Peres concerned about Syrian blood

The Israeli President, Shimon Peres, has resorted to presenting himself as a moderate leader striving for peace and is using sweet talk to convince his listeners, particularly those in the West.

Peres, who has visited numerous Arab capitals, is not moderate at all and his history is full of evidence of this. It is enough to point out that he led the second Qana massacre during the Israeli assault on southern Lebanon which killed over 100 people, mostly women and children, who had to turn to the UN for protection from the missiles of the Israeli jets.  

Yesterday, during his speech to the European Parliament, the Israeli president gave a lecture on the bloodshed in Syria and the need to put an end to the massacres committed by the regime and its jets all over the country.

Peres also called for intervention by an Arab League force to stop the massacre in progress in Syria, and stressed the need to form an interim Syrian government that includes figures from the resistance. He stated, “We cannot stand by while President Bashar Al-Assad is killing his people and children.”

If this was said by a Swedish, Finnish, Brazilian or Arab president, we would understand and sympathize, because the bloodshed of the Syrian people and the need to put an end to the killings is a humanitarian and moral duty. However, for this to come from a president of a country that believes in killing, raids the territories of its neighbours, turns to committing massacres to terrorize ordinary people and makes an art form out of ethnic cleansing in order to establish a hostile entity on the land of others is the epitome of this tragedy.

Peres is not the person who should be teaching us about how to deal with the situations in our countries. If he is truly concerned about the Syrians, he should withdraw from the Syrian Golan Heights, which his government is currently occupying, plundering and scheming to annexe to Israel.

During Peres’s term in office, Israeli jets destroyed the Syrian al-Kabir reactor near Deir al-Zour in north-eastern Syria, and carried out an airstrike on Ain es Saheb near Damascus. It was claimed that grounds for the attack were the destruction of a PFLP general command base and the assassination of Imad Mughniyah, the head of the military wing of the Lebanese Islamic Resistance.

Furthermore, as we mentioned earlier, when Peres was Prime Minster, he sent planes to bomb safe Lebanese villages in southern Lebanon, and committed the second Qana massacre in a location where a blue UN flag was raised. This massacre was described on a television show by the famous British writer, Robert Fisk, as the ugliest massacre in the history of the region.

We are certainly not arguing over the fact that the Syrian regime is committing massacres, what we are arguing about and refuse to accept is for someone like Peres, whose hands are drenched in blood, to present himself as a harmless lamb lecturing the world on peace and putting an end to massacres. Perhaps Peres, who appears to currently speak on behalf of the Arab League announcing his support for Arab League troops to be sent into Syria, might be found one day standing on a platform in Tahrir Square, addressing foreign ministers; maybe even Arab leaders, since he considers himself one of them having addressed the Economic Summit in Morocco 15 years ago.

SOURCE:  Al Quds Al Arabi, Comment, London, 13/3/13