Don’t resign yourself to putting might before right

In his editorial for the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” on 14 December 2024, the editor-in-chief showed highly impressed by Israel’s policy and the “Israeli triumph” in the Middle East. Israel was showing “what can be achieved with a clear strategy and determination”. And with regard to the developments in Syria, he added: “The good news of the power-political shake-up is that conditions can suddenly turn in favour of the beleaguered West”.
  Two days earlier, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, had expressed his “deep concerns” about the “extensive violations” of Syrian sovereignty caused by the numerous Israeli airstrikes on Syria.¹ On 11 December, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Human Rights, Ben Saul, stated with regard to Israel’s attacks on Syria that there was “absolutely no legal basis for pre-emptively disarming a country you don’t like […]”. Israel’s bombings were “completely lawless”. Accepting Israel’s actions would be “a recipe for global chaos.” The UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, George Katrougalos, characterised Israel’s actions in Syria as “part of a pattern”: “It is yet another case of lawlessness that Israel is demonstrating in the region: Unprovoked attacks against a sovereign state.”²
  The Berliner Zeitung, which quoted the two UN special rapporteurs, added: “Neither Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz nor Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock have publicly commented on these accusations or on Israel’s bombardments in Syria in general. When asked by the Berliner Zeitung, the Foreign Office refused to comment on the accusations of violations of international law by Israel.”

The mantra of Western power elites …

This once again casts a telling light on German policy. However, it is not only Germany that is following this line, but all Western supporters of Israel. The editor-in-chief of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung does not speak for himself alone, but on behalf of the majority of Western power elites.
  He has simply formulated the current mantra of these power elites: Our interests and our power politics are above the law! We are not concerned with freedom and democracy, even if we repeatedly claim this in public.

… has created barbaric conditions

This ignorance of the law has created barbaric conditions. And not just today, but for a long time and step by step, especially since the beginning of the 1990s and the claim to world domination by US power elites and their combatants. The list of US and NATO wars in violation of international law and the staging of violent regime changes is just the tip of the iceberg. Added to this is the Western sanctions policy violating international law, and the plundering of states in the Global South which often involves violence.³
  A “coalition of the willing” with differing goals (Turkey, USA and Israel) and very different front-line soldiers has now succeeded in forcing a regime change in Syria.

Lack of honesty

The lack of honesty is particularly offensive. According to the mainstream Western media, a brutal tyrant has been removed from power in Syria, a tyrant who bears sole responsibility for all the misery that the Syrian people have had to endure for more than ten years. Now that he has been overthrown, all Syrians, both at home and abroad, should be celebrating. Balanced accounts of events are nowhere to be found in the Western mainstream. Instead, we see demonisation of the “enemy” and a distortion of history in the service of power.

What remains unmentioned

What remains unmentioned is the devastating effect of the Western sanctions, violating international law, against Syria and the people living there. The UN Special Rapporteur on the negative effects of unilateral coercive measures, Alena Douhan, visited the country in fall 2022 and presented her shocking report in July 2023.⁴
  Also unmentioned are the US plans⁵ for a violent overthrow in Syria, which had been nurtured long before 2011, the numerous acts of war against the country by the US, Turkey and other NATO states since 2011 in violation of international law, the massive Western and Turkish support for violent opponents of the Assad government, the occupation of large areas of land in northern Syria by Turkey and the US in violation of international law, and the plundering of Syrian oil by the US in violation of international law.
  In his posthumously published book “Die gewaltsame amerikanisch-israelische Neuordnung des Vorderen Orients”⁶ (The violent American-Israeli restructuring of the Middle East) from 2022, the former Swiss diplomat Kurt O. Wyss, who deceased in 2019, explained in great detail that US policy and Israel have been ignoring the law for many years, relying instead on breaches of the law and violence, chaos and destruction to achieve their goals in West Asia and also in Syria.
  The fact that the past few weeks have not been a time of orderly transition of government affairs, but a time of violent overthrow – mainly by an armed group mobilised by Turkey, which even in the West was described as a terrorist group until recently – therefore has a long history. The fact that there is no legal basis for this overthrow is completely ignored by the Western power elites.

Why no legal transition?

With regard to the events in Syria, Western power elites, who otherwise present themselves as quite bourgeois, like to talk about a “revolution” – as if this term could justify the breach of the law and cover up the massive foreign interference. We are familiar with similar events in other countries, for example in Ukraine. However, such a regime change is not a trivial matter. With the continued violent Western breaches of the law, the dams of civilisation have been and are being broken, and the consequences of this are already devastating.
  Russian policy, which is once again being polemicised against in connection with the violent regime change in Syria, has repeatedly emphasised in recent years that there must also be further development for Syria – albeit in a lawful manner and with the involvement of all political forces in the country. Those involved in the violent overthrow have ignored this demand.

Wake up before
another human catastrophe

Violent breaches of the law are always associated with serious violations of human rights. The Charter of the United Nations from 1945 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 had the two world wars in the first half of the 20^th century directly in mind when they named the connection between violent violations of the law and these great human disasters.
  Today, we have to realise that the Western power elites are ignoring the lessons of history. They no longer shy away from breaking the law. Will humanity wake up before there is a third human catastrophe? Resigning ourselves to the powerful breaking the law cannot be the end of the story! •

¹ cited from ttps://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/ausland/syrien-guterres-sorge-souveraenitaet-angriffe-israel-100.html of 13 December 2024
² cited from https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/geopolitik/israel-bombardiert-syrien-laut-un-voelkerrechtswidrig-die-bundesregierung-schweigt-li.2280823 of 12 December 2024
³ cf. Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 2004
⁴ https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ahrc5423add1-visit-syrian-arab-republic-report-special-rapporteur f 3 July 2024
⁵ There have been plans for a violent regime change in Syria back in the 1990s under US President Clinton. In 2002 – under the presidency of George W. Bush – US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Syria (along with Iraq, Iran and North Korea) was part of the “axis of evil”. That is why regime change was needed there too. In a recent article for Consortium News (https://consortiumnews.com/2024/12/13/us-israel-destroyed-syria-called-it-peace/ from 13 December 2024), Jeffrey Sachs summarised again the history of US and Israeli aggression against Syria.
⁶ cf. on Syria especially pages 151ff.