Mind Shattering Realities

"I thought it was an earthquake. Everything was on fire. The whole store had crashed down. I saw shattered people, shattered cars, and I collapsed."
"I am trying to reserve the first ticket back to Canada. We tried, we tried, we tried."
Sam Hasna, Lebanese-Canadian, Beirut

Hassan Ammar/The Associated Press -- Lebanese army investigators deal with the aftermath of an explosion hear an Iranian cultural centre in a Beirut suburb on Wednesday

"[Wednesday's attack was] a message by forces of terrorism to continue in their plan to spread death in Lebanon. We will respond to it with solidarity and our commitment to peace."
Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam

And how, one wonders, is Lebanese PM Tammam Salam's commitment to peace visualized when Hezbollah mounts similar such attacks against Sunni Syrians right across the border in Syria? It doesn't occur to Shia Lebanese, supportive of Hezbollah in their midst that its incursions into Syria at the behest of Iran, and to the conflict support of Bashar al-Assad will result in blow-back?

Another two suicide bombers blew themselves and their vehicles into smithereens beside an Iranian cultural centre in Beirut. Four people killed and scores wounded, including children from an orphanage. The latest targeted attack in Shiite areas of Lebanon. With the Abdullah Azzam Brigades boasting yet again that the attack was in "retaliation for Iran's party fighting along the criminal regime in Syria".

Fear and loathing in Beirut, vengeance courtesy of Sunni terrorists for the terrorism activities of Shia Hezbollah in Syria. A simple equation, but one that many Lebanese find too complex for intellectual ingestion. Again, civilians killed and wounded. Boys and girls included, their home for abandoned and orphaned children sitting alongside the Iranian cultural centre, an unfortunate casualty. The Iranians left unscathed, the Lebanese slaughtered. 

Dr. Hussam Bitar, a surgeon at Al-Zahra hospital where the children were treated is furious: "You can't imagine this from somebody you live with, somebody who could be your neighbour". But this is precisely what has happened; Muslims at one another's throats, Shia against Sunni, each considering the other ripe for killing in a demonstration of sectarian intolerance and hatred.

"They say they are Muslims, like us. But they treat us like the enemy. What are they doing?" wailed Mariam Atweh, watching over her husband whose arm was mangled by shrapnel. "They say they are targeting one group [Hezbollah], but they are targeting everybody", said Hussein Hazouri, laying nearby, a university student who had sustained head wounds in the blast.

The bombers had driven vehicles packed with explosives and mortar shells to maximize the damage their blessed mission would cause. The Abdullah Azzam Brigades announced their intention to continue such attacks until Hezbollah withdraws from Syria. Hezbollah, they said, will not "enjoy security in Lebanon until the people of Syria feel secure."

The leader of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades had been taken into custody by Lebanese security in December. It took him a month to die in their custody. Cause and effect appears to be an unknown equation in the Middle East which cannot seem to fathom that peace and tolerance begets the same, that violent atrocities beg for like responses in a tribal mentality subsumed with sectarian hatred.