Syria Quotes

“You are there and to their ears, being a Syrian sounds like you’re unclean, shameful, indecent; it’s like you owe the world an apology for your very existence.”
― Asaad Almohammad, An Ishmael of Syria

“The blind faith in some half-assed conspiracy theories lines up with the logic of having to believe in something with no questions asked. It gives us peace and comfort. As simple as I was, I found that resorting to this absolute nonsense was the root of all our problems. It was a road of willingly-learned helplessness, for no action could make a difference, thereby no action was needed.”
― Asaad Almohammad, An Ishmael of Syria

“Israel's demonstration of its military prowess in 1967 confirmed its status as a 'strategic asset,' as did its moves to prevent Syrian intervention in Jordan in 1970 in support of the PLO. Under the Nixon doctrine, Israel and Iran were to be 'the guardians of the Gulf,' and after the fall of the Shah, Israel's perceived role was enhanced. Meanwhile, Israel has provided subsidiary services elsewhere, including Latin America, where direct US support for the most murderous regimes has been impeded by Congress. While there has been internal debate and some fluctuation in US policy, much exaggerated in discussion here, it has been generally true that US support for Israel's militarization and expansion reflected the estimate of its power in the region.

The effect has been to turn Israel into a militarized state completely dependent on US aid, willing to undertake tasks that few can endure, such as participation in Guatemalan genocide. For Israel, this is a moral disaster and will eventually become a physical disaster as well. For the Palestinians and many others, it has been a catastrophe, as it may sooner or later be for the entire world, with the growing danger of superpower confrontation.”
― Noam Chomsky

“I know this will be a shock as you’ve just arrived, but I have decided to resign. It seems our timing is off.”
― Karl Braungart, Lost Identity

“Major Yildiz has a contact in Stuttgart who is a high-ranking officer of the US V Corps. He is going to help us.”
― Karl Braungart, Lost Identity

“This assignment is my duty to perform for the US Army. My job is outside your command, my friend. You know my security clearance level remains the same. Copying the SCI is a safety measure, in case there is an electrical glitch. So, I believe we’ve talked enough about this subject. Agree?”
― Karl Braungart, Lost Identity

“When the masses are against you, when fear is on every side, and when it seems like you are standing alone, that is when you should stand the tallest. That is when you plant yourself like a mountain, and you do what your heart knows is right. Even if death will be your only reward.”
― Ammar Habib, The Heart of Aleppo: A Story of the Syrian Civil War

“I said to you,
"Hold my hand.
Nothing bad will happen."

These are only words.
A father's tricks,
It slays your father,
your faith in him.
Because all I can think tonight is
how deep the sea,
and how vast, how indifferent.
How powerless I am to protect you from it.

All I can do is pray.”
― Khaled Hosseini, Sea Prayer

“The fervor and single-mindedness of this deification probably have no precedent in history. It's not like Duvalier or Assad passing the torch to the son and heir. It surpasses anything I have read about the Roman or Babylonian or even Pharaonic excesses. An estimated $2.68 billion was spent on ceremonies and monuments in the aftermath of Kim Il Sung's death. The concept is not that his son is his successor, but that his son is his reincarnation. North Korea has an equivalent of Mount Fuji—a mountain sacred to all Koreans. It's called Mount Paekdu, a beautiful peak with a deep blue lake, on the Chinese border. Here, according to the new mythology, Kim Jong Il was born on February 16, 1942. His birth was attended by a double rainbow and by songs of praise (in human voice) uttered by the local birds. In fact, in February 1942 his father and mother were hiding under Stalin's protection in the dank Russian city of Khabarovsk, but as with all miraculous births it's considered best not to allow the facts to get in the way of a good story.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

“Inside the person you know, there is a person you do not know.”
― Christy Lefteri, The Beekeeper of Aleppo

“First Afghanistan, now Iraq. So who's next? Syria? North Korea? Iran? Where will it all end?' If these illegal interventions are permitted to continue, the implication seems to be, pretty soon, horror of horrors, no murderously repressive regimes might remain.”
― Daniel Kofman, A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq

