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August 22, 2013

The End Of The World?

“Can it be that only hours ago a tyrant used chemical weapons against his own people who were rebelling in the capital’s suburbs against his tyranny? Can it be that during this gorgeous summer, Arab women and children are being gassed to death by an Arab dictator?” asks an incredulous Ari Shavit, below. “If civilians can be gassed to death in 2013, we face the end of the world. It’s the end of the world that purports to be moral and enlightened.”

Yes, Mr. Shavit, civilians can indeed be gassed to death in 2013 and the world will stand by and do nothing. That is because the world’s so-called moral compass (or lack thereof) never really changes.

Remember the 1988 gassing of thousands of men, women and children in the Kurdish town of Halabja in Northern Iraq? That was courtesy of Saddam Hussein. Between 3,200-5,000 Kurds were murdered, 7,000-10,000 more were injured, and thousands more died of complications, diseases, and birth defects in the ensuing years.

And all that happened as the so-called “moral and enlightened” world stood by and did nothing.

Years later, in fact, hypocrites and moral relativists (aka liberals), such as yourself and your newspaper, crucified American President George W. Bush for going into Iraq and disrupting the oh-so-peaceful-paradise that existed there under the rule of Saddam Hussein.

Another glaring example of world apathy is, of course, the Holocaust. Europe’s Six Million Jews were starved, tortured and gassed to death, while the world stood by and did nothing.

In fact, the nation that arose from the ashes of those millions of victims, and promised to be the shield of the Jewish people and its nation Israel, is vilified and condemned on a daily basis – by those same hypocrites and moral relativists – for defending itself from the same barbarians in that same “evil neighborhood” you denounce today.

So yes, Mr. Shavit, it is indeed time to "break free of the moral relativism, multicultural hypocrisy and political correctness" that prevent us and the rest of the world from seeing evil as it really is. And yes, a terrible warning siren is indeed being sounded today in Damascus.

But NO, we and the rest of the world do NOT hear it, and even if we did, chances are we’d do little, if anything  about it. For as you see, we and the rest of the world have a habit of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, each time.

The pity is, as a wise man once said, "the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history." 

Haaretz.com  |  August 22, 2013

The End Of The World Is Starting In Damascus

If civilians can be gassed to death in 2013, we face the end of the world that purports to be moral and enlightened

By Ari Shavit

Syrian families mourn.jpg
Families mourn deaths in alleged chemical weapon attacks near Damascus, Syria. Photo by AP

Can this really be happening? In the 21st century? Only a few hundred kilometers from where I’m sitting writing this piece? Can it be that only hours ago a tyrant used chemical weapons against his own people who were rebelling in the capital’s suburbs against his tyranny? Can it be that during this gorgeous summer, Arab women and children are being gassed to death by an Arab dictator?

The eye refuses to believe the pictures the iPad is transmitting. The mind cannot grasp the reports the iPhone is delivering. After the taboos of using artillery, helicopters and missiles on civilians have been broken, the taboo of using unconventional weapons has apparently been shattered as well. According to news reports, not far from us, in the same Damascus with which we sought to make peace, Arabs are murdering Arabs with chemical weapons.

True, more than 100,000 people have already been slaughtered in Syria. For two years our northern neighbor has been bleeding in a way that the Israelis and Palestinians haven’t bled in a hundred years of conflict. And there has already been a chemical weapons incident that the world didn’t really want to acknowledge.

But now it’s highly probable that a horrifying and unprecedented attack took place east of Damascus. If this is the case, Syrian President Bashar Assad and the Arab Spring have crossed the black line. The glorious Arab uprising that the West enthusiastically supported has become an apocalyptic event.

No decent person can ignore what’s happening. What is supposed to be an enlightened world cannot remain silent. Each day, the Syrian civil war is taking on the chilling connotations of the Spanish Civil War. It heralds the end of an era and delineates the coming era.

It’s not only innocent victims being buried in Damascus, but the concept of enlightened Arab nationalism and the hope that the West has a conscience. Women and children who were apparently gassed to death are being buried in Damascus, along with the ideal of an international community and the illusion of international law.

If civilians can be gassed to death in 2013, we face the end of the world. It’s the end of the world that purports to be moral and enlightened. It’s the end of the world that sought to establish a reasonable international order of which the Middle East would be part.

Many in the West and Israel despise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But what’s happening in Syria proves the validity of Netanyahu’s warning that the greatest danger to world peace in the 21st century is the combination of unconventional weapons and unconventional regimes. Lunatics really are insane. Barbarians are really barbaric. Huns will be Huns.

Those who act mercifully toward Huns bear direct responsibility for the fact that nuclear weapons are being built in Iran, chemical weapons are being used in Syria and doomsday weapons threaten the future of the Middle East. Those who underestimate the inherent danger of the Huns bear direct responsibility for the deaths of today’s victims, the Syrians, and tomorrow’s victims, the Israelis, Europeans and Americans.

It’s time to break free of the moral relativism, multicultural hypocrisy and political correctness that prevent us from seeing our evil neighborhood as it really is. A terrible warning siren is being sounded in Damascus. Do we hear it? Does the world hear it?

Original aricle here.


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