How Israel Won Over The Syrian People
Elizabeth Tsurkov
In a popular Syrian news group on Facebook, a Syrian activist recently shared a video of Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teenager in jail for slapping an Israeli soldier. Across the world, Tamimi has become a cause celebré, a symbol of the Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation. But when the activist posted the Amnesty International video about Israel’s policy of detaining children and Tamimi in particular, most of the group’s members — all of them Syrian — reacted dismissively.
“They are better off than us by far, and prisoners are better off compared to how they are treated by Assad’s army and even the revolutionary factions [rebels],” wrote one Syrian from Lattakia.
“If the Syrian army was like the Israeli army, no one would have been displaced from their home,” another commentator, from Daraa, wrote. “If [Tamimi] had raised her head in front of a Syrian soldier, he would have field executed her.”
Far from outliers, these comments exemplify a changing reality among Syrians. The extreme levels of brutality meted out by the Assad regime and its allies against civilians in Syria have improved the image of the IDF by comparison across the Arab world.
It’s not just by comparison, either. Israeli humanitarian assistance and medical treatment in southern Syria has resulted in a marked shift in public opinion among Syrians who oppose the regime, especially in southern Syria, an area whose residents enjoy access to Israeli help.
“This is the first time in the region that they [Israelis] help without being an occupier,” says Shadi Martini, a Syrian who serves as the Director of Humanitarian Relief and Regional Relations to the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees, an organization providing much of the aid passing through Israel. “People are really seeing Israel in a different way. People are not even afraid to talk about working with Israel, because their friends and families support them; otherwise, they would have stayed silent.”
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Since 2013, when the program first started, Israeli hospitals have treated over 5,000 Syrians, providing them with life-saving and state-of-the-art medical treatment. Syrians who have received treatment in Israel report to their friends and relatives about the quality of care. Several residents of southern Syria pointed out to me that Jordanian hospitals treat Syrians much worse, and are quick to amputate limbs, whereas Israeli doctors conduct multiple operations in an effort to save injured limbs.
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“The Israeli Army is our hope,” wrote a Syrian woman in response to (false) reports about Israeli strikes on regime targets in mid-April 2018.
While Syrians recognize that Israel is bombing Hezbollah for its own interests and not to advance their revolutionary goals, they are still pleased to see the regime and its allies humiliated and diminished. As a Syrian residing in southern Syria recently told me, “We hope Israel will bomb the presidential palace, too.”
Read more:
https://forward.com/opinion/399181/how- ... an-people/
Оптимистична статия за подобрения имидж на Израел сред сирийците, особено тези в южна Сирия. Израел е приел над 5000 пациенти от 2013 г. насам, които хвалят условията в израелските болници и ги предпочитат пред йорданските. Освен това първо тайна, след това явната програма за снабдяване с хуманитарна помощ на южна Сирия печели сърцата на сирийците. Цитирани са сирийци, които одобряват и ударите по режима на Асад и Хизбула. Макар че съзнават, че тези въздушни удари са продиктувани от израелския интерес и нямат пряка връзка с революцията, те са доволни да видят режима унижен. Някои се надяват, че израелците някой ден ще ударят и президентския дворец.
Вярвам, че статията на Елизабет Цурков ще предизвика остра полемика и емоциални приливи.
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Gо, Bibi!
