By David Verveer
During these heart aching days, with those terrible videos of showing the corpses of the earthquake victims in Haiti, explaining about the hopelessness future of the survivors, the time consuming efforts to save lives of those who have managed to stay alive under the debris of the quake, with the understanding that those who were saved by the rescuers have in reality, no future ahead of them, to overcome this horrendous disaster and no possibility in building up a livable future in this world, which continues, and already went to the next item of the newscast of the television.
Yes, this disaster is already fading away from our mind, the new scandal with our prime minister’s wife, not paying her domestic help, and the person that was kicked out the big brother show, seem to be on the same level as the reports about Haiti, because we are, thank God, rather passive participants in those dramas, our daily live goes on, and in reality, we really can not help much, donating 10 Euros, with the knowledge that this money wont reach the victims and will be scoped up by the various middlemen on the way, as a sort of payment to tranquilize our conscience, and continue to enjoy our existence, unaffected and far away. We do feel a little bit ashamed when we see on the screen the terrible plight of the people there, and are proud that our country, clearly because propaganda purposes has send an enormous team of rescuers and medical staff to Haiti, without taking into account the sacrifice that was made, was by the poor and suffering people in our region, for whom no money can be found to treat their illnesses, to house them and / or to repay their sacrifices of the past.
Illogical and somehow cruel is the fact that our nation (of course, in defense, and without alternative options) killed last year 1400 people, with the most modern weapons, based on a primitive concept of: an eye for eye and tooth for tooth reasoning, by arguing that they (the enemy) were asking for this punishment, and realistically, looking at the facts and figures, this was true, but still, why can we gallantly save Haitians and kill Palestinians, something must be wrong with our logic, not to speak about the traffic accidents which only yesterday killed more than 10 people and wounded more than 30. Why do we rescue Haitians, when we do not prevent murder on the road?
But my question is somehow different, as good citizen of this world, with a clean conscience, am I allowed in these dark days, to enjoy myself, obvious I can not solve any problems personally, and donations, as we discussed before, do not help the people in Haiti, taking into account that life is relatively short, and every day wasted on crying about the cruel fate of people far away, is a total loss without any benefits for anyone, but laughter and enjoyment is somehow blaspheming, certainly when we demand from other people to remember our sufferings during the holocaust, (which was of course man made, while the earth quake was a natural disaster, a defenseless argument, as buildings and infrastructure built according earth quake codes, are still standing in Haiti, and the World could have come to help and prevented most of the damage, but these are unrealistic reflections which have no real answer).
I see, I need to summarize my remarks, in order to explain my message (which, in any case, is rather vague), but let me try.
I feel terrible sorry for the Haitians, but I can not affectively help them, and don’t want to waste valuable time of my life being sad. Further more, I question the purpose of this all, why do we not prevent, why do we play the hero for propaganda purposes, and why are we such a hypocrites?
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