December 23rd, 2011
Today demonstrators marched against the Syrian regime in Majdal Shams on the occupied Golan Heights. (For believers in the sectarian narrative, most of the people here happen to be Druze, not Sunnis). One of their slogans was ash-sha‘ab yureed tahreer al-jowlan – The People Want the Liberation of the Golan. The Syrian regime, which has slaughtered over 6,000 civilians since the revolution started, hasn’t fired a bullet over the Golan since 1973. In the clip below Asad loyalists confront the protestors, but are outnumbered. The demonstrators shout almowt wala almuzuleh – Death Rather Than Humiliation – and illi yiqtil sha‘abu kha’in – He Who Kills his People is a Traitor.
It’s interesting to note that the Golan was occupied by Zionists in 1967, before most of the demonstrators were born, and illegally annexed in 1982. The very Syrian drama unfolding on these ‘Israeli’ streets proves – if proof were needed – the absurdity of Zionist hopes that Arab national identity on occupied territory will gradually evaporate.
Robin Yassin-Kassab
by Ali Farzat
Many Syrians have been awaiting this moment with dread. A further step down into bloody chaos and incipient civil war, a further step into the dark. This morning two car bombs exploded at security installations in Kafar Souseh, Damascus. At least thirty people were killed and over 100 injured.
Who’s to blame? There is no evidence of anyone’s guilt, and there won’t be any credible evidence while the criminal Asad regime remains in power and continues to lie and to block journalists’ access. This means that pro-regime people will follow the regime line and blame al-Qa’ida, and anti-regime people will blame the regime. I make no bones about it: I’m firmly in the anti-regime camp. Those who followed my writing before this year will know that I was once willing to give the regime the benefit of the doubt. Not any longer. This year I’ve been forced to admit that the regime is a lot less intelligent, a lot less sophisticated, than I thought. Back in February it had enough popularity to lead a genuine reform process. It’s entirely possible that Bashaar al-Asad, had he played this revolutionary year right, could have won a real election. But he didn’t play it right. From the start his regime slaughtered peaceful protestors and subjected thousands to torture, including children, even to death. Worst of all, the regime instrumentalised sectarianism in an attempt to divide and rule. After months of attacks by armed Alawi gangs on predominantly Sunni lives and property there are now instances of ‘revenge’ attacks on innocent Alawis, and tit for tat sectarian killings particularly in Homs and its surrounding countryside. All of this could have been predicted months ago. Of course, the mechanics of these killings is as obscure as that behind the bomb attacks in Damascus today. Some revolutionaries believe the regime is behind the killings of Alawis too, because it aims to spark a sectarian war which it thinks it can win. And we must not forget that sectarian war is still – to the credit of the Syrian people – not the dominant strain in the conflict. There are thousands of defected soldiers, many of whom have seen their comrades gunned down. If they had chosen to they could have attacked the minorities in a coordinated fashion. They haven’t. And the Alawi actress Fadwa Sulaiman is still leading demonstrations in the Sunni heart of Homs.
It’s debatable whether or not the regime can win a sectarian war, but it’s certain that it can’t win its struggle against the revolution for dignity. In fact the signs are piling up that the regime is losing by the day. Three days ago 60,000 revolutionaries took to the streets of Meydan in central Damascus. Thousands took to the streets of central Aleppo. It can no longer be said, therefore, that central Damascus and Aleppo are not participating in the revolution (the suburbs of these cities have been demonstrating for months). The regime’s response to the awakening of the two largest cities has been to escalate. Reports from Jabal az-Zawiyeh in Idlib province suggest that at least 250 people have been massacred there in the last three days, defectors and civilians alike. And the daily death toll of civilians across the country has risen to between 20 and 50.
Now this double bomb attack on Kafar Souseh looks very much like part of the regime’s response. It certainly plays into the regime’s hands, reinforcing the terrorism narrative on the day that the Arab League observers (very worryingly led by Muhammad ad-Dabi, who was Sudan’s intelligence chief during the massacres in Darfur) arrive in Syria. Apparently it took less than twenty minutes for the regime to ‘discover’ that al-Qa’ida, backed by the United States and Israel, was behind the bombs. The regime’s ad-Dunya TV station even informed us that the exploding cars had pictures of bin Laden on their windows. Intelligent people will have as much trouble believing this story as they have believing Butheina Shaaban’s indignant insistence that torture never happens in Syria, or the lisping idiot-in-chief’s assertion that he would leave power if the people stopped loving him.
