https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-outcry-for-syrias-palestinians/
Yarmouk was a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria totally destroyed by the Assad regime during the Syrian Civil War. The death and destruction were far more extensive than what has happened in Gaza, but for reasons which deserve to be pondered, Yarmouk’s fate never received anything like the attention that has been given to the war in Gaza, where the IDF has been falsely accused of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” More on how Yarmouk was reported on, and why its destruction received so little attention, can be found here: “The Yarmouk double standard: Why is there no outcry for Syria’s Palestinians? – opinion,” by Robert Hersowitz, Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2024:
Yarmouk, where 160,000 Palestinians had once lived, was a vibrant refugee camp, bustling with activity: shops hawking their wares, food stalls selling falafel and shwarma, children playing soccer. But then came the indiscriminate bombings, the constant artillery and sniper fire, and, gradually, widespread famine and disease.
Their homes destroyed, their streets in ruins, and with no basic services, tens of thousands of Yarmouk’s Palestinian residents fled to neighboring lands or were internally displaced. Nearly 4,000 of them were killed during the violence.
You’re probably thinking that I’m talking about Gaza. You would be wrong, however. Yarmouk is just outside of Damascus – in Syria. It was once that country’s largest Palestinian refugee camp until it was totally destroyed by Syrian government troops during the bloody civil war that began in 2011 with the ruthless repression of anti-government protesters. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 617,000 people – 164,000 of them civilians – have been killed since the war’s start.
And yet, in the US, even as the Palestinian (and overall civilian) death toll climbed, there were no rallies against the Bashar Assad regime in our public squares. No protest encampments on university campuses. No grassroots calls for a ceasefire. There was only a deafening silence.