English LCCC Newsbulletin For
Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For December 09/2024
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news
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Bible Quotations For today
The child (John) grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness
until the day he appeared publicly to Israel
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 01/67-80:
“John’s father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this
prophecy: ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favourably on
his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty saviour for us in the
house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets
from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all
who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has
remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to
grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him
without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you,
child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the
Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the
forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high
will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow
of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.’ The child grew and became
strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared
publicly to Israel.”
Titles For The Latest English LCCC
Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published
on December 08-09/2024
Text & Video: The Fall of Assad’s Regime: A Faith Certainty and a Foreshadowing
for the Iranian Mullahs' Dictatorship/Elias Bejjani/December 08/ 2024
Text & Video: Mikati Should Be Prosecuted for Treason Over His Statement on the
Need for National Consensus to Disarm Hezbollah/Elias Bejjani/December 07/2024
Text and Video: Naim Qassem's Speech: Delusions, Illusions, Denial, Deception,
Cunning, and an Attempt to Subvert the Ceasefire Agreement/Elias Bejjani/December
05/2024
Colonel Charbel Barakat's Advice to Hezbollah/December 08/2024
Syria and the New Realities/Colonel Charbel Barakat/December 08/2024
Mikati urges Lebanese ‘to show wisdom and calm during critical time’
Israeli military says it killed Hezbollah fighter threatening troops in southern
Lebanon
Netanyahu orders army to 'seize' Syria buffer zone
Israel strikes Syrian arms depots near Damascus
Lebanon says boosting troops on Syria border after Assad's fall
Syrians in Lebanon flock to border crossing after Assad's fall
Iraq evacuates Damascus embassy staff to Lebanon
Hezbollah withdraws forces from Homs, Damascus outskirts
Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published
on December 08-09/2024
Syrian
Opposition Topples President Assad, Prime Minister Calls for Free Elections
Syrian government falls in stunning end to 50-year rule of Assad family
US will remain in eastern Syria and seek to prevent Daesh resurgence, Pentagon
says
Russia Says Syria’s Assad Has Left Country and Given Orders for Peaceful Power
Handover
Watching with trepidation and glee, Netanyahu orders military to seize Syria
buffer zone
Assad loyalists shaken by his fall, some relieved by lack of violence
Former al-Qaeda member al-Golani rebrands as a pluralist amid doubts over
Syria’s democratic future
The fall of Bashar Assad after 14 years of war in Syria brings to an end a
decades-long dynasty
Auchincloss: Syrian government collapse is a ‘potential win’ but ‘not
uncomplicated’
Former national security adviser: ‘Until Hamas is destroyed,’ there can’t be
‘better life for the Palestinians’
Gaza health officials say latest Israeli airstrikes kill at least 14 including
children
Trudeau says a 'new chapter for Syria can begin here' after fall of Assad: 'Ends
decades of brutal oppression'
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre also commented on the situation, suggesting
Canada shouldn't "get involved in that mess."
Titles For The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous
sources
on December 08-09/2024
Analysis: Collapse of Syria's Assad is a blow to Iran's 'Axis of Resistance'/Jon
Gambrell/MANAMA, Bahrain (AP)/December 8, 2024e.
Syria’s Bloody Dictator Has Fallen/Mac William Bishop/Rolling Stone/December 8,
2024
Jew-Hunting: Open Season in the West/Guy Millière/Gatestone Institute./December
8, 2024
Lessons from Syria/Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al Awsat/December 08/2024
Syria has a bright future without Assad/Ghassan Ibrahim/Arab News/December 08,
2024
The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News &
Editorials published
on December 08-09/2024
Elias Bejjani/Text & Video: The Fall
of Assad’s Regime: A Faith Certainty and a Foreshadowing for the Iranian
Mullahs' Dictatorship
Elias Bejjani/December 08/ 2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/12/137796/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNrwroj6KuY&t=861s
The fall of the tyrannical
Baathist Assad regime in Syria, after 55 years of oppressive rule, marks the
definitive end of an era rooted in serving the forces of evil, represented
symbolically by Lucifer, the prince of darkness. This regime’s collapse is a
testament to divine justice and a vivid reminder of the biblical principle that
all oppressive and malevolent systems inevitably meet their demise. The same
fate undoubtedly awaits the Iranian Mullahs' dictatorship, another regime
entrenched in terrorism and injustice.
Assad's downfall is not just a political event but a divine reckoning, foreseen
in scripture and faith. The Bible reminds us repeatedly that God, in His
infinite wisdom and justice, allows time for repentance but never neglects to
bring judgment upon evil. As it is written, "Your body is a temple of the Holy
Spirit within you, whom you have from God" (1 Corinthians 6:19). Assad's regime,
like all oppressive systems, desecrated this sacred principle by violating the
dignity and humanity of countless individuals in Syria, Lebanon, and beyond.
Biblical Parallels and Divine Justice
The fate of the Assad regime is mirrored in biblical prophecies:
"Woe to you, destroyer, you who have not been destroyed; woe to you, betrayer,
you who have not been betrayed! When you stop destroying, you will be destroyed;
when you stop betraying, you will be betrayed" (Isaiah 33:1). These words echo
the inevitable justice that awaits all oppressors. Assad's crimes against
humanity, his betrayal of his people, and his relentless destruction could only
lead to his shameful fall.
"Whatever you ask the Father in My name, He will give you" (John 16:23). The
prayers of the oppressed, the cries of the tortured, and the faith of the just
have been answered. This is a divine intervention, not merely a human effort,
ensuring that no injustice remains hidden, and no tyrant escapes judgment.
A Message to the Iranian Mullahs
The collapse of Assad's regime serves as a harbinger for the Iranian Mullahs.
Just as the Baathist dictatorship fell despite decades of ruthless control, the
Mullahs' regime, founded on oppression, terrorism, and the distortion of
religion, will face a similar destiny. History and faith assure us that regimes
built on lies and injustice are doomed to fail. The same divine justice that
dismantled Assad's regime will undoubtedly dismantle the Mullahs’ grip on Iran
and their regional proxies.
The Iranian regime has brought untold suffering, not only to its people but to
nations across the Middle East through its sponsorship of terrorism and its
hegemonic ambitions. The Bible's teachings emphasize that "there is nothing
concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known"
(Luke 12:2). This assurance reinforces our belief that the Mullahs' crimes will
not go unpunished.
Faith in Action
The fall of Assad's regime is a call to action for all who value justice and
human dignity. It is a moment to reaffirm faith in divine justice and to
actively oppose oppressive regimes that violate human rights. With faith,
prayer, and perseverance, the downfall of the Iranian Mullahs will follow. As
Christians and believers in the principles of justice, we are called to stand
firm in the truth, saying, "Yes, yes, or no, no," and rejecting all forms of
complicity or apathy in the face of evil.
The Road Ahead
We pray and work for a Middle East free of tyranny and terror. Assad’s fall is a
milestone, but it is not the end of the journey. The next chapter begins with
the dismantling of the Iranian regime, whose policies have perpetuated suffering
in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and beyond. Let us remain steadfast, united in faith
and purpose, until the forces of darkness are vanquished and the light of
justice prevails.
