#PrayForParis But What About The Rest of The World?

When Paris turned off the lights of the iconic Eiffel Tower in memory of the Terror Victims last Friday, the rest of the world showed their solidarity by lighting up their own iconic buildings in blue, white and red, symbolic of the French flag.

But while the world mourned for the city of lights, there were those that were left at the back burner, and not many knew about them: the earthquake that rattled Japan, the hurricane that ravaged Mexico, the suicide bombing in Baghdad --- but especially the ISIS attack on Beirut that, according to Rolling Stone has killed 44 and injured more than 200 others in an attack that the city has not seen in years.

While most of the world mourned for Paris, the attack in Beirut was noted as nothing more than strategic punishment for the ongoing involvement of Hezbollah (also translated as Hizbullah or Hizballah) in the Syrian war.

Both Paris and Beirut experienced attacks from the same group of terrorists, yet it seems that violence in Europe is more worthy of news coverage than on in the Middle East.

As the Rolling Stone article pointed out, it is not just about Paris and Beirut, but of the everyday horrors as well -- for instance, daily bombings and frequent massacres in Syria and Iraq that the media has failed to pick up on.

Time pointed out that the disparity of the coverage of both attacks, made only a day apart, has lobbed for accusations of Western bias and racism, especially when Facebook activated its Safety Check feature, which allowed users to mark themselves and others safe -- a feature that somehow failed to trigger during the Beirut attack.

The implication of this, as noted by The New York Times, is that Arab lives mattered less or that the country, despite being relatively calm despite the ongoing war in Syria, was perceived as one where it's normal to see carnage, undifferentiated from the ongoing war next door.

This disparity highlighted a sense in a region as if they've been forgotten, and left to bear the brunt of Syria's war themselves, with little help from their own government -- which is already plagued by corruption, leaving them with electricity and water shortage, as well as a collapse in garbage collections.

For Paris, the attacks are seen as an unexpected bolt out of the blue and the worst attack in the city in decades, while for Beirut, it was a mere fulfillment of their fears of the possible outbreak of violence. But in the interest of Safety checks and lighting up iconic infrastructures -- ISIS is not just a French problem or a Russian problem, or a Lebanese problem. To quote Time, "Until there is some recognition that an ISIS attack on one country is an attack on all, ISIS will be everybody's problem."

Even ours.