Syrian Victims Of Putin Atrocities Just Accept They Don’t Deserve Same Support As Ukraine

“At least Palestinians have the support of antisemites who astroturf that cause, because it opposes Jewish safety.”

Idlib, March 20 – Residents of this Arab Republic who lost loved ones to aerial bombing by Russia’s air force, or who suffered injury and displacement themselves as a result of such strikes, voiced their recognition this week that they occupy a lower rung on the ladder of humanity than the people of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other such locales, and as such cannot expect massive demonstrations of resolve on the part of powerful nations and international alliances to defeat the author of the strikes, even though the author of the two campaigns is one and the same.

In a series of interviews, victims of Russian bombing and ground-assault attacks from the air in Syria acknowledged Thursday their inferiority to the people of Ukraine, and how that inferiority underlies the disparate responses of the global community, principally the West and Europe, to support from those quarters, or lack thereof, for the different populations facing Putin’s aggression. Residents of Idlib, Hama, Aleppo, Palmyra, Homs, and other parts of Syria that have seen massive Russia-induced civilian casualties expressed their understanding that they must rank far below Ukrainians, whose suffering at least makes the news every day.

“At least Palestinians have the support of antisemites who astroturf that cause, because it opposes Jewish safety,” lamented an Idlib-area taxi driver who can no longer work because he lost his legs in a Russian airstrike. “I get that we don’t rate as high as Ukrainians; but it grates on me that Palestinians and ‘pro-Palestinians’ take images of our suffering here in Syria and label it as Zionist atrocities. You’d think a legitimate cause wouldn’t have to invent its suffering.”

Some Syrians took solace in ranking higher than Africans, if not Europeans. “We do occasionally get mentioned in online debates or news items,” insisted a Hama dental assistant whose husband, children, siblings, nieces, and nephews perished when a Russian bomb demolished their home. “It’s not like Biafra, Nigeria, Mali, or Tigray. You can go months on, say, Twitter, without seeing a single ‘human rights’ activist getting worked up about black Africans. They appear not to matter at all, whereas we do occasionally figure in the rhetoric of Turkish, Iranian, Israeli, Kurdish, or Azeri partisans. Someone apparently has some awareness we exist and have the capacity for Putin-induced suffering, even if it doesn’t rise to the level of caring enough to agitate for countering Russia’s aggression against us. Sometimes you just have to take what you can get.”

Please support our work through Patreon.