Things you should know, take two

The Assads do not take lightly any concerted attempt to question their authority.
In 1982, President Hafez al-Assad sent 12,000 soldiers to besiege the city of Hama in open revolt against his regime.
The Muslim Brotherhood had taken control of the city, and declared it liberated.
Assad, a member of the Alawite, a Shiite minority in Syria, shelled the city for weeks.
His troops then entered the town, eliminating all Muslim Brotherhood militants that they could find.
Some 1,000 were slaughtered.
Overall, Assad killed approximately 40,000 Syrians, displaced another 100,000 others, in order to reassert his authority.
Some 15,000 still remain unaccounted for…
The foreign policy analyst Robin Wright called the Hama Massacre the single deadliest act by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East. That is no small achievement in a region that has had to endure the regimes of thugs the likes of Saddam Hussein and Qaddafi…
In many ways you can look at the Arab world over the last few decades and really if you want a turning point, I think the turning point was the terror unleashed on the Syrian people in the city of Hama in 1982.
For about 25 years the Arab people have been terrified of their rulers and the security states have really marginalized them and demolished their sense of dignity, Fouad Ajami, of John Hopkins University, told PBS.
It is that sense of dignity that the Syrians, following the lead of the Tunisians, Egyptians, Yemenis, Bahrainis and Libyans, are seeking to retrieve.
Yet, they are still facing the same ruthless regime, now led by Bashar al-Assad, who succeeded his father after his death in 2000.
The revolt against the Assad tyranny began some five weeks ago in Deera, a city near the Jordanian border.
Last Friday, thousands of Syrians took to the streets anew, after prayers, to demand the fall of Assad.
The people want the overthrow of the regime, they chanted near Abbasside Square in Damascus.
Security forces shot and killed 109 demonstrators, clearly not hesitating to fire into the crowd.
Demonstrators raised their hands to show that they were unarmed. The fire intensified, wrote Reuters’ Khaled Yacoub Oweiss.
Many were shot in the head and chest, wrote Katherine Marsh of The Observer.
Yesterday, funeral processions for the preceding day’s fallen turned into angry demonstrations against the regime in Damascus, Douma, Barza, Maadamiah and Qabon, according to the NYT.
Bashar al-Assad, you traitor! You coward. Take your soldiers to the Golan, many chanted on Saturday (The Golan Heights were seized by the Israelis during the 1967 war, and remain under Israeli occupation).
In Barza, a witness who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal said that at least 1,000 mourners came under fire as they prepared to bury four men and two children, one 7 years old and the other 14. The witness said security forces aimed directly at the mourners, many of whom sought shelter in the nearby Al-Salam mosque, wrote Anthony Shadid of the NYT.
A further 11 were killed on Saturday, throughout Syria.
To date, 280 demonstrators have been killed since the beginning of the Syrian uprising.
Coverage of the events by traditional media has been difficult, as foreign journalists are not authorized to operate freely in Syria.
Yesterday, Carl Perry of Aljazeera was expelled from the country.
Hence, most reports of the events originate from the Syrian activists themselves.
Satellite phones, laptops and modems have been donated by the Syrian Diaspora to ensure that Assad’s brutal repression does not remain unreported.
The opposition movement also has a Facebook page, Syrian Revolution, to rally its supporters.
Assad has made several attempts to assuage the anger of the demonstrators.
He abolished the state of emergency in place since 1963, did away with the security courts, fired several provincial governors and released some political prisoners…
Yet, the fact that his security forces are unabashedly firing on unarmed demonstrators and that activists are still being arrested in midnight raids clearly evince the fact that Assad is more interested in saving his regime than reforming it…
In any case, since Assad has shed the blood of his own compatriots, and considering the brutal legacy of his Baath Party regime, nothing short of its elimination is likely to quell the unrest…
We want the toppling of the regime, a resident of Ezraa told The Observer.
The blood of our martyrs makes this our responsibility now.
Can Assad survive?
How many Syrians is he willing to kill in order to do so?
Will the Syrians persist and topple his regime?
Not all Syrians welcome the uprising.
Several religious minorities, including the Christians, fear that a post-Assad regime could be even worse…
Nevertheless, Assad is clearly unfit, both morally and politically, to rule Syria.
His fate, as well as the nation’s, is in the hands of the Syrian people…
(The photograph above of a demonstration in the Syrian city of Banias on Friday is by AFP)