In the words of scripture: "The righteous will rejoice when they see vengeance
done; they will wash their feet in the blood of the wicked" (Psalm 58:10). This
is not a call for violence but a prophetic assurance that justice, both divine
and earthly, will prevail.
Elias Bejjani/Text & Video: Mikati Should Be Prosecuted for Treason Over His
Statement on the Need for National Consensus to Disarm Hezbollah
Elias Bejjani/December 07/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/12/137737/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6CbG4IBuLM&t=6s
Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s current Prime Minister, has once again proven himself a
pliable tool in the hands of Hezbollah—a terrorist, Iranian, and jihadist armed
militia. Through its war with Israel, Hezbollah has exposed Lebanon and its
people to unprecedented destruction, losses, and casualties, all to serve Iran’s
dictates and advance the mullahs’ destructive, expansionist, and colonialist
project.
Mikati’s government, which is effectively a 100% Hezbollah-controlled entity,
unanimously approved the ceasefire agreement with Israel, brokered under U.S.
supervision. This agreement was a necessary step to halt the bloodshed and
devastation Hezbollah had inflicted on Lebanon through its reckless war against
the state of Israel. The agreement explicitly mandated the termination of
Hezbollah’s military presence across all Lebanese territories and the
implementation of international resolutions 1559, 1701, and 1680. These
resolutions obligate Lebanon to disarm all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias
and extend the authority of the Lebanese state, through its legitimate forces,
over the entire country.
Yet, in a brazen display of duplicity, Mikati shocked everyone on the 5th of
this month with a statement at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, claiming that
disarming Hezbollah requires “national consensus.” This impractical and illegal
condition is clearly intended to perpetuate Hezbollah’s armed dominance over
Lebanon and maintain its occupation of the country. His statement constitutes
treachery against the agreement he himself and his pro Hezbollah government
endorsed, which Hezbollah had accepted through its intermediary, House Speaker
Nabih Berri.
Moreover, this stance flagrantly contradicts the Lebanese Constitution and the
Taif Accord, both of which mandate the disarmament of all militias, Lebanese and
non-Lebanese, and the re-establishment of state authority over the entirety of
Lebanese territory through its legitimate forces—a principle enshrined in
Lebanon’s international commitments.
Mikati’s bizarre stance is not only illegal but also reveals his blatant
political hypocrisy. This Iscariot politician is known for his corruption and
the illicit accumulation of wealth. It is worth mentioning that he has a dubious
history, including business partnerships with the family of the Syrian butcher
Bashar al-Assad. It was the Syrian Assad regime that imposed him on Lebanon’s
political scene to serve its interests. Meanwhile, let us not forget that Mikati
was the Prime Minister of the “black shirts” government following Hezbollah’s
and Michel Aoun's Judas-like coup against Saad Al-Hariri’s government, in breach
of the Doha Agreement.
There is no shred of doubt that Mikati’s position on Hezbollah’s arms and his
insistence on linking their removal to national consensus are entirely
unacceptable by any means. This stance serves Hezbollah and Iran’s interests at
the expense of Lebanon’s sovereignty and the security of its people. It also
blatantly contradicts the Constitution, UN resolutions 1559, 1701, 1680, and the
terms of the ceasefire agreement.
This man, Mikati, who repeatedly demonstrates that he is merely a tool in the
hands of the Iranian armed, terrorist, jihadist proxy that has devastated
Lebanon and impoverished its people, must be prosecuted on treason charges.
In summary, Lebanon cannot rise as long as traitors, mercenaries, Iscariots, and
corrupt individuals like Mikati, Berri, Aoun, Bassil, and all their ilk hold
power.
Elias Bejjani/Text and Video: Naim Qassem's Speech: Delusions, Illusions,
Denial, Deception, Cunning, and an Attempt to Subvert the Ceasefire Agreement
Elias Bejjani/December 05/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/12/137626/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuO6LVRpm1c&t=173s
Sheikh Naim Qassem's recent televised appearance was a disappointing display of
rhetoric and deception. His speech, filled with baseless claims and inflammatory
language, insulted the intelligence of the Lebanese people. Rather than
acknowledging the reality of Hezbollah's defeat and the necessity of the
ceasefire agreement, Qassem attempted to undermine the agreement and perpetuate
a dangerous illusion of victory.
The content of Qassem's speech, like all Hezbollah leaders' statements and
stances since the party's inception in 1982, is a bundle of lies, baseless
rhetoric, delusional fantasies, and sectarian, inflammatory propaganda. This
rhetoric promotes hatred, distorts history, and serves the interests of the
Iranian mullah regime's expansionist, imperialist, and terrorist schemes and
sickening dreams.
Qassem's primary tactic was to downplay the significance of the ceasefire. He
falsely claimed that the agreement was limited to the area south of the Litani
River and only concerned the implementation of UN Resolution 1701. This is a
deliberate misrepresentation of the agreement's terms, which clearly encompass
all of Lebanon and mandate the disarmament of Hezbollah.
By denying the comprehensive nature of the agreement, Qassem seeks to maintain
Hezbollah's military capabilities and its ability to disrupt Lebanon's
stability. This strategy is not only a threat to Lebanon's security but also a
direct challenge to the international community's efforts to promote peace and
stability in the region.
With absurdity and falsification, he asserted that the other resolutions, 1559
and 1680, lack enforcement mechanisms and are solely under the jurisdiction of
the Lebanese state and its army. This is blatantly false. The agreement
unequivocally covers all of Lebanon, mandates the dissolution of Hezbollah, the
handover of its weapons to the Lebanese Army, and restricts the possession of
arms to state entities, as explicitly stipulated in the Taif Agreement, which is
enshrined in Lebanon's constitution.
Some may wonder why Hezbollah agreed to an accord that undermines its very
existence and exposes its false claims about resistance, liberation, and its
grandiose slogans of "throwing Israel into the sea" and "praying in Jerusalem."
The answer is simple: the party faced a crushing defeat against Israel and had
no other option but to surrender.
However, true to its nature, Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons specialize in
deceit, duplicity, and reneging on agreements. Despite their defeat and the
unprecedented calamity they have brought upon Lebanon's Shiite community and the
nation at large, they mistakenly believe they can once again evade the agreement
and renege on its provisions that do not align with their sinister and
expansionist agenda. Qassem's speech falls squarely within this context.
Neither Hezbollah, nor its Iranian sponsors, nor any faction of political Islam,
whether Sunni or Shiite, understand anything other than the language of force.
If they are not deterred by power and compelled to fully and strictly adhere to
the terms of the ceasefire agreement, they will inevitably revert to deceit,
noncompliance, and attempts to rebuild and recover everything they have lost.
To ensure that the ceasefire holds and that Lebanon can move towards a more
peaceful future, the international community must remain vigilant and hold
Hezbollah accountable for its actions. Any attempt by Hezbollah to undermine the
agreement must be met with a strong and decisive response.
Colonel Charbel Barakat's Advice to Hezbollah
Colonel Charbel Barakat/December 08/2024
(Freely translated from Arabic and quoted by Elias Bejjani, editor and publisher
of the LCCC website)
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/12/137782/
Introduction
Colonel Charbel Barakat, a retired Lebanese Army officer, historian, terrorism
expert, and author of numerous works on Lebanon, the Iranian regime’s schemes,
and jihadist movements, has testified multiple times before the U.S. Congress on
critical issues, including Iranian and Syrian terrorism, the Syrian occupation
of Lebanon, jihadist threats, and the pursuit of Middle East peace.
