March 1, 2012

Today, in the case of Assad, we have seen the Syrian forces brutally killing their own people on our television screens over the past year — not two months — whilst the death toll stands at more than 8,000 and the tyrants of Damascus’ troops have destroyed mosques, tortured and assassinated children, as well as women and the elderly, simply in order to allow Assad to cling to power.  Despite all this, we find some countries, politicians, media organizations and figures, who are procrastinating; it is as if we — as Arabs — are saying that if the killer is also an Arab, then this is something that we can accept, however, if he is an Israeli, then we must all move as one to put an end to this!

If, in fact, some change is emerging in the Obama administration’s attitude towards possible Israeli action against Iran, it almost certainly stems from an assessment about the effectiveness of the political-economic-clandestine approach to the Iranian problem.

Unable to defect from government army ranks with much more than small weapons, members of the rebel force fighting to depose Bashar Al Assad as president are using donations from Syrians abroad to buy guns and ammunition from neighbouring countries such as Lebanon and Turkey.

Hamas’ abandonment of its long-time Alawite backers further deepens the Middle East fault line between the Sunni and Shiite worlds. Hamas has now aligned itself with its Sunni brethren already united against the Assad regime. Syria’s Middle East backers are now down to Shiite Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and Iran.