An archive photo from the Hama massacre in 1982 (Al Jazeera)

The French newspaper Le Monde said that Israel is continuing in Gaza, on an unprecedented scale, the systematic destruction of cities that can be compared to “the merciless terrorism practiced by the Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad in the city of Hama in 1982.”

University professor Jean-Pierre Filho said - in his article in the newspaper - that the dictatorship of the Assad family, during the reign of Father Hafez in 1982 and then under the rule of his son Bashar since 2000, treated the Syrian population as an occupying army ready to commit the worst violations in the event of a threat to the situation appropriate for its control, recalling what He took place in the city of Hama when a few hundred “Islamic rebels” captured it.

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The elite forces of the Syrian regime besieged the city, inhabited by about 250,000 people, and regained it within three weeks, after destroying entire neighborhoods by bombing before bulldozing them, thus destroying a third of them, while doubt still looms over the death toll of that massacre, with estimates Ranging from 10 to 25 thousand dead, most of them civilians.

From Hama to Gaza

In this sense - as Jean-Pierre Filho says - a comparison can legitimately be drawn between the terrorism unleashed by the Assad regime against the rebellious Hama in 1982, and the terrorism practiced by the Israeli army in Gaza.

In both cases, it is about restoring a form of “deterrence” against the Islamist threat that is seen as an existential threat.

Either way, the city is being systematically destroyed as the epicenter of such a threat, and the civilian population pays a heavy price for these “acts of reprisals” that resemble collective punishment.

However, the differences between the two bloodbaths are clear: the killings in Hama were not revealed to the outside world until long after the attack by the Assad regime, without any images being broadcast, and the suffering of Gaza is happening - certainly behind closed doors - but it has been lived for five months. And a half, with a deluge of overwhelming and indisputable photos on social networks.

On the other hand, Hafez al-Assad crushed the rebellious city with his forces, taking care not to involve his loyal Soviet ally, while the Israeli attack on Gaza continued thanks to continued American military support, knowing that the Soviet Union would never have dared to describe its support for Assad as “humanitarian.” While Washington does not provide “humanitarian” assistance by sea and air to the hunger-stricken sector except in order to preserve the freedom of the Israeli army to continue its ground operations.

The dark decade

The martyrdom of Hama caused what Hafez al-Assad had hoped for, a permanent shock to the Syrian people, as the writer says - and when part of the cities of Homs and Aleppo fell into the hands of the armed uprising after 2011 during the reign of Bashar al-Assad, the resistance in Aleppo was not broken, despite the indiscriminate bombing, the effects of which are still like wounds. The cavernous cave that symbolizes dictatorial revenge, only thanks to Russian Air Force reinforcements in a square of rubble.

The destruction of more than half of Gaza, just as Aleppo was destroyed in front of the eyes of the whole world, is a similarity between the efforts of the Syrian dictator and the Israeli occupier to subjugate the population deprived of all types of material and symbolic protection with the most severe types of cruelty.

Jean-Pierre Filho pointed out that such a systematic destruction of centers of civilization could only be committed in the name of the “war on terror,” which supposedly justifies all violations, and therefore Bashar al-Assad was satisfied with himself with the “war on terror,” which eliminates any distinction between civilian and military targets. .

As for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he has been repeating for more than 40 years the imperatives of the “war on terror,” which are by definition unforgivable, and such rhetoric has also allowed him to expand his support beyond his traditional base.

Thus, more than half of Gaza, the most densely populated Palestinian city and a city full of history and memory, was destroyed in front of the eyes of the whole world, in a similarity between the efforts of the Syrian dictator and the Israeli occupier to subject the population deprived of all types of material and symbolic protection with the most severe types of cruelty.

Source: Le Monde