Colonel Charbel Barakat in his second political commentary today in which he is
addressing the dramatic unfolding events in Syria and Lebanon, he provided an
in-depth analysis of Hezbollah's current predicament, urging the group and its
community to reconsider their path in light of regional and global developments.
He explained that, with the collapse of the Syrian regime and the apparent
decline of the Iranian regime, it has become essential for the Lebanese people,
especially Hezbollah’s constituency, to recognize the changing tides and take
immediate steps to mitigate the consequences of their current trajectory.
He stressed that Hezbollah’s strategy of mobilizing youth for military conflict
has become untenable given the new realities of the Middle East and the
aspirations of its peoples. Barakat advised Hezbollah to voluntarily abandon its
weapons and its posture of superiority without delay. He warned that failing to
do so would exacerbate internal clashes, further losses, and impede Lebanon’s
recovery amidst the evolving circumstances.
Colonel Barakat urged Hezbollah's youth, particularly those who still aspire to
a future in Lebanon, to lead an internal uprising within their community. He
called on them to sever ties with the failed leadership that has plunged their
sect into despair, abandon destructive slogans, and reject the entrenched
hostility towards others. He explained that this hostility has yielded nothing
but devastation and tragedy.
He advised the youth to reassess their approach, permanently discarding
ideologies of enmity and militarization under the guise of "resistance."
Instead, they should channel their organizational capabilities toward
constructive endeavors, such as preparing their villages and towns for an era of
peace, engaging in reconstruction, and fostering societal collaboration. He
emphasized that these actions should aim to restore dignity and self-reliance
without succumbing to arrogance or subservience.
Barakat appealed to intellectuals within the Shiite community, imploring them to
break free from the culture of hatred and division imposed by the Iranian
regime. He reminded them of how this regime dragged them back over a thousand
years, using easy money, grandiose slogans, and an arsenal of weapons to
dismantle Lebanon’s institutions of enlightenment. These actions replaced
schools that once nurtured thinkers and innovators with ideological centers
breeding hatred and backwardness.
He stated that the downfall of Iran’s regime signals a chance for the Middle
East to embrace renewal and progress. Barakat called on disillusioned youth to
seize this opportunity, collaborate with fellow citizens, and rebuild their
regions instead of perpetuating chaos and unproductive ideologies. He reminded
them of Lebanon's history as a bridge of civilization and openness, urging them
to restore its bright legacy rather than allowing it to remain a hub of hatred
and violence.
He concluded by stressing that this painful chapter in Lebanon’s history must
serve as a lesson and a springboard for national revival. He emphasized the
importance of holding those responsible for the nation’s suffering accountable,
burying their divisive slogans, and ensuring they serve as a warning to future
generations.
Barakat urged the wounded Shiite community to lead a wave of reconstruction,
turning the page on this dark era. He declared that the future lies in
cooperation for the common good—not only among the Lebanese but also with their
neighbors. He reminded the community that repentance and reconciliation are
prerequisites for achieving peace and that the cries of innocent victims will
haunt them until justice prevails.
Colonel Barakat’s message is a stark reminder of the crossroads Lebanon faces
and an urgent plea for transformative change.
Syria and the New Realities
Colonel Charbel Barakat/December 08/2024
(Freely translated from Arabic and quoted by Elias Bejjani, editor and publisher
of the LCCC website)
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/12/137763/
Introduction
Colonel Charbel Barakat, a retired Lebanese Army officer, historian, terrorism
expert, and author of numerous works on Lebanon, the Iranian regime’s schemes,
and jihadist movements, has testified multiple times before the U.S. Congress on
critical issues, including Iranian and Syrian terrorism, the Syrian occupation
of Lebanon, jihadist threats, and the pursuit of Middle East peace.
Colonel Charbel Barakat, shared his analysis today on the evolving events
in Syria and their far-reaching implications for Lebanon, Iran, and the broader
region. He explained: “The rapid developments in Syria underscore that the Assad
regime has entered a critical phase of decline. Major cities have fallen
swiftly, and areas surrounding the Syrian capital are now aligning with
opposition forces. These forces have demonstrated remarkable organization and
strategic planning, indicating that they know precisely what they are doing. In
contrast, the regime and its Iranian allies, who initially promised unwavering
support, have begun withdrawing key leadership elements rather than reinforcing
their collapsing frontlines.”
Barakat added that these shifts raise pressing questions about the region's
future and potential transformations. He noted: “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s stern warning to Assad during his ceasefire announcement was both
explicit and forceful. Furthermore, the visit of the head of Israel’s Shin Bet
to Turkey for discussions with Turkish officials signals a coordinated
international and regional approach regarding Syria’s future and its role in
countering Iran’s expansionist agenda.”
He stressed that Israel’s patience with Iran’s regional interference—spanning
Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen—has reached its limit. Barakat said: “The recent
‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ operation highlights the devastating consequences of Iran’s
reach for Israel. Israel’s year-long war with Hezbollah, characterized by
unparalleled aggression and determination, was a necessary step to dismantle
Hezbollah’s image and limit its influence. This difficult but essential action
has set the stage for serious efforts toward a natural peace that ensures
stability for all regional peoples.”
Discussing the Syrian opposition’s growing control, Barakat observed: “The
opposition’s focus on addressing the suffering of the Syrian people—whether
within Syria, in exile, or in areas dominated by Assad’s regime and Iranian
militias—indicates a potential turning point for the country. The international
community’s attempts to resolve Syria’s crisis through UN Security Council
Resolution 2254, adopted unanimously in 2015, called for a ceasefire and a
political settlement. This included UN-mediated negotiations between the
opposition and regime representatives, aiming for a new constitution and a
peaceful transfer of power. Yet, the regime, emboldened by Iran’s support,
dismissed these efforts outright.”
He further explained that the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran has
increased pressure for regional change, effectively ending a status quo that
served only Damascus and Tehran. Barakat said: “Today, during the temporary
ceasefire between Israel and the Iranian regime, Syria stands on the brink of
transformation. As Assad’s regime collapses, new understandings among Syria’s
communities and regions could emerge, fostering stability, the return of
refugees, and reconstruction efforts to rebuild what war and hatred have
destroyed.”
Turning to Lebanon, Barakat warned: “Hezbollah clings to its illusions,
attempting to bypass agreements and regain dominance in Lebanon. The party tries
to convince the public it can fund reconstruction and compensate its displaced
supporters. However, with Iran’s financial support dwindling, these claims ring
hollow.”
He urged Lebanese leaders and the Shiite community to abandon these delusions.
He stated: “The bitter experiences of the past should serve as lessons for
future generations. It is time to avoid further calamities and seize available
opportunities for progress and development.”
Barakat concluded: *“Hezbollah is a relic of the past, as is the Assad regime,
and the Iranian regime will inevitably follow. Let us learn from these
experiences and move toward cooperation in peacebuilding and reconstruction
rather than perpetuating hatred and destruction.
