Video and transcript inside: Three days ago I heard a casual report, lasting maybe two lines, on SBS or ABC news, that ISIS militants had taken over a suburb of Damascus six kilometers from the Presidential Palace. Although this sounded really awful, the lack of detail was suspicious. One could imagine the United States using such a half-baked report as an excuse to attack the area from the air and kill the Syrian president, so I tried to find out more by going outside Australian and US/NATO news sources. The Syrian government has since driven ISIS out of the area. [1] Below this introduction is a video interview with Alaa Ibrahim, and my transcript of it. From Voltaire.net [1] I learned were that Yamouk refugee 'camp' is not a camp with tents but a fully fledged built-up suburb of Damascus, mostly inhabited by Palestinian refugees, to whom Syria grants full rights to housing, free education and health, like ordinary citizens. Palestine, as readers would be aware, no longer exists on the map, but it used to be next door to Syria, on its southern border, in the area now occupied by Israel. Syria is the only Arab state that provides legal equality to Palestinians and it administers their areas in conjunction with Palestinian leaders. Something like seven million of Syria's population before the current war were refugees from, as well as Palestine, the nearby war-torn states, notably Iraq. (It is amazing that the Australian refugee advocate movement and our anti-war movement - such as it is - does not appear to have realised this.)
Recent comments