Mr. President,




Today’s debate is titled, "the protection of civilians in armed conflict."




Truthfully, there is little protection that we can speak about. Instead, today we recount the subjugation, exploitation, and attempted annihilation of civilians.




The appalling images coming out every day from Homs, Hama, and Aleppo highlight our failures. The international community is failing the helpless mothers and children of Syria. It is failing to protect them from their own brutal ruler. And it is failing to uphold the most basic principles implied by a debate titled "the protection of civilians".




The people of Syria look at us with pleading eyes. They are desperate. We are their only hope.




Today I urge all members of this Council to hear the voice of Hadeel Kouki, a 20-year-old student at the University of Aleppo. She was arrested last year by Assad’s secret police for distributing leaflets that called on Syrians to march peacefully.

 


Last March, she spoke at the UN’s Human Rights Council—an organization that I hope will soon begin doing something remotely related to the protection of human rights. She said, (and I quote), "I spent 52 days in prison. I was brutally tortured. I was raped by the security forces. They tortured me more than usual only because I am a Christian. I want freedom. I have seen too much suffering of fellow Syrians who spent years in prison merely for expressing a thought."
Voices like hers should unite the voice of the world against the tyrannical Assad regime. It is time for us speak clearly, decisively, and truthfully about what is happening in Syria – and to speak unequivocally against this evil regime.

 


Mr. President,

 


Assad is not alone. On Assad’s advisory board sits Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad – the Holocaust denier and self-proclaimed human rights activist, with specific expertise in women, gays, and political dissidents. These two offer Assad guidance on how to slaughter the Syrian people more efficiently. Together they form a "trio of brutality". The future of this "trio of brutality" depends on threatening the lives and crushing the hopes of millions, not just in Syria, but throughout the Middle East.

 


Iran’s arm extends from Syria into Lebanon. Its grip has twisted the Lebanese state into an Iranian outpost for terror. Today Lebanon’s fastest growing industry is the smuggling of missiles. With Iran’s support, Hezbollah has amassed 50,000 missiles that can reach all of Israel and well beyond. Hezbollah has more missiles today than many NATO members – all stored in civilian areas. Hezbollah intentionally puts these missiles in the basements of homes, in the playgrounds of schools, and in the back rooms of hospitals. Talk about priorities. The people of Lebanon are more valuable to Hezbollah as human shields than as human beings.

 


We see the same pattern of civilian exploitation by Iran’s other terrorist proxies. In the Gaza Strip, Hamas uses Palestinian schools to launch rockets at Israeli schools. They use Palestinian hospitals to launch attacks that send Israelis to the hospital. In the past week alone, more than 125 rockets have been fired into the heart of Israeli communities and cities. As we sit here today in New York, daily life is paralyzed for one million Israeli civilians.

 


Yet, this Council has not uttered a single word condemning these appalling attacks. Not one word. The silence speaks volumes.

 


Mr. President,

 


Those who harm civilians are taught to hate and learn to kill.  Yet, in this chamber we hear very little about the cultures of incitement around the world that serve as the key ingredient in the recipe for violence against civilians.
Make no mistake: words can kill. It doesn’t matter whether they are spoken in Farsi in an Iranian mosque that promotes jihad against the West, written in Arabic in a Hamas textbook that dehumanizes Jews and Israelis, or taught in Korean in a North Korean political education center that glorifies violence against South Koreans. This Council has duty to speak with one voice against those Nations and organizations that fan the dangerous flames of hatred and incitement.

 


Mr. President,

 


The clock in this Council ticks forward from debate to debate, but we see little progress in the protection of civilians. By watching the hands of the clock go by, we lend a hand to their oppressors.

 


Some of the very nations that ruthlessly exploit and target civilians in armed conflict have the audacity to sit in this chamber and speak about their protection. They should find no refuge here.

 


The Security Council has a responsibility to speak out against those that callously disregard human life – and to speak up for all the civilians of the world.

 


As Elie Weisel once said, "Indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor – never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. Not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own."

 


Thank you, Mr. President.