The Shiite community in Lebanon must renounce arrogance and divisive rhetoric,
embracing equality within Lebanon’s diverse society. Together, we have endured
hardships and achieved success through collaboration. It is time to face
reality, turn setbacks into opportunities, and reclaim a constructive role in
rebuilding dignity and peace. When peace prevails, and its banners are raised
high, true prosperity will follow for all.”
Mikati urges Lebanese ‘to show wisdom and calm
during critical time’
NAJIA HOUSSARI/Arab News/December 08, 2024 22:40
BEIRUT: Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati stressed the need to tighten
control over the border and distance Lebanon from the repercussions of the
developments in Syria on Sunday. Mikati discussed the situation at the Syrian
border in a call with Gen. Joseph Aoun, head of the Armed Forces, and other
security chiefs. Lebanon currently hosts around 2 million Syrians, while more
than 800,000 are registered with the UN. Many fled Syria after its civil war
began in 2011. Mikati called on the “Lebanese people, of all affiliations, to
show wisdom and avoid provocations, especially at this critical time for our
country.”He urged communication with the National Commission for the Missing and
Forcibly Disappeared in Lebanon and the committee addressing the issue of
Lebanese detainees in Syria. He requested the use of all available resources to
contact the relevant parties for the release of hundreds of prisoners in Syrian
prisons. Recent developments in Syria, including the opening of prisons by
opposition factions and the release of all detainees, along with videos on
social media showing alleged Lebanese prisoners previously considered missing,
have sparked widespread anger in Lebanon. On Sunday, Lebanese citizen Marwan
Nouh, who had been imprisoned in Syria, returned to Arsal, Lebanon. The
president of the Committee of Families of the Kidnapped and Disappeared in
Lebanon, Wadad Halwani, called on Lebanese authorities to follow up on this
issue, especially since Syrian officials had long denied the presence of
Lebanese prisoners in Syrian prisons. In Tripoli, Sidon, and parts of Beirut,
people celebrated the fall of the Syrian regime. The Lebanese Army Command took
security measures “to prevent any threat to civil peace.” Social media activists
circulated a video showing a group of Lebanese youth storming the Arab socialist
Baath party’s office in Akkar, northern Lebanon, and removing posters of Syrian
President Bashar Al-Assad.
Also on Sunday, many pro-regime Syrian families, along with Lebanese families
who had been living in Syria, namely in Rablah and surrounding villages, entered
Lebanon.
Hezbollah in Bekaa sent out a message urging the residents of the pro-Hezbollah
Baalbek-Hermel region to welcome them. Amid these developments, an Israeli
airstrike hit the eastern ridge between Qoussaya and Anjar. Early on Sunday,
hundreds of Syrians gathered at Masnaa Border Crossing with Syria, waiting for
the Lebanese General Security’s to open it. Many more closely followed the rapid
military developments in their homeland through television and social media.
Around 400,000 Syrians returned home from Lebanon during the Israeli assault on
southern Lebanon, which lasted for 64 days. In Arsal, a border town in eastern
Lebanon whose terrain overlaps with Syria and includes the most significant
number of Syrian refugee camps, people emerged from their tents at dawn and
began chanting enthusiastic slogans. One camp official, Abu Mohammed, told Arab
News that people had not slept. “We toured these camps in the Qalamoun region,
Qusayr, and its countryside. All the people want to return, but we look forward
to an orderly exit from Lebanon.” He said that the refugee committees submitted
a request to the relevant authorities in Lebanon to inquire about the procedures
for return.
“We have been informed that those wishing to leave Lebanon may do so only once
without possibly returning.“Departure can occur through Al-Zamrani crossing on
the outskirts of Arsal, a natural geographical passage and not an official
crossing, or via Al-Matraba crossing in Hermel, an unofficial route. “The former
leads refugees to Qalamoun, while the latter directs them to Qusayr.”The General
Directorate of General Security in Lebanon said it would provide all necessary
facilities to return Syrians to Lebanon. It noted that the repeated Israeli
assaults on the land border crossings, particularly in the north, have led to
the closure of these crossings until further notice to ensure the safety of
travelers and entrants.Consequently, Masnaa Border Crossing remains open for the
place of entry and exit, especially for Syrian nationals, under the previously
issued temporary exceptional measures and instructions.
As of Sunday afternoon, around 1,500 Syrians crossed from Lebanon into Syria at
Masnaa Border Crossing. Conversely, the crossing experienced a significant
influx of Syrians entering Lebanon, either to utilize Beirut Airport for travel
or due to having residency permits or sponsors under the procedures established
by Lebanon. The Military Operations Management in Syria confirmed the withdrawal
of Hezbollah from Al-Qusayr and Homs towards Lebanon. The Lebanese Armed Forces
announced the deployment of reinforcements to the Lebanese border north of the
town of Al-Qaa following reports of the evacuation of Syrian security and
customs personnel from their positions. Dalal Harb, the spokesperson and
Communications Officer for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told Arab News
about the measures UNHCR can implement to facilitate the return of Syrian
refugees from Lebanon to Syria. She said it is aware of reports of Syrians
returning from Lebanon, with some movements reported through Masnaa crossing in
Bekaa. According to the Lebanese General Security Office, measures have been
announced to facilitate returns to Syria. Harb said: “We closely monitor these
developments and remain in contact with the relevant authorities. Updates will
be provided as more information becomes available.”
Israeli military says it killed Hezbollah fighter threatening troops in southern
Lebanon
Reuters/December 07, 2024 16:35
CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Saturday that it struck a Hezbollah fighter
in southern Lebanon who posed a threat to its troops, adding it was operating
within ceasefire agreements while remaining deployed to address threats to
Israel.
The Israeli military released aerial footage of an operation along with the
statement, showing a motorcycle being targeted with an airstrike, resulting in
the bike bursting into flames. Hezbollah did not immediately comment about the
incident.
Netanyahu orders army to 'seize' Syria buffer
zone
Agence France Presse/08
December 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he had ordered the Israeli
military to "seize" a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone between the Israeli- and
Syrian-controlled Golan Heights. The premier said a 1974 disengagement agreement
with Syria "has collapsed", so he "directed the (military) yesterday to seize
the buffer zone and the commanding positions nearby. We will not allow any
hostile force to establish itself on our border."
Israel strikes Syrian arms depots near Damascus
Agence France Presse/08
December 2024
Israel struck Syrian army weapons depots on Sunday near the Mazzeh military
airport, on the outskirts of Damascus, a war monitor told AFP. "Israeli strikes
targeted positions of the Fourth Division of the Syrian army near the Mazzeh
military airport," said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights war monitor, adding that the targets included weapons depots.
Lebanon says boosting troops on Syria border after Assad's
fall
Agence France Presse/08
December 2024
The Lebanese Army said on Sunday it was reinforcing its presence on the border
with neighboring Syria, after the government of longtime President Bashar al-Assad
fell and rebels took the capital Damascus. "In light of rapid developments and
delicate circumstances that the region is going through... units tasked with
monitoring and controlling the northern and eastern borders have been
reinforced, in conjunction with tightening surveillance measures," the army said
in a statement.