“I got hold of a copy of the video that showed how Saddam Hussein had actually confirmed himself in power. This snuff-movie opens with a plenary session of the Ba'ath Party central committee: perhaps a hundred men. Suddenly the doors are locked and Saddam, in the chair, announces a special session. Into the room is dragged an obviously broken man, who begins to emit a robotic confession of treason and subversion, that he sobs has been instigated by Syrian and other agents. As the (literally) extorted confession unfolds, names begin to be named. Once a fellow-conspirator is identified, guards come to his seat and haul him from the room. The reclining Saddam, meanwhile, lights a large cigar and contentedly scans his dossiers. The sickness of fear in the room is such that men begin to crack up and weep, rising to their feet to shout hysterical praise, even love, for the leader. Inexorably, though, the cull continues, and faces and bodies go slack as their owners are pinioned and led away. When it is over, about half the committee members are left, moaning with relief and heaving with ardent love for the boss. (In an accompanying sequel, which I have not seen, they were apparently required to go into the yard outside and shoot the other half, thus sealing the pact with Saddam. I am not sure that even Beria or Himmler would have had the nerve and ingenuity and cruelty to come up with that.)”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“For a start, people who traveled for so many miles through such horrific conditions in order to find work cannot accurately be portrayed as lazy benefit-scroungers”
― Patrick Kingsley

“Rolf Ekeus came round to my apartment one day and showed me the name of the Iraqi diplomat who had visited the little West African country of Niger: a statelet famous only for its production of yellowcake uranium. The name was Wissam Zahawi. He was the brother of my louche gay part-Kurdish friend, the by-now late Mazen. He was also, or had been at the time of his trip to Niger, Saddam Hussein's ambassador to the Vatican. I expressed incomprehension. What was an envoy to the Holy See doing in Niger? Obviously he was not taking a vacation. Rolf then explained two things to me. The first was that Wissam Zahawi had, when Rolf was at the United Nations, been one of Saddam Hussein's chief envoys for discussions on nuclear matters (this at a time when the Iraqis had functioning reactors). The second was that, during the period of sanctions that followed the Kuwait war, no Western European country had full diplomatic relations with Baghdad. TheVatican was the sole exception, so it was sent a very senior Iraqi envoy to act as a listening post. And this man, a specialist in nuclear matters, had made a discreet side trip to Niger. This was to suggest exactly what most right-thinking people were convinced was not the case: namely that British intelligence was on to something when it said that Saddam had not ceased seeking nuclear materials in Africa.

I published a few columns on this, drawing at one point an angry email from Ambassador Zahawi that very satisfyingly blustered and bluffed on what he'd really been up to. I also received—this is what sometimes makes journalism worthwhile—a letter from a BBC correspondent named Gordon Correa who had been writing a book about A.Q. Khan. This was the Pakistani proprietor of the nuclear black market that had supplied fissile material to Libya, North Korea, very probably to Syria, and was open for business with any member of the 'rogue states' club. (Saddam's people, we already knew for sure, had been meeting North Korean missile salesmen in Damascus until just before the invasion, when Kim Jong Il's mercenary bargainers took fright and went home.) It turned out, said the highly interested Mr. Correa, that his man Khan had also been in Niger, and at about the same time that Zahawi had. The likelihood of the senior Iraqi diplomat in Europe and the senior Pakistani nuclear black-marketeer both choosing an off-season holiday in chic little uranium-rich Niger… well, you have to admit that it makes an affecting picture. But you must be ready to credit something as ridiculous as that if your touching belief is that Saddam Hussein was already 'contained,' and that Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair were acting on panic reports, fabricated in turn by self-interested provocateurs.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“In addition to my new outlook on life, in some absurdly simple way, Anissa gave me several new reasons to live. Above all, I had to see her again and find out what, if anything, would happen between her and me.”
― Zack Love, Anissa's Redemption

“Adding to my emotional dizziness on Sunday, I spoke with my sister, who kept noting how amazing Michael is, and what a brave and selfless man he is for having helped as he did.”
― Zack Love, Anissa's Redemption

