Israel’s Foreign Ministry recently recommended that the government denounce the killing of Syrian civilians, and call for Bashar Assad to be removed from power. According to a report by Barak Ravid in Haaretz, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has adopted this position. At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was against it, claiming that such statements would only play into the hands of Assad.
Lieberman was right: Israel must denounce the slaughter in Syria regardless of geo-political consequences. The fact that most regional forces would rather distance themselves from Jerusalem – even if we’re just talking about public statements – should not serve as an excuse not to do the right thing (and not just in a mild speech at the UN). Furthermore, dealing with a massacre taking place across the border would serve as another acknowledgment that Israel, and Israelis, are part of the Middle East, and as such, share the concerns of other people living in the region. It is the kind of psychological shift the local public discourse should have made years ago.
I believe we should support any diplomatic initiative against the Assad regime and any humanitarian aid to Syrian citizens. If asked to do so, Israel should also aid refugees from Syria should any arrive at its northern border.
Regarding Western military intervention, the case is less clear. My political instinct is against a NATO-lead military operation (naturally, Israel wouldn’t be part of such an intervention, if it were to take place). The more I read and learn about humanitarian military interventions, the less certain I am about them. The road to democracy can be bloody, and I am not sure that NATO’s bombers can offer the desired short-cut.
I tend to agree with Israeli blogger Yoni Eshpar [Hebrew link]: The West should engage with Syria in coordination with the Arab League, and try to find ways to shield civilians, end violence and allow for meaningful reforms. Perhaps if Russia is invited to take part in those initiatives, they would have a better chance to succeed. I know it doesn’t sound like much – sending bombers is much more satisfying – but removing Assad is the easy part, and we need to think about the day(s) after.
My position is not about Syrian sovereignty – I am for political activism the transcends national borders – but rather about the ability or willingness of Western military powers to serve the long-term interests of other nations.
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aristeides
Israel would only play into the hands of Assad by siding with the rebels. He’s already going on TV with shots of Israeli-made weapons allegedly taken from rebels.
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Nothing is more likely to unite Syrians than the common enemy.
Bill Pearlman
The Assads, both father and son even look like the rattle snakes that they were and are. Hard to see what could be a worse alternative. On the other hand. And it really pains me to say this, Aristeides might be right here. Wouldn’t help for the anti-Assad forces play into the hands of Assad, the Iranians, and the rest of them. the Jewish conspiracy and all that.
sh
I agree with Aristeides, I’m afraid. Anyway, the people of Bab Amr needed help not lip-service and all they got was talk.
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I think Uri Avnery got that pretty much right in his weekly sermon:
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“IF I were to follow the call of my heart, I would appeal to our government to send the Israeli army into Syria, drive the Assad gang from Damascus, turn the country over to the Syrian opposition or the UN, and go home.
That wouldn’t even be very difficult.
Damascus is just a few dozen kilometers from the positions of the Israeli army on the Golan Heights.
The Syrian army is busy fighting against their own people. If they turn around to fight against us, the insurgents would sweep into Damascus and finish the job themselves.
Either way, the monster would be gone.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
YES IT would, but, alas, it is an altogether crazy idea.
First of all, because the Syrian people, including the insurgents, probably hate us even more than they hate Bashar.
If Israeli soldiers crossed the border, the Syrians would unite behind their army and end the insurrection.”
http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/index.html
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He goes on to tell us to think about why we’re in a situation in which even a declaration on our part would be folly (and this was before Lieberman said the opposite).
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“There was a time when people in the Arab world did not like Israel, but believed what Israel said. Even when announcements of the Israeli army were disliked, they were believed. Those days are long gone.
If the Israeli army were to announce that it was entering Syria to rid it of its dictator, and would withdraw immediately after, people would laugh. Israel? Withdraw?”
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The horrendous news reports and gruesome footage from Syria reminded me of the reproaches we made to the allies about their failure to intervene to stop the slaughter of Jews in WWII and I began to see why it might not have been as easy as we feel it should have been. Avnery makes the same point in his piece and uses it to call for a review of the UN veto procedure.
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“BASHAR AL-ASSAD is teaching us that what is needed is a total overhaul of the UN charter. It must start with the veto.
The division of power it represents is ridiculously outdated. Why China and not India? Why France and not Germany?
But that is a minor point. The major point is that it is intolerable for one power, or even several, to block the will of mankind. Today, the UN is a veritable Vetostan.”
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Lousy that we can’t even offer fugitives shelter, but we’ve made our bed and are now lying in it.
aristeides
Pointing out that the US is in almost the same position, being seen in the Arab world as the hand of Israel and the invader of Iraq, the occupier of Afghanistan.
