Arabs praising the UN - Say what?!

This story ran maybe in April or in May. They were interviewing Syrian refugees in Lebanon, who were praising the UN to the skies in regards to the aid they were getting.

After talking about the UN, they went on to some of the other NGOs helping out Syrian refugees. One was the Danish Refugee Council. This Council is helping to pay the rent for 550 families in Lebanon (I think I remembered that number right.) They video-taped one of the employees sitting with a refugee family and I guess explaining to them the terms of the aid. The family was very enthusiastic in its on-air gratitude.

I guess even the BBC Arabic couldn’t deal with such heretical statements, because while they usually would have run a short segment like this repeatedly throughout the day, this one only played once, even though I waited like 11 hours for the repeat, so I could snag some screen shots.

Also, I seem to remember that in 2006, Syrians were divided into 2 camps: those that were burning the Danish embassy down, and the rest that were watching the embassy burn without protest. But I see now that their tune has changed. How very sacrilegious of them. The true Muslim ought to prefer starvation in the streets than accept aid from the blasphemous Danes.

One more point is that the UN aid is being disbursed as cash, so that families can buy whatever they decide they most need – instead of being disbursed as food stamps specific for a certain product. Which means that the Syrian refugees in Lebanon are being treated as trustworthy adults to a greater extent than people on food stamps in the US.