Fiamma Nirenstein Syria

FIAMMA NIRENSTEIN: SYRIA IS A COMPLE DIFFERENT KETTLE OF FISH…….

Eh…..listen up to Fiamma, the woman knows what she’s talking about.

NOTE: The Tundra Tabloids received this translation of Nirenstein’s article from Eliyahu, only the original in Italian has a link.

The West should not be fooled by Syria

by Fiamma Nirenstein

Today, as the Syrian unrest continues, we are forced to acknowledge our weakness and to measure the lies of Realpolitik. Indeed it’s worth quoting President George Bush: “… the horrors of dictatorships remind us that at the end of the day, no dialogue is possible with bullies.” After Rafiq Hariri’s assassination in 2005, the Bush administration broke up all ties with Syria; following that decision, the State Department launched a wide finance campaign aimed at helping secular Syrian dissidents and their projects, including an anti-Assad satellite TV. But later on Bashar Assad started his big game, playing simultaneously ‘at once the arsonist and the fireman’, just as Fouad Ajami writes.

But it’s time to be honest and to admit that we – the West, the US who sent back its ambassador to Syria, the EU that called Assad to start peaceful talks with Israel, the UN that might let him have a seat in the Human Rights Council – it’s time to tell ourselves honestly that we wanted to see only ‘Assad the fireman’. After so many killings, America now starts talking of personal sanctions on the Assad family (not a big deal). Meantime the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, told publicly something really worth mentioning: the United States can prove that among Syrian security forces, the same that are perpetrating a mass killing of civilians, there are many Iranian emissaries.
The governments of Italy, France, United Kingdom, Germany and Spain have summoned the Syrian ambassadors and the EU is expected to gather an high ranking meeting in the following days to discuss potential sanctions against Assad’s regime. Meanwhile, another of the very few initiatives of the EU nations, i.e. a resolution in the Security Council, has been defeated by Russian, Chinese and Lebanese opposition.
But one the most interesting of all the useless reactions to the Syria slaughter is the call by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to the Human Rights Council to take a position. Yet Syria is still a candidate for the vacant Libyan seat in the HRC. Ban Ki Moon, requested to express his opinion on this contradiction, answered that this is not his business. Since Syria is one the four Asian countries entitled to one seat in this UN body, without a veto on the nomination, Syria could get its aim, while Syrians are slaughtered in the streets.
The UN should do whatever is necessary to save Syrians, reaffirming ‘the responsibility to protect’, the same principle that has led the UN Security Council to approve the 1973 resolution, and allowed Nato to wage war against Muammar Gheddafi. But Robert Gates, while still US Secretary of Defense, in a joint statement with his British counterpart, Liam Fox, has stated that the situation in Syria is far different from that of Libya. And even though the international community has responded to Gheddafi’s brutality with military means, it certainly won’t do the same in confronting Assad.
This is the kind of weakness revealed by this UN indifference for democracy and human rights; the same unfortunate deviation we witnessed on massacres like Darfur and Tibet. And this tells the truth about the real reasons inspiring most of the approved Security Council resolutions: political interests. Gheddafi is a bizarre dictator, his ferocity is unquestionable but his strategic value is poor, it is not critical for our and Middle East future. And after all, when he started to shoot his own people, we certainly had to stop him.
Syria is a completely different story. This country is the core of Iranian power in the Middle East, a hub for deadly terrorist groups. Syria is the mother of Hezbollah, the father of Hamas. It borders with Israel and dreams to destroy it. It borders with Iraq and has sent there its anti-American terrorists. As a matter of fact, Syria still occupies Lebanon even though Assad withdrew his troops few years ago, and it shares a very long border and a complicated relations with Turkey, that refuses to condemn the Syrian regime.
Bashar Assad knows that the Sunni majority of his country – where the Alawites are a tiny Shiite minority –  keeps a vivid memory of 1982 Hama massacre, where 20,000 Muslim Brothers were wiped out by Bashar’s father, Hafez. The Syrian president knows that unless he would succeed in chocking the protests at the very beginning, only tanks could crush a large opposition waiting for revenge. Now we can expect from Assad an awful enormous carnage that we have the duty to stop. But the world concern about a possible collapse of Syria, the best friend of Iran, is much greater than the worry about the future of Libya. For that reason we wait and see, while Syrians keep being killed.
Because of our fear of Iran, looking at Bashar Assad in recent years, we have rather chosen to see a beanpole guy wearing well-tailored British suits, a middle class faced boy with a charming wife, instead of the professional butcher who has already decreed the killings of more of 500 among his citizens, awfully using for this aim his bother Maher who commands the Presidential Guard.
Many self made videos show us ferocious aggressions even against women and children. Assad has employed tanks and warplanes against his own towns. This is what we witness, but we don’t want to face it. In the meanwhile the death toll rises.
It’s time to define with moral clarity how worth is the Western religion of human rights. But we must do it now, before the next dictator shoots his people. We gave credit to a dictator, Assad, who didn’t deserve such a chance as no dictator have ever deserved. Instead he used the chance we gave him to arm terrorist groups, to build up chemical weapons and a powerful army. And today, to crash his own people. 


Hon. Fiamma Nirenstein
Vice-president of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
Chair of the Committee for the Inquiry into Antisemitism
Italian Chamber of Deputies
www.fiammanirenstein.com

3 Responses

  1. Syria is indeed a supporter of Hezbollah, which is anti-Israeli, but so is the rest of the ME. What the former Assad did was to stop the Muslim Brotherhood dead in its tracks. If the MB had taken over Syria, the situation would have been far worse. So yet again we are confronted with the devil we know, who is definitely better then the devil in the wings. Since then, the MB has gone underground since it was violently suppressed – yes violently, as that is the only language that violent Jihadis understand.

    One good aspect of Syria is that it has allowed its non-Muslim minorities to live and flourish in peace, without fear of persecution. Christians are free to live and practice their faith, something that would vanish in Syria if the MB gained power. Syria is also the country where large numbers of Iraqi Christians have found refuge after our intervention to make Iraq a “tolerant” state. In fact, the coalition went out of its way NOT to protect Christians in Iraq.

    It is worth remembering that all interventions in Muslim countries, leading to a kind of democracy and elections elections, have lead to hard-line Sunni Salafist regimes, who have murdered their non-Muslim minorities, burned churches and expelled the rest. The same is happening, quite predictably, in Egypt, where Christians are facing far greater persecution then in the days of Mubarak. Egypt’s regime is also considering revoking the peace treaty with Israel.

    In Syria, Sunni fanatics + the MB is now seizing the moment to take power via demonstrations that will will inevitably lead to violence. If these Sunni fanatics are not stopped, via violence if necessary, then I fear for Syria’s minorities, and the Iraqi Christians will then have to flee once more – where I don’t know, as the West does not accept persecuted Christians. We will also see a regime that is far more anti-Israeli then the one of Assad.

  2. Syria: Muslim Brotherhood behind new “Day of Rage”

    “Muslim Brotherhood Behind Syria‘s New ’Day of Rage,’” by Jonathon M. Seidl for AP, April 29 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):

    https://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/04/syria-muslim-brotherhood-behind-new-day-of-rage.html

    If the MB takes power in Syria because a coterie of Western leaders think that all protests by any movement is legitimate and should not be suppressed, by force if necessary, then they do not understand the nature of Islam.

    Syria’s regime may not be to the liking of our ignorant political elite, but it is far better then anything on offer.

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