Between An Olive Tree and a Boycott

MF sent me this excerpt from today's speech by Syria's Bashar Assad:

He reserved much of his criticism for Arab nations for not standing with Syria and for coming down on it for human rights abuses.

"Their situation is like that of a doctor who tells people not to smoke while he has a cigarette in his mouth," he said.

"We have been working for years to create an office to boycott Israel," he said, referring to the Arab League initiative against Syria. "But in weeks they did it against Syria. Are they swapping Israel for Syria?"

"Did the Arab League respect its own nations whose territory has been invaded or occupied? Have they prevented separation of Sudan, or stopped Sudan famine, or stopped the death of 1 million Iraqis, or re-planted any of the olive trees uprooted by Israel?"

UPDATE = and here is the official version:

Has the Arab league actually gained independence for its states, and consequently for itself? Has it ever implemented its decisions and removed the dust off its files and achieved only a fragment of the aspirations of the Arab peoples? Or has it contributed directly to sowing the seeds of sedition and disunity? Has it respected its charter and defended its member states whose land, or the rights of whose peoples, have been violated? Has it returned one olive tree uprooted by Israel or prevented the demolition of one Palestinian house in occupied Arab Palestine?...

...we say that with this attempt they don’t focus on getting Syria out of the League, but rather on suspending Arabism itself so that it becomes an Arab
League only in name. It will no longer be a league – bringing people together – or Arab. It will be a mock-Arab body in order to be in line with their policies and the role they are playing on the Arab arena. Otherwise, how can we explain this unprecedented and unreasonable tact with the Zionist enemy in everything it does and this decisiveness and toughness with Syria?

We have been trying for years to [re?]activate the Israel-boycott office; and we have been receiving excuses of the type that this is no longer acceptable; but, within a few weeks, they activate a boycott against Syria.

And comments: Good to see he has things in perspective.

meaning that if he can place Israel's supposed olive tree activity on the level of those major other matters, Assad has a problem copncentrating on the really important things in life, or is that death ("Thousands have been reported killed by security forces throughout the uprising. Death estimates range from 5,000 to more than 6,000. But the Syrian government has consistently blamed the violence on "terrorists.")?

And, incidentally, 'creating a boycott' is chronologically incorrect.  Here:

The [Arab] League was founded in 1944, and in 1945 began a boycott of Zionist goods and services in the British mandate territory of Palestine. In 1948, following the war establishing Israel’s independence, the boycott was formalized against the state of Israel and broadened to include non-Israelis who maintain economic relations with Israel or who are perceived to support it. The boycott is administered by the Damascus-based Central Boycott Office (CBO), a specialized bureau of the Arab League...

Oh, and "the present Commissioner General of the CBO is a Syrian national, Ahmad Khaza'."

So, it's all in Syria, by Syria.
 
What is the Bashar BS?
 
______________

More UPDATE

I found this in the full speech version:

The social structure of the Arab world, with its large diversity, is based on two strong and integrated pillars: Arabism and Islam. Both of them are great, rich and vital. Consequently, we cannot blame them for the wrong human practices. Furthermore, the Muslim and Christian diversity in our
country is a major pillar of our Arabism and a foundation of our strength...Defeat is not necessarily military and it might come true if they succeed in making us withdraw to international conflicts and forget about our bigger issues on
top of which the Palestinian Issue...

... but we can draw deductions about...the [anti-Syrian] conspiracy. It will end when the Syrian people decide to turn into a submissive people,
when we submit and abandon all our heritage: the heritage of the October war of liberation in 1973, when we abandon our pan-Arab positions. We defended
Lebanon in 1982, when it was the springboard of resistance which led to the liberation of Lebanon in 2000, when we stop supporting the resistance which
we supported in 2006 and 2008 in Lebanon and Gaza, when we give free concessions partially or fully in the peace process, particularly in our occupied land in the Golan, when we abandon our pan-Arab positions towards the Palestinian cause which we have adopted since 1948, when we accept to be false witnesses to the systematic and unprecedented destruction of al-Aqsa mosque.

Note: Jews/Judaism missing.

And despite this pro-Arabism bit below, still no Jews:

...who said that we are talking about an Arab race? Had Arabism been only the Arab race, we wouldn’t have had much to be proud of. The last thing in Arabism is race. Arabism is a question of civilization, a question of common interests, common will and common religions. It is about the things which bring about all the different nationalities which live in this place. The strength of this Arabism lies in its diversity not in its isolation and not in its one colordness. Arabism hasn’t been built by the Arabs. Arabism has been built by all those non-Arabs who contributed to building it and those who belong to this rich society in which we live. Its strength lies in its diversity. Had there been a group of non-Arabs who wanted to change their traditions and customs and abandon them, we would oppose them on the grounds that they weaken Arabism. The strength of our Arabism lies in openness, diversity and in showing this diversity not integrating it to look like one component. Arabism has been accused for decades of chauvinism. This is not true. If there are chauvinistic individuals, this doesn’t mean that Arabism is chauvinistic. It is a condition of civilization.

But he' still paranoid:

What is taking place in Syria is part of what has been planned for the region for tens of years, as the dream of partition is still haunting the grandchildren of [the 1915] Sykes–Picot [British-French Agreement]...The West is still colonial in one way or another. It is changing from an old colonizer to a modern colonizer and from a modern colonizer during the Sykes-Picot agreement to a contemporary colonizer.

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