Ghiyath Matar, the martyr in Daraya
who, with a gesture that confirms the nobility of the Syrian
revolution, had distributed water and flowers to the Syrian soldiers,
was kidnapped by the secret service on 6 September, 2011 and returned
to his family four days later as a battered corpse.
Ghiyath Matar today weeps for his city,
Daraya, as he sees more than three hundred martyrs assassinated by
the blind machine of the Assad army thugs and shabbiha that have
devastated as the Tatars had done, eliminating anyone who they had at
the range of their guns.
But the regime, not content with this
inhuman massacre, ratcheted up their ferocity by sending a reporter
from Addounia TV, owned by Rami Makhlouf, to traipse around with
tele-cameras among the corpses still fresh with blood to interview
the injured, including a woman who seemed to be at her last breath.
Two massacres: the first an expression
of the drunkenness to kill anyone around with an incredible
bloodlust, the second an expression of insensitivity, meanness and
contempt, she wanted to record the voices and images of the event in
order to terrorise Syrian men and women with the prospect of a
similar fate to that of the inhabitants of Daraya, Baba Amro, Azaz
and other places.
The criminal does not erase the traces
of his crime, but he is actually proud in front of everyone,
convinced that the support of Russia and Iran will save him from the
abyss, preventing the any sort of fulfillment of his own end.
Yesterday the torturer Bashar surpassed
his own father the assassin, resolving his psychological conflict
with the father figure, whose effigies filled Syria of the phantom
threat of a new Hama.
Last Sunday, as I watched the images of
the victims of Daraya, I was reminded of a meeting in Beirut, in the
house of the Arabist, Frenchman Michel Seurat, who was killed after a
kidnapping. It was 1981, Beirut was experiencing devastating moments
under the Israeli invasion.
That day I asked the Syrian
intellectual Elias Morcos, who came from Lattakia, how the situation
in Syria was, from where he received the news of the massacre in
Hama. Morcos did not answer directly, but told me about Genghis Khan.
When I showed surprise that Morcos, a Marxist-realist, took refuge in
a metaphor, he looked at me: “What do you want me to say?”. Then
he told me how the secret service men had raided a bar in Lattakia,
where he was having coffee, ordering everyone to kneel.
The pain veiled his eyes with water
that did not look like tears. This authoritative man, who had been a
leading intellectual of our generation and whose political and moral
conduct was irreproachable, found himself on his knees with others.
I was reminded of Elias Morcos not
because the secret services humiliated those men like they did with
the entire Syrian people, but because instead of speaking of the
Assad regime, or perhaps precisely to talk about it, he had to turn
to the image of the Mongols invading the Arab Levant.
They are the Mongols and with them
there is no truce, nor under the oaks – as Mahmoud Darwish once
wrote – or in the darkness of the tomb.
A bloodthirsty appetite dominates the
machine of the regime, which has lost all legitimacy and power. The
lie of its anti-imperialism became apparent. The aircraft MiG and
Sukhoi never dared to stand up against the Israeli Air Force when it
bombed Syria. The mission of the regime has nothing to do with
anti-imperialism and resistance, its real mission is to bend his
knees and humiliate the people of Syria.
The Syrians are alone in front of the
machinery of death.
All verbal support of the United States
and Europe is a false, misleading, cynical lie.
The deafening silence of the world in
the face of the repressive machinery of Assad is not due, as is often
said, to the fact that Syria lacks that oil that arouses appetites
for profit and domination by the West, but it is due to Israel. The
destruction that the regime has inflicted on Syria, Israel could not
even dream about. When the regime will fall, and it will be
inevitable, Syria and the Syrians will have ahead of them long years
of reconstruction.
Do not believe the analysis that the
reason for the lack of support for the Free Syrian Army is the fear
of the Arab states regarding Islamic fundamentalists.
The reason is neither the lack of oil
nor the fear of fundamentalists. Western countries and in particular
the UN does not fear political Islam, which in fact it is building
alliances with States where there are such parties in power.
The only reason is to strengthen the
racist component of Israel, whose insolence and arrogance has reached
the point of making accusations of racism against South Africa which
has decided to apply a special label for the goods produced in the
occupied West Bank.
Bashar Assad is carrying out a task
that for others has so far been impossible: he is destroying Syria
and its social fabric. Then what good does it do to supply arms and
aid to those who want its fall?
If it remains forever, whether its
Russian and Iranian allies merrily dance to the rhythm of bombs and
massacres, Assad will lose power after destroying the country from
north to south. His allies will be covered with shame and hated by
all Syrians and Arabs.
The perpetrator of Damascus has never
been so vital to Israel as he is now, so do not expect anything from
those who claim to be a friend of the Syrian people.
The Syrian people are alone.
They are alone in defending the dignity
of the human being in the entire Arab world. Alone, shedding their
own blood, giving humanitarian and moral meaning to politics.
What can I say to you who are alone?
Your solitude, my brother, you can only
compare to that of the Palestinians, who have found themselves in
front of every bloody turn taken by Israeli savagery. I know well,
brother, that these words do not stop the bleeding, do not dry your
tears, do not console the heart of a grieving mother.
I tell you that you’re alone.
I tell you to persevere in your
solitude, your insistence on taking ownership of the dignity
submerged in the blood of your sons and daughters, your efforts in
defending the ruins of houses destroyed by cannons and fighter
planes, are the road that you have to singlehandedly defeat the
torturer who would like to once again make you go down on your knees.
I know that you do will not kneel. I
know that your mission, crowned by blood, is now the value of our
human dignity. I have nothing but these words of mine that bow in
tribute to your sacrifices and your victims.
Author: Elias Khoury, Lebanese novelist and intellectual
Original text: Al-Quds al-Arabi
