The messages sent to me by the Syrian dissenters include some that are polite or intelligent, and a majority that are the complete opposite of that. What is common among the messages sent by this majority is obnoxiousness (some messages from the dissenters in Bahrain competed with these when it comes to that, but I will save these for another day). This becomes even clearer to me when I compare them to what we read in the course of the Egyptian revolution of rage, and the [funny] slogans in Tahrir Square such as ‘Leave, my hands hurt', or ‘Even if he were a demon, he would have departed by now'. There is nothing like that among the Syrian dissenters (remember, I am talking about the majority, not everybody). Instead, one of these messages, in a way that was repeated throughout many others, spoke about the dead, the injured, the children and the devastation, and wanted me to cry and sob about this. Personally, I know that bullets kill but I have never heard in my life that sobbing has ever brought back the dead. It thus seems that [the sender] has chosen to cry instead of avoiding bullets. I wrote about Syria four times, and each time, I called for an end for the killings, and placed this issue above the need for reform. I continue to demand that all acts of violence against the protesters be ceased and that all their legitimate demands be answered. I am with the protection of innocent lives and the realization of demands, and I do not understand the messages that fail to see this. There is another example, this time with the sender blaming other people of his own shortcomings: I have been having a month-long exchange with a reader who started with a nice e-mail message entitled ‘Coward', with this last word repeated many times over in the course of his message, not to be outdone by another accusation that he rails at me, namely that I am a writer of the court and that I have betrayed the people. Thus, although I write using my real name and although my address is known in London, Beirut, Damascus and Cairo, a reader who chose to remain anonymous accuses me of cowardice. His moniker is sometimes ‘Free Syria', and others ‘Moon Light', and sometimes even something else. He even becomes enraged when I use in my response to his messages, words that he used himself. Meanwhile, Adnan from Syria is not better than the person above. Al-Hayat published a message by Adnan which asked that since I do not expect Bashar al-Assad to change the way he's dealing with the protests, ‘then why did I write hundreds of articles praising him?” Hundreds of articles? I challenge Adnan, whose name is probably fake, to show me one article in which I praised the Syrian President. Yes, I conveyed his opinion because he is the newsmaker, not I. I had done the same thing with former President Hosni Mubarak, and I also challenge the reader to show me one interview with Mubarak in which I praised him, or any other thing I said beyond questions and answers. In the same set of the readers' mail, Haidar from Syria, who must be the same Adnan mentioned above, says, “We know your stance on the Syrian regime, as evident from your statement on BBC when you said you are one million percent on its side…” First, I said one thousand percent, and the reader seems to have multiplied this figure by another thousand. Second, I did not say that I am with the regime one thousand or indeed one million percent. What I said was that if the choice was between Bashar al-Assad and extremist radical groups, then I would prefer him to them a thousand times over, but I did not say that I prefer him to all the Syrian opposition. I go beyond the cowardice apparent from their hiding behind fake names, and I only protest their obnoxiousness [in these messages]. But all the above of course does not mean that I protest to any of the demands of the Syrian protesters. As an aside, the female reader S. Khoury is not one of those people. However, she evoked the past and reminded me of the quarrel I had with some Jordanian tribal figures, as she sent me a news story about how Jordanian women prefer to be married to Palestinians. I want to say to her thank you, and add that the old debate has since been closed. I stated my views, and they responded, and then I commented on their response and that was it. I have no personal beef with anyone, and I also totally refuse to be party to a Jordanian-Palestinian problem, since everyone is in the end my people, even if we have differences sometimes. (In truth, a few days ago I discovered that my driver in Manama was called Za'al [Sadness], and I had a successful tribal reconciliation with him.) The reader can object as he pleases, and reject every single one of my opinions or facts. My only condition is that no one should attribute to me things I did not say (I praised Hosni Mubarak once in an article in which I attacked Hizb-u-Tahrir, when members of the latter attacked the Egyptian Foreign Minister at the time Ahmed Maher, in the Holy Mosque in Jerusalem. I took this assault to be an insult to Egypt as personified by its foreign minister. However, it is impossible for me to have praised Mubarak or others in an interview restricted to mere questions and answers.) Consider Colleague Kamal Abdul Qader, who once objected to an article I wrote in defense of Hosni Mubarak following his ouster. He objected to every single paragraph I wrote, but in all politeness and professional courtesy. I continue to hold my opinion today, as he holds his, but in the end, this is just a difference of opinion. I have no difference at all with readers who defended Ahmed Shukairy. I had quoted a small part of what I had read about him and added nothing of my own. When I stumbled upon the topic, I thought it was about the late president of the PLO. Now, some readers tell me that the Shukairy that I know is the grandfather of the young Shukairy whom I do not know. [email protected]
