funeral. She will always recall the scene of the procession from the nearby hospital’s morgue to his final destination where Bambi’s ancestors are also buried. She will also always recall the father’s moving words mentioned above that she watched live on TV“.
If Mr. Tueni managed to bury hate and revenge, despite any feelings of sadness, anger, and despair upon the assassination of his son in order to preserve both love and unity in his country, why can’t we do it here at home in Canada? Why can’t we do it online? Why can’t we do it in real life? In our hearts, minds, and behaviours? Why should we politicize everything and allow our politicians and/or media to politicize us, and thus divide us, with every trendy issue of the moment?
To conclude this post, Bambi would like to end with Mr. Enrico Macias’ song “Un berger vient de tomber” [“A Shepherd Has Fallen”]. Sadly, it remains timely in Lebanon and in the Middle East when it comes to journalists whose voices we do not want to hear. May both father’s and son’s memory be eternal: the father of love and diplomacy; the son of courage and liberty…
