"There’s only one thing worse than enduring brutal conflict, escaping your homeland, leaving behind everything you know, abandoning your dreams, risking your life, becoming destitute, being abused, fragmenting your family, watching your children suffer and losing loved ones, and it is this: arriving at a place you think is a haven only to be told you will likely be sent back. No one is sure when. No one is sure where. That is the definition of futility — and it’s cruel. Because no one chooses to be a refugee. Refugees are refugees because the alternative used to be death. Now, there’s a worse option: a living death. That is what I saw on Lesbos." -- Queen Rania of Jordan on the world's "deafness" toward Syrian refugees after visiting a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos recently. Sometimes we become distracted or hardened to the suffering of people we don't see or hear, except perhaps fleetingly on our televisions. But the question remains, what do we do? For that, Fareed Zakaria has some suggestions for U.S. policymakers.
Thanks to our dear friend and big-hearted person P.E.C. for focusing us.
