Meliha Çelik
It was just weeks before the Syrian revolution. Yusuf, a father of five children from Aleppo, who worked at the same place with me, had tearful eyes that morning, though he tried hard to hide it. What welled up on his face wasn’t just tears, it was rage. When I asked, ‘What’s wrong?’ he expressed his sorrow and anger as much as he could. That morning, people who spoke Persian had seized the house and car he’d entrusted to his brother in Aleppo. I was furious too, ‘Who are they, and how can they move into a house while someone still lives in it…?’ Years ago, he had left his land and home to come to Türkiye just so his children could survive. At every opportunity, he told us about his homeland, his home and destroyed workplace. His only wish was to return once the war was over. But what happened that morning deeply hurt him. Through his broken Turkish, he cried, ‘It’s not just Assad, Shia are killing us, Iran is killing us the most.’
At that moment, I thought; ‘Wait a second, this story sounds very familiar.’ It was exactly what I’d heard years ago in refugee camps in Lebanon, in Gaza, in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Zionist settlers could easily settle in the homes of any Palestinian they wanted and were not held accountable to anyone when they killed them.
As Yusuf spoke, my memory took me back to one story among the many painful ones I’d heard. I was in the overcrowded Burj el-Barajneh camp, like Sabra and Shatila, where tens of thousands of Palestinians lived in Beirut. These Palestinian camps also sheltered hundreds of Syrian refugees fleeing war. That’s where I met Ümmi Aziz, one of the oldest and most sorrowful women in the camp. Her eyes had gone blind from crying. One morning during the Sabra and Shatila massacre, they had taken away her five sons, the youngest only 13. The old woman still believed they were alive and would one day return.
“They took away truckloads of people… Some were taken to Israel, some were left in Lebanon, some handed over to Syria. There are many Palestinians in Syrian prisons… The Syrian president won’t allow visits or release them. I always say, God is the protector of the helpless.”
Guess who was in charge of Syria during this massacre in 1982, to which some Palestinians were handed over and never heard from again?
‘The deposed dictator Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad…’ Does anyone forget the 1982 Hama massacre where Hafez brutally slaughtered more than 25,000 Sunni Syrian Muslims.
I’ve heard from countless Syrians who lived through these horrors say, “They are even worse than Israel.”
Later, Shia Iranians joined Assad’s killers and have murdered hundreds of thousands of people since 2011. They seized the homes and possessions of Muslims. They took photos smiling over Syrian corpses. Just like the Zionists… Same method, same goal… If it’s not too much trouble for you, ask an average Syrian about Iran, or if you’re not too lazy, ask a Palestinian who spent 20 years in Palestinian prison in Syria. Then decide who is more skilled in cruelty, tyranny, and evil. Brotherly devils, one of whom adopted his race and the other his sect as religion, both religious states have shed blood all over the region for the sake of their own nonsensical promised lands, demonized everyone who was not like them, committed ruthless massacres, and on top of that, have constantly made propaganda to justify themselves. These twin devils both believe in an apocalypse war and try to hasten the arrival of their Messiah or Mahdi. Both are favored tools of the West’s divide-and-rule policy, throughout history, both are known for sedition and corruption. Decide who is more cruel, more despicable, more hostile to humanity by weighing the total amount of blood they have shed in the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq together with the US, in the lie of the Temple of Solomon and the lie of the axis of resistance, in the race to occupy the region and massacre its natives while pretending to liberate Jerusalem.
The real question now is not which one is the devil, but which one is more devilish? Is it the one who has spilled the most Muslim blood, told the most lies, or the one with the hardest heart?
Now, looking at the devastated state of Gaza, I am amazed at those who are trying to exonerate memories with the missiles fired at Tel Aviv. A few dead Jews or Iranians hardly matter to either side… Surely, they’ve accepted the small cost of this performance. While rockets rain on Tel Aviv, at least 100 Gazans are killed each day… The genocide continues in full force.
Shi’ites cannot cleanse themselves of this with a few symbolic attacks on empty buildings or by killing a handful of people in the name of national interest…
It’s not just the Shi’ite regime but many supposedly progressive, cultured, and liberal Iranians who fled the regime also have Muslim blood on their hands. Have you ever heard these Iranian dissidents, who shout slogans about liberation by uncovering heads and legs, speak of the pain of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians killed? Europeans who adore these Iranians may find their cause appealing, but we’ve taken note of their silence too… Just as we have not forgotten the voices of the dissident and conscientious Jews who stand up against Zionist Israel and the genocide…
We had a conversation with Ismail Haniyeh, who was martyred in Iran, in his modest home in the refugee camp in Gaza in 2014. At the end of our conversation, he said: ‘Gaza needs its friends. Jerusalem, needs especially the children of the Islamic Ummah.’
Let those who rejoice at the missiles fired at Tel Aviv not forget that among the Gaza’s friends and brothers are many conscientious people of various faiths and nationalities; Irish, Scottish, South American, Spanish, even South Korean, and many others but among them, there are never the Shi’ists who tortured and killed Muslims in Damascus, Aleppo, and all across Syria, nor the Zionists who committed genocide in Palestine. And they never will be there!
The real global Aryan Devil will likely bind these two lesser devils at his door when they’re both worn out, saying, ‘stop, you are brothers, make peace.’
How do I know? Everything becomes clearer through the eyes of both a Palestinian child in Gaza who lost arms and legs, and a Syrian woman raped in Sednaya prison and whose child, once grown, was raped too. Those who cannot look into both eyes at once will side with one of them, looking squinting at current events.
Our side is only the side of the oppressed, against all oppressors, no matter who they are.
