Lousy Arab Strikes again

I've written before about Asad Abukhalil's biased coverage of the Syrian uprising. But Asad (aka the Angry Arab), is not done smearing the Syrian revolution.

A Syrian on twitter commented a couple of days ago that all the counter-revolutionary propaganda on Syria is aimed at proving one thing: that the opposition, the protesters, their armed wing, their politicians, all of them are just as bad as the regime's. 

Which makes sense: Asad Abukhalil can't just outright come out and defend Bashar Al Assad, can he? so what he does instead is trash the opposition and the protests' movement and attempt to portray it as sectarian, violent and treasonous (in the sense that it is western and Qatari-backed).

For sure, Syrian people aren't angels. There are worrying incidents of violence and sectarianism. But the uprising at large has been overwhelmingly peaceful and non-sectarian. What Abukhalil (and his ilk) does is to magnify these incidents and blow them out of proportions: as if they do not occur in Bahrain, as if they've not occurred in Egypt or Tunisia.

The latest installment of grouch comes in the form of doubting the popularly of the Syrian uprising. Asad Abukhalil actually goes straight to claiming the Syrian uprising is the least popular in the Arab World. He does not state one single proof for this grandiose claim (and let's remember that he mocks western reporters for making generalized statements about the Arab World without evidence. Heck, even when a study about domestic violence was presented with statistics, he didn't believe it and went picking at it just because it didn't suit his narrative).

However, Asad does present one sort of a proof: discounting the Salafi gangs in Lebanon, there has not been any protests in support of the Syrian uprising in the Arab World, according to him. But that's not all. He adds:

"And when the Syrian opposition in exile took its cause to Tunisia for a meeting of the Arab League, they were met with one of the largest Arab demonstration on Syria, but it was in favor of Bashar Assad."

First of all, the protest in Tunisia was not in favor of Bashar Al Assad, it was, according to its organizers at least, against the “conspiracy” against Syria. (But maybe this Freudian slip  betrays the real position of Asad himself?)

Second, it wasn’t an Arab League meeting, it was the Friends of Syria conference.

Third, the said protest can hardly be described as the “largest on Syria”. It actually had few dozens who tried to storm the conference. Watch this video, and judge for yourself.

But at any rate, if Asad is going to rely on the size of a protest to gauge the popularity, how about we check youtube for rallies across the Arab world in support of the Syrian uprising? 

I will not even mention the one held in downtown Beirut (in consideration to Asad sensibilities, who described them as “Salafi Gangs”). Let’s have a look at protests and expression of support elsewhere: