[Marxism] A Palestinian speaks about leftist support for Assad

Louis Proyect lnp3 at panix.com
Sun Jan 24 06:47:38 MST 2016

Mohammed Sulaiman (on Facebook)

January 22 at 5:51pm ·
There are (white, mostly British and American) people who have so much 
affection for the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad in a way that leaves 
me genuinely baffled. The extent to which they are so fond of Al-Assad 
is shocking; they are so preoccupied with defending, whitewashing and 
propagandising in defence of the Syrian genocidal dictatorship in a way 
that reminds me of the Zionist propagandists on social media during the 
past three onslaughts on Gaza-- particularly the last one in 2014. I was 
surprised by how many they were, and how many of them were friends with 
me on Facebook. Most of them are people I have never met, and seem to 
have become my Facebook friends because I am a Palestinian from Gaza. 
They do what they do because for them this isn't about Syria but rather 
about Israel/Palestine. They somehow give themselves the legitimacy to 
speak for Palestinians on the Syrian issue. To be honest, I was 
completely disgusted by them that I decided to have no connection 
whatsoever with the entire Palestine solidarity movement. Moreover, they 
are not a minority there. It is no exaggeration to say that they 
represent the official line amongst Palestine solidarity groups. All so 
called pro-Palestine groups that do not take an official stance and 
speak out publicly against the genocide in Syria are complicit because 
they passively allow their voices to be hijacked by these deranged 
people. Since the advent of the Syrian uprising, I haven't thought twice 
about voicing full support for the people's struggle and as this 
worsened and things became more complicated eventually descending into a 
civil war, these people became all the more visible and their voices 
became increasingly louder. They are so serious about what they do and 
are willing to spends hours on end and participate in endless (futile) 
discussions to recruit support for the Syrian regime and demonise the 
Syrian people and all opposition groups. These people might appear as 
innocuous, at first. One might think they are ignorant, but they are 
not, and they read so much more about Syria than a lot of us do. They 
are a dangerous bunch of dogmatic and arrogant ideologues who are not 
interested in any way in learning about what is actually happening 
there, and are deliberately shutting their eyes to the reality of the 
Syrian question. They believe their knowledge and insight is superior 
and is therefore incontestable. I have not hesitated to delete them from 
my friends' list, and I urge you to do so.

More information about the Marxism mailing list