Witnesses claim that the streets around the bomb blast were closed off by security before the explosions. The oppositionist Muhammad al-Abdullah writes on his facebook page that “Reliable sources leaked the news that the victims of the bombings in the security services building were innocent people detained during demonstrations and were transferred from prisons and detention centers to the military and security buildings to use as victims in the series of explosions planned in the coming days after signing the death protocol (the Arab League protocol) and the presence of Arab observers to let the world think that the Syrian revolution is a terrorist revolution.” The regime claims it received information from Lebanon two days ago that 200 al-Qa’ida operatives were crossing the border. Lebanon’s ex-prime minister Saad al-Hariri (admittedly an anti-Syrian politician) says “this is fabricated by the Syrian ministry and some of its tools in Lebanon.”
So choose the narrative that fits you best. This is the confusion into which the criminal and traitorous regime has led us.
#SNN| #Syria:: The Revolution Council in Damascus and Damascus Suburb\ The daily Report\By SRGC
Summary of Events in Damascus and Damascus Suburb
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Summary of Events in Damascus and Damascus Suburb
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Another day of rage in Syria, government who is trying to quiet the sound of its people calling for freedom and unarmed civilians who have been calling for freedom for more than none month and the answer to their call is a widespread of army, Shabeeha (Regime sponsored gangs) and security forces. All the above are spread across the towns and in the streets arresting activists, beating on demonstrators, shooting with live bullets and using heavy machine guns and tanks to shell the homes.
This is seen in repeating itself almost every day for the last few months and again today another day like the past days in Damascus and the Suburbs of Damascus. The security forces spread in Al-Qadam fully armed. In Bab Mussalla Busses full of armed men were traveling to Bab AlJabia. In Zamalka the security forces spread in the streets placing check points and searching civilians. In Kafr Battnah at least twenty army vehicles, 5 busses and six more security cars stormed the streets positioning in the center of the city with rocket launchers, and the security forces raided homes and arrested people. In Harasta the snipers took position on the roofs of the buildings and the army sormed the street beating and insulting the pedestrian. Hammuriyyah was under siege. As for Arbeen it was stormed by the Army. Douma’s share was not any less form its neighbors in addition to war plane circling the sky above the residents of Douma. Mu’adhameyyatu-Sham’s street was filled with army and armed men especially as the students were leaving schools and being young children and student didn’t stop the security forces form beating the students nor it prevented them from shooting live bullets on the students. In addition the residents of Mu’adhameyyatu-Sham heard explosions but had no clue where the source was. In AlKeswah also gunfire was heard and the security forces were spread around. Kanaker and Az-Zabadani are still under the army occupation.
In addition to a strict security aggression, the residents were punished by power outage in most areas on and off in almost a complete power outage took place in Al-Qadam, Mu’adhameyyatu-Sham, Al-Kiswah and Douma in addition to disconnecting phone lines in Douma.
The tight security, the spread of the army with their artillery and the bad humanitarian status of the suburb with lack of necessities of food and fuel, all of that didn’t stop the residents in Damascus and its suburbs from going out in the street protesting this situation and insisting on calling for freedom. There was two demonstration in Al-Maidan, one in Ash-Shaghoor, one student demonstration in Al-Qanawat, one in al-Qadam, two in al-Qaboon by students and one which was attacked by the security forces. Two in Zmalka, one in Hammuriyyah, Harasta, Douma, Judaidat Artooz, Al-Kiswah, Al-A’bbadah, Yabrood and Az-Zabadani.
The demonstrators were faces with attacks from the security forces and in many cases there were beaten and arrested. In Zamalka few men were arrested, in Harasta more than twenty men were taking by the security forces. In Al-Keswah two men were arrested from the family of An-Naddaf. In Kanaker few men were detained and some confirmed names from Wadi Barada: Muhammad Ahmad As-Saleebi, Muhammad Hendiyeah, Abdullah Haydar and Ahmad Alya (Airforce sldier).
One Confrimed Martyr in Mu’dhameyyatu-Sham: Muhammad Khalid Al-Wadi.
In Kanaker there were reports of the government retrieving the military identification cards from the army and replacing it with Police IDs and police uniform.
