A defender of oppression
Among Syrians participating in the struggle against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, Mother Superior Agnès Mariam de la Croix is bitterly criticized as an apologist for the regime who has gone so far as to claim that the horrendous gassing of mainly women and children in Ghouta last August was a fraud.
Mother Agnès recently completed a speaking tour in Canada organized by some in the antiwar movement who nevertheless defend her. In response, at the St. George campus of the University of Toronto issued the following statement to expose her association with various human right violators and stand in solidarity with the cause of Palestinian liberation and the Syrian Revolution. Organizations and individuals which endorsed the statement are listed below.
WHILE PALESTINIANS and Syrians need and continue to liberate themselves from the Israeli colonization of Palestine and the Syrian Golan, the Assad regime continues to launch military attacks and sieges, including but not limited to the siege on the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk.
While the Assad regime continually practices criminal violence against the bodies of Palestinian-Syrians and all the people of Syria, against our mothers, brothers, sisters, infants, fathers, families and communities, and as the people remain steadfast against such tyranny, certain organizers have decided to invite Mother Agnès.
While the Assad regime's collective punishment is not even limited to mass starvation, torture, sieges, knives, bombs and missiles, displacing millions and millions of Syrian refugees and perpetuating the Nakba for Palestinian-Syrians in particular, certain organizers have decided to invite a Zionist apologist to deny the crimes of the regime, hence contributing to those crimes.
Mother Agnès is a veteran propaganda tool of the Assad regime. She has been denounced by Syrian Christians for Peace for claiming there had never been a single peaceful demonstration in Syria. Syrian Christians for Peace has also accused her of failing to disburse any of the money she raised in the name of their beleaguered community. They have asked that she be excommunicated and prevented from speaking in the name of the Order of Carmelites.
Mother Agnès is documented to have met with Mihrac Ural. Mihrac Ural is an Assadist paramilitary leader of the "National Defense Force" and a war criminal who has carried out the massacres at Baniyas and al-Bayda.
Human Rights Watch documented the massacres in a report titled "No One's Left," published September 13, 2013. The report states that most of the killings took place after clashes between government troops and rebels had ended. At this point, both regular government troops and National Defense Force militia "entered homes, separated men from women, rounded up the men of each neighborhood in one spot, and executed them by shooting them at close range." According to the report, "in some cases, government and pro-government forces executed, or attempted to execute, entire families."
What this shows us is that while Mother Agnès claims to be a humanitarian, she betrays her affiliation with tyrants, war criminals and the massacres they commit by sitting and meeting with Mihrac Ural. Mother Agnès' claims of sympathy with the oppressed have all the credibility of statements of regret made by officials in the Israeli army after the massacres of Deir Yassin and Sabra and Shatila, which is none.
Mother Agnès spoke in Paris on March 21, 2013, at an event organized by the France-Israel committee, where she repeated sectarian Islamophobic racist and Zionist apologetics, appealing to the Zionist-organized event.
Mother Agnès is an Islamophobic racist who portrays the situation in Syria as one of "faithful Christians" being attacked by "barbaric" Muslims who are "without faith or law." Her Islamophobia is also explicitly Zionist because she claims that Israel "must be the recourse for the protection of faith and of believers" and that "Israel must remain a light for people of faith of the world."
Moreover, Mother Agnès spoke in defense of the "democratic character" of Israel and praised Israel's "inclusion" of Arab minorities in parliament, in the Supreme Court and in all spheres of society. Mother Agnès' Zionist apologetics normalize Israeli colonialism in the Golan and Palestine; they are an insult to the Syrian refugees displaced from the Golan who still await their right of return and have been targeted and massacred by the regime, just as they are also an insult to the victims of Zionism.
The Occupied Golan is under the hegemony of Israeli apartheid, and as such, the apartheid analysis and the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement are accountable to the Golan and its people, just as they are to Palestine and its people. Despite this, some people--who call themselves antiwar and "anti-imperialist" and claim to be allies of the Palestinian people and supporters of the BDS movement and the apartheid analysis--are shamefully touring and promoting her, presenting a defender of oppression to speak on behalf of the oppressed.
The actions of the organizers who will stoop to endorse someone who repeats such Zionist discourse and affiliates herself with war criminals are beyond divisive and threaten harm to the Palestine solidarity movement. Palestine is more than land; Palestine is also the people, including the exiled, ethnically cleansed Palestinians living in and exiled once more from Syria. For the organizers who say they want "freedom for Palestine" and at the same time bring a Zionist apologist for the Assad regime, the word "freedom" is misused to mean replacing one oppressor with another.
