12 of the Most Shared Videos and Views on Paris
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by what has happened in Paris, you’re not alone. In the aftermath of the attacks on Friday evening, many are finding it hard to figure out what has happened and, indeed, where all this is going. The media has barely taken a moment to breathe. In the last few days there have been French reprisal attacks against […]
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by what has happened in Paris, you’re not alone. In the aftermath of the attacks on Friday evening, many are finding it hard to figure out what has happened and, indeed, where all this is going.
The media has barely taken a moment to breathe.
In the last few days there have been French reprisal attacks against ISIS in Syria. Other countries across the globe have threatened joint military action. Police have made raids across Europe, including an intense one in the early hours of this morning in Paris which resulted in the death of two suspected jihadists and arrest of seven. Many Muslims have declared Friday night’s attacks were #NotInMyName.
Some politicians maintain the flood of refugees into Europe must be stopped because they are bringing in untold ISIS terrorists. And everyone is throwing in their two cents’ worth, with a tsunami of social media links and videos that can leave one feeling confused and “Paris-ed out” with info overload.
Rather than add to the flood of news, we have picked out 12 of the views and videos that have been forwarded to us the most by SAPeople followers, some incredibly uplifting in these times of trouble:
Conversation between a father and his son. Guns and flowers…
For many parents, it’s been tough trying to reassure their children that they are safe. In this video a French boy and his father talk at the site of one of the attacks. The child says: “They have guns, they can shoot us because they are really really mean, daddy.” Dad answers: “It’s ok. They might have guns but we have flowers.” (If you cannot see the video – please refresh this page.)
French father and son have the most precious conversation in i…A father and son have the most precious conversation during an interview by french media at the scene of the Bataclan attacks. I saw that it hadn’t been subtitled in english yet, so I made a quick edit to show the rest of the world how freakin awesome some of our citizens are. They’re my heros. I feel better too now! #paris #bataclan #parisattacksImages and interview are a courtesy of Le Petit Journal . Thank you so much to the LPJ team for this interview and a very touching segment yesterday! Also, thank you for letting this video be accessed by all and not putting it down. Thank you to Angel Le (father) and Brandon (son) for brightening up our day. <3 Original Segment: http://bit.ly/1Lix9L2Original Video (without subtitles): https://www.facebook.com/PetitJournalYannBarthes/videos/1013093998733798/
Posted by Jerome Isaac Rousseau on Monday, 16 November 2015
The full transcript is as follows:
Journalist from Le Petit Journal: “Do you understand what happened? Do you understand why those people did that?”
Son: “Bad guys are not very nice. And we have to be really careful because we have to change houses.” Father: “Oh no, don’t worry. We don’t have to move out. France is our home.”
“But there’s bad guys, daddy.” “Yes, but there’s bad guys everywhere.”
“They have guns, they can shoot us because they’re really really mean, daddy.” “It’s ok. They might have guns but we have flowers.”
“But flowers don’t do anything. They’re for …” “Of course they do. Look, everyone is putting flowers. It’s to fight against guns.”
“It’s to protect?” “Exactly.”
“And the candles too?” “It’s to remember the people who are gone yesterday.”
“The flowers and candles are here to protect us?” “Yes.”
– Father and son talk in front of a journalist from Le Petit Journal near the site of one of the Paris attacks.
Three Canadian friends: “If we don’t unite…we let them win.”
Three friends in Montreal, Canada – from Egypt, Turkey and Paris – joined hands (literally) and stood in the subway of their city to declare ‘Love Over Fear’.
“Their [ISIS’] goal is to scare and separate us through their hateful crimes. If we don’t unite we let them win.”
The makers of the video (including the three in it) – Ammar, Thomas, Matt and Derin – say they say they are friends from four different countries who are all affected by the ISIS attacks.
The Dalai Lama – “God would say solve the problem yourself.”
“People want to lead peaceful lives. The terrorists are short-sighted, and this is one of the causes of rampant suicide bombings. We cannot solve this problem only through prayers.
“I am a Buddhist and I believe in praying. But humans have created this problem, and now we are asking God to solve it. It is illogical. God would say, solve it yourself because you created it in the first place.”
– The Dalai Lama, quoted in Deutsche Welle.
Waleed Aly – “ISIL is weak, and they don’t want you to know it.”
https://youtu.be/nxNJLkIkYQM
– Waleed Aly is an Australian journalist with the programme ‘The Project’.
SA Muslim Academic – “Why should I condemn anyone?”
Professor Farid Esack from the University of Johannesburg wrote on Facebook: “I am not praying for Paris; I am not condemning anyone. Why the hell should I? I had nothing to do with it. I am sickened by the perpetual expectations to condemn. I walk away from your shitty racist and Islamophobic expectations that whenever your chickens come home to roost then I must feign horror.
“Stop supporting and funding terror outfits, get out of other people’s lands and continents, stop outlawing peaceful resistance such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, to occupations, abandon your cultural imperialism, destroy your arms industry that provides the weapons that kill hundreds of thousands of others every year.
“The logic is quite simple; When you eat, it’s stupid to expect that no shit will ever come out from your body. Yes, I feel sorry for the victims on whom the shit falls. But, bloody hell, own it; it’s yours!”
– Professor Farid Esack, University of Johannesburg, on his Facebook page.
Trevor Noah – “Let’s not forget, before we fight, to love.”
