Should Israelis be speaking up about Syria?
While Israelis are watching the goings on in Syria with great interest, you don't hear a lot of Israelis speaking out in support of the Assad regime's opponents. Should we be? One Israeli thinks we should. Our northern neighbors are protesting in favor of human rights, against torture and in the name of democracy – yet here all we have is silence. A handful of experts are explaining to us, with an academic yawn, that what we are seeing in Syria is an uprising, and beyond that there seems to be no interest around here.I was with him right up until that last paragraph (okay, there are a few more after it). The issue isn't that Israelis want to - or can be - Switzerland. The issue is that we don't know whether those who are trying to throw out Assad will be more hostile to us or will be willing to reconcile with us. I am followed on Twitter by at least one prominent Syrian who is living in exile and who is opposed to the Assad regime. Unfortunately, I don't hear anything coming out of Syria that indicates that the protesters are leading toward the type of democracy he advocates. Instead, what I hear is to throw out the Alawite and replace him with a Sunni. That's not the sort of thing I'm going to go spending my political or monetary capital on any more than I would spend it on throwing out Gadhafi to put al-Qaeda in power in Libya (which is essentially what the Americans and Europeans are now doing).
There is nobody that would write a song for our Syrian brothers and post it on YouTube, as was the case with Libya, and there is nobody that would engage in debates about the possibility of better days to come without Assad and the Baath Party.
Moreover, there is not even a genuine debate or question marks over the readiness of certain groups in Israel to hand over Mount Hermon to an eye doctor in a precarious position in Damascus.
We can explain the above by referring to a rather unclear tendency adopted around here in recent years: Presenting a neutral façade any time a dramatic event takes place in the region. As though if we conduct ourselves like Switzerland in the United Nations, people will think we are indeed Swiss.
When there's a secular democratic Syria that wants to live in peace with us, I'm all ears, and will be happy to much on Kosher humus and falafel in Damascus. In the meantime, I have more important battles to fight - like keeping the Golan out of Assad's hands.
Labels: Alawite, Sunni, Syrian regime change
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:59 AM
1 Comments:
Yup... the Alawites are bad but the Sunni Islamists who would replace them are far worse.
Assad is a rational man and one can only imagine what a fanatical Sunni leader would do on Israel's northern front.
Israelis have learned from Egypt that any change in an Arab country is usually for the worse. A change in who holds power in Damascus won't change Syrian Arabs' underlying hostility to the Jewish State in the slightest.
To understand why, think the Muslim Brotherhood X 2 and if the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan is ever overthrown there will be three Muslim Brotherhood regimes ruling Arab countries. Four if Hamas in Gaza is still around.
In short, Arab uprisings won't lead the Arabs to make peace with Israel in the foreseeable future.
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