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Statement, published in Socialist Worker (US), May 1, 2013
Introduction:*
A group of Syrian, Arab and international activists launched the Global Campaign of Solidarity with the Syrian Revolution at the World Social Forum in Tunis last month to create an open and diverse platform to support the Syrian revolution. The World Social Forum was an opportunity to create organic relationships with progressive intellectuals and social movements. In addition, it was an important moment to re-inscribe the Syrian revolution in a larger framework of popular struggles against oppression and authoritarianism. It was an occasion to reassert the Syrian people’s right to self-defense and resistance against despotism and dictatorship.
The following statement, signed by intellectuals, academics, artists and activists from more than 30 countries, reminds the world that what is happening in Syria today is a people’s revolution for freedom and dignity–and for that reason, it should be supported by all means. The campaign has called for a day of solidarity on May 31, during which groups in various cities around the world are invited to organize protests, cultural events and other symbolic actions in public squares and in front of Syrian embassies, as well as online. Groups based in different countries will choose the most effective strategies to support the Syrian revolution and remind the world that:
– The massacre of the Syrian people must stop now.
– Assad must step down and be brought to justice.
– All countries or groups must end all financial and military support to the Syrian regime.
– All Syrian regime embassies must be closed down. Complicity with the Assad regime will not be tolerated.
– The Syrian representative must be expelled from the United Nations.
– Aid must be sent to all Syrian refugees and internally displaced.
* This published introduction above is unsigned and its relation to the statement below is not evident. In contrast to the statement, the introduction contains a string of wrong-headed proposals that fit comfortably with the U.S. et al-led drive to install a pro-imperialist puppet regime in Syria, including the closure of Syrian embassies, expulsion of Syrian representatives from the United Nations and diversion of aid away from institutions of the Syrian regime. The introduction also gives the U.S. and its allies a carte blanche to ‘bring to justice’ Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. The world is all too familiar with the kind of ‘justice’ that the U.S. has brought to Iraq and Afghanistan… –RA
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We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with the millions of Syrians who have been struggling for dignity and freedom since March 2011. We call on people of the world to pressure the Syrian regime to end its oppression of and war on the Syrian people. We demand that Bashar al-Assad leave immediately without excuses so that Syria can begin a speedy recovery towards a democratic future.
Since March 2011, Assad’s regime has steadily escalated its violence against the Syrian people, launching Scud missiles, using weapons banned by the Geneva Convention such as cluster bombs and incendiary munitions, and using aerial bombardment. The regime has detained and tortured tens of thousands of people and committed untold massacres. It has refused political settlements that do not include Assad in power, and it has polarized the society through strategic acts of violence and by sowing seeds of division. The regime has also, since the early days of the uprising, sought to internationalize the crisis in order to place it within geopolitical battles that would only strengthen the regime.
Staying true to the logic of an authoritarian regime, Assad could never accept the legitimate demands of the Syrian people for freedom and dignity. Thus, there is no hope for a free, unified, and independent Syria so long as his regime remains in power.
This is a revolt that was sparked by the children of Deraa and the sit-ins and demonstrations of the youth in the cities, the peasants of the rural areas, and the dispossessed and marginalized of Syria. It is they who rallied nonviolently through protests and songs and chants, before the regime’s brutal crackdown. Since then, the regime has pushed for the militarization of the Syrian nonviolent movement. As a result, young men took up arms, first out of self-defense. Lately, this has resulted in attempts by some groups fighting the regime to force a climate of polarization, and negation of the Other, politically, socially and culturally. These acts that are in themselves against the revolution for freedom and dignity.
Yet the revolution for freedom and dignity remains steadfast. It is for this reason that we, the undersigned, appeal to those of you in the global civil society, not to ineffective and manipulative governments, to defend the gains of the Syrian revolutionaries, and to spread our vision: freedom from authoritarianism and support of Syrians’ revolution as an integral part of the struggles for freedom and dignity in the region and around the world.
