Lessons on hypocrisy from Syria

By DAVID M. WEINBERG 11/10/2013

http://tinyurl.com/pzzbx9j 

All the human rights moralizers are ignoring the frightening plight of Palestinians and Christians in the Syrian civil war. There is, alas, no anti-Israel angle to the story.

The fighting in Syria once again proves the sad old adage that human rights organizations and their advocates in the mainstream Western media are essentially anti-Israel. There is no other way to explain the fact that all these high-and-mighty moralizers are ignoring the frightening plight of Palestinians and Christians in the Syrian civil war.

You see, there is no anti-Israel angle to the story of Palestinian or Christian suffering in Syria.

That suffering can’t really be blamed on the Jews. So nobody cares.

a) UNWRA  reports 250,000 Palestinians have been displaced in Syria since the start of the conflict

b) In May, for example, some 6,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in Ein al-Tal, a refugee camp near Aleppo in northern Syria.

The response from the world: Nothing. - SILENCE

c) more than 55,000 Palestinians have been forced to flee Syria to Lebanon and Jordan

d) In Lebanon, the Palestinian refugees join more than 500,000 other Palestinians who live in refugee camps.

International uproar  - ZERO .

IN ISRAEL If six (never mind 60, 600, or 6,000) squatting Palestinian families were forced to move two kilometers out of an IDF firing zone in the southern Hebron hills. There would be UN investigations, international tribunals, condemnations from Western capitals, and much handwringing and moralizing by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and more.

Actually, this has happened exactly. A grand total of 10 Palestinian families were evicted by an IDF evacuation order. AND THE WORLD WENT BERSERK.

e) At least 2,000 Palestinians have been killed in Syria, by both the rebels and the Syrian army.

BUT OF COURSE, YOU WOULDN’T KNOW ABOUT THIS FROM THE WESTERN PRESS.

IN ISRAEL Now imagine if IDF troops killed 150 terrorists, and inadvertently also killed a few civilians behind which the terrorists were hiding, during a raid meant to destroy enemy missile launchers. There would be UN investigations, international tribunals, condemnations from Western capitals, and much handwringing and moralizing by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and more.

Actually, this has happened exactly.

The two Palestinian governments – Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank – have said or done nothing to draw global attention to the plight of their brethren in Syria. No emergency UN Security Council session to discuss the new Palestinian tragedy. They are more worried about construction of a few homes in Israeli settlements in the West Bank than the lives of thousands of Palestinians in Syria.

f) Syria’s Christians, more than 600,000 of whom have been displaced or fled Syria since the rebellion began. It seems that their fate will be similar to that of the Christians in Iraq, half of whom emigrated, fled or were killed.

In March 2012, Islamist militants went door to door in neighborhoods of Homs, expelling local Christians. Of the more than 80,000 Christians who lived in Homs prior to the uprising, approximately 400 remain today. In May 2012, Christian residents of Qusayr received an ominous warning: Either join the opposition against Bashar Assad or leave.

Soon after, thousands of Christians fled the town.

The Vatican News Agency Fides and Catholic Online magazine reported this week that 45 Christians were recently massacred and thrown into mass graves by Islamists in Sadad, a town of 15,000 mostly Syriac Orthodox Christians located 160 km north of Damascus.

The 4,000-year old Assyrian town’s 14 churches and monastery were defiled and looted. According to Archbishop Selwanos Boutros Alnemeh, Syriac Orthodox Metropolitan of Homs and Hama, about 2,500 families have fled from Sadad. “

Where is the Christian conscience? Where is human consciousness? Where are my brothers?” But of course, you wouldn’t know about this from the mainstream Western press or from Western leaders.

IN ISRAEL Now imagine that a few Jewish hooligans were to vandalize a monastery or two in Israel.
There would be howls of protest worldwide.

The attack would be covered extensively in just about every newspaper in the world, with a lot of buzz about the supposed brutalization of Israeli society and a radicalization of religious Jewry. There would be UN investigations, condemnations from Western capitals, and much handwringing and moralizing by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and more.

Actually, this has happened exactly.

When persecution against Palestinians and Christians doesn’t come from the Jews, nobody cares. And this tells me that international howls of protest against Israel related don’t stem from real concern for Palestinian or Christian “victims” of Israel’s heavy hand.