"This is how we feel"

A few lines by Cristina, Paula and Diego -2ºBTO- about  the 13th Nov. attacks on Paris.

            On 12th November, in the morning, my father told me that Jihadi John, a British Arab  known for being the man seen in several videos, produced by the Islamic extremist group ISIL, showing the beheadings of a number of captives, had been killed by US. For me, that sounded suspicious and risky, I thought about the ripple effect, and it reminded me about the 11S attacks. The next day, that night, it happened.

I was with my father having dinner, he usually listens to the radio, so we were listening to something about Syria, when, suddenly, that information was interrupted by the breaking news: a terrorist attack on Paris. I started shaking. First, a shooting in a restaurant, then bombs, a hundred hostages  in a disco, another bomb near a concert hall, injured people and finally 128 deaths. I felt sadness and empathy, I told my father that I could have been there, having fun on a Friday night. I could have had that luck.

After that, I started thinking again about the chain effect. I hoped that France wouldn’t be able to do it once again, and for sure, France did it. Twenty bombs on Syria on Sunday night, it made my hair stand on end, and some tears ran down my cheek, what is coming next? It isn’t the beginning of the third world war, I mean, have the human beings ever been at peace?

Rousseau said: “The Human Being is born pure, it is society that corrupts”, we are Good by Nature but Corrupted by Society.

This society has made us conformist and blind, unable to appreciate what is happening outside the First World, individualist and hypocrite. We empathize just with our own struggle, our world media  focus on us and we let them make a gossip spectacle out of our deads. One life of us is more valuable than thousands from that far away Third World.

I feel the sorrow that consumes me to the deepest part of my being.

We have to stop generalizing, tagging and categorizing. It is not about the religion, the economy, politics or culture. It isn’t about our differences it is about our similarities. We are earthlings, human beings; we all have identical feelings. Every life is worth the same, no matter which country has killed the most, those are just numbers. What does really matter is every single innocent life that has been ended, every traumatized child that has lost their parents, every person who has no home left, every individual who is suffering hunger, loneliness and pain.

At the end, the thing that sets my chest on fire is the way the governments take advantage of this situation. The USA, Russia, France or even Spain, make contracts, multimillion-dollar agreements with Arab Nations to sell them planes, bombs and any type of weapons, enriching the arms industry and the economy.

Therefore, I wonder who the real enemy is.

                        Everyone got frightened on that Friday night when we heard about  the terrorist attacks on Paris. Hundreds of people died or were injured without any reason. In that moment I said: "the world will die too if nobody does something". Later, I started thinking about it much calmer.

I know every day people die because of the Jihad and we don’t care about it, but this time they attacked a country that belongs to a continent with principles of humanitarianism,  although less and less so.  The European Union must give an example, that's why we should remain united.

But, what about bombing Syria? Is it a good example of a humanitarian reaction? If we answer them with the same violence, the world will burst out.

It’s a difficult situation and we’re scared, everybody wants to do away with terrorism, but we should think of other solutions.

I’m an atheist; even so I respect and understand all religions. However, there’s something I have never understood, is religion more important than a human being’s life?

The whole world lacks respect for other cultures, religions…
For our own sake, I expect that, eventually, people realize how ridiculous it is. 

Hatred brings about more hatred, 

hatred  is followed by violence,

and violence causes more violence.
The only solution is to uproot  the problem  through EDUCATION.