JJ
Isn’t it typical for an armed revolution that ‘own citizens’ come under fire and doesn’t the UN charter rule out foreign intervention? Sure, watching it from the sidelines is terrible, but we better get used to it because much more is coming.
Mesho
This is playing into the media and Western narrative that the Syrian rebels should be supported/armed etc against Assad’s massacre against Syrian civilians. Wake-up call: the Syrian rebels are not a unified entity and many of them are just as complicit in the targeting and killing of civilians. This is not a black and white conflict, and I think it is absolutely a mistake for the U.S. (and Israel) to intervene on the side of the rebels. Please stop hijacking OUR revolutions.
Once the rebels are bought out by the U.S., it will merely be another means to installing a U.S. and Israel-friendly puppet government in Syria.
Let me say this loud and clear: we don’t want your goddamn intervention.
Jazzy
I don’t agree with the argument that Israeli support for Syrian civilians would help Assad – the only constraints on his brutality are set by Russia and China, and it already looks like he’s pushing those limits. Even if, in theory, Assad tried to use the Israeli position as a excuse to increase the level of brutality, there isn’t really a margin of brutality left to exploit. So I agree with Noam. However, it looks at this point like Assad’s going to pull through.
Sinjim
I think you’re a great guy, Noam, and you’re definitely one of the reasons I keep coming back to this website, but you’re completely wrong on this. Israel seriously needs to butt out of this. As occupiers of Syrian land, it’s not your country’s fight.
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Israel is incapable of acting in the interests of the Syrian people. Forget about whether or not Israeli interference would help or hurt the uprising, do you really believe that your country headed by the class of politicians that it is would be a force for good in Syria? Was it a force for good in Lebanon? Do you think Israel could possibly go in and pursue only humanitarian goals, without interfering in the politics of the state to its regional military advantage and thereby strengthen its own rights abuses? Do you think that yet another Israeli invasion of Arab land will lead to less deaths for Arabs?
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The answer is no. So butt out.
Piotr Berman
Lieberman is sometimes right, especially if he is not watching Haneen Zoabi — that seems to unhinge him totally.
That said, the consequences of “being right” or “wrong” are minuscule. A statement is made. Between demolishing one village and another GoI can also express humanitarian impulses in an admirable show of multi-tasking. Due to superior levels of technology and organization, Israel can achieve supremacists goals while killing much fewer people than primitive Assad regime, something worth stressing.
But going beyond making a correct statement and getting a nice warm feeling (“yesterday I escorted a blind little old lady across a street and today I made a humanitarian statement”), it is hard to recommend something concrete. For example, Israel could ban the importation of books printed in Syria, but it is done already. Sending “help to wounded” across mine fields and concertina wires on the border may be difficult. Using airforce to deliver humanitarian aid can backfire.
Rachel
Disagree. Nothing will unite Syrians and play into Assad’s hands more than Israel butting in. It’s not your fight. Let the Arabs take the lead on this. Syrians are there “Arab brothers.”
Philos
Assad now feels confident enough to use fixed-wing aircraft against his own people. That’s the redline that requires Western intervention.
RichardL
SH: You mention Uri Avnery. That is the same guy who was involved in looting and war crimes in 1948 (read ‘A Soldier’s Tale’), who voted for the annexation of East Jerusalem when he was in the Knesset, who opposes BDS without giving a viable alternative, who said he would support the devil himself in order to get rid of Gaddafi (and so supported NATO who defied and abused UNSC resolutions 1970 and 1973 with the result that even the NPC admits to 30,000 deaths -remember we are talking about 8000 in Syria so far). Avnery means well and he is a brave man, but he is a crank and a crackpot who would set the whole of the Middle East on fire with his mad ideas. You must consider what people do, not what they say.
Noam: Israel should aid refugees from Syria. You’re joking surely? Which refugees would that be – the 125,000 that Israel evicted from the Golan in 1976 by any chance? And remember too what happened on Nakba Day at Majdal Shams only last year. Time to come back to planet earth my friend. Sinjim as ever is spot on again. Israel has no place in this and neither has NATO. Until there is a serious debate in the UNSC with no hidden agendas and no lobbying beforehand, no Western Special Forces meddling in Homs and elsewhere, until that time the present ugly status quo is the best of an appalling bad set of options.
sh
@RichardL – “Avnery means well and he is a brave man, but he is a crank and a crackpot who would set the whole of the Middle East on fire with his mad ideas. You must consider what people do, not what they say.”
