Heikal’s opinion on the Syrian people
I was not shocked by what the veteran Egyptian journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal had said about the Syrian people. I never agreed with much of what he had been saying over the years. I must admit that Heikal has his own school of thought and he still has followers. However, even his students in Egypt have been bitterly attacking him these days because of what he wrote in Al-Ahram and other newspapers about the revolution in Syria. His students also criticized his attitude regarding the Egyptian revolution and the presidential candidates.
What pained me the most was his mockery and cynicism of what is happening to the people in Syria. Heikal said: “I know that the notorious Blackwater company, which is famous for its clandestine and bloody history, is existing with a new name around Syria and inside it, and that it has about 6,000 people inside and outside Syria.” This reminded me of his nonsensical claims that it was the Yugoslav Serbs who exploded the two World Trade Towers in New York.
Blackwater in Syria? What a lie! Even Sharif Shihata, the media representative of the regime, could not go to that extreme. As per his usual habit, Heikal used the words “I know.” We know that he does not know much of what he claims to know. It is us who know that more than 10,000 people, with names, families and addresses, were brutally killed in Syria in a war the Arabs have not known for more than half a century. All these people were brutally killed by the regime’s army. Most of them were peaceful and unarmed civilians. Some of them were killed while demonstrating against the regime, while others were killed inside their homes during random shelling as per the regime's policy aimed at punishing and terrorizing the people.
Few of them were killed while carrying arms to defend their areas, while some others were murdered because they dared to revolt against the regime after long years of repression, systematic slaughtering and torture. Are all these dead children, women and old men members of the Blackwater that Heikal has invented? I have no doubt that Heikal is well aware of the fact that had Blackwater or the CIA been present in Syria, the regime would not have survived for 15 months.
Heikal also claims that what is happening in Syria is a NATO conspiracy. If only half of this lie were true, freedom fighters would have entered the People’s Palace in Damascus last summer and toppled President Assad and his junta.
The Assad regime is repressing the peaceful and unarmed Syrian people by shear force. The people remain unarmed because they are prevented by the world community from acquiring arms. They are even deprived of the right to escape through the borders.
In fact, if there is any conspiracy, it is one aimed at protecting the regime and not vice versa. The world community could not stop Assad’s warplanes from raiding and killing civilians. This community has allowed him to use more than 4,000 tanks to demolish towns and villages.
The regime is receiving oil free of charge from Iraq to fuel its tanks, armored vehicles and warplanes. It is also receiving shipments of modern arms from Russia and Iran. The Iranian Blackwater, the Iranian Republican Guards, and the Hezbollah militias are fighting alongside Assad’s forces.
Worse of all, Heikal has decided on his own that “There is a majority of people in Syria who do not want what happened in Libya to take place in their country. They did not want an Arab Spring that is the making of the NATO.” Just imagine: Eight hundred demonstrations took place simultaneously in various parts of Syria last week, and Heikal would still have the nerve to say the majority of the Syrian people did not want to change the regime!
Heikal also did not want to see other Arabs supporting the Syrian people. He said: “I listen sometimes to the Saudi foreign minister speaking. I close my eyes and imagine that the voice coming to me is actually the voice of Ernesto Che Guevara, the symbol of the international revolution.” Is not support the least we can do in the face of this situation, which is similar (in its brutality) to the massacres in Bosnia, Kosovo, Gaza and Beirut?
In his speeches and writings, Heikal confuses Syria, the country and the people, with Syria, the regime of Assad. We want him to name names. He said, “There is a campaign against Syria,” while in fact the campaign is in the defense of Syria and against the killings and genocide being committed by the regime.
Here I quote an Egyptian writer who is disappointed with Heikal. He says, “Heikal does not know all this. He does not follow or understand what is happening, because he kept himself aloof from the events and the experiences of the Arab people before and after the Arab Spring. Heikal is still a captive of the incidents of the 1960s and 70s and the Nasserite (the time of former Egyptian leader Jamal Abdul Nasser) era.”
