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By Crethi Plethi

Yesterday, Tariq Alhomayed — Editor-in-Chief of the Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat — wrote a column about the Arab hypocrisy in dealing with the ongoing slaughter in Syria by dictator Bashar al-Assad as he kills thousands of civilians nationwide.

Alhomayed compares the situation in Syria with recent wars Israel was involved in — for example the Lebanon War [2006] and Gaza War [2008/09].

He writes:

“Let us pause here in front of this state of mad dictatorship, and compare it with what Israel has committed against us in recent times, and I say recent times as we are talking about the last 5 years, particularly the Lebanon and Gaza wars. The entire world rushes to stop Israel’s aggressions against Lebanon in 2006, and this war ended after approximately two months, claiming the lives of 1,200 Lebanese. The same thing applies to the Gaza war, which had approximately the same death toll. In both wars, the public opinion in the Arab world rushed to take action, whilst counterfeit “friends of Israel” lists were issued, masterminded by the al-Assad regime; indeed a number of Arab politicians attempted to exploit this tragedy, most prominently the al-Assad regime. However we did not hear anybody ask — even now — why did these wars happen? Whose interests did these wars, and more, serve? Who was responsible for this?”

Alhomayed defines this Arab hypocrisy as an Arab case par excellence which means it’s “a problem with no solutions.”

And this is not only the case when the Arab World is dealing with Israel, but also:

— On the day Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait;
— when Hezbollah agents intentionally incited an unjustifiable war in Lebanon;
— when Hezbollah occupied Beirut;
— when Hezbollah invented the concept of the one-third [parliamentary] blocking minority;
— when Hamas carried out a coup d’état by force of arms in the Gaza Strip [2007];
— and when al-Maliki lost the elections in Iraq but remained in power.

And this is not all, Alhomayed writes, “for our democracy is deformed, as are our republics, for they are neither true republics nor monarchies, and this is something that applies to the al-Assad regime, both the regime of the father and the son.”

How is it possible that Bashar al-Assad — a Muslim according to his claim — is still in power despite his atrocities, massacres and cold-blooded assassinations? Alhomayed explains:

Today, in the case of al-Assad, we have seen the Syrian forces brutally killing their own people on our television screens over the past year — not two months — whilst the death toll stands at more than 8,000 and the tyrant of Damascus’s troops have destroyed mosques, tortured and assassinated children, as well as women and the elderly, simply in order to allow al-Assad to cling to power. Despite all this, we find some countries, politicians, media organizations and figures, who are procrastinating; it is as if we — as Arabs — are saying that if the killer is also an Arab, then this is something that we can accept, however if he is an Israeli, then we must all move as one to put an end to this! This is a saddening and shameful state of affairs, particularly when somebody like Hassan Nasrallah shamelessly comes out to defend al-Assad!

“Therefore,” Alhomayed writes, “if we compare al-Assad to Israel we will discover the extent of the growing hypocrisy in our region.” But not only in our region, but at the UN as well, and among officials from the Obama Administration and in the rest of the world.

Saddening and shameful indeed.

Read Alhomayed’s column here.