An incredibly sad piece on
Tunisia after the terrorist attack on the beach:
Look at Tunisia’s resort city of Sousse on the Mediterranean. Two months ago, an ISIS-inspired nutcase named Seifeddine Rezgui strolled up the beach with a Kalashnikov in his hand and murdered 38 people, most of them tourists from Britain.
The police shot him, of course. There was never going to be any other ending than that one. And before the police arrived, local Tunisians formed a protective human shield around Rezgui’s would-be foreign victims. “Kill us! Kill us, not these people!” shouted Mohamed Amine. According to survivor John Yeoman, hotel staff members charged the gunman and said, “We won’t let you through. You’ll have to go through us.”
Tunisia’s hospitality and customer service are deservedly legendary, but that was truly above and beyond. It’s how Tunisia rolls, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. Tourists are not going back.
The loss of the tourism trade is badly hurting the city, but they have a treasure in their people and their culture. I hope they can find a way to recover.
Take a trip!
ReplyDeleteIt's a terrible situation. Too bad the whole Hall couldn't head over for a vacation.
ReplyDeleteWhen armed men say, "You'll have to go through us," I honor them as heroes and cheer them on. When defenseless people do the same . . . . Everything I have been struggling to express about the right way to identify with our fellow human beings is summed up in that instinctive gallantry and sacrifice. It's the polar opposite of offering someone up on a platter to atone for one's own crimes.
ReplyDeleteI read once about a German flight attendant on a hijacked plane whom the terrorists ordered to collect all the passports and turn over the Jewish ones. Even at the risk of being shot, she told them she couldn't do it. Don't you understand, she said, that I'm German? I can't do that. She felt she had to provide the counterpoint, in her own person, to the previous generation's willingness to turn Jews over to the Nazis, because they weren't "us."