The fight in Syria is an extension of the fight for freedom regionally and worldwide. It cannot be divorced from the struggles of the Bahrainis, Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans, Yemenis and other peoples who have revolted against oppression and authoritarianism as well as against those seeking to usurp or destroy the uprisings and divert them for their own agendas. It is connected to the Palestinians’ struggle for freedom, dignity and equality. The revolution in Syria is a fundamental part of the North African revolutions, yet it is also an extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.
The Syrian revolution has confronted a world upside down, one where states that were allegedly friends of the Arabs such as Russia, China, and Iran have stood in support of the slaughter of people, while states that never supported democracy or independence, especially the U.S. and its Gulf allies, have intervened in support of the revolutionaries. They have done so with clear cynical self-interest. In fact, their intervention tried to crush and subvert the uprising, while selling illusions and deceptive lies.
Given that regional and world powers have left the Syrian people alone, we ask you to lend your support to those Syrians still fighting for justice, dignity and freedom, and who have withstood the deafening sounds of the battle, as well as rejected the illusions sold by the enemies of freedom.
As intellectuals, academics, activists, artists, concerned citizens and social movements, we stand in solidarity with the Syrian people to emphasize the revolutionary dimension of their struggle and to prevent the geopolitical battles and proxy wars taking place in their country. We ask you to lend your support to all Syrians from all backgrounds asking for a peaceful transition of power, one where all Syrians can have a voice and decide their own fate. We also reject all attempts of any group to monopolize power, and to impose its own agenda, or to impose unitary or homogenous identities on the Syrian people. We ask you to support those people and organizations on the ground that still uphold the ideals for a free and democratic Syria.
What you can do:
* Find out more about the Global Campaign of Solidarity with the Syrian Revolution on its Facebook page.
* There is also information on Facebook about the global day of solidarity set for May 31.
* Sign a petition in solidarity with the struggle for freedom in Syria.
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Hezbollah promises another “divine victory” in Syria
Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah stated clearly in his recent speech that his party has and will continue to fight in Syria next to the regime forces. His reasoning remained purely political: he linked it to Syria’s role as a strategic regional partner. However, within the Shiite community in Lebanon, this political rhetoric has no real value, as more dead bodies of ‘martyrs’ come back from Syria.
A different kind of narrative was needed to convince Hezbollah’s constituency why the enemy is now on the other side of the border. In Shiite villages and towns, the rhetoric has little to do with “foreign powers aiming to destroy Syria as a country, people, and army, and canceling its regional role,” as he mentioned in the speech. Hezbollah’s leaders managed to quell public discontent by adding a sacred element to their involvement in Syria: Karbala. The divine narrative has been invoked, yet again.
In the beginning of the 1980s, Hezbollah built its rhetoric to tie together political and historical narratives to gradually form a Shiite collective memory. The Party of God employed the memory of the battle of Karbala, when an army sent by the Sunni Umayyad caliph Yazid I defeated Al Hussein bin Ali, grandson of the prophet Mohammad. This battle marks the root of the historical schism between Sunnis and Shiites.
When Hezbollah decided to take over resistance in Lebanon and eliminate the National Resistance Front, the act of resisting Israel was intertwined with Hussein and his family’s resistance to Yazid.
The family Hussein suffered and were eventually martyred in order to preserve the Shiite faith, and Hezbollah invoked this martyrdom in reference to its ‘divine victory’ in the 2006 July War. In fact, tales of Hussein and his family’s spirits helping Hezbollah fighters in the battles against Israeli soldiers are still told and have been merged with the collective Karbala memories.
Today, as Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria can no longer be kept secret, this memory is being exploited again. Many of its symbols are being used by Hezbollah’s leaders to tie their fight in Syria to a scared mission. This time, it is not only to defend Shiites in Syria, or Lebanese on the borders, or even Shiite shrines for that matter; the real mission Hezbollah is marketing to its community is to save the Shiite existence exactly as Hussein bin Ali did in the year 680.
