NOVANEWS
The propaganda for and against the Syrian regime intensifies at a feverish pitch. Syrian regime TV is an insult to anyone’s intelligence. You watch the news and think that Syrian regime is fighting Israel, and not its own civilian population. They list casualties among the “regime/order preserving forces”, but not the civilians unless they talk about “the criminal gang” that roams the country and shoots at people and Syrian regime forces alike. AlJazeera continues its propaganda that ignores news: it is now the YouTube channel. It merely reproduces YouTube clips from the internet.
I also notice that it keeps increasing the estimate of the Hamah massacres week after week: Amnesty International and Syrian Muslim Brothers used to rely on the estimate of 10,000, although it could be more. Yesterday, Aljazeera increased the estimate to 38,000 (in the previous version of this article, it talked about an “official estimate” of more than 10,000. That is a lie because the lousy Syrian regime never ever gave any estimate of the massacre and its never ever talks about the massacre. See my problem with Aljazeera: it is not about politics, it is about unreliability, unprofessionalism, and fabrications, exaggerations, and lies. It has made it easy for supporters of the Syrian regime to discredit it.
New TV, on the other hand, clearly has resolved to support the Syrian bloody campaign of yesterday. Instead of covering the stories of the victims of the regime, it showed (YouTube again) images of unknown people tossing unidentified dead bodies in the water and said they were protesters tossing bodies of soldiers of the Syrian army. Hariri media initially ignored the protests of Syria (in the first few weeks, only As-Safir and Al-Akhbar covered extensively the protests in Syria): they were clearly waiting for orders from Saudi Arabia. Once the orders from Riyadh came, they went all out against the regime like Saudi media. Yesterday, mini-Hariri spoke about the right of the Syrian people to “decide on its own choices freely and in the framework of its human rights”. Mini-Hariri was not asked if he supported such rights in Saudi Arabia.
Asad regime and resistance to Israel: dilemmas of some Arab progressives
Some Arab progressives yesterday were displeased with negative comments I wrote against Asad regime and against the “refusalness” (mumana`ah) stance of the lousy Syrian regime. Their point is that Asad regime has supported Hizbullah’s resistance to Israel. My answer: I don’t trust the Syrian regime: even when they, on rare occasions, take a verbal stand against Israel. This is a regime that is motivated first and foremost–since Hafidh days–but the obsession with its own security and survival. It killed resistance fighters against Israel when it suited its interests: i am talking about its murderous military intervention in 1976 when it crushed a nascent Lebanese-Palestinian alliance that was destined to win against Israel’s death squads in Lebanon. That victory would have been detrimental against Israeli interests and the Syrian regime collaborated with Israel in the war on Tal Az-Za`tar camp in the same year.
The Syrian regime supported Hizbullah’s fight against Israel for its own reasons, and it also fought Hizbullah into the 1980s. The Asad regime’s calculations were never about liberating Palestine or about empowering resistance against Israel. The Asad regime truly supported one PLO organization: As-Sa`iqah, which contributed nothing in the struggle against Israel, unless you count thuggery, blackmail, looting, and murders as struggle. Asad was Minister of Defense when George Habash was put in jail in 1968, because the regime did not want any fight against Israel.
In the 1990s, PLO leaders in Damascus were summoned by `Abdul-Halim Khaddam (on orders of Hafidh Al-Asad) to tell them that they are barred from plotting any attacks on Israel, and were sometimes prevented from making political statements against Israel (according to a senior member of the delegation who told me about it). So the progressive has a clear task: to support the overthrow of the regime, while opposing the reactionary Muslim Brothers and their liberal allies who are capable of replacing one lousy repressive regime with another. Secondly, progressive owe it to the Syrian people to support their legitimate struggle against dictatorship.
And Syrian jails are full of leftists and communists who were the most daring in their struggle against the regime. I am thinking about the brutal treatment of the leaders and members of Communist Action Party (which succeeded in recruiting among `Alawites). Thirdly, the entire record of the regime vis-a-vis Israel is shameful: it was a record of defeats. And a senior Minister in the government of Hafidh Al-Asad in 1973 shared with me deep suspicions about the defeatist role played by Hafidh at the time. Fourthly, Arab progressive have no choice but to support the overthrow of every single Arab regime (and add Iran to the mix, and of course the Zionist entity which should be abolished and replaced by a liberated Palestine where people can live in freedom and equality without regard to religion).
No Arab regime is worth the support of any progressive. Sixthly, Arab progressive should have more faith in the Syrian people: a free Syria can be more giving in terms of struggle against Israel than the present-day regime especially if we fight simultaneously against the Asad regime and the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies. Of course, we should fight against the Asad regime on our own terms and not according to the Saudi-Qatari-Israeli design which want us to believe that real opposition to the Asad regime should translate into support for their chosen clients. But since when we progressives take marching orders from oil dynasties or from Zionist hoodlums?
