Al-Akhbar and Syria : No Room for Silence

Curieusement, Saghieh semble continuer à écrire comme si le débat opposait « simplement » les pro-régime aux anti-régime. L’impression d’en être resté à l’année dernière. Lui représentant une sorte de pureté idéologique (de la même façon que Max Blumenthal claquait la porte du Akhbar récemment), face à ses anciens amis trop tolérants et laissant s’exprimer dans leurs colonnes des chroniqueurs trop alignés avec la paranoïa du régime.

Cependant, de plus en plus, le Akhbar (et le débat plus général) semble plutôt représentatif de la « troisième voie » (third wayers) : ni l’opposition armée soutenue par les impérialistes, ni le régime autoritaire baasiste.

Et en la matière, j’ai du mal à comprendre comment se positionne Saghieh, auteur de ce ce texte court et simples, par rapport à la longue interview de Haytham Manna sur le même site (Jadaliyya). Lequel clairement a toujours dénoncé le régime et demandé sa chute, mais jamais au prix de la destruction de l’État syrien :
http://seenthis.net/messages/77903
Et en particulier : pas de recours à la violence armée par l’opposition favorisée par le CNS et financée par les séoudiens et le Qatar, ni même (ce qui peut étonner) l’effondrement économique total du pays, deux faits dont il pense qu’ils éloignent du but de la révolution en radicalisant les syriens. Or, c’est cette position qu’exprime le plus souvent le Akhbar (tout en revendiquant le besoin d’intégrer tous les points de vue).

Est-ce que la promotion et la sympathie désormais affichée pour les « third-wayers » est une manœuvre de rattrapage pour une partie des pro-régime qui cherchent à limiter les dégâts, je l’ignore. Mais ce que raconte Saghieh semble totalement occulter cette position, qui est centrale désormais dans le Akhbar. Voir par exemple la réponse suite au départ de Blumenthal :
►http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/al-akhbar-and-syria-no-room-silence

L’autre point aveugle de son billet, c’est l’histoire des gauchistes libanais, qui ont quand même largement espéré de la guerre libanaise de 1975, pensant mener la révolution contre le féodalisme libanais, avant de se rendre compte (certains dès 1978) qu’ils avaient en réalité tout perdu dans le déclenchement d’une guerre devenue milicienne et confessionnelle. D’anciens gauchistes libanais ont décrit les espoirs de leur camp au déclenchement de la guerre, qui finalement aura favorisé la réaction et la transition du féodalisme au confessionnalisme soutenant le néolibéralisme (lire Charbel Nahas sur l’idéologie de la reconstruction). Du coup, quand il dénonce « un terrible échec moral », il parle de mouvements qui ont lourdement payé un certaine naïveté morale dans les années 70 : l’idée de démarrer une guerre civile en Syrie au motif qu’on est dans son bon droit, pour quelqu’un qui a milité au début des années 70 au Liban, ça ne doit pas être totalement évident.

Bref, par rapport au choc intellectuel qu’a dû représenter sa rupture avec le Akhbar, je trouve son texte pas bien éclairant.

The right to resist is universal: A farewell to Al Akhbar and Assad’s apologists
http://maxblumenthal.com/2012/06/the-right-to-resist-is-universal-a-farewell-to-al-akhbar-and-assads-a

Following her vehement defense of the Syrian dictator’s use of surgery metaphors to refer to his security forces’ brutal crackdowns, Al Akhbar English featured Ghorayeb’s daftest work to date: an attack on Arab Third Wayers (supporters of the anti-imperialist, anti-authoritarian political tendency) in which she asserted that “the real litmus of Arab intellectuals’ and activists’ commitment to the Palestinian cause is no longer their support for Palestinian rights, but rather, their support for the Assad leadership’s struggle against the imperialist-Zionist-Arab moderate axis’ onslaught against it.”

