Originally written in Arabic, this article was translated by Farah Shoukair.
Syrians are demolishing their country - The first argument states that the “Syrians have the right to demand reform, but it ceased to be a justifiable right the moment they carried weapons and started destroying the country allowing foreign powers to interfere in their own affairs”. In that regard, the blame is solely casted over those who - after months of the brutal killing, savagery torture and random arrest in the face of their peaceful demonstrations – decided to carry weapons first to defend themselves and second to liberate their country from tyranny. With this rhetoric, the genuine strive for freedom from a 43-year-old oppressive rule is reduced to the danger of exposing Syria to foreign involvement and interest. Correspondingly, Syrians should give up their call for freedom and surrender to the Assad killing machine to cut the way for foreign intervention and to put an end to the sad demolition of their cities and villages.
Syrians are
bearded Jihadists - The second argument takes a more simplistic
route by resorting to the easy Jihadist label. “How can democrats who strive
for dignity and human rights support a revolution that is led by Jabhat al-Nusra
and backward Jihadists, even if it is against a criminal regime?” With this accusation,
millions of Syrians are downgraded to the level of Jabhat al-Nusra and
trespassing Jihadists. Images of “normal people” (women-men, old-young) and
their daily routine in their towns are replaced with bearded fighters who take
pride in performing obnoxious acts of killing. This manipulative imposition
makes the death of tens of thousands of people somehow “acceptable” and relieves
the lamenters from the duty of condemning the mass murder of the Syrian people,
reduced to extremists who hold responsibility for this bloodbath. Unsurprisingly, the Syrian Army airstrikes
and the heavy blind bombardments are unnecessary details in this “neutral”
narrative.
Don’t mess
with the devil - Finally, the third argument - used ignorantly
or ill-intentionally - questions the rationale behind revolting against a
regime that is criminal by nature. “The Syrian people are well-acquainted with the
regime’s criminality, and they know that it will not think twice before taking
the whole country down. How irresponsible of them to even think of revolting
against this regime without taking into consideration its violent reaction!”
According to this rhetoric, the Syrians are to blame for their own execution
and pitiful destiny. One can extend this peculiar reasoning to the endless
massacres, and hence the responsibility of the mass killing of children in
al-Bayda or Baniyas is to be borne by their parents who did not stop to consider
the consequences of their own acts. For after
all, what does a “killer” do but kill? And hence, the act of killing should
come as a surprise to no one, and it would have been wiser to avoid instigating
the “criminal’s/killer’s” anger from the first place rather than put the blame
on his “natural” inclination to kill…
Maybe not so
surprisingly, the so-called neutralists have resorted to empty arguments that
does a great job at expressing their deep hatred to the majority of Syrians
either by labeling them as al-Nusra fighters, pretending that they would
have supported their demands if not for the militarization of the revolution,
or by blaming them for overstretching the tolerance of a criminal regime.
Implicitly, what these neutralists are really arguing for is that a revolution
against a criminal regime is not right exactly because of the criminal nature
of this regime!
This renewed
nonsense and continuous fabrication of accommodative excuses to justify the
unwillingness of the proponents of “neutrality” to take a decent position shows
day after day that the Syrian revolution is radical in its attempt to eradicate
a culture of hypocrisy and ignobility and that its enemies are many. At the
same time, this indecent discourse shows that despite all difficulties and
internal and external dysfunctions that might fuel revenge and violence, the
Syrian revolution proved unyielding perseverance in facing the ruling regime
and its widespread arms, among which are obsolete rotten mentalities that never
gave any value to freedom, and never stood up for the dignity of the people
they claim to protect against foreign conspiracies.
Ziad Majed
