Remembering Syria (Marrickville Town Hall March 20, 2013)

Remembering Syria with the Marrickville Peace Group – March 20, 2013

Damascus has become feeble,
she has turned to flee
and panic has gripped her;
anguish and pain have seized her,
pain like that of a woman in labour.

(Jeremiah 49:24)

Words of the prophet Jeremiah that sound very contemporary but which were actually first spoken in the 6^th century B.C. and reflect the fact Damascus (and the people of Syria as a whole) have seen their fair share of violence and suffering over the last twenty seven centuries of human history!

The great irony of course is that until very recently Syria was something of an oasis in the Middle East, and especially for Christian people, who could worship freely in Syria – something that is completely impossible in its neighbouring Arab countries!

Our media told us that the cause of all the violence was a popular democratic uprising against the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, but most of us now realise that this is not the full story.

Our media depicted the noble rebels as a group akin to Robin Hood and his merry men, but the growing list of atrocities and the obvious links to Al Qaeda have put the lie to that one too.

It is starting to become obvious that this war was largely initiated and has been largely fuelled by neighbouring countries backed by the U.S. and NATO, who have their own insidious reasons for wanting to weaken Syria and get rid of the current government, perhaps largely because they want to weaken Iran. And so the media dutifully constructs a narrative and we dutifully swallow it, and so we all become complicit.

And the problem is that it’s not only the truth that suffers! It’s tens of thousands of Syrian men, women and children – almost all of whom did not want this conflict and did not chose to participate in it.

So many of our sisters and brothers have suffered and so many acts of inhumanity have been performed that the country will remain scarred for many years to come.

It’s not obvious that we can do very much from here but we must do what we can. And one thing we can do it to begin to tell the truth about what is really happening – about the media bias, and about the way we profit from seeing Syria destroyed.

We all have blood on our hands, but we can all make a stand today for truth and for peace for the people of Syria.