“It is a sacred battle and a religious duty,” their leaders tell them. “The Shiites in Syria are suffering death, torture, and thirst, exactly as Hussein and his family suffered before them. Their fault is that they loved Hussein,” states many of their Facebook pages and websites.
Recently, whenever Syria is mentioned, Hussein bin Ali and his family are brought up. Syria is no more a war between the regime that supports resistance and fighters that wish resistance to end. Instead, this war is painted as a divine battle to defend the Shiite faith and pave the way for the appearance of the “awaited” Al Mahdi, the twelfth Imam for the Shiites. People are recounting old forgotten tales of Mahdi’s appearance and now it is believed that he and his army are going to appear soon in Damascus with yellow flags to conquer and restore peace.
Hezbollah has realized that this collective memory is the only way to drag the Shiites again to a battle decided by Iran, which serves only Iran. But when more dead bodies come back from Syria and the promised “victory” is not fulfilled, Shiites will eventually realize that the divine narrative is not always a guaranteed recipe for power and victory. Hezbollah will then lose its last recourse, and eventually the collective memory will probably collapse and take down both the party and its popular base. Unfortunately, it will be too late for the Shiites as they will be in a bloody and violent confrontation with Sunnis in Syria and Lebanon.
But Hezbollah seems to have dropped Lebanon from its strategic map. In his speech, Nasrallah cast off all Lebanese-related issues and stated before he concluded that there is no time to discuss these as they are not significant. Lebanon is not important to the Party of God. When he declared war against the international community by saying that “Syria has real friends in the region and across the world that will not let the country fall into the hands of the US, Israel, or takfiris,” Nasrallah certainly did not have Lebanon’s interest in mind.
If Lebanese Shiites do not realize that they are being exploited in a war that serves Iran, not Lebanon, then they will have to face a civil war in which neither Hussein bin Ali, nor his family, can save them.
Hanin Ghaddar is the managing editor of NOW. She tweets @haningdr
An artist’s rendering of the 680 Battle of Karbala. (Image via AbbasShalai.com)
“Tales of Hussein and his family’s spirits helping Hezbollah fighters in the battles against Israeli soldiers are still told.”
Those infantile apologists for fascism who imagine against the facts that Syria’s popular revolution is a foreign conspiracy won’t like this piece by Michael Neumann, a frequent contributor to Counterpunch and the son of Franz Neumann, the analyst of modern fascism. It is however, one of the most morally compelling pieces on Syria that I have read. Originally published at Insufficient Respect.
Many reasons are given for supporting either the Syrian revolution or the units of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). But while there is sympathy for the Syrian people, hardly ever do those reasons speak to or from Syrian needs. Instead the appeal is to the quite narrow interests of others, always in negative terms: not supporting the FSA will encourage Islamic extremism, invite a regional conflagration, squander opportunities to ‘have a say in
Syria’s future’(!), counter-productively encourage uncontrolled arms proliferation, leave a legacy of anti-Western sentiment in
Syria. Syrians are essentially seen either as a menace, or as weaklings likely incapable of countering some menace in their midst.Of course the idea here is that solid reasons can only rest on hard-headed realism, not sloppy sentiment. But there may be at least two other reasons rooted in a less myopic assessment of the situation. They invoke principles and large historical opportunities – which does not distinguish them from the sort of ‘higher’ motives that in fact drive a good deal of political activity. They do have implications for the whole world, but they originate not only in the interests but also in the achievements of the Syrian people and their revolution One reason is ‘negative’, the other, positive.
The negative reason has to do with what Syrians suffer.
It’s taken me a while to realize that most people probably don’t really know the full extent of Assad’s cruelties, or how they compare to the cruelty we know has been inflicted in so many times and places. It’s not the sort of material that makes the front pages. An appendix to this post gives some details. For several reasons, none solely sufficient but in combination decisive, the horrors of Syria have unique significance.
