The beleaguered residents of Yarmouk, a Palestinian suburb of Damascus, have been brutally attacked by the forces of both Bashar al-Assad and Islamic State (IS). Yet there has been no outcry even from most pro-Palestinian organizations (including the PLO), and no protests, calls for boycotts, or UN resolutions. Ben Cohen comments:
Both Assad and IS are culpable for Yarmouk’s wretched situation, with Assad taking the lion’s share of the blame. In response to the appearance of Free Syrian Army fighters in Yarmouk, often backed by local Palestinian factions, Assad began a brutal campaign of air strikes in December 2012. By the early summer of 2013, Yarmouk was under a full-blown siege, with water, electricity, and food supplies cut off from its residents. According to current estimates, around 18,000 of an original population of 160,000 remain in Yarmouk, exposed to the full horrors of Syria’s civil war—malnutrition, displacement, and deadly, systemic abuse. . . .
[D]espite the fact that Yarmouk is by some measure the worst blow taken by the Palestinians in nearly seven decades, the legions of Palestine solidarity activists in the West have remained unmoved. Their silence is, in many ways, confirmation of the suspicion that the Palestine solidarity movement is motivated primarily by detestation of Israel’s existence, rather than [concern] for Palestinians wherever they may be. . . .
At the heart of anti-Zionist ideology is a theory of original sin that haunts its Jewish bearers for eternity. The “Nakba” [the Palestinian term for the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation] . . . .didn’t end in 1948 [according to this theory]. It is still going on, and the sin lies with its originators, the men and woman who created the state of Israel, and only them.
More about: Bashar al-Assad, ISIS, Israel & Zionism, Palestinians, Syrian civil war