Ex hostage says no easy answers

POPULAR media reports are no basis for an understanding of a Middle East which is in a constant state of flux, a Catholic priest once held hostage in the Lebanon warned this week.
"People want instant answers — but you have to look at history or none of it makes any sense," said Fr Lawrence Martin Jenco, who at the time of his kidnapping in Beirut in 1985 was director of the Catholic Relief Services in the Lebanese capital, "I have so many things stored up in my heart but I cannot talk about them until all the hostages are freed," said the 56-year-old Servite priest. He stressed that the Lebanon was one of the few Arab countries with a large Christian population, but when the Shiite Moslems became the majority in the country they "saw a discrepancy in justice and they wanted a piece of the pie from a nation that had so much to offer", he said.
"It is sad to think that we resolve differences through the violence of war," said Fr Jenco. And he accused the United States as a military power of selective judgement and focus in the troubled spots of the globe.
"We don't call the government in South Africa terrorist. And for the Israelis to bomb Beirut wasn't terrorism to the Americans. Such selectivity terrorises my spirit. I see millions dying in Ethiopia and Mozambique, but we don't give the same focus to places like that. We have our own interests at heart — a continuation of the good life," he said.
Fr Jenco said that in addition to the western hostages still held by the Arabs following the release of British journalist John McCarthy and the American Edward Austin Tracy earlier this month, hundreds of Arabs were being used by Israelis as bargaining counters. And arms deals made by the United States with Middle Eastern governments had only served to fuel further violence, he said.