First there is the sheer barbarism. Many régimes which have inflicted tortures perhaps as ghastly as Assad’s – Chile’s Pinochet and the Iran under the Shah come to mind – do not quite match his barbarism for one simple reason: Assad’s tortures are not confined to adults, much less to those who have ever posed any threat, but also to children not into their teens. The torture of injured people in their hospital beds, and of medical staff, is also very unusual. Sometimes victims are tortured in order to reveal information, or at least to admit to something, whether or not they did it. Often they are simply tortured to death, simply to have them die in agony.
Second there is the scale of it. Those tortured run into the tens, perhaps the hundreds of thousands. Multiple deaths under torture are reported almost daily. Perhaps as many suffered in Cambodia, or Rwanda, or the Congo; no figures are available.
In practicing such spare-no-one savagery on so vast a scale, Assad has had very few rivals – perhaps Saddam Hussein. But in Syria there’s another dimension to the nightmare – and it’s no less significant for being less brutally tangible. Never before have such atrocities been not only so visible, but so close to what might be called the mainstream world.
The torturers ‘get’ Twitter and Facebook. They often record their torture sessions, down to death and mutilation, on their cell phones. When the perpetrators are captured, these videos get onto Youtube. In a world civilization that practically defines itself through its exposure on digital media, this sort of shamelessly public sadism gains a prominence unique in modern history.
Because Syria’s atrocities are so open to the world – so much a part of that world – the failure to support the Syrian resistance is no mere strategic error. Though history almost seems a succession of moral failures, this one is special.
Other evils, the mainstream world could ignore or minimize or pretend to ignore. Not this one. Nor can some ideology or reason of state be invoked as even a partial explanation or excuse. Syria is not important enough to be strategically or economically key. Assad is no longer a useful ally to anyone, and his régime represents neither a cause nor the pursuit of any ideal. Indeed no cause can be invoked to support him. If the type and scale of these cruelties are not worth opposing with determination and ferocity, what is? What sort of justice or benevolence – for anyone – can be worth pursuing if this evil is not worth confronting?
The world’s cowardice and passivity in the face of these crimes brings the mainstream political order into irredeemable disrepute. No one can assess the consequences of this failure, but it’s hard to imagine anything much less than a definitive loss of stature for every mainstream principle and every institution dedicated to uphold them, from the UN to the International Court of Justice to NATO and the whole panoply of apparently useless human rights organizations. Here is an outcome whose dangers go far beyond such bogeymen as extreme Islamists, sectarian warfare, stray weapons or regional destabilization. The danger, though occasioned by Syria’s agonies, is of the mainstream world’s own making. It will probably exceed by far whatever Syrians could possibly do to others.
In short, the refusal to support the Syrian revolution exposes the uselessness of every political entity – every nation, every court, every assembly, every movement, every human-rights outfit – supposedly out to civilize the world. If that sounds extreme, ask yourself by what date you’d expect these worthy institutions to protect us from savage repression. You might also ask how long it will take to forget so prolonged and public a failure.
But there is also a ‘positive’ reason rooted in what the Syrian revolution represents.
If it prevails, the Syrian uprising will be the first truly popular revolt to succeed since 1789 – the first since the dawn of the industrial age. Unlike the Russian or Chinese or Vietnamese or Cuban revolutions, it is not the design or possession of some élite vanguard. Unlike the 19th century revolutions of Italy or Latin America, it did not coalesce around the leadership of, quite literally, a man on horseback. It did not arise under the aegis of a military hero like Turkey’s Kemal Ataturk. Unlike the Tunisian revolt, it did not succeed because the régime collapsed. Unlike the Libyan revolution, it did not rely on outside participation. Unlike the Egyptian revolution, it did not leave much of the old order in place, so that nothing happens without at least the passive approval of the armed forces.
