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| Aftermath of Sunday's air raid in Damascus |
"Who are you with: Israel or Assad?"
I asked myself the same question while hearing
yesterday’s depressing evening news.
I confess robotically answering in my mind: Israel.
One person agreeing with me today is Saudi Arabia’s
most eminent journalist, Abdurrahman al-Rashed, who heads Alarabiya TV news
channel.
In fact, the title for my post is a translation of his
daily column’s headline in the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat.
Israel or Assad?
I am sure the question popped up in many people’s
minds after hearing news of yesterday’s Israeli airstrikes in Syria.
The Israeli warplanes struck several critical
military facilities near Damascus and killed dozens of elite troops stationed
near the presidential palace, a high-ranking Syrian military official told the New
York Times today, Monday.
A doctor at the Syrian
military’s Tishreen Hospital said there were at least 100 dead soldiers and
many dozens more wounded, the Times reported.
A
Western intelligence source told Reuters
Sunday’s attack, like the one 48 hours earlier, was directed against stores of
Fateh-110 missiles in transit from Iran to Hezbollah.
People
were woken in the Syrian capital by explosions that shook the ground like an
earthquake and sent pillars of flames high into the night sky.
Syrian
state television said bombing at a military research facility at Jamraya and
two other sites caused "many civilian casualties and widespread
damage," but it gave no details.
So
here is Rashed’s
cutting rejoinder this morning as appears in Arabic in Asharq Alawsat:
Who are you with, Israel or Assad?
You don’t need to support either.
When Israel attacks the Syrian regime, she is
defending her security and interests.
Ditto for us when we rejoice at Israel attacking
Assad forces and arsenals, because that would hasten the regime’s fall and
deprive it of weapons to kill extra thousands of Syrians.
Only Iran loyalists are protesting and condemning the
Israeli air raids because they fear for Tehran’s allies, namely Hezbollah and
Assad.
It is not true that their protests are motivated by
their hostility to Israel.
Two years of massacres, which left tens of thousands
of unarmed Syrians dead, exposed the biggest lie in the history of this
(pan-Arab) nation – the ploy of “resistance and objection” that were never
meant to challenge Israel or defend Palestine.
Few people were aware of this fact and all the rest
were simply misled.
Hezbollah and its operations against Israel had
nothing to do with either protecting Lebanon or defending Palestine.
Hezbollah is nothing other than an Iranian battalion
planted for more than 30 years to serve the objectives of the ayatollahs’
regime in Tehran.
The Iranians, Assad the father and Assad the son sought
to hijack the Palestine cause to rule Syria, occupy Lebanon and serve Iranian
interests. Pitching in were such groups as Abu Nidal’s, Ahmad Jibril’s PFLP-General
Command and other “boutiques” trading in so-called struggle.
They shared a common cause: to assassinate Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) chieftains when the late President Yasser Arafat
led it.
By emulating Iran and condemning the Israeli
airstrikes against Assad forces, the administration of Egyptian President
Mohamed Morsi was – for all intents and purposes – backing Assad without
denouncing Israel.
The Morsi government could have been excused for standing
by Iran, which is on Assad’s side, if it were an active promoter of the Free
Syrian Army.
But the Morsi administration’s avowed position so far
is pro Iran and Russia, both blatant Assad supporters.
The Morsi government went further. It joined Moscow
and Tehran in calling for a political solution on the sole premise of national
reconciliation between the Assad regime and the opposition.
Other than being shameful, the proposal is nonviable,
coming after two years of mass killings and destruction by Assad forces and
shabiha.
Notwithstanding the Egypt-Iran censure, what is
certain is that the Syrian people were happy to see the strikes against Assad’s
bunkers, forces and weapons, irrespective of Israel’s motives and targets.
The Syrians would have felt even happier had Turkey
retaliated in kind to the violation of its territory and airspace by Assad
forces, instead of sufficing with a barrage of wordy denunciations.
Syrians have had their fill of oratory declarations,
which provoke them more than give them hope.
They are unmindful of regional political
considerations and of whether Israelis, Westerners or Arabs launched the
airstrikes on Assad.
More important for them is the demolition of the
killing machine being flagrantly fed by the Russians, Iranians and Hezbollah.
