BROOKE: Just prior to the Paris attack, over 40 were killed and more than 200 wounded in two suicide bombings in the neighborhood of Bourj al-Barajneh in southern Beirut. ISIS claimed credit and, a day later, attacked Paris. And that sparked a huge reaction on both mainstream and social media. For a while, the world seemed bedecked in the French flag.  But amid the displays, a question was raised, and raised again. Why Paris, and not Beirut? Why didn’t the global media mourn for victims in Lebanon? Habib Battah, founder of Beirut Report dot com, both asked and answered the question in a post for Al Jazeera. He said that for him it started with a symbol of solidarity, that wasn’t.

HABIB: Some Lebanese news sites had posted a picture of the sydney opera house lit up with the lebanese flag and people had spread this around saying oh isn’t that nice that australia is mourning lebanese victims because there are so many lebanese immigrants living in Australia. it turned out that the photo was a photoshopped fake.