Democratic opposition?

At last the Arab uprisings have hit Syria. Even though the Assad Ba'ath regime is utterly ruthless and brutal, the Syrian people, particularly in the city of Deraa and other outlying areas, are bravely confronting it and demonstrating for freedom. There has been "emergency rule" in Syria for 48 years! That means anyone can be arrested for any reason and tortured and imprisoned under the so-called emergency regulations. The Syrian regime has justified this because of the conflict with Israel. But, although Israel had similar emergency regulations in effect because of the war situation with Syria and other Arab States, and who could say it was not justified, these were cancelled in the 1960's. Since then all Israeli Arabs (but not Palestinians because they are not Israeli citizens) were able to move around freely anywhere in Israel and demonstrate. This is another example of how Arab countries that are ruled by brutal dictatorial regimes have used the Palestinian situation as an excuse to control their own citizens. In Deraa, the demonstrators torched the Baath Party headquarters, the secret police HQ (Muhabarat) and several companies, including the telephone company owned by a cousin of Pres. Bashar Assad, another case of official nepotism and corruption that blights Arab countries.

So far the West has taken out Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Whatever the rights or wrongs of each situation, the removal of these brutal dictatorial regimes must have played a role in the readiness of other Arab peoples to challenge their own dictatorial governments. So it's two down, a third to go. Although the western Coalition, now establishing the no-fly zone in Libya and taking out Qaddafi's ability to attack his own towns and people, say that according to the terms of the UN SC resolution 1973 the removal of Qaddafi and "regime change" is not strictly their goal. But, hopefully the Libyan rebel army will receive more arms and under the umbrella of the Coalition forces will counter-attack Qaddafi's forces and remove him.

Whether or not the opposition in Syria or Libya will be pro-western and/or prepared to live in peace with Israel remains very much to be seen. In Deraa in southern Syria it is said that one of the slogans the mob chanted against Assad accused him of being soft on Zionism, since Syria has not attacked Israel in many years. No doubt if they had power they would want to do so. For all his faults Asad has kept the Syrina-Israel border quiet for 30 years. Just because they want to remove Assad and demand "democracy" does not mean that the demonstrators are really "democratic." For example, taking advantage of the unstable situation in Egypt, many Muslims have renewed attacking the Coptic Christians of Egypt. The Copts are decended from the original Egyptians (while the Arabs came from Arabia), and their Church is one of the oldest. But, they are under constant attack by Muslims. While some Copts and Muslims demonstrated together against Mubarak, now the divisions are showing. Churches have been attacked in Alexandria and elsewhere and at least 50 Copts were killed. Luckily there are no Jews to attack, they were expelled by Nasser in the 1950's. Protection of minorities is a measure of the maturity of a democratic system. So far no Arab country has ever shown any tolerance for other religious minorities.