The End of the World Is Starting in Damascus. By Ari Shavit.
The end of the world is starting in Damascus. By Ari Shavit. Haaretz, August 22, 2013.
A Tipping Point in Syria? By Will Marshall. Real Clear Politics, August 23, 2013.
The one video from Syria’s alleged chemical weapons attack that everyone should watch. By Max Fisher. Washington Post, August 21, 2013.
Young girl affected by chemical weapons attack on Damascus, 8/21/2013. Video. ANAChannelEng, August 21, 2013. YouTube.
Syrian activists: Dozens killed in Damascus chemical attack. Video. turan utkan, August 21, 2013. YouTube
Shavit:
Can
this really be happening? In the 21st century? Only a few hundred kilometers
from where I’m sitting writing this piece? Can it be that only hours ago a
tyrant used chemical weapons against his own people who were rebelling in the
capital’s suburbs against his tyranny? Can it be that during this gorgeous
summer, Arab women and children are being gassed to death by an Arab dictator?
The eye
refuses to believe the pictures the iPad is transmitting. The mind cannot grasp
the reports the iPhone is delivering. After the taboos of using artillery,
helicopters and missiles on civilians have been broken, the taboo of using
unconventional weapons has apparently been shattered as well. According to news
reports, not far from us, in the same Damascus with which we sought to make
peace, Arabs are murdering Arabs with chemical weapons.
True,
more than 100,000 people have already been slaughtered in Syria. For two years
our northern neighbor has been bleeding in a way that the Israelis and
Palestinians haven’t bled in a hundred years of conflict. And there has already
been a chemical weapons incident that the world didn’t really want to acknowledge.
But now
it’s highly probable that a horrifying and unprecedented attack took place east
of Damascus. If this is the case, Syrian President Bashar Assad and the Arab
Spring have crossed the black line. The glorious Arab uprising that the West
enthusiastically supported has become an apocalyptic event.
No
decent person can ignore what’s happening. What is supposed to be an
enlightened world cannot remain silent. Each day, the Syrian civil war is
taking on the chilling connotations of the Spanish Civil War. It heralds the
end of an era and delineates the coming era.
It’s
not only innocent victims being buried in Damascus, but the concept of
enlightened Arab nationalism and the hope that the West has a conscience. Women
and children who were apparently gassed to death are being buried in Damascus,
along with the ideal of an international community and the illusion of
international law.
If
civilians can be gassed to death in 2013, we face the end of the world. It’s
the end of the world that purports to be moral and enlightened. It’s the end of
the world that sought to establish a reasonable international order of which
the Middle East would be part.
Many in
the West and Israel despise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But what’s
happening in Syria proves the validity of Netanyahu’s warning that the greatest
danger to world peace in the 21st century is the combination of unconventional
weapons and unconventional regimes. Lunatics really are insane. Barbarians are
really barbaric. Huns will be Huns.
Those
who act mercifully toward Huns bear direct responsibility for the fact that
nuclear weapons are being built in Iran, chemical weapons are being used in
Syria and doomsday weapons threaten the future of the Middle East. Those who
underestimate the inherent danger of the Huns bear direct responsibility for
the deaths of today’s victims, the Syrians, and tomorrow’s victims, the
Israelis, Europeans and Americans.
It’s
time to break free of the moral relativism, multicultural hypocrisy and
political correctness that prevent us from seeing our evil neighborhood as it
really is. A terrible warning siren is being sounded in Damascus. Do we hear
it? Does the world hear it?