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The reason you (and we) know all the things you said about Avnery before you came up with the above is because he writes about them and the way his thinking and activities evolved over time. I don’t see that drawing conclusions from one’s experiences that modify one’s opinions and broaden one’s horizons is negative, quite the contrary. Thanks for your advice, but if the flames were not already crackling I’d suggest you look no further than the Knesset for crackpots who would set the whole of the Middle East on fire with their mad ideas.
RichardL
SH: Obviously I have to agree with you about crackpots in the Knesset. Neither do I enjoy taking pot shots at Uri Avnery who has been working for peace since before I was born. However I remain appalled that this prominent peace activist supported the attack on Libya and appears to have expressed no regret since the country has been devastated with a loss of life at least three times that which has occurred to date in Syria. Yes the UNSC veto has been much abused but I wonder what might have happened to Libya had Russia and China vetoed the application of a no-fly zone. Perhaps there would have been no aerial bombardment, perhaps the death toll would have been less than one-tenth of what has occurred and perhaps Libya’s infrastructure would have survived and much misery amongst ordinary people might have been avoided. Where I disagree with Avnery is that he was happy to see Libya devastated to get rid of Gaddafi, and apparently would accept the same equation for Syria. That is not my idea of peace, and the present state of Libya convinces me that Avnery was always wrong. There has to be a different approach in Syria, and the appointment of Kofi Annan brings the tiniest glimmer of hope that perhaps some sanity can be negotiated in that entrenched bloodbath.
Finally, apologies for my awful typos. NPC should of course been NTC, and 1976 is a dyslexic 1967. Shame on me.
Steve
Are the Syrian rebels in favor of peace with Israel? Or do they want to destroy it like the other radicals?
Gerald Sobel
Let’s just “do the right thing” and trust in God, or Providence, that doing the right thing will be the best thing we Jews and we Israelis can possibly do. Don’t worry about the baloney about playing into Assad’s hand. Assad is going to be finished off like all the other dictators of history and it’s better to be rooting for, and helping the righteous winning side. Deep down, the Syrians are our brothers and sisters, and if you don’t know that, it’s because you’ve socialized with any of them, really nice people.
max
@Richardl, I was surprised by the numbers you provided to explain your virulent attack on the idea of foreign intervention, and looked up the numbers.
The estimates range from 2,000 to 30,000 casualties, and only a few hundreds attributed to the foreign intervention.
Interestingly, the estimates got higher in accordance to the political motivation of the assessor. For example the lowest estimate was given by the World Health Organization (WHO) while the higher ones by the National Transitional Council. Also interesting: the highest estimate is twice as high as the next highest.
In short: enough options to choose whatever fits an agenda, very little to base an objective view on, and no indication that the cause of the deaths is related to the foreign intervention.
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ON the subject of the post: I think that diplomacy isn’t about venting but influencing, and Israel’s venting here is likely to produce a negative influence
Martin
An old oriental proverb says: “the enemy of my enemy is my freind”. That may be so in theory, but when implemented into real life this can turn out quite tricky.
So what happends if we give the players names? For sure Syria and Israel are not exactly known to be great freinds. Or if we differentiate it a bit, the syrian regime/current government and Isreal are not the best of freinds. Same goes for the Hisbolla and Israel. On the other hand one can assume that Israel would be quite happy if it didn’t have to watch both borders so closely. And while Hisbolla and the Assad government seem to play fore the same team (not to ferget Iran) there now is a new player in the game that could share the liberal ideology of the west – the syrian opposition.
So if Israel were to support the syrian opposition it could hit two or actually three or maybe ever four birds with one stone. Why?
Well, first it would form a partner on the other side of teh border it can talk to on equal and freindly terms once teh regime falls and a new freele elected government might arrise.
Second, with a friendly government in Damascus, the loop around Hisbolla in Libanon would tighten cutting them off from (re)supplies from Iran and thus also help the moderate forces in Lebanon to appease this county – this being point three.
and four, of course push back the irans sphere of power and interest further away from teh mediterran.
With all these advantages at hand Israel should just not forget to act as a “follower” of the revolution and not as a leader that might be iterpreted as Zioniostic surge for powen and influence. Israel should rather offer its help and see if the opposition accepts and then treat them on equal terms, treat honestly them as possible friends right from the start without and backthoughts. For with such friends at hand, Syria and israel might develop a truly great cooperation after the revolution, because Syria will need help to restructure and rebuild its economy and its sociaty.
I’m sure israel can help with irrigation technology, Solar power, and most important help find inverstors willing to invest in Syria.