By Yves Kugelmann No Letters from Syria

Scouts who did reconnaissance in the land of Canaan, while the Jews were still wandering the desert, are already mentioned in the book of Genesis. They reported back to the Israelites about a hidden land immediately beyond modern day Syria – in fact, a land in close vicinity of today's riotously contested city of Aleppo – where milk and honey were flowing freely and from where originate the oldest preserved manuscripts of the Hebraic Bible. In the past few months, indeed, such scouts would have been necessary again; perhaps their reports would have motivated international institutions and political powers such as China or Russia to commit to a more forceful intervention instead of following only their own myopic self-interest.
    Almost no word has escaped from Syria for months. Months and months of silence, while the Syrian regime is massacring its own people. Only a few reports were able to penetrate the physical and virtual borders. The media, even the secret services have almost no binding or reliable information; nevertheless, the rest of the world, which has been silent, passive failing to intervene until a few days ago, knew about this mass murder. But silence also hovers over Iran and Saudi Arabia, the same silence as some time ago over Darfur or today over North Korea. The totalitarian regimes have been victorious over the West, over their own populations and over the internet by pitting technology against their own citizens. By the push of a button. Total control.

    This used to be different. There was a time when marathon runners, messages in bottles, homing pigeons, ambassadors and emissaries, messengers on water, on horseback or on foot brought information to their recipients – a highly complex undertaking and often at high risk to the messenger's own life. The century-old tradition of sending messages, the advent of the printing press and ultimately modern-day newspaper printing facilitated the democratization of society – in fact even its enlightenment. Today, all this can be switched off by the totalitarian push of a button. Back then, a message was worth giving one's life for, the ultimate treasure. Today, too many no longer recognize the value of the message.
    The age of the internet has completely demolished the value of a message. Information that is accessible at any time, free, and reviewed less and less for its veracity, has no value and is replaceable, interchangeable. Intoxicated by gushing information and message floods, all information becomes the same. Weighing or sorting falls victim to the next message that takes over. Today, information is treated as an aspect of entertainment, journalistic quality meets a public that is only too rarely able to absorb and evaluate such information. While the foreign news sections of newspapers or news programs used to be relevant for public broadcasting agencies in educating a community that was interested in international affairs, today even the bastions of quality journalism are cutting back on their foreign correspondents. All of a sudden, the achievement that has shaped the nature of our democracies – a free press – is in a free-fall.

    Discussions regarding the internet, social media, and the transparent person in the democratic system do not appreciate the fact that, while it is true that the internet has made information more accessible and more democratic, it has also provided more tools for blocking information, for making information more elitist. All of a sudden, the exchange of letters, for example letters of the 20th century, takes on a completely new light. Information, descriptions, interactions between letter-writers away from the official historiography provide the context for a time and a century marred by catastrophe, a century that is in many aspects still very poorly, if at all, understood. Postcards, mail from the war front, letters and the good old telegram democratized and decentralized the way that the history of a whole century was written. Witness testimonies that stand between a new future and the destruction of civilization.

    Writing is or was also thinking. The great writers were above all great thinkers. They were not only able to write, they were first of all able to think – and these thoughts they wrote down. These are people who saw by writing and who wrote by seeing. Over the past 150 years, it was these literary talents in the coffee houses of Europe, the people forced into hiding or imprisoned, such as Anne Frank, Jitzchak Katzenelson, Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, Irene Nemirovski, or ambitious journalists like Truman Capote who were able to convey truth in their writing – they have no equal in the age of virtual information. Simply put, often these were people who wrote letters to each other or who kept diaries and journals for themselves. The number of people who bore witness is indeed great.

    The massacre in Homs may be replayed at some point in the future in suppressed e-mails or non-posted entries in Facebook. But, what some will coin, the nostalgic look by a democratized, modern society upon centuries of writing cannot help but denounce the omnipresence of always accessible and always available communication for its total failure in Homs or Aleppo, as well as in Darfur or China.

    There were no letters coming out of Syria, only fuzzy pictures on YouTube. There is no way that the world cannot know about the terror that is raging behind the walls. Sometime in the future, the question will be asked why we did not use this knowledge against the regime of oppression and in support of the people of the land. Perhaps Socrates would say today: "I don't know anymore what I don't know." And this will make us all the more guilty.

Yves Kugelmann is editor in chief of JM Jüdische Medien AG. He lives in Basel und in Zurich.