Florence Snyder
Vladimir Putin may be the highest-tech mass murder on the planet, but he has not been able to silence the men, women and children in Syria who are writing their last wills and testaments on Twitter.
One of them is a seven-year-old girl named Bana. With a little tech support from her mom, she tweeted a “Final message. People are dying since last night. I am very surprised I am tweeting right now and still alive.”
Some Syrians are communicating the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper. If you’re a nurse who saves lives for a living, you need more than 140 characters to explain why taking your own life is a more appealing exit strategy than being murdered by Assad’s army, after a battalion has raped you.
If little Bana is still alive, she is “hiding and terrified.” If she somehow survives Bashir’s Bloodbath, she will learn that holocausts have been going on since biblical times, and many people knew, and few people lifted a finger to help.
The Lie of the Year may change, but “Never again” is The Lie of Every Year.
