The lack of action over the fate of Palestinians in Syria suggests the death and suffering of Palestinians is not enough to get people onto the streets.
The lack of action over the fate of Palestinians in Syria suggests the death and suffering of Palestinians alone is not enough to get people onto the streets
The demonstrations that have been glaringly absent from Britain’s streets during the Syrian civil war reappeared this weekend to protest against the latest round of fighting began between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
The Stop The War Coalition, who months ago told the Guardian that protesting over Syria isn’t their job as they only focus on “what Britain and the US are doing”, made their usual exception for Israel by helping to organising Friday’s demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy in London.
As for Syria, STWC was only interested when it looked like Britain and the US might intervene military to stop President Assad using chemical weapons against his own people.
Their co-organisers included War on Want, whose website advertises just one past event for Syrian refugees in Lebanon and nothing about the situation in Syria itself; and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, whose website contains nothing at all about Syria.
It is perfectly understandable that people who care about human rights and the suffering of others should care about Gaza. The images emerging from there in the past week would stir anyone who cares for the plight of civilians caught up in conflict. The question of whether or not Israel’s actions are justifiable or proportionate is not the subject of this article.
Rather, it is the contrast between the demonstrations against Israel and the lack of anything comparable over the brutal slaughter in Syria that justifies some pointed questions.
By current reports, over 160 people have been killed in Gaza during the current fighting. Sources differ over how many are civilians. As a comparison, according to the Violations Documentation Center in Syria, 2,207 people were killed by regime forces in Syria last month, of whom two-thirds were civilians. Estimates of the overall total of deaths in the Syrian civil war range from 115,000 to 170,000.
Comparing reactions to events in Gaza to the non-response to much worse events in Syria is not a case of ‘whataboutery’, because the Syrian conflict directly affect Palestinians; and in this respect the lack of solidarity is most glaring. By February 2014, over 2,000 Palestinians were reported to have died in the Syrian civil war, most of whom were killed in Palestinian refugee camps in the country.
Those campaigners who talk about a siege on Gaza should look at Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus to see what a siege actually involves. Since July 2013, Yarmouk has been cut off by Syrian government forces. Barely any food or medicine has made it in. There are no goods trucks entering Yarmouk every day as Israeli trucks do in Gaza. In March 2014, Amnesty International identified 128 people who had starved to death in Yarmouk as a result.
Yet the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s 2013 Annual Report makes no mention of Syria or of Yarmouk. PSC passed a resolution at its AGM in January 1014 deploring the situation in Yarmouk, but according to its website there have been no demonstrations outside the Syrian embassy, no letter writing campaigns, no mass lobbying of MPs on behalf of Palestinians in Syria.
It wasn’t always this way. In 1976 it was Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon that were under siege from Syrian forces. Palestine News, a UK-based monthly newspaper that was politically aligned to Fatah and financially supported by the Arab League, planned to devote several pages of coverage to the fighting.
Its editor at the time, a young Liberal with a passion for Palestine called Louis Eaks, thought it prudent to warn the Syrian Ambassador in London, Adnan Omran, that the newspaper would be heavily critical of Syria’s conduct. Omran was outraged and threatened to withdraw the Arab League’s monthly stipend of £1,000 unless the edition was pulped. Eaks refused and published anyway: he lost his funding but kept his principles.
Nowadays in Eaks’ place we have the shameless George Galloway, who collects his pay check from Russia Today and presents programmes on Iran’s Press TV while both countries provide arms for Assad’s slaughter.
Galloway compounds his hypocrisy by using the platform given to him by the Holocaust deniers of Tehran to compare Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto.
Then there is the grotesque situation of anti-Israel campaigners who misattribute victim photos from Syria in their haste to find gory images from Gaza to put on social media. Thus the Syrian dead are denied solidarity twice over.
The enthusiasm with which some people demonstrate about Israel while having no interest in doing the same for Syria makes it hard to believe that they are motivated by an objective concern for human rights. The lack of action over the fate of Palestinians in Syria suggests that the death and suffering of Palestinians per se is not enough to get people out on the streets.
It seems that if you are a Palestinian in Gaza whose safety is endangered by Israeli soldiers wielding American weapons, you are guaranteed the solidarity and support of the British anti-imperialist Left. But if you are a Palestinian (or anyone else) in Syria, under attack from Syrian government or Hizbollah troops armed by Russia and Iran, then you serve no purpose and consequently are of no interest.
Those protestors in London at the weekend presumably believe they were standing up for morality and basic humanity. In fact, all their selectivity demonstrates is just how easily those values can be abused.
Dave Rich is deputy director of communications at the Community Security Trust (CST)
54 Responses to “Outraged about Gaza? Fine. Now worry about Syria”
Gary
Why is there nothing that can be done? If british left wingers genuinely cared they would pressure the government and UN to send peace keeping troops to Syria to stop the open murders. The fact that they do not, but vigorously oppose Israel is striking
Odumba100
Why is it ok for people to cry for Gaza but they don’t do anything when it comes to Syria? Unbelievable. Assad is 1,00000 times worse than Israel.
Wo Shi Xiong Mao
that’s because jews and christians are evil and believe the wrong religion
muslims are pure and kindhearted and can do no wrong. those people who died in syria were not killed by syrians.
evil zionist jews used evil jewish magic to make the bullets fly all over the place killing kind hearted holy,peaceful,peaceloving,pious,chaste, handsome , hijab wearing, motherly,voluptuous, god fearing, honest, just, five legged , beautiful muslims
so it’s the evil jews fault don’t let the muslims brainwash you with their propaganda.
Guest
Killed without comment? Are you mental? What about the notice given before bombardment, or the field hospitals set up to cater for Gazan civilians, or the materials/food sent in every day (most of which gets misappropriated). In the west people are taught that Jews are pernicious or just plain bad. It’s so endemic in western culture that lots of people can be easily radicalised. Killing people is awful, but to continually point the finger is not the solution.
mls31286
So because Syria doesn’t have dialogue with the Western powers they should have a free reign to kill people…Also, the US and Britain have much worse civilian to militant kill ratio. Further, no civilians die in Britain and the US when they went to war with Afghanistan and Iraq but no one spoke of the dis-proportionality of the fighting to the extent it does against Israel.
The point is Israel is surrounding by countries like Syria that don’t respect the rules of war and have genocidal intentions against Israel. The US and Britain are surrounded by Western nations that live in peace with it. It’s completely unfair to expect Israel to hold up to the same standards of Western armies, but as General Kemp from Britain and any other Western army commander will tell you, no one puts in as much effort to avoid civilian casualties as Israel.
You mention the “usual accusation of anti-Antisemitism”, given the recent protests, are you serious? Turkey asked all of it’s Jews to apologize on behalf of Israel and compared said Israel has surpassed Hitler in brutality – this is anti-Antisemitism. In Europe, 6 Synagogues were firebombed along with Jewish businesses. Protests like these are happening around the world and Jews are being assaulted everywhere. Not every pro-Palestinian activist or Anti-Zionist are Antisemetic but you can’t deny that there are enough to call it an issue.
It’s like people want Israel to allow their people to be massacred before they can retaliate instead of preventing it from happening. Israel is very serious about “Never Again”.