Let's Play "Name That Zionist!"

Yesterday, Syrian Dictator Bashar Assad announced that Syria was going to pull out of Lebanon in the same sense that China has pulled out of Tibet. The establishment press is ignoring the fact that Lebanon is ALSO crawling with Iranian troops, doing Assad's bidding. Even if Syria is forced out, these hit squads can continue to terrorize the Lebanese. Israel was nonplussed by Assad's speech. Alexander Cockburn's Counterpunch is continuing its drive to support Ba'athists wherever they can be found.

But pressure on Syria is just part of the continuing cornucopia of benefits coming from the Allied toppling of Saddam Hussein. There are now voices inside Syria itself defying the Assad regime. There are now voices in Egypt calling for democracy as well. Meanwhile, the world is unaware of how weak Syria is economically, in part because the CIA exaggerates Syria's GDP by a factor of at least 5.

There is one crucial aspect of the Assad attempt to give the world a Brooklyn cheer that is being overlooked. Assad is not only flipping the bird to the world when he continues his aggression against Israel, he is also defying the wisdom of his OWN GREATGRANDFATHER, who endorsed Zionism! I quote:

"Those good Jews brought civilization and peace to the Arab Muslims, and they dispersed gold and prosperity over Palestine without damage to anyone or taking anything by force. Despite this, the Muslims declared holy war against them and did not hesitate to massacre their children and women... Thus a black fate awaits the Jews and other minorities in case the Mandates are cancelled and Muslim Syria is united with Muslim Palestine."

The statement is from a letter sent to the French Prime Minister in June 1936 by six Syrian Alawi notables (the Alawis are the ruling class in Syria today) in support of Zionism. Bashar's greatgrandfather, the grandfather of Hafez al-Assad, the former Fuhrer of Syria, was one of them. Source, Daniel Pipes, Greater Syria, Oxford U Press, p. 179)

Another Syrian daring to tell the truth was THE PRIME Minister of Syria in 1948, Khaled al-Azem.

Iin his memoirs, published in 1973, listed what he thought were the reasons for the Arab failure in their aggression against Israel 1948:

" ... the fifth factor was the call by the Arab governments to the inhabitants of Palestine to evacuate it and leave for the bordering Arab countries ... We brought destruction upon a million Arab refugees by calling on them and pleading with them to leave their land." "FOLLOWING a visit to refugees in Gaza, a British diplomat reported the following: 'But while they express no bitterness against the Jews...they speak with the utmost bitterness of the Egyptians and other Arab states: 'We know who our enemies are,' they will say, and they are referring to their Arab brothers who, they declare, persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their homes." - British Foreign Office Document #371/75342/XC/A/4991 [From "Revising or Devising Israel's History" by Prof. Shlomo Slonim in Jewish Action, Summer 5760/2000, Vol. 60 #4]