When people go on about the disunity of the opposition, they haven’t considered this difference. Usually you speak of disunity in reference to something once united – a movement, a party, a state. And normally, that’s what you find when there is a revolution. But no one tut-tutted that the French Revolution ‘lacked unity’. Like the Syrian revolution, that was a spontaneous uprising whose very disunity testified to the depth and breath of its roots.
This is no mere historical oddity. It is proof of something quite unexpected: that a people, starting with nothing, can prevail against a tyrannous modern state with as large and sophisticated a repressive apparatus and any tyrant could desire. The key component of this proof is the courage of the Syrian people. That too exceeds anything previously encountered: never before have civilians refused to be cowed by such widespread cruelty, such firepower, and such slaughter.
The Syrian revolution brings new hope to the world, and therefore demands wholehearted, unqualified support. Unqualified support does not mean heedless support. It does not preclude resolve to address the very real dangers such a revolution poses. Of course supporters also must be ready to work against sectarian infighting and other forms of extremist violence, both in Syria itself and beyond. But these dangers must be countered in any case. These frightening possibilities should blind no one to the compelling obligation, not to sit on the sidelines, but to help that revolution succeed.
Appendix
What follows makes for very unpleasant reading. Since it omits any results of artillery or aerial bombardment, it’s only a very partial indication of what’s inflicted on the Syrian people. In part, its compilation is made necessary by the attitudes of the very humanitarian agencies from which some of the material is derived.
These agencies seem to adopted the dogma that we must never weigh one human rights violation against another – there is no better or worse. Every nation gets its report and its scolding; every nation and every political group is culpable. This stance suggests that if, for example, Syrian revolutionaries sometimes violate human rights, which they undoubtedly do, they are as unworthy of support as the régime they oppose. To think otherwise then looks immoral, a sinister case of ‘the end justifies the means’. The severity of the violations doesn’t seem to count. After all, even ‘persecution’ on religious or cultural group, if ‘consistent’, is counted a ‘crime against humanity’ by the International Court of Justice, and that’s without any reference to what form the ‘persecution’ might take.
This confuses morality with unreflective delicacy. It makes no sense in principle: is there really nothing to choose, for example, between the taking of one innocent life and the slaughter of several billion? It makes no sense in practice either. We sacrifice innocent lives all the time, not just out of necessity but also for convenience. We know, for instance, that innocent lives would be spared if we cut speed limits by, say, 90%, for non-essential vehicles. But we don’t even consider sparing them. We’re no more fastidious in our political judgements on the past. Since we know that wars inevitably take innocent lives, was it wrong to resist Nazism, or to fight the perpetrators of the Nanking massacre?
Here are the testimonies. I have not included anything alleged against the Syrian rebels, but you can consult Human Rights Watch if you like, and judge for yourself whether there is no better or worse in this conflict.
· “A while ago, one of my students was detained. They hung him from his hands for 7 days and tortured him brutally until he reached the point of insanity. He was being tortured in a room where blood and urine stained the floors; and dead, decayed, worm infested bodies littered the ground. They forced him to sleep atop the bodies. He fear drove him to insanity, but they were not done with him. They slaughtered him with knives in front of the other prisoners.” (Translated speech of Shaikh Moaz Khatib, President of The National Coalition Of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, delivered during the Arab League Summit in Doha Qatar on March 26, 2013-03-24.)
· They had started out as 20 people in that room, but some had died. They had not been fed for the entire duration of their detention. In the room where I was held, an injured man on the bed next to me was beaten at least once a day. His leg wasn’t treated. I could see the worms and small insects crawling in and out of the wound with my own eyes. In the same hospital, they would use a drill to gouge out eyes. They also used an iron welder to burn the flesh off your body as you are awake. In some cases also, they would use brute force to pull your hair out. At the hospital, they also used the method of hanging you upside down. They kept people hanging like that for days. Sometimes they changed the method of torture according to your “crime”. For photographers and videographers, they broke their arms, their wrists, and individual fingers. They also gore their eyes out.” (Avaaz reveals scale and horror of Assad’s torture chambers)
· “His captors drilled into his brain while he was still living, burned his body with a welding torch, poked out his eyes and mutilated his genitals, according to his brother. They tried to strangle him with a rope so hard his fingers that were trying to stop the choking were almost severed.” ( Physician tells of brother’s torture in Syria.)
