person:patrick seale

Not Just for the Sake of Syrians, but for Our Sake

Precisely the Arabs in Israel, who are fighting discrimination and oppression, must not stutter when it comes to the injustices perpetrated across the border

Odeh Bisharat Apr 10, 2017 12:16 AM
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.782651

What can the Arabs in Israel do for their Syrian brethren? They have no army, no diplomatic clout, no logistical capabilities that could allow them to offer civilian support. The only thing that remains is moral support – words. “You have neither horses nor treasure to give … so let the words rejoice if circumstances be grim,” said the poet Al-Mutanabbi. But the Arab leadership in Israel has failed in the realm of words as well.
The truth is that even if the Arabs in Israel manage to give verbal support to Syria’s citizens, that will not change the balance of power at all between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, or between Syrian President Bashar Assad’s murderers and the fanatics backed by Qatar. In the situation we’re in, the battle over what position should be taken toward Syria is a battle over the moral image of Arab society in Israel, over its attitude toward the terrible massacre going on across the border.
>> Israeli Arab party fails to condemn Assad’s gas attack in Syria, slams U.S. strikes <<
And if in the hard days of the chemical-weapons assault on Khan Sheikhoun almost none of the leaders of Arab society in Israel saw fit to condemn the Syrian regime, that’s cause for concern. Even those who did condemn it, by the way, did so weakly, to the point where it could not be said whether the statements were condemnation or commentary.
Condemnation of Assad produces furious responses from his supporters, as if he were Mother Theresa, censured out of nowhere. But Assad was part of a bloody regime even before the appearance of ISIS and the Nusra Front. On June 26, 1980, when Hafez Assad waited on the steps of the presidential palace to welcome an African guest, two bombs were thrown at him, miraculously missing their target. Revenge was quick to follow. The next day, June 27, at dawn, a group of some 60 soldiers, led by Muin Nassif, deputy of Rifaat Assad, the president’s brother, boarded helicopters and flew to the Tadmor Prison in the heart of the desert. There, the soldiers broke up into smaller groups and opened fire on the prisoners locked in their cells. Five hundred prisoners were murdered in cold blood. That story appears in Patrick Seale’s biography of the senior Assad.

#Syria #Palestine #Israel

Endless Predictions of the Syrian Regime’s Collapse—Why Hasn’t It Happened? | Foreign Policy Journal
▻http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2015/07/06/endless-predictions-of-the-syrian-regimes-collapse-why-hasnt-i

BH: Why do such commentators and analysts consistently fail in their predictions on Syria?

KA: The so-called experts and analysts fail in their predictions because they think Syria was the same as Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, and even Egypt. They failed to realize the ground realities of Syria and most experts have not even been to Syria. For instance, the same experts were defense advisers in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Libya. They often begin their arguments by saying, ‘In Bosnia we did so and so.’ ‘In Afghanistan, we did the surge in the South.’ Really? If Afghanistan or Iraq are barometers for success, then one must look really hard in the mirror. Most strategic analysts are opportunists linked with media and defense companies who have vested interests and are definitely not bi-partisan. Without naming names, one of the key ‘experts’ was a DoD official who become the spokesperson for the Syrian National Council. How can an American defense official all of a sudden be a Syrian expert and spokesperson for the SNC? The only credible voices on Syria have been the late Patrick Seale, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Joshua Landis.

Patrick Seale, the eminent Middle East journalist, historian and scholar, has died in London at the age of 83. He wrote and broadcast on the Middle East for five decades and was the author (among other books) of a remarkable trilogy: The Struggle for Syria (1965), The Struggle for the Middle East (1988) on the Hafez al-Assad leadership, and The Struggle for Arab Independence (2010), a biography of Lebanon’s first post-Independence prime minister, Riad el-Solh. Seale was above all known for his intimate knowledge of #Syria. He wrote this article for Le Monde diplomatique in 2011, analysing the Assad dynasty and its likely response to Syria’s uprising as the violence took hold.
▻http://mondediplo.com/2011/05/02syria

« Fatal aveuglement de la famille Al-Assad en Syrie »
►http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2011/05/SEALE/20483

Patrick Seale : The Destruction of Syria
►http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=53563

There can be no military solution to the Syrian crisis. The only way out of the current nightmare is a ceasefire imposed on both sides, followed by a negotiation and the formation of a national government to oversee a transition. Only thus can Syria avoid wholesale destruction, which could take a generation or two to repair.

L’article est très intéressant, même si ses critiques du régime sont formulées avec une certaine complaisance (« mistakes », « suffocating controls »).

In Syria, this is no plan for peace | Patrick Seale
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/27/syria-no-plans-peace

Engineered by Kofi Annan – the UN and Arab League mediator – the ceasefire of 12 April is now in tatters. His peace plan called on both sides to put down their guns as a necessary preliminary to ’"Syria-led" political negotiations. But the opposition – of which the most formidable element is the Muslim Brothers – is waging an urban guerrilla war backed by outside powers. This wing of the opposition does not want to negotiate with Bashar al-Assad: it wants to topple him.

The Gulf states have pledged $100m to the opposition, to enable it to pay its fighters and buy arms. The US has no intention of getting involved in a war in Syria itself, but it is said to be co-ordinating the flow of weapons and intelligence to the rebels. Although it says it supports the Annan plan, it is unashamedly undermining it by helping to arm the rebels. This is the central contradiction in US policy.