The collection of some videos of today’s events:
Demonstration in Al-Maidan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iGPdpo3Kg8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ltg0bkm-3c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTRNdpV9h8
Student’s demonstration in AL-Qaboon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUvsaHANvN0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcU2-cD0Pxw
Mass demonstration in Zamalka:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpsNGVVxjPE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT3vynVrkiY
Kafr Battnah:
http://youtu.be/OcTH7s1Z6Xw
Hammureyyah:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GwkBLV3-Ks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxn8kqXiL-g
Hammureyyah and Misraba:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBYbkh8Mhrw
Harasta:
http://youtu.be/K-rpFQmdvyc
Douma:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA0yExQUw6M
The security forces chasing the activists in the street of Mu’adhameyytu-Sham:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2v6gSLEjkI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GTNqXRm7Qw
Students in Judaidat Artooz:
http://youtu.be/vxY1eLhHjcs
http://youtu.be/JPQUAQwDlmY
Al-Kiswah:
http://youtu.be/qF4mcgRE4js
http://youtu.be/EPsRvzp53KA
http://youtu.be/fDyraIJpoLA
http://youtu.be/j8SMxJCipS0
Demonstration in Al-A’bbadah:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeNt0LxaKyw
Yabrood:
http://youtu.be/4xh7nK8zN8I
http://youtu.be/ngGjDy7tH-U
http://youtu.be/AkUYuWQmptM
Az-Zabadani:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMxLVCyQRBU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIgC9SFW-Po
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au41A8aOW0s
Damascus University declared strike, the School of Architecture was attacked by the army
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB-UMrNd2ZA&feature=youtu.be
The Strike in Damascus University/School of Science:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ7uYZxjwaU&feature=youtu.be
The above translation is a summary of the Arabic version. The information contained in this translation is taken from the Arabic version, and the translation is summarized in order to avoid repeated phrases and an overabundance of details in terms of the neighborhood and street names.
Link:https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=243413039062940&set=a.212527035484874.51360.198164220254489&type=1&ref=nf
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
I’ve heard that the Syrian army has carried out more live fire exercises to test their readiness against any external aggressors. Of course we all remember how ready the Syrian army was in 1967, when it lost the Golan Heights without putting up a fight, or when the Syrian Air force lost eighty planes over Lebanon in one day because their planes are rubbish, or, more recently, when the Israelis bombed a suspected nuclear installation in 2007, or when Israeli planes breached Syrian airspace shortly afterwards, or when the American special forces carried out a helicopter raid from Iraq and killed Syrian citizens on Syrian soil, or when the Mossad assassinated a Syrian general in Lattakia, and Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus – all without a single response from the Syrian regime, which says it has the right to respond at a time and place of its choosing, ie never.
To be honest with you, the first time I realised that Syria even had a navy was when I heard that it was being used to shell parts of Lattakia. Of course, when we say Navy in Syria, what we really mean is a bunch of hill-billy yokels on some rusty fishing boats equipped with missile launchers and some big guns. We’re not exactly talking about a Syrian carrier group or something.
Who are we kidding? The Syrian army consists of a rag-tag bunch of undertrained, non-motivated, ill-equipped conscripts, along with a hardcore of heavily armed, fanatically loyal thugs who are concerned only with protecting a dictatorship and who have not hesitated once to use their weapons against Syrians. But this is not a novel invention of Assad’s Baath. Back when the Baath party was a party of crackpots who were oppressed and banned, the first Syrian president to use the Syrian army as an instrument of butchery, rather than for the defence of the realm, was the fascist Adib al Shishakli against the Druze community. Since then, the Syrian army’s greatest triumphs have been against Syrian civilians, or in repressing and extorting Lebanese people at checkpoints.
So the next time you hear about the brave and noble Syrian ‘army’ carrying out live fire exercises, just remember to put this bunch of incompetent and ineffective thugs in perspective. Here are some examples of how brave the Syrian army is in the face of ferociously unarmed, half-naked, Syrian civilians with their arms tied behind their backs
1:00 AM Damascus Time
For Prompt Release and Distribution
الأن تحصل مجزرة
حصري_إدلب _كنصفرة: استشهاد أكثر من150مدني في كنصفرة نتيجة قصف مركز على تجمعات النازحين المدنيين في المزارع بين الزيتون ..كانوا هاربين من مداهمات الامن و الشبيحة و هم من القرى التالية كنصفرة, كفرعويد, المزره 13 شهيد منهم من عائلة واحدة من بيت الحاج علي 4 شهداء أخوة
… القرى الان مكلومة و تدفن شهداءها تحت القصف و العدد مرشح للزيادة..أغلب الجثث وصلت متفحمة..
