Date: Tuesday, 02 February 2021
Please find attached my latest writing, '“Why Was I Ever Born”' for your review. Please advise if you plan to publish. Best Regards, Dr. Alon Ben-Meir 212-600-4267 212-866-7376 (fax) alon@alonben-meir.com www.alonben-meir.com Alon Ben-Meir - January 21, 2021 “Why Was I Ever Born” Righting the Wrong https://mcusercontent.com/a2e336c40140a3ad66435cef8/images/3bf741d9-a489-4545-b322-13e6982bb771.jpg Artwork by Florence Dabby The bombing continues unabated. The explosions are heard in the distance. A family with seven children is cowering in fear in a corner of their shack, Daring not to step out Dreading instant death from shrapnel or a sniper’s bullet. Occasionally looking up to the sky through a hole in the roof, hoping still for some rain drops collected in a bucket underneath. Drinking water is nowhere to be found and only the rain drops keep the family alive. The mother is careworn; She tries to breast-feed her baby boy, Mahmood But her milk runs dry. The baby’s eyes are open still, gazing at nothing perhaps wondering what’s happening to him and why. Slowly he tries to raise his weakened hand to touch his mother’s breast as if pleading for just one more drop of milk. His arm falls back, hanging; he can’t move, he can’t cry, his eyes run dry He has no tears left to shed to ease his agonizing pain! If you bent to ask him how he is feeling and if he could only talk, he would say, why, why was I ever born? Weeks of starvation finally took their turn his body surrenders and he dies in his mother’s arms. How correct was James Baldwin when he said “A child cannot, thank Heaven, know how vast and how merciless is the nature of power, with what unbelievable cruelty people treat each other.” Countless Yemeni children are dying from starvation and disease while the world shamelessly watches in silence as if this was just a horror story from a different time and a distant place, seeing a country ravaged by a senseless, unwinnable war while a whole generation perishes in front our eyes. Those at the top who are fighting the war are destroying the very people they want to govern; They are the evil that flourishes on apathy and cannot endure without it. What’s there left for them to rule? Twenty million Yemenis are famished One million children are infected with cholera Hundreds of thousands of little boys and girls are ravenous Dying, leaving no trace and no mark behind to tell the world they were ever here. And the poorest country on this planet earth lies yet in ruin and utter despair. The civilian casualties became a weapon of choice and the victor will be the one who inflicts the heaviest fatalities and as the higher the death toll of civilians continues to rise, climbing ever higher the closer they believe they come to triumph. “People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man,” Dostoyevsky said, “but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.” When will the international community wake up? Evil humans can do much horrific harm But those who watch them with deafening silence cause a greater disaster for failing to act When will they try to bring the Yemenit calamity to a close? What will it take to bring the combatants to what’s left of their sanity? There is nothing left to fight for Though however hopeless the conditions are We can still be determined to change course. And if we succeed in saving even a single life, as the Abrahamic religions teach us it is as though we have saved the whole world. President Biden cannot allow this human catastrophe to take such a toll on the Yemeni people and degrade our morals and numb our conscience. It is time to warn Iran to end its support of the Houthis as Tehran will never be permitted to establish a permanent foothold in the Arabian Peninsula. As an ally, Saudi Arabia should be encouraged to maintain the ceasefire and sue for a peace agreement. The Houthis must remember that there will be no victors Only losers—losers, for they have already lost the country. The country they are fighting for is no longer there They must now start at the beginning And only together with the beleaguered government put an end to these unspeakable atrocities. And maybe, just maybe The community of nations will come together to right the wrong Not only for the sake of the Yemeni people But for the sake of humanity. We are facing the test of time and will never be forgiven for failing to rise up and answer the silent call of that little boy, Mahmood who died so cruelly so much before his prime. ____________ Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. alon@alonben-meir.com Web: www.alonben-meir.com For media inquiries, contact Kim Hurley at 212.600.4267 or at kimberlee@alonben-meir.com. Please feel free to share this article with your contacts. ============================================== Unsubscribe dehai@dehai.org from this list: https://alonben-meir.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=a2e336c40140a3ad66435cef8&id=d62c64f4fc&e=097182246f&c=032a2aeb8f