Syria and Palestine in Assad's Speech

In my previous blog post, which I have now updated, I included the additional material available but I thought a separate post is proper for dealing with the subject, so here are Bashar Assad's remarks dealing with Zionism, Israel, Palestine and no Jews in the full speech 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...

...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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