Advice From Syria on Rights Rings Hollow

Re “Rattling ‘Doors of Hell’ in Mideast,” Commentary, Dec. 3: Bouthaina Shaaban offers plenty of idealistic advice to the U.S. and Israel about occupation, media representation and respect for human rights. Were she not the representative of Syria, the de facto occupier of Lebanon, a country actively contributing to unrest in the region and with a rather dismal human rights record, she might be more credible. On the other hand, perhaps Shaaban’s country would like to live up to her stated ideals and lead by example, by truly allowing Lebanon to be more than a Syrian puppet state, refraining from providing arms to those intent on destroying all of Israel and ceasing anti-Jewish portrayals in the media. Sad to say, I suspect that the time for that will be when the “doors of hell” have frozen over.

Harold Keer

Emerald Hills, Calif.

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Shaaban of the Syrian Foreign Ministry does a masterful job of portraying Syria’s “kinder and gentler” nature. However, she omits basic facts: Syria is relatively tolerant of minorities because President Bashar Assad and the Assad royalty are a minority themselves -- Alawite. She alludes to Syria’s resistance to Muslim extremists, but she doesn’t spell it out. In the early ‘80s, former President Hafez Assad killed up to 10,000 people in the Muslim Brotherhood city of Hama.

Her anger at Israel, though, is understandable; the Jewish state had the audacity to resist Syria’s wars of aggression in 1948 and 1967. Ariel Sharon also had the nerve to defend Israel’s northern border and halt the Syrian domination and near-annexation of Lebanon in 1982 at the height of Lebanon’s civil war.

Richard Friedman

Los Angeles

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It is not racist to conclude that significant percentages of Islamic peoples support and applaud the killing of innocents (witness the wide celebrations after 9/11). Can Shaaban or others who hold similar views cite dozens of terrorist murders all over the world committed by Christians or Buddhists? One can easily identify such targeted killings of innocents committed by terrorists in the name of Islam. To paraphrase the Bible, “By their fruits we shall know them.”

It may not be politically correct to say so, but Islam has been hijacked by the extremist clerics, who are represented regularly on national broadcasts throughout the Arab nations.

Shaaban’s commentary cannot change the reality of Islamic radical violence throughout the world.

John Langstaff

Whittier