A Good Day for Bashar Assad

Syrian President Bashar Assad must be crowing about the success of his Nakba Day distraction. Yesterday, thousands of Palestinian residents of Syria marked the day by mobbing the border with Israel and breaking through, forcing Israel to open fire to stop the invasion. Four people were killed and 40 wounded; the others were peacefully returned to Syria later that day.

The same scene was repeated on the Lebanese border. There 10 people were killed (though Israel says they were shot by Lebanese soldiers).

The idea that these demonstrations were spontaneous is ludicrous. Syria is currently under martial law, in the midst of a brutal government crackdown on its own people. The army is out in force all over the country. Under these conditions, there is no chance whatever that thousands of people could get all the way to and past the heavily guarded border with Israel unless the Syrian army–i.e. the government–had approved the incursion.

The same is true for Lebanon, whose south–meaning the entirety of its border with Israel–is ruthlessly and totally controlled by Syria’s loyal ally, Hezbollah. Nothing happens in south Lebanon without Hezbollah’s consent; that is why there are virtually no Palestinian attacks across that border. Hezbollah zealously enforces its monopoly on such attacks. There is thus no chance that thousands of Palestinian protesters could descend on Israel’s border without Hezbollah’s approval.

It’s not hard to figure out why Assad and his Lebanese ally would encourage these invasions. The Syrian president desperately needs a distraction from the uprising in his own country and his brutal suppression of it. His own countrymen did not take the bait; the anti-regime demonstrations continued unabated. Nevertheless, Assad knew that he could rely on the West’s useful idiots to take the bait. As Omri pointed out yesterday, journalists like the New York Times‘s Nicholas Kristof fell obediently into line, sending inane tweets like “Pres. Assad must be so relieved that Israel shot Syrians at the border, distracting from his own shootings of Syrians.”

In a rational world, the media might take note of two important distinctions. First, Israel was repelling a hostile mob trying to invade its borders, while Assad is shooting his own people in an effort to suppress their demands for democracy. Second, while the border incident was a one-time event, Assad has been mowing down demonstrators every day for eight weeks, with the result that the UN now puts the death toll as high as 850. Then, having noted these distinctions, the media might reach the rational conclusion: what Assad is doing is far more serious.

But in the real world, the media prefers to obsess over Israel. Assad can relax, confident that his Nakba Day diversion accomplished its purpose, and go on slaughtering his people while the West yawns.