Syrians in Lebanon flock to border crossing after Assad's
fall
Associated Press/08
December 2024
Syrians have crowded the Lebanese side of the Masnaa border crossing Sunday
waiting to cross back into Syria after the fall of Bashar Assad. Lebanon’s
General Security closed the crossing overnight but reopened it in the morning,
allowing Syrians to freely cross out of Lebanon while restricting their entry
from Syria into the country. Lebanese officials have long complained about the
country’s population of refugees — the largest per capita in the world. As of
Sept. 30, some 768,353 Syrian refugees were registered with the U.N. refugee
agency in Lebanon, with hundreds of thousands more believed to be unregistered.
Many fled Lebanon after the escalation of the conflict between Israel and
Hezbollah in late September, but others crossed back from Syria into Lebanon in
recent days as insurgents marched toward Damascus.
With Syrian officials having abandoned the Syrian side of the border, an
Associated Press photographer who crossed from Lebanon into Syria said he saw
some people taking the opportunity to loot the duty-free store between the two
borders.
Syrian refugees in Beirut say they want to go home
Associated Press/08
December 2024
Syrian refugees in Beirut rejoiced Assad’s downfall on Sunday, with some saying
they are considering returning to Syria. “After all these years of suffering,
God granted us relief,” Hilal Youssef, a Syrian from Hama, said on Sunday. “We
will go back to Syria with pride and joy. We got rid of this army. We got rid of
the injustice that we lived before and freed Syria. Now we can go there anytime
we want.”“For sure we want to go back,” said Bilal al Khleif, also from Hama.
Refugees will return “to Hama, to Damascus, to Idlib and all areas and chant
‘Freedom,’” he said.
Iraq evacuates Damascus embassy staff to Lebanon
Agence France Presse/08
December 2024
Iraqi embassy staff left Damascus on Sunday for neighboring Lebanon, a
diplomatic source told AFP, after Syrian rebel forces seized the capital and
declared the end of President Bashar al-Assad's rule. The foreign ministry
official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the embassy's 10 employees
including the mission's chief arrived "in Beirut by land, and are all in good
condition," adding that the evacuation was "due to the tensions in Damascus...
the full withdrawal of the army and the loss of security."
Hezbollah withdraws forces from Homs, Damascus outskirts
Agence France Presse/08
December 2024
Hezbollah is pulling its forces from the outskirts of the Syrian capital
Damascus and the Homs area, a source close to the Lebanese group said Sunday, as
their ally President Bashar al-Assad faces a rebel offensive. The group "has
instructed its fighters in recent hours to withdraw from the Homs area, with
some heading to Latakia (in Syria) and others to the Hermel area in Lebanon,"
the source told AFP, noting that "Hezbollah fighters have also vacated their
positions around Damascus."
The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published
on December 08-09/2024
Syrian Opposition Topples President Assad, Prime Minister Calls for Free
Elections
Asharq Al Awsat/08 December 2024
The Syrian opposition declared President Bashar al-Assad's ouster after seizing
control of Damascus on Sunday, ending his family's iron-fisted rule after more
than 13 years of civil war in a seismic moment for the Middle East. The
opposition also dealt a major blow to the influence of Russia and Iran in the
region, key allies who propped up Assad during critical moments in the conflict.
Iran's embassy was stormed by opposition fighters following their capture of
Damascus, Iran's English-language Press TV reported on Sunday.
ADVERTISING
Syria's army command notified officers on Sunday that Assad's rule had ended, a
Syrian officer who was informed of the move told Reuters. But the Syrian army
later said it was continuing operations against "terrorist groups" in the key
cities of Hama and Homs and in the Daraa countryside. Assad, who had crushed all
forms of dissent, flew out of Damascus for an unknown destination earlier on
Sunday, two senior army officers told Reuters, as the opposition said they had
entered the capital with no sign of army deployments. "We celebrate with the
Syrian people the news of freeing our prisoners and releasing their chains and
announcing the end of the era of injustice in Sednaya prison," the opposition
said, referring to a notorious jail on the outskirts of Damascus where the
Syrian government detained thousands. The opposition coalition said on Sunday it
is continuing work to complete the transfer of power in Syria to a transitional
governing body with full executive powers. "The great Syrian revolution has
moved from the stage of struggle to overthrow the Assad regime to the struggle
to build a Syria together that befits the sacrifices of its people," it added in
a statement. Thousands in cars and on foot congregated at a main square in
Damascus waving and chanting "Freedom" from a half century of Assad family rule,
witnesses said. The collapse followed a shift in the balance of power in the
Middle East after many leaders of Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah group, a
lynchpin of Assad's battlefield force, were killed by Israel over the past two
months. Russia, Assad's other key ally, has been focused on the war in Ukraine.
ORDERLY TRANSITION?
The pace of events has stunned the region and raised fears of a new wave of
instability.
It marks a turning point for Syria, shattered by years of war which has turned
cities to rubble, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and forced millions
abroad as refugees. Stabilizing western areas of Syria captured in the
opposition advance will be key. Western governments, which have shunned the
Assad-led state for years, must decide how to deal with a new administration in
which a globally the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) looks set to have influence. The
United States will continue to maintain its presence in eastern Syria and will
take measures necessary to prevent a resurgence of ISIS, Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Daniel Shapiro told the Manama Dialogue
security conference in Bahrain's capital on Sunday. HTS, which spearheaded the
opposition advances across western Syria, was formerly an al-Qaeda affiliate
known as the Nusra Front until its leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani, severed ties
with the global movement in 2016. "The real question is how orderly will this
transition be, and it seems quite clear that Golani is very eager for it to be
an orderly one," said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert and Director of the Center
for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Golani will not want a
repeat of the chaos that swept Iraq after US-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein
in 2003. "They are going to have to rebuild ... they will need Europe and the US
to lift sanctions," Landis said. HTS is Syria's strongest opposition group and
some Syrians remain fearful it will impose draconian rule or instigate
reprisals. In a conference in Manama, Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic advisor to
the United Arab Emirates president, said a main concern for that country is
"extremism and terrorism."He said Syria is not out of the woods yet, adding that
he did not know whether or not Assad was in the UAE. Gargash blamed Assad's
downfall on a failure of politics and said he had not used the "lifeline"
offered to him by various Arab countries before, including the UAE.
ASSAD WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN
A Syrian Air plane took off from Damascus airport around the time the capital
was reported to have been taken by rebels, according to data from the
Flightradar website. The aircraft initially flew towards Syria's coastal region,
a stronghold of Assad's Alawite sect, but then made an abrupt U-turn and flew in
the opposite direction for a few minutes before disappearing off the map.
Reuters could not immediately ascertain who was on board. Two Syrian sources
said there was a very high probability that Assad may have been killed in a
plane crash as it was a mystery why the plane took a surprise U turn and
disappeared off the map according to data from the Flightradar website. As
Syrians expressed joy, Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali called for free
elections so Syrians can choose who they want. But that would require a smooth
transition in a country with complex competing interests, from extremists to
groups with links to the United States, Russia and Türkiye. Syrian opposition
fighters, for example, said they have started an attack on US-backed Kurdish-led
forces in the northern Syrian town of Manbij, according to a statement posted on
Sunday but dated Dec. 7 (Saturday) on X by the Ministry of Defense of the Syrian
Interim Government. Jalali also said he had been in contact with opposition
commander al-Golani to discuss managing the transitional period, marking a
notable development in efforts to shape Syria's political future. Syria's civil
war, which erupted in 2011 as a peaceful uprising against Assad's rule, dragged
in big outside powers, created space for extremist militants to plot attacks
around the world and sent millions of refugees into neighboring states. "Assad
is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by
Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer," US
President-Elect Donald Trump posted on X. "Russia and Iran are in a weakened
state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of
Israel and its fighting success."
