Ghassan Aboud to Washington Syrian community conference: Syrians have to rebuild Syria

Ghassan Aboud, owner and CEO of Orient Media Group, sent on Friday (Oct 27) a televised speech in which he addressed the Syrian community in the US. The speech read:

"Ladies and gentlemen, 

May God’s peace be upon you.

Let me begin by saying that the magnitude of sacrifices in the Syrian cause is enormous. These sacrifices are met with unprecedented  international letting down. Therefore, it is not enough for the cause to be just in order to achieve its goals, but it needs to have a balanced political action, so people in the world’s political arenas will at least think of us seriously and not as rivals. 

We can write volumes about the fact that the Syrian regime is a mafia of murderers and thieves, which has all evil qualities. We can also lament the world’s abandonment. But how long would this last? The world has become bored with this story with all its details. States of the world are looking for their interests in Syria. So no matter how much you criticize them, they are based on their interests and not on slogans of human speeches.

It saddens me to say that Syrians – after the punishment they received only for claiming their freedom and democracy – seem to have understood that democracy is a banned right in the Middle East. So they have reduced their demands to a right-minded rule. This rule allows Syrian families to wake up in the early  morning. Parents then have breakfast with their children in safety. They accompany their children to school and then bring them back home safely after a hard day of learning. These parents and children have lunch in security. Then they depart to their own affairs. Some go to church. Others go to mosque. Some others go to the gym. They go and come back safely. Those Syrian families want to sleep in peace. They do not want any of their sons or daughters to be kidnapped while these parents are prohibited from asking whether their children are alive or dead.

Did these simple demands become forbidden to the Syrian people in particular and to the Middle East’s peoples in general?

It grieves me to say that Bashar al-Assad has played an ugly role in dividing Syrians into two parts: pro or anti-Assad Syrians. The divided opposition also contributed to dividing Syrians. It has reached to an extent to find a three-room house with different banners.

For example, look at the city of Hasaka now; it represents a terrifying scene of different flags with colors and beliefs.

Today many opposition members have accepted Bashar Assad, the killer and murderer, to be at the head of power in Syria, arguing that the international community has let Syrians down. They also say the Americans and the Europeans’ goal is no longer to topple Bashar Assad. As if  the Americans or the Europeans or the Russians or the Iranians, or the governments in different Arab countries were the ones who convinced Syrians with revolting against the regime of killing with all its tools, including the chemical weapons. And let me say here, if the nuclear weapons were available, Assad regime would not hesitate in using them against the Syrian people. Those opposition members have chosen the idea of accepting Assad in power and being cards in the hands of key players in the Syrian arena instead of practicing the sound political work. 

Those opposition members, who have served the Syrian people’s cause in nothing, have at least to keep the flame burning for the coming generation, rather than give the legacy of weakness and surrender.

What is happening now in Syria has its impact on the whole world. For example, the number of radical Jews in Israel has doubled to 8,000 compared with their figures before the Syrian revolution.

 

We have seen in Israel - the oasis of  Middle East’s democracy as the world calls it – how some rightist members attacked a leftist demonstration with knives in one of  Tel Aviv’s streets. This indicates that extremism is an infectious epidemic. Please do not forget that the Sunni extremists turned to violence, making the moderate Sunnis their first and largest victims. Those moderate Sunnis were absolutely different from the Sunni extremists. The story is not different in Lebanon where  the extremist political Shiites - represented by Hezbollah – finished off all Shiite figures of those who would not follow their ideology. 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In the late days Raqqa disappeared from the Syrian map. Deir ez-Zoor is almost vanished from the same map. Idlib might face soon the same destiny, as it is circulated that 10,000 al-Qaeda members are positioned in it. Terrorists move from a city to another when the offensive is launched. The international community then tracks them to destroy our cities one after the other. Destruction will soon  sweep Latakia and Tartous for the very reason; tracking the terrorists’ remnants. Then they will chase them out the Syria border. 

It is a terrifying scenario of explosions, is not it?

So the story is no longer a pro- or anti Assad Syrian one. It is a story of the very Syrian people’s existence. I wish  you would not believe those states who claim to contribute to Syria’s building. Neither Somalia nor Afghanistan nor oil-rich Iraq after 20 or 30 years witnessed an attempt of building a stone by any of those who claimed reconstruction.

Russia and Iran are destructive forces. They back tyrants in the region. They have never built a brick in all countries they occupied in the East or in Europe.  Europeans and the Gulf states have their problems which deepen day by day.

And here, we hope that the American administration, which has put containing the Iranian influence in the Middle East on its priorities, to translate its statements into a real policy that Iran and Russia cannot escape.

This conference has to succeed while all conferences have failed in uniting Syrians to end the war and to end devising plots against Syrians. We have to depend on ourselves in building the post-war Syria by establishing a financial fund sponsored by businessmen and Syrian characters. Those whom are trusted by Syrians. So they can – through these trusted characters - contribute to this fund according to capability and power. 

I think this project is capable of saving Syrians from perdition and preventing the disappearance of Syria forever after Bashar al-Assad has become a pretext for  the continuation of war and destruction.

I have never thought – as some opposition members have done – of making opposing Assad regime my job only for the sake of opposition. Those Assad’s opponents have to believe in the notion of change to end the tragedy of the Syrian people.

Ladies and gentlemen,

You know I have opposed killing and terrorism. I have also helped in fighting  ISIS, but the matter has become more complicated than this group. It is the radical ISIS ideology that has reached all issues and theses. This ideology has strongly spread in all sects. It is the idea of not accepting others in thought or even in life.

And here, let me thank  the organizers of this conference of the Syrian community in the US who have always contributed to raising the Syrian plight ... I bow humble to hundreds of doctors who went to Orient and other hospitals to volunteer in treating and rescuing hundreds of thousands of the wounded and the sick.

Thank you very much, every one, thank you."