“The street is still divided by political and sectarian lines, but this time around the sense is that these are people, period,” Fares said of the political situation in Lebanon. “They’re dead because of something they had absolutely no role in ... They died because of some demented, twisted politics.”
Fares added that it would be incorrect to call the bombing victims martyrs.
“Calling them martyrs is a sort of Lebanese way to not only dehumanize them, it’s to sort of make ourselves feel better that, yeah, it’s okay, they died, but they’re martyrs which means they’re in heaven and they’re in a better place,” he says. “But the fact of the matter is it’s just sort of a label to make ourselves feel better, and maybe their families feel better because the label of ‘victim’ means there’s a sort of accountability to the process.”