When Israel, in one go, bombs 40 targets in the suburbs of Damascus, and when these strikes are the third of their kind in a matter of months, and the second in days, without any Syrian response, then this means two inseparable things: One, Syria will not respond, not tomorrow or thereafter, regardless of the lie about choosing the right time and the right place. And two, even if Syria wanted to respond, it is incapable of doing so, not tomorrow or thereafter. Otherwise, Israel would not have struck 40 targets at once, without response. This explicit powerlessness, which has many precedents, has coincided with extreme heavy-handedness shown by the regime against its people, in which the Syrian air force, which refrained from responding to the Israelis, plays a prominent role. However, this paradox, which most in the Syrian opposition did not miss, leads to one certain conclusion: The regime and the army in Syria have only one purpose, namely, to rein in the Syrian people and block their freedom. It is in this context alone that the verbal bellicosity against Israel can be understood, to serve the regime's purpose mentioned above. This estimate is true not only of the Syrian regime, but also the entire Mumanaa camp, the so-called pro-resistance axis, both with regimes and non-state actors. For instance, Iran's only response was to offer to train the Syrian army! And when we understand how long training sessions take, we will realize that the Iranian offer is only adding comedy to tragedy. For its part, Hezbollah, which no longer conceals its assistance to the Syrian regime in the battles in Qusayr and Homs, refrained from helping the regime face the Israeli strikes. This is while bearing in mind that the speeches of Hezbollah's secretary general almost convinced us that all of Israel is now in the range of his firepower and rockets. Comparing both conducts leads to a wakeup call that urges us, for the millionth time, to leave the world of colorful lies in which some of us still reside. And when Syrian dissidents come out to say that the Israeli strikes took place to cover up the crimes of the regime, all they are really doing is renewing their subscription to those lies, even if from the other side of the divide. With this, they would be hindering us from reaching the radical conclusions that it is high time to use to fortify our minds. To be sure, nationalism and patriotism in their most frenzied form, whether Baathist or non-Baathist, are but a recipe for humiliating the Arab peoples and preventing them from marching up the path of progress. This was the case in 1967, and this is the case today, on an even wider scale. And what is true of that verbal frenzied patriotism, back then and today, is also true of the operational tools owned by their advocates, including their armies, intelligence and security apparatuses. It is not without significance, both real and symbolic, that the Fourth Battalion which came under attack in the Israeli raids, has a prominent role in the brutal crackdown on the Syrians and in visiting upon them various forms of death and humiliation. Yet this did not prevent the emergence of voices calling on Syrians to express sorrow and bitterness because of the attack against the Fourth Battalion, just because Israel, and for purposes of its own, was the side behind the attack! This is how selling lies and illusions, or ideologies of lies and illusions among the honest, reaches the extent of calling for dealing with the death coming from the Fourth Battalion, as an enticing stop between two lies.
