Human rights for Syrians

Where are the protests, where are the "human rights activists", where are the slogans "Stop killing Arabs"? Nowhere to be seen. It could be the cold weather, but we know it's not, we know that the so-called "human rights activists" only come out if Israel is involved. They are not motivated when thousands of Syrian Arabs are being killed in the streets, even though the degree of state-sponsored murder is much bigger than they usually protest. After all, they usually come out only when the IDF accidentally kills one or two Palestinian civilians. That's what really gets them riled up, Palestinian lives are more valuable to them than Syrian lives, even though these people speak the same language, are all Muslims and to all intents and purposes are identical. In all likelihood most of these so-called "human rights activists" agree wth Russia and China that Assad should be left to kill his own people and he is continuing to do just that.

In fact, Pres. Assad's regime in Syria has killed approximately as many people in the past 10 months as Israel has killed Palestinians in the whole of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It is estimated by the UN that ca. 6,500 Syrians have been killed, but this does not include those arrested and tortured by the regime, up to 25,000, most of whom have disappeared. Since the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, it is estimated that 8,000 Palestinians have been killed in 64 years, the majority of them soldiers (terrorists) wearing civilian clothes. On the Israeli side the figures are very comparable, perhaps 6,000 killed, including those IDF soldiers killed by the Egyptian Army on the Suez Canal in the Yom Kippur War 1973. At no time has there been mass casualties caused by Israeli military actions, compared to the mass killings now occuring in Syria. Even the killings in Libya and Egypt are on a far larger scale than happens to the Palestinians even when they inflict hundreds of deaths of Israeli civilians thru terrorism. Another Arab regime, like Syria, would probably send in its army and decimate their towns and villages, but Israel does not do that. Even in the most recent clash, Operation Cast Lead in Dec 2008 in Gaza, there were only ca. 1,200 Palestinian casualties, about two thirds of them being combatants (usually not in uniform). Pres. Assad in Syria gets rid of that number in about a week.

Most Western countries have a policy not to negotiate with terrorists. So does Israel. Hamas, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, is registered as a terrorist group by the UN, EU, US and Israel. In the past it has killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in terrorist attacks, and continually shoots rockets from Gaza into Israel (sometimes using proxies like Islamic Jihad). Understandably, the Israeli Government refuses to have talks with this organization that is dedicated to "wipe Israel off the map," as their sponsor the Iranian PM Ahmedinejad says, and they also refuse to talk to Israel. In Qatar, the Head of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, and the Head of Fatah, Pres. Abbas of the PA, the largest faction in the PLO, are having unity talks. They are trying to implement the unity agreement that was arrived at in negotiations in Egypt last year. So far nothing concrete has come from that supposed agreement. This time it is expected that they will come closer, because there is pressure on Hamas to compromise with Fatah because of the current unrest in the Arab world and the threat of Iran. But, if they do form a unity government then Israel will refuse to negotiate with them, because one does not negotiate with terrorists! PM Netanyahu was quite forthright, he advised Abbas, "either negotiate with Hamas or negotiate with us, you can't have it both ways!"