Hazem al-Amin

I recently met a Syrian businessman from Aleppo, one of those people who does not wish for the Syrian regime to fall. He is neither close to the ruling political or security apparatus, nor one of its foes. He is simply a Syrian to whom the regime did no harm. What struck me about the man, however, was the intense grudge he held against the Lebanese politicians who have appeared on TV to defend the current regime in his country. His opinion on this breed of politicians is worth discussing, as he considered them to speak a different language to the Syrians and to use a dictionary that is wholly unrelated to Syrian division. One of the politicians of whom he spoke called on the Syrian president to quit the so-called “containment policy with the conspirators” and urged him to bring the [Syrian] army into confrontation with them. Another Lebanese politician brandished the threat of a potentially all-encompassing regional conflict, if the regime in Syria were to be endangered.

Our friend, the Syrian businessman, believes that Lebanese politicians and media figures who appear as guests on Syrian television do so, not only because they are part of a mechanism that is utilized by the Syrian regime in its time of need, but also because they are foreigners. The violence used by the Syrian regime internally has a different dimension to the violence that it used in Lebanon. In Syria, violence is mute and takes place in daily interactions, alongside rhetoric of compromise. No Syrian, no matter how close he or she is to the regime, could call upon Assad to step up his violent confrontation with protesters, nor could they threaten the Arab region as a whole.

After thinking about this businessman’s point of view for two consecutive days, I decided to test its soundness. Indeed, Syrian MPs and political analysts on satellite television, who have risen to notoriety due to their flimsy pretexts and reasoning, are always keen to end their irrational on-screen talk with an assertion of their inclination toward some kind of settlement.

Alternatively, they say that a distinction should be made between protesters and “conspirators.” Some, for instance, acknowledge the possibility that a mistake has been made, whereas others try to shrug the mistake off with a smile. As a result, Syrians feel like laughing; however Lebanese nationals leave them seething with anger.

Regime-friendly Syrian citizens feel that those Lebanese [who are too vocal about defending the Syrian regime] are acting in such a way as to endanger [the very nature of] daily behavior in Syria. In the meantime, these same people merely express dissatisfaction with the performance of their own citizens, who appear on television as regime analysts or close supporters of the regime. The protesting majority is certainly angrier. Daring to call for more blood is in effect encouraging the regime to go beyond the violence that is already being exerted, knowing already that the regime’s violence reaches new heights every day.

Yet calling for more violence pushes these heights even further away. No sooner are such calls for violence made than the [Syrian] regime adopts them merely a couple of days later.

Syrians spread dozens of jokes and funny stories about Syrian pro-regime analysts, but we have yet to hear any joke about the Syrian regime’s mouthpieces in Lebanon. Perhaps it is because we know that their statements, even when rendered as jokes, would not come out at all as funny.