I have no idea why, but the Obama administration has been very warm toward the Syrian regime, calling the dictator/son of a dictator Bashar al-Assad a “reformer”. This leads to the obvious question, what does that make Pol Pot? While Syrian police have been killing protesters en masse, the US has been silent. In fact, the US has pledged not to intervene. Funny how quick they were to cut Mubarak loose. You know, an actual ally.
As the last few days have made clear, Assad is no reformer. Like Qadaffi, he is completely willing to murder his own people. Anything less than full support from the US for protesters is morally disgraceful, not to mention strategically incoherent. If the US is going to call for the removal of Mubarak but not Assad, it might as well send an official letter to its allies letting them know that it will not support them. Hyperbole, yes, but I’m very frustrated with a president who opposes Jewish presence in Jerusalem but does nothing to stop Palestinian violence, who cuts loose America’s strongest ally in the Arab world under the guise of human rights but does nothing while Assad kills his own people, who frames it as a victory when he cuts medicare. I say this as an East Coast liberal.
Speaking as a Zionist, I have no great love for Syria. Antisemitism runs rampant there, they funnel weapons to Hezbollah, they troll the comments at Haaretz. But when I see footage like this, I have to sympathize with the Syrian people in their struggle for democracy, without western support, against a ruthless police state. Death counts for today alone are as high as 88
Imagine a middle east which wasn’t Jews versus Arabs, Kurds versus Turks, Greek Cypriots versus Turks, Armenians versus Turks, where ethnic conflicts and colonial wounds didn’t define geopolitics. That, my friend, would be good for the Jews.
