Real Hypocrisy: False Analogy
of Syria and Palestine
By Jonathan Cook – Nazareth
As with many of those who express a view in the continuing
debate about the wisdom of launching yet another “humanitarian
intervention” in Syria, I have found myself under attack from
those calling for more war. The charge against me and many
like me is one of hypocrisy.
So where are my double standards? I have consistently objected
to all western efforts to interfere militarily in the Middle
East over the past decade. I have argued that all states in
the Middle East, including Syria, are seen by western
governments simply as chess pieces in a great game called the
Battle for Oil.
But critics want to use a different stick to beat me and
others who resist their on fervor for intervention. Here is
how Louis Proyect, a diehard interventionist who blogs under
the title “The Unrepentant Marxist”, sets out the accusation:
“With his long time commitment to the Palestinian cause,
[Cook] seems to have trouble understanding that those under
attack in Homs or Aleppo have much in common with those living
in Gaza. While he is obviously trained enough to understand
and communicate the plight of one group of Arabs, another
group gets short shrift because it is perceived as inimical to
the interests of peace.”
In other words, I and many other supporters of the Palestinian
cause are not being consistent in denying to the people of
Syria the support we wish extended to the people of Gaza. This
is an argument I hear being used with increasing frequency by
the interventionists, in an effort to recruit to their cause
the large numbers who back the rights of the Palestinians
against decades of occupation and oppression.
But Syria and Gaza are not alike on many levels, making the
comparison deeply unhelpful. And in so far as there may be
similarities in their situations, I actually hold a consistent
position that differs markedly from the interventionists.
First, Gaza is not like Syria because Palestinians live under
a belligerent occupation, not in a unified, if failing state
run by a dictator. There are very few decades-long
occupations, but there are lots of dictators the world would
be better off without.
Occupations are regulated by international law, which in
Gaza’s case is almost entirely ignored, whereas states have
the luxury of being largely ringfenced from such
accountability within their own domestic spheres.
International law is mostly there to regulate the relations
between states, not what goes on inside them. I may wish it
were otherwise but I have to live with the reality that this
is the current world order, and that such law exists precisely
to prevent powerful states, either on spurious or selfish
grounds, from destroying smaller states.
The comparison with Gaza is also unhelpful because it is
possible to be in favor of external efforts to remove the
occupation in Gaza without that also requiring us to be in
favor of external efforts to overthrow the state apparatus in
Syria. Doing the first may lead – potentially – to liberation;
doing the second leads – inevitably – to chaos, as we saw in
Iraq and Libya.
Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem need
help in freeing themselves from the rule of a belligerent
foreign state, one in which they have no stake or voice. The
people of Syria – if Syria is to survive and not end up as a
series of feuding ethnic cantons – need to find a common
cause, a sense of nationhood they can agree on. That, by the
way, was a long and painful path Egypt was just beginning on
when the Egyptian military – backed by decades of US money and
armaments – decided to halt it.
The only thing that changes in Syria by intervening or by
arming either side is that each is able to inflict more
bloodshed on the other. Ordinary civilians are dying on both
sides of the civil war in greater numbers because we have fed
an industry of fighting and death by providing factions with
guns and rockets.
The only hope for Syria – as what remains of a rapidly
collapsing state – is through bringing those sides willing to
talk to negotiations to create a new order in Syria. It will
not be Sweden.
Also to be addressed is the paradox that for the Syrian
government to negotiate safely it needs to ensure its strength
within the global system of nation-states; but with such
strength it has less interest in making concessions to the
rebels. This is a paradox that relates to the current world
order. We may not like that order, but it is the only one that
exists at the moment.
The
implication
of
critics
like
Proyect
is
that
the
Palestinians are in a civil war themselves and that doubtless
I would be in favor of intervention to help them. Again, the
situations are different. The civil war between Palestinians
is being fed and manipulated by Israel to keep the
Palestinians weak and divided so that the occupation can
entrench. It is part of a familiar colonial settler project.
The Syrians are in a civil war because there is bitter
competition between sectarian groups for dominance of the
state apparatus. In short, there is not enough sense of
Syrian-ness. If there were, one of two situations would have
arisen: Assad would have mass support still, or the rebels
would have been able to tip the balance in their favor and
take over through a popular revolution. That revolution might
have been bloody but it would have been liberating. Instead we
are in a protracted civil war, which each side sees as a zerosum game.
Exacerbating this problem is the exploitation by other states
of the Syrian state’s current relative weakness. Those states,
chiefly Saudi Arabia, are feeding the conflict and trying to
distort its nature. They are further damaging the fragile
sense of Syrian-ness. On the other side, Iran and Hizbullah in
Lebanon are playing their part in interfering in favor of the
Syrian government, propping it up with military support.
These last factors point to a more realistic way of
interpreting events in Syria. Syria is caught in a power game,
with the US and Saudi Arabia trying to keep Iran and its ally
Syria weak on one side, and Iran desperately trying to keep
its few remaining allies, among them Syria, as strong as
possible in its battle against efforts by Israel and the west
to undermine its sovereign integrity. Ignoring this as the
main framework for understanding what is happening in Syria
inevitably leads to erroneous analysis and faulty solutions.
What is needed now in Syria to lessen the bloodshed is reduced
negative western intervention in Syria and much greater
western positive engagement with Iran (certainly much more
positive than the measly deal struck at the weekend). Syria’s
best hope of a solution is through the west coming to a
respectful accommodation with Iran.
A last point about the Palestine and Syria comparison. In so
far as there may be some similarity in their respective
situations, I certainly do not favor western military
intervention on behalf of the Palestinians. This is not
related to what is allowable in international law, which, as I
noted earlier, treats these two situations differently; I am
talking only about what I personally believe makes most sense.
I have never argued for the US and Europe to start arming
Palestinian militants in the hope that the Palestinians can
end the occupation by slaughtering settlers and soldiers. The
level of military support the Palestinians would need to
challenge or defeat Israel militarily would result in only one
outcome: a sustained bloodbath that would lead to large
numbers of dead both among Palestinians and Israelis.
Something less than massive military support for the
Palestinians would lead to a bloodbath chiefly on the
Palestinian side. I favor neither outcome.
More useful and ethical would be a drastic reduction in, or
better still an end to, military support to Israel from the US
and economic support from the EU, or at least tying continuing
support to genuine concessions from Israel to the
Palestinians. Making Israel more militarily vulnerable to its
neighbors, for example, would be an effective way to get it to
the negotiating table and force it to make meaningful
compromises.
So, in short, I and most other supporters of the Palestinians
wish nothing less for the Syrians than we do for the
Palestinians.
A final, related point about the revolutionary fervor of many
of the supporters of greater western intervention in Syria.
People who have monikers like the “Unrepentant Marxist”
doubtless believe in a global workers’ revolution, but they
are deeply misguided if they believe it will or can start in
Syria.
The real hypocrisy lies with these armchair revolutionaries.
Eager to foment a revolution, they want to build it on the
bodies of Syrians, a people who have little hope of liberating
themselves in a world where their tiny state is no more than a
pawn being shuffled around a board controlled by other, much
stronger states. If the revolutionaries really want to effect
change, they would be wiser – and far more ethical –
concentrating on the revolution needed first in their back
yards.
– Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for
Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of
Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle
East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s
Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). He contributed this
article
to
PalestineChronicle.com.
Visit:
www.jonathan-cook.net.