Iran Calls Shots in Syria

MASSACRING THEIR OWN PEOPLE By Tom Gross April 26

This dispatch is a follow-up to my recent article on Syria.

Because some in the international media are still not covering the six-week-old Syrian uprising properly, and indeed certain journalists are still taking Assad regime propaganda at face value, I attach four videos below.

(As recently as yesterday, the correspondent for The New York Times, for example, was still referring to Bashar Assad as though he was some kind of moderate reformer who may have little or nothing to do with the current crackdown in Syria, much in the same way that for years other writers at The New York Times made excuses for Yasser Arafat, deluding themselves that Arafat had nothing to do with the terrorism which he was in fact initiating.)

Bashar Assad, even more than his father, has formed an ever closer alliance with the regime in Tehran, hence U.S.President Obama’s reference yesterday to the role of Iranian advisors in the present massacre of Syrians.

Israel is on high alert in case Assad and his partners in Tehran create a crisis in Lebanon or Gaza. We should not forget that the cause of the crisis that led to the 1967 Six-Day War was Syrian instability, and the willingness of Syria’s Alawite rulers to act against Israel in order to maintain their rule.

Carrying out acts of terror is nothing new for the Assad family, of course. They have been aiding and abetting terrorism against Israelis, Lebanese, Kurds, Iraqis and others for decades.

Al Jazeera is carrying interviews with witnesses in the city of Daraa, and in the Damascus suburb of Duma, saying that after Syrian security forces have shot unarmed demonstrators, they have then executed many of the injured, and shot anyone trying to help them. The authorities have turned off water and electricity in the area, so the injured can’t be treated properly in hospitals in any case.

Meanwhile, Syria is still in line to become the newest member of the (cruelly misnamed) U.N. Human Rights Council when a vote takes place on May 20 at the UN General Assembly in New York.

Be warned, this first video (filmed over the weekend) is one of the most graphic I have ever posted. (The other two videos after that are not nearly as gruesome. In particular I recommend watching the second video. There are some other notes after the three videos.)

-- Tom Gross