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Following are excerpts from an interview with Lebanese writer May Menasa, which aired on OTV on March 5, 2008:
May Menasa: Let me start with Lebanon, because I am a Lebanese woman, and I have always been proud of being Lebanese – so far. I don't know how long I will continue to be proud of this, because things are really dismal. I look around, and all I see are threats and curses. In my view, a politician in my country should serve as a pillar in our daily lives. Instead, the politician has become a fountain of curses, hatred, and threats. Morning, noon, and night, and at every moment in our lives, all he talks about is the "civil war." We no longer hear anything but this talk about a civil war. I would like to ask the politicians: Why do you want a civil war? Does this woman talking to you want a civil war? Do the women, from whose wombs men are born, want a civil war? What do men want? Do they want war? If so, they should enter the fray by themselves, and let our children be. We are not wombs that give birth for the sake of death. We give birth for the sake of life. My country does not understand this logic anymore. We, the women and our children, want life, not death.
[...]
Look at what happened in France in World War II. Who brought about stability and peace in France? It was the women, who joined the Resistance. All women joined the Resistance. A woman would say: My son and my husband went to war. It was imperative during the war. When the German armies went in, you couldn't stay at home, and say: I'm against war. Back then, there was no choice but to wage war. Instead of hiding and keeping silent, they conducted that great resistance. Today, our role is to conduct resistance.
Interviewer: How do you view the role of women in politics?
May Menasa: We do not need women in the political world, as long as politics are not useful in any way. Many women work in clinics, many work for charities, but they constitute the silent element in society. We want to hear [their] voices louder than all those loudmouths on TV talk shows, who draw the people around them, so they can say that it is all about them. We need women to raise their voices, not just to work in clinics, in the Red Cross, and so on. The Red Cross is very important, this quiet resistance is very important, but today the time has come for women to speak their mind. Women should say, first and foremost, that we need a secular country. We don't need a sectarian country. We are fed up with sectarianism. We've seen where sectarianism has got us. Other countries perceived us as weak, when they saw that each of us clings to his religion and fights for it. It is time that all women unite – Shiite, Sunnis, Maronites, and Druze. They should leave their sects behind, leave them for the politicians, and become educated and secular women, who work towards shaping this unique country – a country that does not send its children to war, because, as I've said, mothers do not give birth so that their children will be sent to die, but so that they will live.
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