Because crimes committed against Palestinians in Syria are crimes committed against Palestine, because we all should take a stand against oppression and not retreat into inaction, we in the student movement to oppose Israeli apartheid, along with the brave and steadfast people of Syria and Palestine, oppose all oppressors. We are both anti-colonial and against state tyranny, and we recognize that Assad's forces are the dominant, but not the only, perpetuators of killing inside Syria.
Among our other solidarity duties, we must and will organize to break the sieges and stop Assad from using mass starvation, checkpoints, torture, detention, killing and all forms of collective punishment as methods to pacify the Syrian and Palestinian people's undying desire for dignity and social justice.
We denounce the organizing of the Mother Agnès events. We demand that the organizers repudiate their support for a Zionist apologist and for someone who affiliates with the war criminal Mihrac Ural, and that they affirm the analysis of Israeli apartheid in the Golan and Palestine. We demand they affirm the right of return for refugees of the Golan, and that they oppose Israeli colonialism in the Golan, including but not limited to the construction of Israeli settlements and theft of Syrian natural resources, such as oil, gas and water. We demand the organizers acknowledge and oppose the war crimes committed by the Assad regime against Palestinian-Syrians.
All quotations are translated from Josiane Sberro's summary of Mother Agnès' talk, titled "Situation des Chrétiens en Syrie, quel message pour Israël et pour la France?" and delivered on March 21, 2013. Sberro's article is entitled "France-Israël reçoit Mère Agnès-Mariam de la Croix" and was published March 25, 2013.
Endorsers:
Yarmouk Local Coordinating Committee, Syrian Revolution
Yarmouk Palestinian Refugee Camp, Syria
Independent Jewish Voices, Canada
Left Movement, Lebanon
Middle East and North Africa Solidarity Network, United States
Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG), York University
Palestine Camps Network News Union
Socialist Forum, Lebanon
Students Against Israeli Apartheid, York University
Students for Human Rights in Syria, University of Texas at Austin
Students for Justice in Palestine, Ryerson University
Syria Solidarity Collective, Toronto
Syrian Leftist Coalition, Syria
Syrian Revolution Solidarity Committee, São Paulo, Brazil
Tamil Student Association, York University
Ajras Alawda website editorial board
Fabio Bosco, member of the Front in Defense of the Palestinian People, BDS Brazil
Faraj Bayrakdar, Syrian poet and former political prisoner
Fares Al Helo, Syrian artist
Hala Omran, Syrian actress
Jalal Al Taweel, Syrian actor
Jens Hanssen, professor at the University of Toronto
Khaled Qannout, Syrian writer
Khawla Al Hadid, researcher and media person
Malik Little, blogger
Marcus Halaby, staff writer, Workers Power
Mary Rizzo, activist, translator, blogger
Majed Kayali, Syrian Palestinian writer
Mohamed El Kadri, member of the Front in Defense of the Palestinian People, BDS Brazil
Naomi Foyle, British writer in support of Palestine
Qusai Zakarya, endorsed on the 18th day of his hunger strike
Rabea Eid, Palestinian activist
Rim Banna, Palestinian artist and activist
Robin Yassin-Kassab, author and editor of Critical Muslim
Salameh Kaileh, Syrian Palestinian writer, political prisoner for eight years
Sam Charles Hamad
Sara Ajlyakin, member of Unified Socialist Workers Party (PSTU), International Workers League-Fourth International (IWL-FI)
Shiyam Galyon, activist
Soraya Misleh, member of the Front in Defense of the Palestinian people/ BDS Brazil
Talal Alyan, writer
Yasser Munif, professor
Yassin al Haj Saleh, Syrian writer, political prisoner for 16 years
Yazan Ashqar, writer
Youssef Fakhreddine, writer
Yusef Khalil, MENA Solidarity Network, United States
Louise Abdul Karim, Syrian actress
Students for Justice in Palestine, University of California San Diego
Lola, member of the Palestinian Front, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Augusto Malaman, member of the Palestinian Front, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Hasan Zarif, member of MOPAT (Movement Palestine for All), São Paulo, Brazil
Clovis Pacheco Filho, journalist and sociologist, São Paulo, Brazil
Francisco Horus Moura de Almeida Pacheco, student, São Paulo, Brazil
Yasser Khanger, organizer from Occupied Golan Heights and former political prisoner in Israeli prisons
Farah Saed, Students Against Israeli Apartheid-UTM
Gilbert Achcar, professor at the University of London and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
