The Syrian war has thrown not only antiwar forces for a loop but also the Palestinian solidarity movement. The disarray comes during a period of military crises & the weak antiwar movement is in no condition to unite around even a minimum program of action. Palestinian solidarity activists are divided, with some cheering Assad as a champion of the people when nearly 500 Palestinians have been tortured to death in his gulag & hundreds of others are political prisoners.
Some Palestinian supporters have disgraced the movement with Islamophobic rubbish about US-backed “head-chopping, heart-eating rapist jihadists”; some by accusing civilians being bombed by Assad & Russia of using their children as human shields; some with attacks on White Helmet rescue workers as nefarious operatives; & some with anti-Semitic claims that the war is initiated & all about Israel rather than about Assad’s dictatorship.
Many Palestinians have bristled at this outrageous rubbish & have blogged, twittered, & written no-nonsense rebuttals denouncing these attempts to put them at odds with their Syrian brothers & sisters under siege. This article by Sharif Nashashibi is part of that campaign & takes the issue on head-first without equivocation.