[Amanpour:] Welcome back to the program. There are grim new warnings about another potential massacre underway being planned in Syria. As the Assad regime escalates its offensive using helicopter gunships in the town of al-Hafa. The United States and the U.N. say they are gravely concerned. The mass killings of civilians in two villages over the last two weeks left nearly 200 people dead, many of them women and children. NPR's Deborah Amos is one of the few journalists inside the country and I spoke to her on the phone just a few moments ago. Deborah Amos, thank you for joining me from Syria. I want to ask you about what you have witnessed in the countryside, particularly the latest massacre and the aftermath.
[Deborah Amos, Npr Correspondent:] We went with the U.N. to this isolated farming hamlet called Kubair. The scene there was horrific, Christiane. The buildings, two of them, were filled with the aftermath of a massacre, blood-soaked carpets, a wall where the children were killed, low down, these children, obviously were crouching as they were killed. You can see the blood splatter up the wall, dead animals, fresh graves at the mosque, bodies burned, still body parts inside some of these houses. It is unimaginable, the horror that that must have been in that village as they were attacked by apparently, as we were told by people who came to us, when we were there, from villages surrounding them, people who were their neighbors before this started. And that was also part of the horror of what happened in that village. This is neighbor against neighbor.
[Amanpour:] Deborah, some senior Syrian insider has described what is emerging to be a pattern of ethnic cleansing to try to get rid of the Sunni villages and for Assad to carve out for himself a sort of mini-Alawite romp state. Does this fit with what you're seeing?
[Amos:] I can't say if it's that organized. But it is certain that these militia, these people called the shabiha, the ghosts, can act with impunity. We've had two terrible massacres in the last two weeks. There will be and there has been a price for those massacres. For example, in Damascus for the first time ever, you had merchants, Sunni merchants, the backbone of this regime go on strike in the old souk, the old market downtown, unprecedented for business men to take that kind of position. And people here talk about before Houla and after Houla. And that was the first big massacre, that that changed so much about how Damascus is reacting to the regime and the underpinnings of the regime are crumbling over these kinds of massacres. It is at a price to have that kind of sectarian cleansing.
[Amanpour:] You're talking about the underpinnings of the regime. Of course, everybody is looking at the capital of Damascus. You're seeing the fighting approach the capital, if not entering the capital already.
[Amos:] It was in three neighborhoods, not in the suburbs, where we have seen it for almost a year, but now in neighborhoods that are close to the center of the city. And when I say see, I mean I saw as we drove into town, coming out from the village up north. We could see smoke billowing on the skyline. You can hear it and you can feel it, 1:30 in the morning, something will go thud, and you know that that's been an explosion somewhere in the city. I was here six months ago. That was not happening then.
[Amanpour:] And you even said that you could have conversations about what was going on that you couldn't have some time ago. Do you think people are getting more emboldened against Assad in his heart of power in the capital?
[Amos:] You know, I spoke to an opposition man today, and he said I believe that most Syrians feel in their bones that the regime is over, it's only a matter of time. And what Syrians understand in the capital is they can't arrest everybody. It was extraordinary to watch people break through that wall of fear here in the capital. We've seen it outside of this capital, but we haven't seen it here where the security is very, very tight. So it feels like a new phase, even though the offensive from the Free Syrian Army was, in fact, a military failure. But it changed the tone of this city.
[Amanpour:] Incredible to have your eyewitness report from there in Damascus. Deborah Amos, thank you very much.
[Amos:] Thank you.
[Amanpour:] And now we turn to Nobel peace laureate and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, who's become a leading moral voice in our world today. Nineteen years ago, he challenged then President Clinton to do more to stop the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, in Bosnia.
[Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor And Author:] Mr. President, I cannot not tell you something. I have been in the former Yugoslavia last fall. I cannot sleep since for what I have seen. Some as a Jew I am saying that. We must do something to stop the bloodshed in that country!
[Amanpour:] And today, Wiesel is challenge President Obama to do something in Syria. Elie Wiesel, thank you for joining me.
[Wiesel:] Thank you, Christiane.
[Amanpour:] You have written a very powerful piece recently, as well as everything that you've said publicly, calling what's happening in Syria not just a tragedy but a scandal as well. What do you mean by the scandal?
