{"id":8410,"date":"2011-02-18T00:00:41","date_gmt":"2011-02-18T05:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/?p=8410"},"modified":"2011-02-18T00:27:42","modified_gmt":"2011-02-18T05:27:42","slug":"demonstration-in-damascus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/demonstration-in-damascus\/","title":{"rendered":"Demonstration in Damascus"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/object><\/p>\n

From the Lede – New York Times Blog<\/a><\/p>\n

According to the blog Syria News Wire, a demonstration in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Thursday, caught on video posted on YouTube, was not part of a wave of antigovernment unrest sweeping the Arab world.<\/p>\n

The blog, which is written from Damascus and London, explains the video this way:<\/p>\n

An unprecedented scene in Syria this morning as an estimated 1500 people took to the streets in a spontaneous protest.<\/p>\n

They were angry that the son of a shop owner had been allegedly beaten by a traffic police officer. So they went on to the streets at Hariqa, just south of Souq Al-Hamidiyah in Damascus. From the video, it seems as if the protest spread down to the western end of Medhat Pasha.<\/p>\n

They chant \u201cthe Syrian people will not be humiliated\u201d, interspersed with, \u201cshame, shame\u201d and \u201cwith our soul, with our blood, we sacrifice for you Bashar\u201d. That\u2019s a very Syrian way of saying they were furious at the police, not the president. Also, note there was no chanting of \u201cthe people want the fall of the regime\u201d (the words used in Tunisia and Egypt, and now in Yemen and Bahrain).<\/p>\n

At the start of the video, almost every person in is holding up a mobile phone. With mobile phone video cameras plus Twitter and blogs to distribute the footage, public servants face a degree of accountability that they have never faced before.<\/p>\n

In a surreal moment, the Minister of the Interior arrives and asks the crowd why they are demonstrating. He has now promised an investigation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another Syrian blogger, a student in Aleppo who writes on Twitter as Seleucid<\/a>, called the video of the protest \u201cproof that the Syrians can do it as much as anybody, they just don\u2019t want to.\u201d<\/p>\n

This video and commentary from the Syrian blogosphere comes just three days after a teenage blogger, brought into court chained and blindfolded, was sentenced to five years in jail by a court in Syria. As Reuters reported<\/a>, the blogger, \u201cTal al-Molouhi, a high school student who has been under arrest since 2009 and is now 19, had written articles saying she yearned for a role in shaping the future of Syria and supporting the Palestinian cause. Lawyers said the judge gave no evidence or details as to why she had been charged.\u201d<\/p>\n

Letter From Herzliya, Neocon Woodstock<\/a>
\nMatthew Duss
\nFebruary 14, 2011<\/p>\n

…As a result of the revolution in Egypt, a key theme that emerged at the conference was hostility to Arab democracy and the assumption that it would bring only chaos and danger for Israel\u2014a mantra that also exposed a division between Israeli neoconservatives and some of their American comrades. \u201cIn the Arab world, there is no room for democracy,\u201d Israeli Major General Amos Gilead told a nodding audience. \u201cThis is the truth. We prefer stability.\u201d Former Israeli Ambassador to the US Zalman Shoval scoffed that George W. Bush\u2019s freedom agenda\u2019s \u201cprinciple accomplishment seems to be the victory of Hamas in Gaza.\u201d Boaz Ganor, the executive director of the IDC\u2019s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, warned, \u201cWhen these people [Arabs] vote, they are voting for what Coca-Cola calls the real thing and that is fundamentalism.\u201d Shmuel Bar, Director of Studies at the IDC\u2019s Institute of Policy and Strategy, declared that the US had \u201cbecome an agent of revolutionary change in the Middle East, at the expense of stability.\u201d<\/p>\n

In opening remarks to a late-addition panel on \u201cStability vs. Democracy,\u201d progressive analyst Brian Katulis\u2014one of a handful of non-conservatives invited to participate in the conference\u2014declared the panel\u2019s title false choice. Calling America\u2019s \u201ccontinuing addiction to dictators\u201d part of \u201ca cold war hangover,\u201d Katulis stressed the regional trends driving events in Egypt\u2014massive unemployment, millions of disillusioned youth\u2014and suggested that Israel and the United States would be wise to anticipate them. \u201cThere\u2019s a delusion that we can prevent these trends,\u201d said Katulis. \u201cAnd we\u2019ll probably hear some of these delusions on this panel.\u201d<\/p>\n

As if to immediately make Katulis\u2019s point for him, Martin Kramer of Israel\u2019s conservative Shalem Center began by mocking the Obama administration\u2019s repeated assertions that the regional \u201cstatus quo is unsustainable,\u201d suggesting that it should be taken as the administration’s motto. “In Israel, we are for the status quo,” Kramer said. “Not only do we believe the status quo is sustainable, we think it’s the job of the US to sustain it.”<\/p>\n

Responding to Kramer\u2019s remark afterward, Israeli analyst Meir Javedanfar said, \u201cThe first stage after a divorce or death is denial. This is followed by anger, then bargaining, depression and acceptance.\u201d Kramer \u201cis still in the denial stage. His statement shows that he still has not realized that the relationship with Egypt is over.\u201d<\/p>\n

But however much in denial, Kramer\u2019s and Bar\u2019s comments get at something real among conservative Israeli foreign policy elite: a sense that America, under both Bush and Obama, has failed to apply its power correctly in the region. This inability to achieve certain goals has consequently led to a perception of American decline (never mind that the refusal of allies like Netanyahu to honor American requests contributes to that perception). Many also voiced concerns that Obama\u2019s treatment of Mubarak would cause other US client states to question America\u2019s commitments.<\/p>\n

\u201cObama is perceived, in a moment of truth, to have abandoned an ally,\u201d said Brig. Gen. Michael Herzog, now a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute. \u201cIt\u2019s unfair, but that\u2019s the perception.\u201d Herzog also doesn\u2019t characterize Israeli views on democracy as harshly as some others. \u201cMany, if not most, Israelis would lean at this point towards stability\u201d rather than democracy, Herzog said, \u201cnot because they don\u2019t want to see democracy around them\u2014they do\u2014but because they are highly skeptical whether the upheaval in Egypt will lead to real democracy in the foreseeable future.\u201d And many Israelis are deeply concerned over\u00a0potential negative developments in the meantime….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Lede – New York Times Blog According to the blog Syria News Wire, a demonstration in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Thursday, caught on video posted on YouTube, was not part of a wave of antigovernment unrest sweeping the Arab world. The blog, which is written from Damascus and London, explains the video […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hr-prisoners","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nDemonstration in Damascus - Syria Comment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/demonstration-in-damascus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Demonstration in Damascus - Syria Comment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From the Lede – New York Times Blog According to the blog Syria News Wire, a demonstration in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Thursday, caught on video posted on YouTube, was not part of a wave of antigovernment unrest sweeping the Arab world. 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