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http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-s-favorite-arab-dictator-of-all-is-assad-1.352468
Israel's favorite Arab dictator of all is Assad
Both Assad senior and Assad junior advocated resistance against Israel.
This slogan was hollow, serving the regime merely as an insurance policy
against any demand for freedom and democracy.
By Salman Masalha Mar.29, 2011 | 2:30 AM | 26
As strange as it sounds, everyone in Israel loves Arab dictators. When I
say everyone I mean both Jews and Arabs. The favorite dictator of all is
president Assad. As Assad junior inherited the oppressive regime in
Syria, so did both Jews and Arabs transfer their affection for the
dictator from Damascus from Assad senior to his son.
Following the intifada in the Arab states, Bashar al-Assad maintained in
an interview to the Wall Street Journal that the situation in Syria is
different, adding that Syria is not like Egypt. He also emphasized that
Syria was not susceptible to sliding into a similar situation, because
it was in the "resistance" front and belongs to the anti-American,
anti-Israeli axis.
Well, Assad is right. The situation in Syria is indeed different. The
Syrian regime is more like Saddam's defunct regime. The Ba'ath Party
that ruled Iraq and the one still ruling Syria both held aloft flags of
pan-Arab national ideology. But slogans are one thing and reality is
another. All the ideological sweet talk was only talk. For the Ba'ath
Party, both in Iraq and in Syria, constituted a political platform to
perpetuate tribal, ethnic oppression.
Indeed, the situation in Egypt is completely different. If we put aside
the Coptic minority, then Egyptian society is homogenous religiously and
not tribal at all. The demoted Egyptian president, Mubarak, never had a
tribal-ethnic crutch to lean on. The Egyptian army is also different and
not at all like the Syrian or Iraqi armies.
For example, when the United States invaded Iraq, the Iraqi army
splintered into its tribal and ethnic fragments. The soldiers took off
their uniforms and each joined his tribe and ethnic community. Saddam
too adhered to those tribal codes. He did not flee Iraq but went to hide
in the well-protected areas of his tribesmen. This is what happens in
these societies. In the land of the cedars, as soon as the civil war
broke out, the Lebanese army dissolved into its ethnic components and
disappeared.
True, Syria is not Egypt. Syria is also different in terms of the price
in blood inflicted by the tyrannical Syrian regime. The Syrian tribal
government is based on the force exercised by the security branches
ruled by the tribesmen and their interested allies.
Inherently, a tribal regime of this kind will always be seen as a
foreign reign. This kind of reign can be called tribal imperialism,
which rules by operating brutal terror and oppression. This is
underscored when a minority tribe rules, like in Syria. Thus every
undermining of the government is seen as a challenge to the tribal
hegemony and a danger to the ruling tribe's survival. Such a regime by
its very nature is totally immersed in a bloodbath.
Both Assad senior and Assad junior advocated resistance against Israel.
This slogan was hollow, serving the regime merely as an insurance policy
against any demand for freedom and democracy. The Syrian "resistance"
government has not uttered a peep on the Golan front since 1973.
Instead, the "resistance" regime was and still is ready to fight Israel
to the last Lebanese, and if that doesn't do the trick - then to the
last Palestinian.
As voices in Israel have recently spoken out in favor of Hamas'
continued rule in Gaza, so many Israelis are worried these days over the
Syrian regime's welfare. Astonishingly, not only Jews are praying
secretly for the Damascus regime's survival, but many in the Arab
parties as well. These parties' leaders have been dumbstruck, their
voices have been muted and no outcry has been raised against the Syrian
regime's massacre of civilians.
All the hypocrites, Jews and Arabs alike, have united. It seems Assad
has wall-to-wall support here, as though he were king of Israel.
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