Al-Okaz, Saudi Arabia, December 18
The world lost its humanity. The gruesome atrocities taking place in Aleppo have left thousands of innocent civilians dead, injured, and homeless. The brutal hands of Bashar al-Assad, together with Hezbollah and Iran, have been systematically slaughtering Syrian civilians on a daily basis: men, women, children, and the elderly. These images, sadly, remind us of dark times in history. The massacres that we are witnessing today are no different to the ones committed by Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin. The genocide in Syria is no different than the ones in Rwanda, Armenia, or Cambodia. Did anything really change? Are we not, as witnesses, accomplices in these crimes? Today, social media makes the world more connected than ever before. We really don’t have the privilege of claiming, “We did not know.” We are sitting in the comfort of our living rooms, staring at mass killings throughout phone and television screens, and, yet, we fail to act. The International Community turned its back to the Syrian people, and the United Nations has long rendered itself useless. The UN Envoy to Syria himself acknowledged the fact that 4,000 years of history have been destroyed in Syria in less than 4 years, yet refused to explain how the UN would act. What is happening in Syria today is shameful to all of us. It is shameful to humanity. Unless we take immediate action to help the people of Syria, we will never be able to look back at history and say we weren’t part of the crime. We are, no matter how much we deny this sad truth. – Turki al-Dakheel