Britain and United States condemn murder in Syria but condone murder in Palestine
Arising out the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist who invented
dynamite, the Nobel Prize is universally recognized as the most
prestigious award in the fields of peace-making, economics, chemistry,
physics, medicine and literature. How about an international award –
without the gold medal, the diploma and the money – for hypocrisy?
Such an award could be called the Lebon Prize (reversing Nobel).
If there was such an award, the statements of European and American
leaders in the immediate aftermath of Russia and China’s veto of the
Security Council resolution to end the killing in Syria suggest two most
obvious nominees for it.
One is William Hague, Britain’s foreign secretary.
In the House of Commons he pronounced Bashar al-Assad’s regime to be
“doomed” because there is “no way it can recover its credibility”. That
may very well be the case in the long term, but in my view that Hague
statement was somewhat naive at the time he made it. For its short- to
medium-term survival at the time of writing, and unless visiting Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is seeking to engineer Bashar al-Assad’s
departure from office in a face-saving way that will protect Russia’s
interests, the Syrian regime doesn’t need credibility in the outside
world. It needs only enough weapons and the will to go on killing its
own people. (That said there can be no doubt that Bashar al-Assad and/or
his Alawite generals took the Russian and Chinese vetoes as a green
light to escalate the killing. Also to be noted is that Bashar al-Assad
was not the only Arab leader to draw a particular conclusion from
Mubarak’s downfall. “If our people take to the streets demanding regime
change, shoot them!”)
But the particular Hague statement that prompts my suggestion that he
be nominated for a Lebon Prize for hypocrisy was this one. By exercising
their veto “Russia and China have placed themselves on the wrong side
of Arab and international opinion.”
The obvious implication is that it’s not good politics and policy to be
on the wrong side of that opinion. Really? Then how do we explain the
fact that all the governments of the Western world, led by America, are
on the wrong side of it because of their support for the Zionist state
of Israel right or wrong – unending occupation, ongoing ethnic cleansing
and all? There is a one-word answer. Hypocrisy.
Hague also condemned China and Russia for “betraying the Syrian
people”. It apparently doesn’t matter that the British and all other
Western governments have been betraying the Palestinians for decades.
There really is no end and no limit to the hypocrisy.
The second most obvious nominee for a Lebon Prize for hypocrisy is
Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN. In condemning the Russian and
Chinese vetoes, she said, “For months this council has been held hostage
by a couple of members.”
Given that for the Security Council has been held hostage for decades
by American vetoes to protect Israel from being called to account for
its crimes, that Rice statement is – what I can say without resorting to
use of the “F” word? – hypocrisy most naked and taken to its highest
level
No doubt readers will have other suggestions, probably many, for nominations for a Lebon Prize for hypocrisy.