للعمل على إيقاف هذه المجزرة الآن: انشر هذا الخبر أيها القارئ الكريم في كل جروب أنت مشترك فيه، وفي صفحات الأخبار كلها
A massacre is ongoing right now.
Idlib, Kensafra, More than 150 civilians were murdered in Kensafra as a result of the targeted bombing of the gathering of refugees in between olive orchards. in several villages (Kensafra, Kafar-oueyd, Mazra). There are 13 martyrs from one family 4 brothres.
Villages are in mourning now and they are burying he martyrs. The number is increasing and most corpses arrived burned like charcoal.
Please distribute this on Facebook and in every news site.
بيان من برهان غليون
استغل النظام السوري التوقيع على بروتوكول المراقبين العرب في اطار المبادرة العربية للقيام بهجوم وحشي لا سابق له على المدن والاحياء السورية الثائرة.لقد بلغ عدد الشهداء في اليوم الاول لهذا التوقيع مئة وعشرين شهيدا وهو يتجاوز اليوم الثلاثاء المئتين وعشرين شهيدا اضافة الى مئات الجرحى والمفقودين.
ادعو الامين العام للجامعة العربية السيد نبيل العربي والامين العام للامم المتحدة بان كي مون للتدخل فورا لوقف المجازر التي يرتكبها النظام السوري بحق المدنيين العزل متسترا بتوقيعه على بروتوكول المراقبين كما ادعو الراي العام والمجتمع الدوليين للتظاهر والاحتجاج وعمل كل ما بوسعهما لاعلان تضامنهما مع الئعب السوري والعمل بجميع الوسائل لوضع حد لمجازر النظام السوري وفضح اعماله الوحشية.
A Press Release From Burhan Ghalyoun
The Syrian regime is using its signing on the observers’ protocol within the AL initiative to conduct a barbaric vicious attack on dissident villages and towns. The number of martyrs reach 120 on the first day, and today it is exceeding 220 martyrs in addition to hundreds of wounded and missing.
I call on the Secretary General of the Arab League, Mr. Nabil Al-Arabi and the Secretary General of the UN to interfere immediately to put a halt to the massacres being commited by the Syrian regime against unarmed civilians hiding under its signature of the observers’ protocol. I also call on the international community and the international public opinion to demonstrate and protest and do everything they could to declare solidarity with the Peoples of Syria and to spare to method to halt the massacres committed by the Syrian regime and to expose its barbaric actions.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aimjtxwln4E&feature=colike?]
Saturday, December 17 2011|Ami Kaufman
All Tanya Rosenblit wanted to do was get on a bus to Jerusalem. She didn’t have any plans to turn into the Israeli Rosa Parks, when a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews demanded she move to the back of the bus
Tanya Rosenblit
Waiting for Rosenblit to move to the back, preventing driver from moving (photo: Tanya Rosenblit)
A crowd gathers outside (Photo: Tanya Rosenblit)
He won’t sit behind a woman (photo: Tanya Rosenblit)
Policeman speaks to “head” of protest (photo: Tanya Rosenblit)
Most passengers just didn’t care (photo :Tanya Rosenblit)
Tanya RosenblitIt was supposed to be just another regular Friday morning for Tanya Rosenblit. Tanya had to get from her hometown Ashdod to Jerusalem for a meeting there. On the way, Rosenblit experienced one of the most intimidating stories of religious coercion I’ve seen lately: She was told by a Haredi man to get to the back of the bus, or nobody was going to go anywhere.
