Daniel Lubetzky

Abdulrahman Al-Rashed, General Manager of Al Arabiya News Channel, shares a unique way of looking way of looking at the different players in Middle East conflicts. See his full piece after the jump.

 Spotted by Daniel Lubetzky, by Julianna Storch

Monday, 6 May 2013

There is no need to support either. When Israel attacks the Syrian regime, it does so because it aims to defend its security and interests.

And the same goes for us when we were happy that Israel attacked Assad’s forces and warehouses because the attack will speed up the collapse of the regime.

It will also deprive the regime of weapons that would have been used to kill more Syrians. Only Iran’s supporters condemned the attack because they fear for Tehran’s allies, like Hezbollah and Assad. They are not condemning it because of their hostility towards Israel.

Two years’ worth of massacres against tens of thousands of unarmed Syrians has revealed the biggest lie in this nation’s history: the lie of resistance. Syria’s conflicts have never really been aimed at Israel and have certainly never been aimed at defending Palestine, as our minds were hijacked to believe. Only a few were aware of the truth whilst the rest fell for this lie.

Condemnations and political calculations

Hezbollah’s operations against Israel have nothing to do with protecting Lebanon and defending Palestine. Hezbollah is merely an Iranian brigade which has been founded for more than 30 years to serve the aims of the Ayatollah’s regime in Tehran.

Throughout the years, Iran, (former president) Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad have sought to hijack the Palestinian cause in order to dominate Syria, occupy Lebanon and serve Iranian interests.

Other groups also did the same like Abu Nidal, the founder of Fatah, and Ahmad Jibril of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, as well as other random figures claiming resistance against Israel.

All of them aimed to confront and assassinate leaders of the Palestinian Liberation Organization when late president Yasser Arafat led it.

When Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi’s government condemned the Israeli military air strike against Assad’s forces on Sunday, like Iran did, it practically supported Assad but did not denounce Israel.

The stance of Mursi’s cabinet, which is biased towards Iran which in turn is biased towards Assad, would have been excused if it had played an effective role in supporting the Free Syrian Army.
But so far, its public stance is that it is with Iran and Russia, which frankly support Assad.

Mursi’s cabinet joined Moscow and Tehran in calling for what it dubbed the “political solution” to the Syrian crisis and national reconciliation between the Assad regime and the opposition. This is not only a shameful stance but it is also impossible to achieve this suggestion considering two years of slaughter and destruction carried out by Assad’s forces and Shabiha (thugs).

Despite Egyptian and Iranian condemnation, it is certain that the Syrian people were happy that Assad’s warehouses and forces were shelled regardless of Israel’s reasoning.

The Syrians will be even happier if Turkey responds to Assad’s regime violations of its sovereignty and attacks the forces instead of just issuing condemnations and statements.

Syrians are fed up with statements which now anger them a lot more than actually granting them hope. And they are not concerned much about regional political calculations regardless of whether Israelis, Westerners or Arabs shell Assad. What matters the most for them is that this lethal machine which is being publicly supported by the Russians, the Iranians and Hezbollah is destroyed.

This article was first published in Asharq al-Awsat on May 6, 2013.

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Abdulrahman al-Rashed is the General Manager of Al Arabiya News Channel. A veteran and internationally acclaimed journalist, he is a former editor-in-chief of the London-based leading Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, where he still regularly writes a political column. He has also served as the editor of Asharq al-Awsat’s sister publication, al-Majalla. Throughout his career, Rashed has interviewed several world leaders, with his articles garnering worldwide recognition, and he has successfully led Al Arabiya to the highly regarded, thriving and influential position it is in today.