· A compilation of torture techniques.
· One released detainee said that he shared a cell with a young man who had been forced to have a glass bottle with a broken top inserted into his anus. One said that his cellmate had been raped with a metal skewer. Others spoke of a detainee with whom they had shared a cell who, while hanging in the shabeh position, had a cord attached to a large bag of water tied around his penis. (‘I wanted to die: Syria’s torture survivors speak out.)
· “One of them, Jihad Saleh, had his hands bound to his feet behind his back and was left lying on his stomach without food. He starved to death in the corridor outside my cell.” (Military airport transformed into torture cells in Syria: activists.
· One 15-year-old told the charity he had cigarettes put out on him when he was imprisoned in what used to be his school.
Another described being given electric shocks and sharing a cell with decomposing bodies, while a third teenager, Wael, said he had seen a six-year-old die after being tortured and starved.
The 16 year-old told the report’s authors: “I watched him die. He only survived for three days and then he simply died.”
“He was terrified all the time. They treated his body as though he was a dog.” (BBC News – Syria child trauma ‘appalling’ – Save the Children)
- ”We were 70 to 75 people in a group cell that was 3 by 3 meters. We slept with our knees to our chests. Some people had broken hands, legs, their heads were swollen. There were 15- and 16-year-old kids in the cell with us, six or seven of them with their fingernails pulled, their faces beaten. They treat the kids even worse than the adults. There is torture, but there is also rape for the boys. We would see them when the guards brought them back to the cell, it’s indescribable, you can’t talk about it. One boy came into the cell bleeding from behind. He couldn’t walk.” (Syria: Stop Torture of Children | Human Rights Watch)
· In his first media interview since he fled his position as head of the intensive care unit in an Aleppo military hospital, the doctor gave a chilling eyewitness account of secret wards where he said patients were tortured or sent to their death.
“Important arrested patients, those that had more information to reveal, had to be healed. Those that were useless to them were sent to a secret ward that we nicknamed “the dark room” where they were tortured, eliminated or left to die.”
The doctor, who for security reasons can only be identified as Ahmed, worked in military hospitals in Aleppo, Deraa and the suburbs of Damascus each of which had these wards.
The patients were kept in “dire” conditions with their hands and feet handcuffed to the beds and their eyes blindfolded in windowless wards, often in a basement.
Deprived of antibiotics and painkillers, and often left to lie in their own faeces, many of the patients sported gaping infected wounds.” (Syrian prisoners left to die in military hospital ‘dark rooms’)
· “The discovery of the charred and mutilated bodies of three young medical workers a week after their arrest in Aleppo city is yet further evidence of the Syrian government forces’ appalling disregard for the sanctity of the role of medical workers, Amnesty International said.
All three men were students at Aleppo University – Basel Aslan and Mus’ab Barad were fourth-year medical students and Hazem Batikh was a second-year English literature student and a first-aid medic.
They were part of a team of doctors, nurses and first-aiders who have been providing life-saving medical treatment in makeshift “field hospitals” set up to treat demonstrators shot by security forces and who could not therefore go to state-run hospitals for fear of being arrested, tortured or even killed.
They had been detained by Air Force Intelligence since their arrest in the city on 17 June.
…
The three students’ burned bodies were found in the early hours of 24 June in a burned-out car in the Neirab area of Aleppo’s north-eastern outskirts.
Medical personnel who saw the bodies at the morgue told Amnesty International that Basel Aslan had a gunshot wound to the head and his hands were tied behind his back.
