Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Syria and the Arab Left's Moral Dissonance

Suddenly, the voice of the Arab Left is alive again, enthusiastically supporting a popular uprising against a Middle East strongman.  They  are outraged, as they should be, by the clubbing, hosing and teargassing -it is toxic, you know- of peaceful demonstrators by a vindictive and brutal police force. They are outraged that the country's prime minister calls these peaceful demonstrators extremists, terrorists, foreign agitators and vows never to give in. To those who support the masses, struggle against injustice, the abuse of human rights and for freedom of expression, this was a no brainer.  It is as clear as night and day, there are no hidden phantasmagorical conspiracies at play here. There is no moral equipoise in what is happening in Turkey. Power to the people!

Too bad, the Syrian people -Arab brethren- did not fare as well on the left's moral compass, even though they had a much more compelling story to tell, a story that dates back over forty years.

Eight hundred days ago, Syrian teenagers in Daraa, exercising their freedom of expression, faced not teargas, clubs or water canons but a torturers pliers that pulled their nails out and beat them senseless.  Peaceful demonstrations that followed this outrage were met with bullets and those who sought medical help were dragged out of hospitals and abused.  Physicians who dared exercise their professional duties and help the injured were jailed or killed.  Peaceful activists were jailed by the thousands, many enduring humiliation, torture and death, a practice that continues to this day. Areas of the country that dared resist violence with violence were treated brutally and indiscriminately.  Entire villages, small towns and entire city neighborhoods were systematically flattened. The country is in ruins; tens of thousands have lost their lives and hundreds of thousands have been injured and a quarter of the population is displaced.

Eight hundred days on, many on the Left remain unmoved by the plight of the Syrian people.  The Syrian revolution disturbed their fixed East-West, Arab-Israeli conflict narrative.  To cope with that dissonance, they either chose to completely ignore it or explained it away with improbable conspiracy theories. They chose not only to ignore the current injustices perpetrated on the Syrian people but also a  forty year history of well documented, indisputable brutal oppression and abuse by the same regime.   Either way, they shirked their moral responsibilities and empowered a brutal tyrannical regime. There is little question in mind that the stance of many in the Arab Left on Syria is partially responsible for the regimes prolonged survival and consequently the death of many Syrians.