And what do you think Rosenblit did? That’s right – she stayed put. And she took pictures of the whole ordeal and later wrote about it on Facebook. Here’s her story, which I publish a part of with her permission:
A bus ride to Jerusalem taking the wrong turn…
I lived in Israel all my life. I was brought up in a free country and I was taught the value of freedom as a basic right that could never be undermined by anyone. All my life, during my teens, my military service, my university years and then after I always felt as equal among my peers. I was always proud to be a woman and never felt deprived or weakened by men, until today.I had an appointment in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem and looked for easy transportation on a Friday morning. After checking the official Egged site, which is the leading bus company in Israel, I decided to take line 451 from Ashdod (my hometown) to Jerusalem. I chose this line because it stopped a mere five minute walk from my scheduled appointment.The driver looked at the station where I was standing and didn’t stop. I had to signal him by raising my hand for him to stop. When I entered the bus he looked surprised. He explained that the only ones who go on the bus are Orthodox Jews. I sat behind him in the first row and asked for him to tell me when we get to my station.At the next stop, Orthodox Jews started mounting the bus. At first, they just stared at me, but said nothing and moved on to sit somewhere in the bus behind us. Only one passenger decided that he preferred standing on the stairs near the driver, although there was plenty of space. I didn’t mind that, and focused on the music in my ears. But then, another one entered the bus, but instead of entering, he prevented the driver from closing the door. He looked at me with despise, and when I took off the earphones, I heard him call me “Shikse”, which means “whore” in Yiddish. He demanded I sit in the back of the bus, because Jewish men couldn’t sit behind women (!!!). I refused.The driver tried to talk to him, explained that he was late, but the “penguin” wouldn’t budge. Another passenger, also religious and orthodox asked the driver to be refunded because he was gonna miss his meeting. He also said that he didn’t mind what was going on, he just wanted to get to where he was going and that the fact that they decided to stop the bus is a good reason for the driver to give him his money back. For company policy, he didn’t, but that’s a different story.
The driver understood he was not going to move anytime soon, so he called the police. Until that moment, no one tried to talk to me. The only comment I heard was from the initiator of this whole mess ordering me to sit in the back of the bus as a sign of respect. In the meantime, a crowd started forming outside the bus, as a result of his cries. I was starting to get scared, to tell you the truth. There were like 20 of them, all wearing black. Most of them were just curious, but they were definitely on his side.
After a while, the police came. It was one officer who first talked to the driver. The driver explained to him that he didn’t tell me anything and that they wouldn’t budge. Then, the officer had a long conversation with the person who started this whole mess. It seemed quite friendly, and in the end, the policeman came to me and asked me if I was willing to respect them and sit in the back of the bus. I answered that I respected them enough by wearing modest cloths, because I knew I was going to an Orthodox neighborhood, but I wouldn’t be humiliated by those who can’t even respect their own mothers and wives.
The officer stepped down and so did the leader of the little protest that was going on. He stayed in Ashdod, while the rest of the Orthodox Jews, including those who got on the bus later on boarded the bus and quietly went to sit behind me. The person who chose to stand on the stairs at the beginning remained on the stairs sitting and praying throughout the entire bus ride, because he wouldn’t sit behind a woman!!!
The entire delay took about half an hour, but we managed to arrive on time. In the neighborhood, I met some very pleasant people who were very happy and eager to help me when I asked for directions, men and women, Orthodox and religious. When I later decided to take a walk around the Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem, I was again treated as an equal, as a secular woman, with the utmost respect and sympathy, by men and women of all streams.
The reason I am posting this story is not to declare the Orthodox Jews as pure evil and the oppressors of human rights and liberties. I want to point out that this is a social and educational problem. There are a lot of lovely things about religion, but forcing people to choose religion is wrong. It is wrong to use religion as an excuse to eliminate people’s basic rights: the right for freedom and the right for dignity.
Waiting for Rosenblit to move to the back, preventing driver from moving (photo: Tanya Rosenblit)A crowd gathers outside (Photo: Tanya Rosenblit)He won’t sit behind a woman (photo: Tanya Rosenblit)Policeman speaks to “head” of protest (photo: Tanya Rosenblit)Most passengers just didn’t care (photo :Tanya Rosenblit)Tanya’s story filled me with mixed emotions. First and foremost, I am in awe of her bravery. I don’t think there was any danger of violence, but to stand up to that kind of intimidation shows an inner strength of a very special kind.
And, of course, it filled me with anger. That the policeman actually asked her to move. And that this is what Israel is turning in to. It’s a slow process. But it’s steady.
Tanya wishes to make sure that her cry is not against the ultra-Orthodox as a whole and does not wish to turn this into a religious war of any kind. As she told me today: “The extremists are the problem. In Israel 2011 we are waging a battle for individual rights. We should fight for freedom and tolerance for all.”
I agree with Tanya that these are extremists. But I also believe their numbers are on the rise, and that the current political system has shown no interest whatsoever in changing the tide.
P.S. I just have to add that as much as I don’t like the word “shikse”, I don’t particularly approve of the term “penguin” as well. I can only presume it was written when emotions ran high.