One leg and one arm were broken, several teeth missing and the flesh was missing from his lower legs, leaving the bone exposed. Some of his fingernails had been removed.” (AIUK : Syria: Detained medics tortured and killed amid Aleppo crackdown)
· “The woman was arrested at a checkpoint in Homs late last year.
As part of the torture, she alleges, rats and mice were used by interrogators to violate women. She described an assault on another prisoner which she says she witnessed.
“He inserted a rat in her vagina. She was screaming. Afterwards we saw blood on the floor. He told her: ‘Is this good enough for you?’ They were mocking her. It was obvious she was in agony. We could see her. After that she no longer moved.”” (BBC News – Syria ex-detainees allege ordeals of rape and sex abuse.)
Sunday, May 05, 2013
Again and again the Syrian revolution is condemned as some kind of foreign “conspiracy” that is aimed against the self-described bastion of Arab resistance to Israel. Last night’s Israeli attack against an Assad regime research facility in Damascus has brought out of the wood work all sorts of individuals who, silent in the face of the massacre in the coastal city of Banyas for the past three days, have suddenly found their voices. The similarity in the pictures we saw coming out of Banyas this past few days were truly horrific, and reminiscent of the images we saw from the Sabra and Chatilla massacres during the Lebanese civil war. Yet these self-styled anti-imperialists did not retweet and angrily condemn these murders. They chose silence and wilful ignorance instead.
Today they are trying to portray the Israeli air raids last night as an attack on Syrian sovereignty, as if that is not what Assad has been doing to Syrians for the past two and a half years. Apart from the evident hypocrisy of this position, there are also two fallacies underlying their argument. Firstly that the Syrian regime represents Syria, and that an attack on it is an attack on the country and its people, and the second is that Israel did this in support of the Syrian revolution.
With regards to the second point most Syrians, including those who support the revolution, are missing the fact that Israel hasn’t got the slightest concern about the Syrian revolution or the Syrians who are dying. It is focused first and foremost in its battle with Iran and Hezbullah, and has consistently stated that it will not let the more advanced weaponry in Syria’s arsenal falling into Hezbullah’s arms. When it attacks Assad’s bases and arsenals, it is doing so with a clear strategy.
Syrians supporting the revolution should neither cheer nor lament the involvement of Israel’s attacks on Assad’s arsenal. From a practical point of view it is very much an advantage to the revolution (armed as well as peaceful), as it is far better for the regime’s arsenal and advanced divisions to be obliterated than that they be used against Syrian towns and villages. We have seen the piles of bodies in Banyas and countless Syrian villages and cities, on a week so close to the anniversary of the Houla massacre perpetrated by Assad regime thugs, and these images will forever be engraved in the collective memory of Syrians. Never again must we allow ourselves to be in such a position, that Syrians be slaughtered like sheep in an abattoir.
To cheer for Israel’s attack on Assad, apart from being misguided, makes the mistake of siding with one oppressor against another. How different is it, then, that people would side with Iran simply because it claims to be fighting for the Palestinians? This is a fallacy, and more importantly the answer is not to wag the finger at Israel and claim that once we finish with Assad we will drive over and liberate Jerusalem in a Golgotha of blood. International law, human rights, and morality are with us as they are with the Palestinian people, and it is through this path that we can then achieve true justice for all and make good cause with good people across the world.
True Syrian sovereignty begins with us as people and not as a regime. It is when we realise this simple political fact that we can decide how best to champion the cause of oppressed people the world over. We as Syrians, and the Syrian transitional government should take note, have a unique opportunity to right the wrongs of the past, and to be a shining beacon of human rights and democracy not just to the Middle East but to the world. We can and should create a national self-belief that we are a unique mix of people who will never accept might as right. A Syria committed to human rights and the rule of law will protect itself from Israeli missiles and warplanes far better than expensive, and largely ineffective, Russian S-300 air defence systems. When we become the change that we have fought for so fervently, we will become far better champions for the downtrodden than all the divisions of Hezbullah and Iran put together.
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