“Meaning of the "White House" to the war victim children of Syria or Palestine is nothing but just a white-painted house. Perhaps, they imagine Casper lives there...or maybe some dead people. They really don't have time to think about it. Because they are busy discovering their own bloody limbs along with their parents' dead bodies from the ashes of their burnt homes.”
― Munia Khan

“A row of young boys sat along an old metal pipe, excitedly singing Arabic songs. The girls whizzed each other around in wheelbarrows and played with their dolls on patches of earth that had hardened from mud to crusty dirt. “It is still like a playpen to them, like a big party,” one frail father said absently, as if he was staring right through me. “Soon they will know.” Crevices of stress had been delicately carved into his tanned face. His party was one of torment as he paced in circles, as if slowly going mad. I did not know what had happened to him and his family, but it did not feel right to ask.”
― Hollie S. McKay, Only Cry For The Living

“Once-barren patches of empty dust across Iraq had been dramatically transformed by countless numbers of sprawling, fast-filling tent camps. Sometimes, those patches of earth contained so many tents that they stretched out into the groove of the horizon beyond what the naked eye could see, and it was impossible to fathom just how many lives had been upended in a single plot.”
― Hollie S. McKay, Only Cry For The Living

“From the glistening eyes of a child that once held hope, foreign faces, aid workers, and people dressed in suits had come to symbolize a sequence of disappointments. Abdullah was tired of talking about what he needed most; it had become a fruitless exercise. He and many others had come to believe that the other camps in the area were getting all the money. They felt as though they were the only ones who had been left out and made to suffer.”
― Hollie S. McKay, Only Cry For The Living

“It was the streaks of pink and yellow flushing the early morning skies that could only exist in the Middle East. The region produced the most extraordinary sunrises and sunsets I had ever seen — a beautiful, deceptive umbrella hiding the bloodshed below.”
― Hollie S. McKay, Only Cry For The Living

“It seemed to me that they wanted freedom, but they were also scared of freedom. If they had freedom, that meant others had freedom too — freedom to drive on any road and pass any checkpoint. Those others belonged to the unknown, and could strike them again.”
― Hollie S. McKay, Only Cry For The Living

“It was the place that the helpless visited day in and day out, tearing their hair out and pacing the garden outside as they waited for news about their missing loved ones with the kind of agony that made me think they would shatter into tears at the slightest touch. The worst news was no news because the anguish would endure. But despite the desperation that clung to the walls, the building was a place of profound survival.”
― Hollie S. McKay, Only Cry For The Living

“The broken bones might heal and the open wounds might close, but victims of such merciless torture would never again have a safe place in the world to call home. Their flesh would be the prison walls against which their mind would thrash, but they would be unable to run.”
― Hollie S. McKay, Only Cry For The Living

“The ordinary — the ones that raised their babies in times of steep uncertainty — were of great intrigue to me. Life for this young family had indeed been hard, but it seemed not to occur to Noor that it could have been any different or easier.”
― Hollie S. McKay, Only Cry For The Living

“I spent a restless night on a cot surrounded by dozens of strange men inside the headquarters of the Mosul Civil Defense Unit. In the minutes between dark and daylight, we boarded trucks to make the drive to Tel Afar. The unit had received information that two mass graves containing at least twenty bodies were submerged beneath slabs of concrete and decomposing in the sewage system of the former ISIS bulwark — a sickening reminder of the lasting devastation caused by the group’s three-year occupation of northern Iraq”
― Hollie S. McKay, Only Cry For The Living

“Safety, for now, feels something of an illusion. The black flags of ISIS still wave in the shadows.”
― Hollie S. McKay, Only Cry For The Living

“But generosity of spirit is not enough: our responses must be grounded in wisdom. The headless heart may lead to outcomes little better than the heartless head. So we need to be a little more specific about what generosity of spirit implies. What shoud it mean in the context of Syria, and, by extension, what should it mean more widely in the global context of refugees?”
― Alexander Betts, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System

“Refugees are not a homogeneous group of people. Some are attracted by the prospect of succeeding in a high-income society; others, a majority, hope to return to Syria.”
― Alexander Betts, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System

“There's extreme violence, but there's a will to find who these people really are. And I think that's what's really inspiring about it.”
― James Foley