Left has learned nothing from Syria crisis
Op-ed: As West becomes more sensitive to human rights, its willingness to use force in order to protect them decreases
Without getting into the question of whether the US should intervene in the Syrian civil war, the past few weeks have shown us, yet again, that as the West's sensitivity to human rights increases, the willingness on the part of its leaders and citizens to use military force to protect these rights decreases.
The saga of the delayed American response is not merely further evidence of the hesitation and softness of the American superpower under Obama's leadership in the face of brutal rulers such as Assad and cynical patrons like Putin, it is another worrying sign of the downfall of West, headed by the US.
The horrific events in Syria and other events related to the "Arab Spring" have hardly changed the discourse on the state of Arab society. Apart from a few discussions on Fox News, media outlets in the West have largely ignored the topic. You would also be hard pressed to find leftists in Israel and the western world who would be willing to admit that maybe something is rotten in the divided 22-state Arab kingdom.
Assad is following in the footsteps of "Chemical Ali" (the Iraqi defense minister who gassed Kurds in 1987) and his father Hafez, who massacred 10,000-40,000 people in Hama in 1982. In Egypt the army regained control through an aggressive coup, and Lebanon is ruled by a terror organization – Hezbollah – which also helps Assad butcher his own people. In Libya a regime of armed militias has replaced the regime of the madman Gaddafi.
Despite all of these developments, leftist organizations in Israel and the West are focusing on America's militancy, Obama's "capitulation to militant populism," Cameron's goal to "make Britain great again," Israel's "clear interest in meddling in the Syrian war" and the American Jewish lobby, which is "influencing the administrations' moves from behind the scenes." Heaven forbid they should talk about Arab society itself.
The radical Left in Israel and the world views everything that is happening in the Arab world, and not only there, as an almost deterministic product of imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, racism and the hatred of the other in the West, which they claim were fostered mainly by the US of Ronald Regan and George W. Bush, Thatcher's Britain and Israel when it is ruled by the Right.
These leftists ignore for example, the findings of a 2002 study conducted by 70 academics, intellectuals and researchers (all Arab) on the 22 members of the Arab League which determined that the Arab world is plagued by backwardness, zealotry and lack of achievement.
They are ignoring the oppression of women and minorities in the Levant, the trampling of human and civil rights, the blind worship of force, the presence of murderous terrorists and the lack of democracy.
Anyone who dares to hold up a mirror to Arab society will not be able to return home without a crown of thorns placed on his head by the local and global Left with the inscription: "Racist, rightist and unenlightened."
