Editor:
I was appalled to read R. Lagassé’s welcome letter to the Ibrahim family of Syria (“Courageous truth tellers,” May 19), which serves as nothing more than a vehicle for his thinly veiled propaganda piece.
For better or worse, Syria has been governed by the socialist, pan Arabist Ba’ath party for 50 years, primarily under the dictatorship of Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar. Michil Ibrahim points out that international interests have chosen sides between Sunni Muslims (74 per cent of the population) and Shia Muslims (another 13 per cent). Lagassé clumsily distorts this observation into his own rhetoric regarding “US, NATO, and Israeli sponsored terrorism intent on destroying Syria to steal its vast energy resources,” conveniently omitting that Russia and China have their own geopolitical interests in the region, while implicitly exaggerating Syria’s energy importance – Syria’s proven reserves are less that two per cent of Iraq’s, and are lower than non energy exporting countries such as Vietnam.
Ibrahim goes on to state, “The social media are liars. Al Jazeera, they are Qatar and Saudi Arabia. They are against Syria.” Lagassé leaps from there to complain about “NATO propaganda” and goes on to reference the “independent Canadian journalist” Eva Bartlett, (who, ironically, publishes on the rather non-independent Russian state-owned media Russia Today). Lagassé goes so far as to publish Bartlett’s Facebook social media page, thereby contradicting Ibrahim’s astute observation on the value of social media.
Surely, a big welcome to the Ibrahim family! May you find your new home of Canada to be a land of freedom, safety, civility, and opportunity; one where no one else in our community might hijack your story and pervert your words in such a blatantly self-serving manner to support their own agenda.
Alan Donenfeld, Gibsons
