Talk:Arab Leagueball/@comment-26997191-20161204172333/@comment-172.98.86.237-20170108004240

Hello, I'm Lebanese but I live in the US. Yes of course we are Arabs! We may disagree with what makes us so, but we are, like it or not. That whole bullshit about us being Phoenicians is just such a desperate attempt to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the Arabs (for perhaps very understandable reasons). But when all is said and done, we speak Arabic, or a horribly mangled variant of it, but certainly not Phoenician. Racially, we are as mixed as any good old bastards are, being there at the groin of civilizations. And the Arabs certainly have as good of a claim to us that way as any, if not better. But when all is said and done, perhaps nothing defines as who we are as much as other's perceptions of us. I didn't realize how much of an Arab I was until I came to the US. I kept on futzing with my race on those standardized test forms that tell us, Middle Easterners, that we are white. But not in the eyes of the rest of the world. We are "Other", and determinedly so. We would be better served to acknowledged that and move on. Instead of trying so hard to distance ourselves from the rest of the Arab world because we are so ashamed of it and think ourselves so much better, maybe we should just prove that, and show how wonderful it could be to be an Arab. After all, for all the shameful crap that’s in the Arab history, there is a lot more to be proud of. You don’t see Europeans trying to redefine their race because their ancient (and not-so-ancient) history is drenched in blood and barbarity. They just live as better people now. So, instead of our vacant haughtiness--because one day some of our ancient forefathers invented the alphabet or discovered the color purple--let’s just show what we, now, the living, have done. And there isn’t much to be proud of, unfortunately. We have much more to be ashamed of, we the Phoenicians, in our recent and current history than much of the Arab world. Yes, we had the Paris of the East, the Switzerland of the Orient, and look what we’ve done with it! But of course, it isn’t our fault; it’s the Arabs, and the Israelis, and the Americans, and the Syrians, and the Iranians, and the French… Ah, pity the nation!