[Wiesel:] Scandal is that the world is not doing enough to stop it. I invited the president a few weeks ago to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington and in my introduction I already mentioned Syria Syria was then as it is now a symbol of mass murder. And the fact that we know, the fact that we can see from television, the fact that we can speak about it and nothing is being done, that is a scandal.
[Amanpour:] I am fascinated by what you said specifically in that regard. You said that the Holocaust, even that could have been stopped because people knew in '39, '40, '41, even '42, and you said particularly that each time in Berlin, when Goebbels and the others always waited to see what would be the response in Washington or London or other capitals, and they were emboldened when there was no response.
[Wiesel:] No doubt about that. When you read the memoirs of those men who committed the murders, who gave the orders to commit murders, they speak about it, that the world doesn't care, and they mention Washington. And they mention the White House. And they mention really all those people who were supposed to be the descendants of democracy, the great heroes of moral values and saviors of victims. They did not do anything. Oh, yes, there was a war going on. Let's be honest. Of course there was a war. But the words, the words were missing. They spoke about war, but they did not speak about what Hitler has done to the Jewish people. Day after day, at one point, when Hungarian Jews were targeted, I, one of them, 12,000 a day were gassed and murdered, every single day. And now look, the look at Syria. It's part of the same thing. I never compared any tragedy to that tragedy, of course. But it's happening. And thank you for mentioning it again and again. And it reminds me, really, of Sarajevo
[Amanpour:] Yes.
[Wiesel:] when both of us were also involved then in trying to alert the world
[Amanpour:] It does
[Wiesel:] what has happening.
[Amanpour:] And it reminds me of we played what you said, and challenged President Clinton then, and I want to play what President Obama said in response to your introduction at the Holocaust Museum this spring.
[Barack Obama, President Of The United States:] "Never again" is a challenge to nations. It's a bitter truth too often, the world has failed to prevent the killing of innocents on a massive scale. And we are haunted by the atrocities that we did not stop.
[Amanpour:] Are they words? Do you believe that that's going to be put into action?
[Wiesel:] I don't see. I don't see it happen yet. And it should. Look, I don't have the information that we should have. Maybe [inaudible] how many people do we need to send to Syria? Must we send what, whom, what troops, with whom, with what other country? I've been assured that the White House knows, the Pentagon knows, the State Department knows what to do. We don't. One thing we do know, the something must be done to stop that tragedy, that mass murder. It's only one man for the moment, who's a symbol of all that, is Bashar al-Assad, and this man, what does he want? What does he want? He's afraid of death? It cannot be, because he is inflicting death to so many people, his own people, after all. And we are supposed not to do anything?
[Amanpour:] One of the things President Obama said, he said that I am the first president to make this declaration and to declare that preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest. And he launched an Atrocities Prevention Board. What does that mean to you? It sounds very bureaucratic to me.
[Wiesel:] Oh, the president is listening. He's a very good listener. But I know him as a very good listener. And I am convinced that he wants to do something. And my idea is that he together with some other Western leaders will come up with a plan, at least a plan, a warning, as I said in my piece that to warn Assad that once this is over, he will have to face the heart, international core.
[Amanpour:] And The Hague, yes.
[Wiesel:] And The Hague, charged and indicted for mass murder and crimes against humanity. It will happen. It will have to happen.
[Amanpour:] When you look out and you see this and you remember your own experience, I don't know what lesson do you take for the condition of us, of humankind?
[Wiesel:] Look, you speak to millions. I speak to my classes. I'm a teacher. I love teaching. And really, when it comes to that, I'm so discouraged because now, again now we know and some of us have access to people who have power and could do something and if all this, and with passivity, [inaudible] and every day, while we talk here, how many people are being killed? How many children are being massacred in Syria, how many? Many. Too many. Every one is too many.
[Amanpour:] Well, your voice is exceptional and powerful and loud, and you keep spreading that voice. Thank you for being in.
[Wiesel:] Thank you.
[Amanpour:] Thank you. An impassioned appeal indeed for action. And when we return, a journalist's view of man's inhumanity to man, the images may change but the face of evil remains the same.