Trevor Noah said on “The Daily Show” that the one thing that made him smile during the tragedy is the way that Parisians went out of their way to help each other on Friday night, citing the hashtag #PorteOuverte or “open the door” that started trending in the aftermath.
“To the people of France, we commend you. I will say you are ruining our cultural stereotypes, because the French are supposed to be cold and unwelcoming, and then you do these beautiful things, and who do we make jokes about now, Finland? Because we will, we will make jokes about Finland, if we have to.
“But our prayers will be with Paris. Our prayers are with the people,” he concluded. “But let’s not forget, before we fight, to love.”
– Trevor Noah talking on The Tonight Show on the Comedy Channel, USA
Former Hezbollah captive – “What happened doesn’t surprise me.”
Brian Keenan said in an Independent newspaper interview: “The contagion has broken out of its confinement. Someone has planned all this for a long time. There is a lot of organisation – but it doesn’t take much of a commitment to kill people. What happened doesn’t surprise me. What surprised me was that what happened in Beirut [24 hours earlier] spun to Paris. It’s as if the culture of victimhood which is rife in the Middle East … has risen to new levels, legitimising the worst horrors.”
“What do we need to do about this? In a global dimension, we all have to take some responsibility for this. My own thoughts – after four and a half years in captivity – is that the dispossession and the anger has to be acknowledged. These people have to be offered something more than revenge or Holy War or even this perverse Islamic apocalypse. I’ve seen too many times the map of the Middle East changing – many borders are irrelevant now.
“What worries me is that as these old borders and ‘international zones’ disappear, ‘security barriers’ become the new borders. We’ve seen this in the Middle East and they are rapidly being erected across Europe. These worry me more than the term ‘terrorism’. They create these kinds of conceptual contours – it’s not just a wall, it’s a wall that defines a lot of cultural beliefs and misbeliefs. We are damaging ourselves with these walls – we are damaging our ability to think, our ability to be creative.”
– Brian Keenan, an Irish journalist held captive for 54 months in the 1980s by Hezbollah (and thus Shia Muslim) fighters (ISIS are Sunni Muslims), was interviewed by The Independent in London.
Madonna – “They want to silence us. We won’t let them.”
“I feel torn. Why am I up here dancing and having fun when people are crying over the loss of their loved ones? However, that is exactly what these people want to do. They want to shut us up. They want to silence us. And we won’t let them.”
– Madonna at a concert in Stockholm on Saturday night.
Quintus van der Berg – “That (French) flag and my (Facebook) profile stands for the prayer of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity…and I am not apologetic for that.”
“So, why did I change my profile (to include the French flag)? … The bigger picture is NOT selective mourning or trying to feed some anti-sentiment. It does not mean I don’t care about farm murders in my country or the ongoing evil in the world. This event struck at the heart of the pieces of society that we thought was still reasonably normal. It escalated things. Somewhat like Pearl Harbour did. It is the trigger to something very big and sad and horrible to come. My mom’s dad fought in WWI (she was born when he was 63). My mom’s half brothers fought in WWII, my dad served in the SA military, my father-in-law was in the WWII resistance, I was an actively deployed soldier in Namibia. I always said that was enough. My son would not carry a rifle in someone else’s war. I am sticking to it. War can never be the answer. It will never prove who was right, in the end it will just determine who is left. That is it. France and Paris shocked me and should shock the world. It is the heat gauge of an engine busy going horribly wrong. That flag and my profile stands for the prayer of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity…and I am not apologetic for that.”
– Quintus van der Berg – from Umhlanga Rocks, KwaZulu Natal – writing on his Facebook page.
Charlotte Farhan – “I won’t be changing my profile to the French flag even though I am French and from Paris.”
I won’t be changing my profile to the French flag even though I am French and from Paris. The reason for this is that if…
Posted by Charlotte Farhan on Saturday, 14 November 2015
Antoine Leiris, who lost his wife – “You will not have my hatred”
A message of defiance from the Parisian husband of one of Friday night’s victims – Helene Muyal-Leiris – has stood out. Journalist Antoine Leiris posted a Facebook message after his wife, and the mother of his 17-month-old son, was killed in the Bataclan club.
He said the woman he had loved since meeting her 12 years ago was an “exceptional being” and that now “we are only two, my son and I, but we are more powerful than all the world’s armies…every day of his life this little boy will insult you with his happiness and freedom.”
– Antoine Leiris, on Facebook.
Queen Rania of Jordan Suggests Calling ISIS ‘SIS’
Earlier this year Queen Rania of Jordan spoke with Huffington Post about ISIS. Her interview has gone viral again in the last few days. In it she said:
“I would love to drop the first ‘I’ in ISIS because there’s nothing Islamic about them… They have nothing to do with faith and everything to do with fanaticism. I think as an international community, we would do well to not focus on the religious character of that group because when we do, we give them undeserved legitimacy.”
She said: “ISIS wants to be called Islamic … because any action against them will automatically be called a war against Islam, which is exactly what they want it to be…They want it to be the West coming against Islam because it will help them with their recruiting.”
According to the Huffington Post, the Queen said the war against ISIS should be led by Musliam and Arabs with the international community in a supporting role.
“What the extremists want is to divide our world along fault lines of religion and culture, and so a lot of people in the West may have stereotypes against Arabs and Muslims,” she said. “But really this fight is a fight between the civilized world and a bunch of crazy people who want to take us back to medieval times. Once we see it that way, we realize that this is about all of us coming together to defend our way of life.”
-Queen Rania interview in the Huffington Post, March 2015