Beyond Insulting the Prophet: Defying Hypocrisies East and West

Rulers of Iran and Syria "exaggerate the significance" of the film to divert attention from their own problems.

AN EXCELLENT PIECE

By Hamid Dabashi

Al-Jazeera

"In a rare public appearance, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has delivered a fiery speech protesting the film that has mocked Islam and Prophet Muhammad. He has called for a weeklong protest against the film. This is a diversionary tactic, directly from the apothecary box of the Islamic republic, intended to divert attention from the criminal atrocities of the ruling regime in Syria, and by extension Iran, the principal sponsors of Hassan Nasrallah.  

The world has been distracted by such diversionary tactics once in 1979. It will not be fooled again in 2012.  
Hassan Nasrallah is as much invested in diverting attention from the unfolding Arab Spring - particularly in Syria - as Netanyahu is, for on the urgency of this diversion they are identical, Nasrallah to keep himself relevant in a vastly changed political climate, Netanyahu to steal more of Palestine. 

The Arab Spring has put them both on the spot as opposing open-ended democratic uprisings that is changing the political contour of the region away from clichés-ridden "resistance" to Israel that in effect sustains its colonial designs to gobble up the entirety of Palestine by making even the two-state solution obsolete, as we now hear the American Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney - bought and paid for by the Israeli benefactor - Sheldon Adelson - articulate it.   

The fact that the Free Syrian Army has been discredited for its own violent records, and the fact that Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf client states and by extension the United States are trying to abuse the situation in Syria to their own advantage do not mean that Bashar al-Assad and his tyrannical rule are God's gift to the Syrian people. Bashar al-Assad is in trouble, even more than Ali Khamenei was in trouble two years ago......

It is sad to see an ageing warrior like Hassan Nasrallah being left behind by the force of history and resorting to a predicable cliché like asking for no less than one whole week of protest by his supporters ostensibly to vent anger against a pathetic racists video but in effect to distract attention from the criminal atrocities of his allies in Syria and Iran, or perhaps to regain the popularity he once had before endorsing Assad and before him Khamenei. But such is the force of destiny and the unfolding drama of the Arab Spring....."