Ghorayeb’s rant, rightly condemned by As’ad Abu Khalil as an “outrage,” was of a piece with the Syrian regime’s long record of exploiting the Palestinian struggle to advance its narrow self-interests. For me, it was the final straw. Had Al Akhbar’s editorial leadership provided a platform to Ghorayeb and other apologists because of the quality of their writing or because of their willingness to defend the regime behind the cover of leftist ideology? This had become a salient question.

I was forced to conclude that unless I was prepared to spend endless stores of energy jousting with Assad apologists, I was merely providing them cover by keeping my name and reputation associated with Al Akhbar. More importantly, I decided that if I kept quiet any longer, I would be betraying my principles and those of the people who have encouraged and inspired me over the years. There is simply no excuse for me to remain involved for another day with such a morally compromised outlet. And so, instead of preparing to throw up in my own mouth each time I click on one of the pro-regime op-eds appearing with regularity on Al Akhbar English’s home page, I am washing my hands of the whole operation.

The Angry Arab News Service: Enough grandstanding on the Syrian question: Al-Akhbar English versus Aljazeera.net
http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2012/06/enough-grandstanding-on-syrian-question.html

PS In other words, AlAkhbar (accused of a pro-Asad slant) publishes articles calling for Asad’s downfall.  When the Arab oil and gas media call for the downfall of the Saudi or Qatari royal regimes, we can talk, or when the Western liberal media, like the Nation, dare publish an article calling for the demise of Israel.

Al-Akhbar and Syria: No Room for Silence
►http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/al-akhbar-and-syria-no-room-silence

Media organizations, including Al-Akhbar, failed to deliver proper journalistic coverage of Syria. Unreliable sources, inaccessibility of troubled areas and many other factors may be used to rationalize this shortcoming. While the debate regarding a clear editorial line was ongoing, the publication that prides itself on doing things differently found itself partner in a collective media failure in dealing with Syria.
Fifteen months into the events, Al-Akhbar’s editorial policy is that it stands for the basic rights of the Syrian people, for a united and free Syria, and against violence, hatred, destruction and civil unrest. The Syrians must have full sovereignty in deciding their political path without any foreign interference. All crimes should be investigated and all perpetrators, irrespective of their positions, should be held accountable by an independent judicial authority. This applies to all without exception.

However, the collective media failure has laid the groundwork for a situation that is dire in Syria, where only absolutes are tolerated – an absolute crushing of an uprising, or a complete destruction of a regime. Clarity is sought in the most murky of environments. But absolute answers do not exist. Just like there is no black and white in Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and other places, the political landscape in Syria is also painted with shades of gray.

Bashar al-Assad shouldn’t go today. Bashar al-Assad should have never been president. After all, countries are not personal assets that are passed on as inheritance.

Theory is simple and beautiful and can even be principled – reality, not so much

Media restrictions and Al-Akhbar
http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2012/06/media-restrictions-and-al-akhbar.html

Max, I noticed, did not complain at all about censorship because I believe he has the freedom to write what he wanted: I believe that this is the strength of Al-Akhbar in relative terms: editorial control is most lax compared to all Arab media and even to Western media. There are articles in Al-Akhbar Arabic and English that are very critical of the Syrian regime and that call for its overthrow. […] But if Max is unhappy to write alongside people who support the Syrian regime (with whom I disagree of course), how will he feel about writing for, say, Huffington Post where there are apologists for Israeli war crimes? Or for Aljazeera.net? In the Huffington Post Max is writing alongside Abe Foxman, for potato’s sake. Does that bother him? […] Al-Akhbar is a work in progress and our efforts can strengthen the project. It is a least centralized media that I know of and departments are quite independent (sometimes that is good and sometimes that is not but it is not tightly controlled like most Arab media). […] There are yet things in the paper that I don’t like: on Syria or on Lebanon but what is important (and here is something that Max may not see because he does not read Arabic) is that the paper is pioneering on secularism and on challenging religious authorities (Sunnis and Shi`ite and Christian and even published an article about corruption of Hizbullah clerics). The culture section is promoting sexual liberties and homosexual rights: no other Arab media—NONE—dare do that. If there is a freer and better alternative to Al-Akhbar, I don’t know it because there is none.