The Golan

Last week the Syrian blogging community had this event where everyone was blogging about the occupied Syrian Golan and how we want our occupied lands back from the aggressors (Zionist Israel)who have been unjustly occupying the Golan since 1967. It is indeed very nice to see that people will still stand up for 'our' occupied land and still remember that the Golan is part of Syria with such passion and vehemence that in some cases I just had to stand up and applaud those emotionally disturbing posts with a tear in my left eye.... hhmmmm.. not really.. (I would just like to point out that I will be using sarcasm in this entry..)

The thing is, I found it to be really ridiculous that someone actually allocated A WEEK to blog about the occupied Golan, which really symbolizes our commitment, as Syrians towards our occupied lands. I believe that one week is more than enough to revive in the minds of Syrians that we actually have occupied territory, and inform those who don't know anything about "our struggle" to free the Golan that the Golan is actually part of Syria and we have a right to retrieve our occupied lands. That is one point.

Second point. Since we are so eager to liberate our occupied "Land" that we lost in the 1967 war, and since that "Land" means so much to us, then we should also remember that the Land occupied by Turkey known today as Hatay (Liwa'a Al-Iskandaron) is also part of the Syrian Territory before it was given to the Turks in 1939 by the French. Why are we discriminating between the two areas? Given that most people in Syria have not been to the occupied Golan, and have no direct relation to it, why are we so eager to have the Golan back, but not 'Hatay'? If our fight is for the land then both areas should be treated in the same way and we should be blogging about Liwa'a Iskandaron as much as we are for the Golan.

But the reason why we have so much feelings towards the Golan is not because we love that land, I bet that even when we get the Golan back the majority of Syrians will not even go there, but our feelings for the Golan are created from the anger and abhorrence towards the occupiers of that land since 1967, and the fact that the indigenous population, the PEOPLE of the Golan are discriminated and treated unfairly and unjustly by those occupiers (or at least that is what I hope we are fighting for, to give justice to those people). As long as we are fighting for land we are no better than the Zionists who are doing exactly that, fighting for land that is not theirs in the first place. I think it is important to point out the difference between fighting to free land and fighting to free people from oppression.

So if you agree with what I said, that we should be fighting to free the oppressed rather than freeing occupied land, then we are in a dilemma. In a post written by Maysaloon (Arabic), and to some extent in Tajreeds' post which happens to be more diplomatic compared to Maysaloons' post, both of which raise this point. If we are fighting for the oppressed then why are we not supporting and fighting with the Palestinians who are also being oppressed by the Zionists? If we are going to remove oppression from the people of the Golan, what about the Palestinians? Don't they also deserve A WEEK from us to blog about the injustice and cruelty they live under?

Gaza has been under siege by the Zionists (and the Egyptian Government) for more than a year and the world is watching (that is including Arab and Muslim states). People in Gaza are dying in Hospitals not because of a lack in doctors and medical care, but because there is no medicine at all, no electricity to power life support equipment, how would you feel if you had to manually pump air into your childs' chest because the breathing support equipment is not working!!? People are starving in Gaza, while we, their brothers supposedly in both islam and for the more nationalistic of you, in being of Arab origin, are sitting here and blogging about how much we miss our occupied Golan!!

I'm just saying, that if we are going to be standing up, Finally, for our people then we should do it properly, we should stand up for the oppressed people in Palestine in the same manner as we are doing for the People in the Golan. We also need to set our priorities straight, people are more important than land.