BY JULIA BREEN

A LEBANESE doctor wrote on his blog this week: “When my people died, no-one bothered to light up its landmarks in the colours of their flag.

“When my people died, they did not send the world into mourning.

“Their death was but an irrelevant fleck along the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world.”

While the world rightly mourns Paris, while people change their social media statuses to the colours of the Tricolour and light up their national monuments in red, white and blue, the forgotten victims of horrific terrorist attacks in Beirut and Baghdad last week quietly fade into obscurity.

Paris should never be forgotten. The unspeakable horrors of Friday night will leave a horrific, blood-soaked impression on those who witnessed it forever.

The City of Light will never quite be the same.

And it is right that we should not forget those 129 victims who, innocently trying to enjoy the end of their working weeks, were shot down in their prime.

Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children, all just a treasured memory now for their families, because of lunatics wielding Kalashnikovs.

Mark Zuckerberg was forced to defend his use of Facebook’s “Safety Check” feature this week in Paris, when it had not been applied in Beirut.

It was the first time it had been used in a terrorist attack, having been previously used primarily for natural disasters, such as the Nepal earthquake.

I have a friend who lives in Beirut. The first I knew of the horrific terror attack on Thursday was after the Paris atrocity on Friday night, when she posted a picture on social media of a candle standing in for the ‘i’ in Paris and the ‘i’ in Beirut.

I read the news acutely – it’s my job.

Perhaps I had seen the items about the Beirut attack, and was guilty of scrolling past it. I am sure it was reported – although nowhere near as widely as Paris, which has – rightly - dominated the news schedules for days.

But Beirut – although recently peaceful – was synonymous in my childhood with war and suffering, and perhaps that caused me to, subconsciously, ignore the news reports.

Beirut, like Paris, was a targeted attack on innocent civilians.

It was described as a “satanic terrorist attack” by Hezbollah.

On Thursday two suicide bombers detonated explosives near a busy market in a southern suburb inhabited mostly by Shia Muslims.

Forty-three people were killed by ISIS and over 200 injured in the worst terrorist attack in Beirut since the end of the Lebanese civil war.

On Friday 17 people were killed by a suicide bomber at a wedding at Baghdad, with another seven being killed there in a blast on Sunday.

I understand – I really do – why Paris has shocked us so much.

It is a mere few hours on the train from us. Many of us have spent a weekend there, taken in the art galleries, ridden the lift to the top of the Eiffel Tower, or wandered along the banks of the Seine.

If they can strike there, are any of us safe, anywhere?

But what message does it send to the rest of the world when we seem so much more concerned with Western lives?

It only reinforces the beliefs of terrorist groups like ISIS that the West only cares when the attack is on its doorstep, and will send more misguided people into the arms of terrorism.