Can a New Year Truce Help the People of Egypt and Syria

I cannot help but think today about the freedom fighters of Egypt and the people of Syria who are trying to fight for freedom.

In Egypt, we are watching the terrible battle between the real democrats, those courageous street marchers who defied Mubarak and his military to be free, and the military which once stood with them but is now feeling power slipping away and resisting with violence against the very people they saved last January.

In Egypt, we see the forces of democracy and statist/religious control battling it out for the future of Egypt and of its people. The young and educated, especially, are engaged because it is their future. It is they who will suffer if repression is re-instated. It is they whose ideas and words will be suppressed if the islamist extreme gains power over the Egyptian government.

There is no hope, it seems, for Egyptian freedom fighters to win at the polls.  Their fears that early parliamentary elections would lead to massive victory for the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist groups was well-founded. They understand this and are now back on the streets and in the squares, fighting with everything they have in order not to lose the freedom that was so close and now seems jeopardized.  

And in Syria, we have a government so far out of control that it has today promulgated a law stating that anyone who supplies weapons to the freedom marchers in Syria will be subject to the death penalty.

The world continues to talk and cajole and install sanctions - and nothing is helping the Syrian martyrs who are trying to be free of a vicious sectarian and tribal dictatorship.

Could we hope for a Holiday truce for the Syrian people - a time at the New Year when the government would cease its slaughter.

Can we hope that the Egyptian army will see, as some in the Syrian army already have, that freedom is the honorable goal and that they must help to achieve it, starting with a truce for the New Year that will let all sides calm their passions and reflect on the rightful future of all Egyptians.