Boston Lebanese Americans Experience Anger, Fear

August 2, 2006

Source: The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/articles/2006/08/02/anger_dismay_and_fear/

On August 2, 2006 The Boston Globe reported, "The Lebanese flag outside St. George Orthodox Church in West Roxbury flutters at half-staff while inside the sanctuary six young women pass baskets to collect money for that war-torn country. Most of the 200 people attending Sunday services at this 96-year-old church are either immigrants from Lebanon or the children or grandchildren of Lebanese immigrants. With some 30 parishioners just back from vacations in Lebanon cut short by war -- and news breaking about the Israeli air strike that killed more than 50 in Qana -- the mood here is anger at both Israel and the United States mixed with sadness, dismay, and fear... The congregation is part of one of the nation's oldest Lebanese-American communities. Of the estimated 175,000 Arabs and Arab - Americans living in Massachusetts, 40 percent, most of them Christian, are of Lebanese descent, according to the state chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Their roots, says Monsignor Joseph Lahoud of Our Lady of the Cedars of Lebanon church in Jamaica Plain, date to the arrival in the late 1860s of immigrants fleeing religious strife and Ottoman oppression. The country's first Maronite church was established 113 years ago in Chinatown, and Lebanese-American families founded a mosque in Quincy in 1964."