Ask most citizens of South Africa about the situation in Homs and they will in all likelihood answer the question with a question of their own such as “Where the hell is that?” Moreover the same question posed of Gaza or the Palestinians would elicit an immediate response. Why is this so?

Firstly some background.

The Arab Spring ignited uprisings across the Arab world against the oppressive regimes in power. One such uprising was in the ancient city of Homs where the Syrian opposition rose only to be confronted by the Syrian Military using artillery and tanks to crush the rebellion.

The resultant destruction of vast swathes of Homs including its hapless civilian population did not draw any condemnatory response let alone a sharp rebuke. The world reacted in a quiescent dilatory manner.

No inflammatory speeches, no demonstrations at Wits University against the perfidious Syrian government which is a lackey of the Russia regime under Putin.

If this had been Gaza, the enraged Arab world would have questioned the disproportionate response: tanks versus puny AK47s. Pictures of slaughtered children in varying states of disembowelment would have been shown to world aghast at such wanton killings. Pictures of hysterical women clad in hijabs and niqabs clutching dead loved ones would have beamed to the world.

Instead none of this occurred. The same scenes as seen in Gaza were replicated in Homs but instead of loudly declaiming their disgust at these events, perforce it was hidden from view behind a veil of tanks, guns and bombs.

Such is the flagrant hypocrisy of the Arab world.

For this conduct, they will be harshly dealt with not in the afterlife but in posterity and in the court of public opinion as being no more civilised than the brutal WW2 SS and their Nazi Regime.