Syrian government falls in stunning end to 50-year rule of Assad family
BASSEM MROUE and ZEINA KARAM/BEIRUT (AP)/December 08/2024
The Syrian government fell early Sunday in a stunning end to the 50-year rule of
the Assad family after a sudden rebel offensive sprinted across government-held
territory and entered the capital in 10 days. Syrian state television aired a
video statement by a group of men saying that President Bashar Assad has been
overthrown and all detainees in jails have been set free. The man who read the
statement said the Operations Room to Conquer Damascus, an opposition group,
called on all opposition fighters and citizens to preserve state institutions of
“the free Syrian state.”The statement emerged hours after the head of a Syrian
opposition war monitor said Assad had left the country for an undisclosed
location, fleeing ahead of insurgents who said they had entered Damascus
following the remarkably swift advance across the country. Syrian Prime Minister
Mohammed Ghazi Jalali said the government was ready to “extend its hand” to the
opposition and turn its functions over to a transitional government. “I am in my
house and I have not left, and this is because of my belonging to this country,”
Jalili said in a video statement. He said he would go to his office to continue
work in the morning and called on Syrian citizens not to deface public property.
He did not address reports that Assad had fled. Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights told The Associated Press that Assad took a flight
Sunday from Damascus. State television in Iran, Assad’s main backer in the years
of war in Syria, reported that Assad had left the capital. It cited Qatar’s Al
Jazeera news network for the information and did not elaborate.
There was no immediate statement from the Syrian government. As daylight broke
over Damascus, crowds gathered to pray in the city’s mosques and to celebrate in
the squares, chanting “God is great.” People also chanted anti-Assad slogans and
honked car horns. In some areas, celebratory gunshots rang out. Soldiers and
police officers left their posts and fled, and looters broke into the
headquarters of the Ministry of Defense. “My feelings are indescribable,” said
Omar Daher, a 29-year-old lawyer. “After the fear that he (Assad) and his father
made us live in for many years, and the panic and state of terror that I was
living in, I can’t believe it.”Daher said his father was killed by security
forces and his brother was in detention, his fate unknown. Assad “is a criminal,
a tyrant and a dog,” he said.”
“Damn his soul and the soul of the entire Assad family,” said Ghazal al-Sharif,
another reveler in central Damascus. “It is the prayer of every oppressed person
and God answered it today. We thought we would never see it, but thank God, we
saw it.”
The police headquarters in the capital appeared to be abandoned, its door left
ajar with no officers outside. An Associated Press journalist shot footage of an
abandoned army checkpoint where uniforms were discarded on the ground under a
poster of Assad’s face. Footage broadcast on opposition-linked media showed a
tank in one of the capital's central squares.It was the first time opposition
forces had reached Damascus since 2018, when Syrian troops recaptured areas on
the outskirts of the capital following a yearslong siege. The pro-government
Sham FM radio reported that the Damascus airport had been evacuated and all
flights halted.
The insurgents also announced they had entered the notorious Saydnaya military
prison north of the capital and “liberated" their prisoners there. The night
before, opposition forces took the central city of Homs, Syria's third largest,
as government forces abandoned it. The city stands at an important intersection
between Damascus, the capital, and Syria’s coastal provinces of Latakia and
Tartus — the Syrian leader’s base of support and home to a Russian strategic
naval base. The rebels had already seized the cities of Aleppo and Hama, as well
as large parts of the south, in a lightning offensive that began Nov. 27.
Analysts said rebel control of Homs would be a game-changer. The rebels' moves
into Damascus came after the Syrian army withdrew from much of southern part of
the country, leaving more areas, including several provincial capitals, under
the control of opposition fighters.The advances in the past week were by far the
largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by a group that has its
origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and
the United Nations. In their push to overthrow Assad's government, the
insurgents, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, have met little
resistance from the Syrian army. The U.N.’s special envoy for Syria, Geir
Pedersen, called Saturday for urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly
political transition.” Speaking to reporters at the annual Doha Forum in Qatar,
he said the situation in Syria was changing by the minute. Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov, whose country is Assad's chief international backer,
said he feels “sorry for the Syrian people.”In Damascus, people rushed to stock
up on supplies. Thousands went to Syria's border with Lebanon, trying to leave
the country. Lebanese border officials closed the main Masnaa border crossing
late Saturday, leaving many stuck waiting. Many shops in the capital were
shuttered, a resident told The Associated Press, and those still open ran out of
staples such as sugar. Some were selling items at three times the normal price.
The U.N. said it was moving noncritical staff outside the country as a
precaution.
Assad's status
Syria’s state media denied social media rumors that Assad left the country,
saying he was performing his duties in Damascus. Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad
Ghazi al-Jalali said Sunday he does not know where Assad or the defense minister
are. He told Saudi television network Al-Arabiyya early Sunday that they lost
communication Saturday night. He has had little, if any, help from his allies.
Russia is busy with its war in Ukraine. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which at one point
sent thousands of fighters to shore up Assad's forces, has been weakened by a
yearlong conflict with Israel. Iran has seen its proxies across the region
degraded by regular Israeli airstrikes. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on
Saturday posted on social media that the United States should avoid engaging
militarily in Syria. Separately, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser
said the Biden administration had no intention of intervening there. Pedersen
said a date for talks in Geneva on the implementation of a U.N. resolution,
adopted in 2015 and calling for a Syrian-led political process, would be
announced later. The resolution calls for the establishment of a transitional
governing body, followed by the drafting of a new constitution and ending with
U.N.-supervised elections. Later Saturday, foreign ministers and senior
diplomats from eight key countries, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Egypt,
Turkey and Iran, along with Pederson, gathered on the sidelines of the Doha
Summit to discuss the situation in Syria. In a statement, the participants
affirmed their support for a political solution to the Syrian crisis “that would
lead to the end of military activity and protect civilians.”
The insurgents' march
A commander with the insurgents, Hassan Abdul-Ghani, posted on the Telegram
messaging app that opposition forces had begun the “final stage” of their
offensive by encircling Damascus. HTS controls much of northwest Syria and in
2017 set up a “salvation government” to run day-to-day affairs in the region. In
recent years, HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani has sought to remake the group’s
image, cutting ties with al-Qaida, ditching hard-line officials and vowing to
embrace pluralism and religious tolerance. The shock offensive began Nov. 27,
during which gunmen captured the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, and
the central city of Hama, the country’s fourth-largest city. The Syrian
government has referred to opposition gunmen as terrorists since conflict broke
out in March 2011. Qatar's top diplomat, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al
Thani, criticized Assad for failing to take advantage of the lull in fighting in
recent years to address the country’s underlying problems. “Assad didn’t seize
this opportunity to start engaging and restoring his relationship with his
people,” he said.
**Karam reported from London. Associated Press writers Abdulrahman Shaheen and
Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria; Abby Sewell in Beirut; Qassim Abdul-Zahra in
Baghdad; Josef Federman and Victoria Eastwood in Doha, Qatar; and Ellen
Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.
