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Blog PostsNote to Robert Fisk RE Syria
By Joe Emersberger at Aug 05, 2012 |
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RE: http://www.zcommunications.org/syrian-war-of-lies-and-hypocrisy-by-robert-fisk
Mr. Fisk:
You wrote of various types of hypocrisy being exposed by the conflict in Syria. At one point you singled out westerners who protest their government's support for Israel's crimes against Palestinians:
"Then, of course, there's us, our dear liberal selves who are so quick to fill the streets of London in protest at the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians. Rightly so, of course. When our political leaders are happy to condemn Arabs for their savagery but too timid to utter a word of the mildest criticism when the Israeli army commits crimes against humanity – or watches its allies do it in Lebanon – ordinary people have to remind the world that they are not as timid as the politicians. But when the scorecard of death in Syria reaches 15,000 or 19,000 – perhaps 14 times as many fatalities as in Israel's savage 2008-2009 onslaught on Gaza – scarcely a single protester, save for Syrian expatriates abroad, walks the streets to condemn these crimes against humanity. Israel's crimes have not been on this scale since 1948. Rightly or wrongly, the message that goes out is simple: we demand justice and the right to life for Arabs if they are butchered by the West and its Israeli allies; but not when they are being butchered by their fellow Arabs."
This is a horribly misguided and muddled paragraph for several reasons
1) Israel lost 6 soldiers during operation "Cast Lead". Months ago, Syrian opposition sources said that 2000 Syrian soldiers had been killed by the rebels. The Syrian rebels are inflicting losses, including defections, on Assad's forces that the Palestinians could never dream of inflicting on Israel's military. It is now routinely speculated that Assad will be militarily driven from power. When it has it ever been speculated that the Palestinians were on the verge of militarily driving Israel out of the Occupied Territories? You say there are "14 times more fatalities as in Israel's savage 2008-2009 onslaught" but ignore that there is over 300 times more combat going on In Syria if you compare Assad's military losses to Israel's.
2) Israel kills thousands of Palestinians each year through deliberate economic strangulation. This is easily confirmed by checking UNICEF's mortality statistics for the Occupied Territories. This, again, is related to the almost total one sidedness of military conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
3) Unlike Israel, Assad does not depend on Western support. The only useful thing westerners can do for Syrians is prevent their own governments from adding fuel to the fire,as they did in Libya, by throwing military support behind the rebels.
4) Related to points 1 and 2, Israel could easily end its conflict with the Palestinians. Israel simply needs to quit blocking the two state solution it and its western sponsors, have been blocking for decades.
You may rationally take westerners to task for not protesting against their governments adding fuel to the fire in Syria by arming the rebels. Bear in mind that it took decades for significant movements to develop against Israel's crimes. Westerner have even been slow to protest rampant and destructive inequality at home - policies that attack millions of westerners directly.
Joe Emersberger
Please Note: This article contained two erroneous references to "nuclear weapons" in Iran. There errors were almost certainly not Fisk's fault because one was in the headline and the other in a quote. In response to feedback from many people, these errors were corrected. It speaks volumes that sub-editor would have made these errors in the first place. Similarly when a sub editor at the Independent, years ago, labelled a photo of Hugo Chavez with a caption calling him a "dictator". Editors are, by necessity, diligent readers of their newspapers. They are therefore largely informed - or misinformed - by their newspapers' content.
ALSO NOTE: Ed Herman pointed out to me a point I missed "Fisk also errs in saying Israel has not done anything comparable since 1948. He forgets the 1982 invsion of Lebanon that took an estimated 20,000 lives."
..
You can try reaching Fisk (as other have in the past) through the following email addresses
foreigneditor@independent.co.uk
However, I don't recall him ever responding to a reader.
non-sequitur
By McGehee, Michael at Aug 07, 2012 20:55 PM
In Israel we are seeing the slow, gradual process of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
In Syria we are seeing the military quickly put down a foreign backed and directed attempt at an armed coup.
If the Palestinians had the political, military and economic support to fight back they very likely would.
If the U.S. and its regional satelites weren't arming and backing the Syrian terrorists, which included AQ fighters from Iraq, there would probably not be an armed conflict, and certainly not on the level of what we are seeing.
On that note, CFR just published this article by Ed Husain:
Al-Qaeda's Specter in Syria
http://www.cfr.org/syria/al-qaedas-specter-syria/p28782
"The Syrian rebels would be immeasurably weaker today without al-Qaeda in their ranks. By and large, Free Syrian Army (FSA) battalions are tired, divided, chaotic, and ineffective. Feeling abandoned by the West, rebel forces are increasingly demoralized as they square off with the Assad regime's superior weaponry and professional army. Al-Qaeda fighters, however, may help improve morale. The influx of jihadis brings discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results. In short, the FSA needs al-Qaeda now."
The same is true for Western and GCC support. Without it the rebels "would be immeasurably weaker." What does that say about their local support that they rely on Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the US to even exist? Likewise, the Syrian regime is still very much in place, and the military is still very loyal. I agree with Noam in that a preferable solution would be for Russia not to send arms AND likewise for the West. But at the same time it's worth pointing to the Cuban Revolution for a thought: the Batista regime was heavily armed too, but it's local of a popular base allowed a small band of poorly armed rebels to quickly overthrow them. Point being that even with Russian weapons there is considerable support for Assad beyond the Alawite community, or else he would have been ousted a long time ago.
This is very similar to what happened in Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.
The West and its local forces do not have a popular social base in which to affect changes in these places, and instead must rely on force. The fact is that Ho Chi Minh, Slobodan Milosevic, Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Moammar Gaddafi, and Bashar al-Assad, while not perfect angels by any means, preferable to the agenda the West has. After 3-5 million dead in Southeast Asia, tens of thousands of dead in Yugoslavia, more than a million dead in Iraq, tens of thousands in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the thousands killed and ethnically cleansed in Libya, and the thousands killed in Syria are the product of foreign intervention, not local suppression. It is reasonable to beleive the vast majority of these people would still be alive were it not for our intervention.
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