Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: gli apologeti di Assad

Guarda caso, c'e' anche un editorialista di ha ha Haretz
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=410
Bashar’s apologists: A time for reckoning
For years, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s apologists and appeasers
have allowed him to get away with murder. Now is their, and his time
for reckoning.
Assad, we were told by some of Israel’s diplomatic and journalistic
elite, was a trustworthy leader who only needed the proper incentives
to make peace. A nudge in the right direction, the proper rhetoric and
this silly spat over a piece of territory would be over. Peace would
reign at long last!
Alon Liel, for example, is a former director-general of the Israeli
Foreign Ministry and a professor at Tel Aviv University. When asked in
2008 if he trusted that the Syrian dictator sincerely desired peace,
Liel responded, “Yes, I trust him and believe him. He wants peace and
prosperity for his people."
Assad sure has a funny way of showing it -- imposing more than a
decade of brutal tyranny, imprisoning bloggers, mowing down protesters
in the streets, arresting opposition and rigging elections. When I
asked Liel in 2009 if the brutality of Assad’s regime ever weighed on
his work toward peace with Syria, he said simply “No.”
Liel was channeling President Jimmy Carter, who said of Assad’s
father, "It's true, [Hafez] Assad is a dictator. But you can rely on
him. He never lied to me. If you sign an agreement, he'll keep it ...
[Hafez Assad] never lies.”
Elie Podeh, professor of Middle East studies at Hebrew University,
wrote earlier this year in Haaretz that “Syria's natural place in the
regional alignment is with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and there's nothing
to prevent it from returning to that place if given the right
incentives. But what is Israel doing? Very little. It hasn't responded
to Assad's proposals with the appropriate seriousness.”
Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz’s Middle East analyst who holds a doctorate in
history, lambasted Israel’s foreign minister for “babbl[ing] on about
the collapse of the Assad family's rule,” and chastised Israel for
“shrugging its shoulders at a chance to reach peace with Syria.”
Shortly before the Syrian people bravely rose up and confronted their
oppressor, esteemed Yedioth Ahronoth journalist and former bureau
chief to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Eitan Haber, wrote an article
titled “Peace now, with Syria." “So why now?” he asked in the piece.
“The answer is that now of all times Syrian President Bashar Assad is
proposing peace talks.” Is it any wonder, though, that the dictator
was proposing talks? What better way to deflect attention from
economic ruin, political isolation, endemic torture, restive
opposition and bottomless corruption?
Larry Derfner wrote in the Jerusalem Post of the necessity to make
peace with Assad “if he’s willing.” “In essence, it means Syria
joining the moderate, U.S.-aligned Arab camp with Egypt and Jordan.
The U.S., of course, would have to throw in a lot of money for
Syria ... If Bashar Assad is willing to take his country out of the
‘axis of evil’ with Iran, Hezbullah and Hamas but Israel turns him
down, then we leave him no diplomatic option for retrieving Syria's
land, and one way or another we will be endangering our own
security ... [I]f we're serious about fighting a long-term ‘war on
terror,’ about cracking away at the Middle East's radical Arab/Islamic
axis, how can we pass up the chance to extract Syria from it -- to
change Syria from being the axis's linchpin to being the wedge that
divides it?”
The naivete of Israel’s diplomatic and journalism elite is shocking.
Should a man who does not hesitate to murder thousands of his own
citizens be trusted to treat his historic enemy with equanimity? Is a
leader who does not trust his own people to vote freely worthy of the
West’s trust? The answer, of course, is no. And that was the answer
long before Assad's regime started openly butchering protesters in the
street.
There are, however, glimmers of hope. Soon after clashes broke out,
respected Israeli journalist Sever Plocker wrote, “I was wrong and I
admit it. Three times in the past three years I wrote articles in
favor of a peace treaty between Israel and Syria. I wrote, based on
numerous conversations with senior security officials, that Israel can
achieve peace with Assad’s regime in exchange for willingness to
withdraw from the Golan Heights, whose security significance has
become dubious, if not wholly non-existent.”
He continued: “While making this argument, I did not take into account
the Damascus regime’s tyrannical character. I fooled myself. Even when
Assad won 98 percent of the vote in the last elections I did not wake
up and say: We must not make peace with this man. I believed in peace
so much to the point of being blinded to reality."
“I should have seen reality," Plocker continued. "As one who
researched and wrote about the fall of tyrannical regimes, I should
have realized that Arab affairs experts are wrong, just like Soviet
experts were wrong before them. The people of Aleppo are no different
than the people in Gdansk. Both want to live as free men, and the
thirst for freedom is like the thirst for water: It has no substitute.
Sooner or later, it overflows and brings down any dam.”
Plocker had finally internalized the teachings of Natan Sharansky. We
must trust states only as much as they trust their own people, the
former Soviet dissident teaches us. I will never tire of repeating
Sharansky’s mantra because the principle is so simple yet so sound.
The Syrian dictator has now slaughtered thousands of his people --
just as his dictatorial father did before him. The tyrant doesn’t fall
far from the tree. Why did it take mass deaths for so many to realize
what Bashar was all along -- a ruthless killer whose word wasn’t worth
the paper it was written on? Why were the ignoble councils of peace,
to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, relentlessly courted?
Had the West listened to Sharansky, Syria would have received about
the same amount of trust you would now give Bernie Madoff with your
grandmother's retirement fund. Madoff should not be given incentives
to steal your money. Madoff should not be courted to drive a “wedge”
between himself and even more despicable thieves. He should be in
prison. Why is the absurdity of this lost entirely when taking about
Assad? Madoff only stole money; Assad stole money, peace, thousands of
lives and the future of millions.
Shame on those who wilfully deluded themselves for so long

 
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?idA0

Eh già.
Ma la bella cosa di essere un P.E.M.M. è che appena uno dei tuoi palloncini
colorati vola via, se ne trova subito un altro con cui zampettare felici. E
nemmeno ricordi più quella brutta faccia di Assad il moderato, il
modernizzatore, l'uomo a cui dare il Gokan in cambio di pace, lo
stabilizzatore del Libano... Puf... Anche il ricordo è volato via...
-- 
recoil is insignificant when there is a tiger on the head of your elephant