On Wednesday, March 20th at 9pm EST, PITAPOLICY Founder, Mehrunisa Qayyum appeared on Huffington Post Live to participate in the segment: “March to War in Syria”. This was her second appearance on the show. The challenge was to reframe the debate to consider the humanitarian consequences among the Syrian people, not just “the problems of the neighborhood” as in the spillover effects into Israel, as described by Jonathon Shanzer of the Forum for Defending Democracies. Pitapal, and among PITAPOLICY Blog’s first contributors, Ramah Kudaimi, was also a guest.
Here is the Huffington Post Live segment:
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Assad May Have Been ShotSince airing this segment, a few developments:
- The SNC leader, Moaz Khatib, stepped down from his role as president. However, Khatib’s resignation has not be accepted by SNC members. (Resignation Speech, Thank you @hhassan140 for the translation.)
- U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, makes a surprise visit to Iraq to push for ending Iran-Syria flights.
- There are unconfirmed reports that Bashar Al-Assad’s Iranian Bodyguard shot him.
- Israel-based newspaper, Jerusalem Post, reported that Israeli Defense Forces launched Tamuz missiles in response to 2 incidents of fire from the Syrian side of the border. In a slightly different tone, the BBC reports that the shots coming in from Syria may have been stray bullets coming from within the Syria and did not confirm that the Syrian fire on IDF was intentional. Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since 1967.