US will remain in eastern
Syria and seek to prevent Daesh resurgence, Pentagon says
AP/Reuters/December 08, 2024 13:00
WASHINGTON/MANAMA: The United States will maintain its presence in eastern Syria
and will take measures necessary to prevent a resurgence of Daesh, Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Daniel Shapiro said on
Sunday.
Speaking hours after Syrian rebels announced they had toppled Bashar Assad’s
government, Shapiro called on all parties to protect civilians, particularly
minorities, and to respect international norms. “We are aware that the chaotic
and dynamic circumstances on the ground in Syria could give Daesh space to find
the ability to become active, to plan external operations, and we’re determined
to work with those partners to continue to degrade their capabilities,” he told
the Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain’s capital. “(We’re
determined) to ensure (Islamic State’s) enduring defeat, to ensure the secure
detention of Daesh fighters and the repatriation of displaced persons,” Shapiro
added. Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), which spearheaded the militant advances
across western Syria, was formerly an Al-Qaeda affiliate known as the Nusra
Front until its leader, Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, severed ties with the global
jihadist movement in 2016. Western governments, which have shunned the Assad-led
state for years, must decide how to deal with a new administration in which HTS
looks set to have influence. HTS is a globally designated terrorist group. US
President Joe Biden was keeping a close eye on “extraordinary events”
transpiring in Syria, the White House said late Saturday. “President Biden and
his team are closely monitoring the extraordinary events in Syria and staying in
constant touch with regional partners,” National Security Council spokesman Sean
Savett said in a statement on social media. President-elect Donald Trump said
that Assad had “fled his country” after losing the backing of Russia. “Assad is
gone,” he said on his Truth Social platform Sunday. “His protector, Russia,
Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any
longer.” Earlier, Trump said Saturday that the US military should stay out of
the escalating conflict in Syria as a shock opposition offensive closes in on
the capital, declaring in a social media post, “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT.” Trump’s
comments on the dramatic militant push were his first since Syrian militants
launched their advance late last month. They came while he was in Paris for the
reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral. In his post, Trump said Assad did not
deserve US support to stay in power.
Russia Says Syria’s Assad Has Left Country
and Given Orders for Peaceful Power Handover
Asharq Al Awsat/08 December 2024
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
had left office and departed the country after giving orders there be a peaceful
handover of power. In a statement, the ministry did not say where Assad was now
and said Russia has not taken part in the talks around his departure. It said
Russia's military bases in Syria had been put on a state of high alert, but that
there was no serious threat to them at the current time. It said Moscow was in
touch with all Syrian opposition groups and urged all sides to refrain from
violence. The Syrian opposition announced on Sunday that it had ousted Assad,
after seizing control of Damascus on Sunday, ending his family's iron-fisted
rule after more than 13 years of civil war in a seismic moment for the Middle
East. Russia, a staunch Assad ally, intervened decisively in 2015 to prop him up
during Syria's civil war. But with its military resources mostly tied down in
Ukraine, Russia's ability to influence the situation on the ground was far more
limited this time round - despite maintaining two military facilities in Syria -
and it did not mobilize the same level of resources. Earlier, deputy chairman of
Russia's upper house of parliament Konstantin Kosachyov said on Sunday that the
Syrians will have to cope with a full-scale civil war alone, while suggesting
that Moscow was ready to support the Syrian people in certain circumstances.
Russian war bloggers have raised fears about the fate of the two Russian
military facilities under the opposition but they so far appear to be still
functioning while the Russian Embassy in Damascus has said its staff are "fine."
On Friday, the embassy had urged Russian nationals to leave the country.
Kosachyov, a veteran Russian expert in international affairs, predicted that the
civil war in Syria would not end with Assad's departure and that tough times
were ahead. "Syria is a very difficult story, for everyone without
exception. One way or another, the civil war will not end today, there are too
many opposing interests and too many opposing forces. Including outright
terrorist groups. And that is why the hardest part is ahead again," Kosachyov
wrote on his official Telegram channel.
"It's a tragedy, I repeat, for everyone. And for us Russians, our primary task
is to ensure the safety of our compatriots and civilians, including of our
diplomats and their families, and, of course, of the military personnel who are
there for the sake of Syria, its sovereignty and territorial integrity. "If the
people of Syria continue to need our support, it will be provided. But hardly in
the context of a full-scale civil war. The Syrians will have to deal with that
themselves," he said.
Watching with trepidation and glee, Netanyahu orders military to seize Syria
buffer zone
Analysis by Mick Krever,
CNN/December 8, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that the collapse of
Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria was a “direct result” of Israel’s military
campaign against Iran and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. “This is a historic
day in the history of the Middle East,” he said. But in a sign of the potential
danger Israel feels from unknown rulers in Damascus, Netanyahu said that he had
ordered the military to seize the buffer zone that separates the
Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria. “Together with the
Defense Minister, and with full backing from the Cabinet, I directed the IDF
yesterday to take control of the buffer zone and the dominant positions near
it,” he said while visiting the Golan Heights. “We will not allow any hostile
force to establish itself on our border.”
It is the first time Israeli troops would be stationed in the buffer zone since
a 1974 agreement establishing the line of control between Israel and Syria,
though they have in the past entered the no-man’s land for brief periods. Since
1974, the buffer zone has been patrolled by United Nations peacekeepers. Israel
captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and annexed it in 1981. Israeli
leaders are watching events across the border in Syria with a mix of trepidation
and glee, as 50 years of detente were upended in a matter of hours.
“We don’t know much,” said Boaz Shapira, a researcher with the Alma Foundation,
a think tank dedicated to issues in northern Israel. “The situation that we were
used to in Syria in the past – 50 years with the Assad regime – has changed
completely.”
Bashar al-Assad was hardly an ally, but there was an understanding that allowed
the countries to coexist. Though Israel occasionally offered treatment to
casualties of Syria’s civil war, it maintained official neutrality in the
conflict. The Israeli military has also for years targeted supply lines of Iran
and its proxy Hezbollah in Syria – most notably killing Iranian military
commanders in the Iranian consulate in Damascus, in April – but avoided
targeting the Assad regime itself.
The rebels’ rapid capture of Damascus means that Israeli leaders will have to
evaluate the implications for their own security.
Iran has now lost one of its most important bulwarks in the region. That will be
cause for celebration in Israel, which has been fighting Iranian-backed forces
in Gaza (Hamas) and Lebanon (Hezbollah) since October last year.
Netanyahu, who declared that the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan
Nasrallah was a step towards changing “the balance of power in the region for
years to come,” will see this as advancing that goal. Mordechai Kedar, who
specialized in Syria affairs during a 25-year career in Israeli military
intelligence, said that the events in Syria were a domino effect from Hamas’
October 7 attack on Israel. “It’s not only Israel – it’s the whole Middle East
will celebrate,” he told CNN. The collapse of the Assad regime is a “severe
blow” for Iran, said Amos Yadlin, a former major general in the Israel Defense
Forces, who also served as chief of the Military Intelligence Directorate. “The
rebels tearing down posters of (Iranian commander Qasem) Soleimani and Nasrallah
from the Iranian embassy in Damascus illustrate the severity of the blow to the
axis,” he said. “Rebuilding Hezbollah seems even more difficult with the loss of
Syria, which was a logistical rearguard for weapons from Assad, Iran, and
Russia.”
