Meanwhile, back at a foreign franchise of Hotel Canada

A Canadian implies that our evacuation of our citizens was based on racist criteria and wonders whether he should take advantage of it himself. As far as I can determine he didn't.

The foreign nationals are an issue now. With so many visiting for the summer, and so many Lebanese holding dual nationality, it’s been tough for the G8 to plan their evacuations: 40,000 Canadians (seven of whom died yesterday in the south); 20,000 French. What to do with all these people? Create categories: on the one hand, genuine, white-skinned, tax-paying, valuable citizens; on the other, recently integrated, recently assimilated, brown-skinned, tax-paying, not so valuable citizens...

A few hours ago I was offered the chance to leave tomorrow morning. I hold a Canadian passport because I was born in Toronto when my parents were students there. I left when I was two, and have never gone back. I could leave here tomorrow by car to Syria, then to Jordan and onto a plane. For days I have been itching to go because I have a job to do, deadlines to meet, a life to live. And yet when the phone call came telling me to be ready at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, I asked for time to think. I was torn. The destruction, the number of those dead, injured or displaced, bind me here. It isn’t patriotism [certainly not Canadian - MC] so much as the will to defy Israel. (I suppose I am no longer tired of defying.)

I am a secular person and I’m democratically inclined...

Rasha Salti, a curator and freelance writer, lives in New York and Beirut.

Time indeed to re-examine Canadian citizenship.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at August 10, 2006 07:13 PM