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Where Is the Flotilla for Syria?

(Wall Street Journal) Ron Prosor - The fleets of flotillas, ferries, yachts, sailboats, canoes and catamarans that have set sail for Gaza in recent years rival the size of the Spanish Armada. Yet one might argue that humanitarian flotillas are needed just a bit more urgently in Syria, where more civilians have been murdered by the Assad regime than those killed during Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11 combined. The conflict in Syria has also claimed roughly four times as many victims in the past 20 months as were killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the past 20 years. The residents of Gaza continue to enjoy more international assistance than virtually any other population on the planet, but almost no aid is reaching the two million people displaced within Syria. The flotilla crowd prefers to protest Israel's legitimate defense against the terrorists who target its citizens and fire thousands of rockets into its cities. Israel's democratic institutions, civil society and independent media offer a wealth of easily accessible information that these "human-rights activists" use to attack Israel. With more reporters and human-rights activists per capita than anywhere else on the planet, we understand deeply the invaluable role of civil society, even though its institutions can sometimes be used and abused by those with the most radical of agendas. Just this May, the British activist group Viva Palestina enjoyed the hospitality of Bashar Assad. Around the same time that Assad's thugs were gearing up for their massacre of children in Houla, members of Viva Palestina were proudly tweeting their whereabouts and posting photos on Facebook of themselves next to the regime's representatives. Instead of dancing with dictators, what if the flotilla crowd actually set sail in the direction where aid is so desperately needed? The writer is Israel's ambassador to the United Nations.
2012-09-05 00:00:00
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