On the other hand, no one quite knows – including in Israel – who the rebels are
who now control Syria, and how they will implement their power. The offensive
was led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which was formerly an al Qaeda affiliate. The
US Government still has a $10 million bounty on the head of its leader, Abu
Mohammad al-Jolani, whose real name is Ahmed al-Sharaa. Kedar said that despite
their radical roots, the opening indications were positive. “So far, they are
rather rational,” he said. “For example, they are leaving the government to run
the country.”Jolani has called on rebel forces to leave state institutions
unharmed. “To all military forces in the city of Damascus, it is strictly
forbidden to approach public institutions, which will remain under the
supervision of the former Prime Minister until they are officially handed over,
and it is also forbidden to fire bullets into the air,” he wrote on Telegram.
“Here, they are learning from the mistakes of the American in Iraq. They don’t
want to destroy the country. They want the system to work – of course under
different rules and different leadership. This is a very rational way to run the
country.”Yadlin said that Jolani had “demonstrated great political
sophistication and conquered Syria almost without a fight.”“In the short term,
the rebels are not a threat to Israel,” he said. “When he is required to
establish his rule in Syria, he will not get involved with the most powerful
military force in the region. Israel needs to shape the rules of the game
against Syria in the same aggressive manner in which it does so in Lebanon.”
That view is not universal. Israel’s Minister of Diaspora and Combating
Antisemitism Amichai Chiklisaid said in a statement that “the bottom line is
that most of Syria is now under the control of affiliates of al-Qaeda and Daesh.”
He called for the Israeli military to establish full control within the buffer
zone that has since 1974 existed between Israeli- and Syrian-controlled
territory. Indeed, Israel’s top priority will be securing its border with Syria.
The IDF said the deployment of troops within the Golan buffer zone was made “to
ensure the safety of the communities of the Golan Heights and the citizens of
Israel.”
Shapira said he doubted Israel would want to provoke the new leaders in Damascus
by pushing into Syrian-controlled Golan. “Taking more territory means we have to
deal with other players who might not be so happy about it,” he added. “There
are dozens of different militias,” Shapira said. “It’s going to be very
challenging for Israel.”
The Israeli military, in its statement about operations in the Golan, said: “The
State of Israel does not interfere in in the domestic conflict within
Syria.”Israel’s top security and political leaders have been mostly mum on
events in Syria – no doubt, as they evaluate how to react. Opposition leader
Yair Lapid said that Assad’s ouster emphasized the need “to create a strong
regional coalition with Saudi Arabia and the Abraham Accords countries (Bahrain,
UAE, Morocco, Sudan) in order to jointly address regional instability. The
Iranian axis has weakened significantly, and Israel needs to strive for a
comprehensive political achievement that will also assist it in Gaza and the
West Bank.”
Assad loyalists shaken by his fall, some relieved by lack of violence
Reuters/December 8, 2024
(Reuters) - Confusion and fear have swept through Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect
and other loyalist communities since his fall, with many questioning how the
collapse was so rapid after so many of their members had died to keep him in
power.
Loyalists spoke with a sense of resignation about the implosion of his 24-year
rule and with it, the end of decades of rule by minority Alawites - an offshoot
of Shi'ite Islam - in majority Sunni Syria. Assad's hometown of Qardaha - home
to a mausoleum to his father, Hafez - for many years hosted continuous funerals
due to the numbers of loyalist fighters who were dying to defend him, locals
say. Reuters spoke to four people in the Alawite heartland between the coastal
city of Tartous and Latakia hours after Assad was toppled. One, Mohsen, said he
was bewildered by how the Syrian army had given up without even calling up extra
reserves from Assad's core support base. "I know for a fact that there were many
men who would have been willing to fight if they were called upon by the
president, but that did not happen. Instead, we see withdrawals everywhere. It's
strange."He said that inhabitants of Alawite villages near the coast had set up
informal security measures, with checkpoints at villages to monitor who came in
and out. Protests have broken out in mainly-Alawite Latakia and in Tartous, with
residents knocking down statues of Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria from 1971
until his death in 2000, and chanting anti-Assad slogans. An Alawite resident of
the coast who witnessed the protests, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
that they had been struck by the peaceful nature of the protests and said so far
there were few sectarian tensions around the issue.
RELIEF AT LACK OF VIOLENCE SO FAR
"If it keeps going like this, there is little reason to have concerns," he said.
"it would mean we are not going for the Libya model and that all we were told to
be scared about was not true."After taking over Homs, rebels searched government
offices and security branches in the city but did not ransack them or destroy
property, residents said, adding the inhabitants reacted with a sense of relief.
Residents of Homs' Alawite Zahraa neighborhood published a statement saying they
would stay in their homes and were against any kind of violence, calling on
rebels to act responsibly as they had in other areas where they had encountered
minorities. They also said anyone resisting rebels was acting on his own. Rebels
had barely entered the Alawite neighborhood, residents said. Alawites, the sect
to which Assad and most high-ranking military officers belong, were largely
supportive of Assad's campaign to crush the Sunni-led revolt against his rule
during the civil war. The fiercest enforcers of the crackdown were often
so-called Shabbiha, brutal sectarian militias drawn from the Alawite community.
On Sunday, a third Alawite Syrian who spoke to Reuters said the way the rebels
had so far acted, notably in Homs, a city with a large Alawite population, had
eased the concerns of many in the region that they would face massacres as the
regime had long maintained. "It's clear now that there is a decision not to
fight. The army has essentially laid down its weapons and withdrawn and you have
some local defence committees in villages," the third Alawite Syrian said. "I
think we will only see problems if there are attacks on the community – you know
there are foreign fighters and some hardliners who are scary in their views. But
if they keep going like this, if the new government is responsible, we will be
able to avoid bloodshed."Early in Syria's war, many Alawites say they felt they
have no choice but to back Assad, fearing retaliatory slaughter for religious
affiliation with the president as the revolt became increasingly sectarian.
Alawites are believed to make up about about 10 percent of the 23 million
population, Sunni Muslims about 70 percent, and there are substantial
communities of Christians, Kurds, Druze and other religious or ethnic
minorities.
(Writing by Timour Azhari, Editing by William Maclean)
Former al-Qaeda member al-Golani rebrands as a pluralist amid doubts over
Syria’s democratic future
Sertac Aktan/Euronews/December 8,
2024
Former al-Qaeda member al-Golani rebrands as a pluralist amid doubts over
Syria’s democratic future
A jihadist and an extremist? Or a new face of a modern and tolerant Syria?
Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the militant leader whose insurgency toppled President
Bashar Assad, has long pursued a political and military agenda. He has shifted
his political stance many times to gain support and at times defied orders to
eliminate rivals. Now, he is working hard to reinvent both his relationship with
Syria and his public image, having renounced his ties to al-Qaida and portrayed
himself as a champion of pluralism and tolerance. Recently, the insurgency
dropped his war name and began referring to him by his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa.
However, the extent of his transformation from jihadi extremist to would-be
state builder is now put to the test.With Assad in hiding and insurgents
controlling the capital, Damascus, it remains uncertain how Syria will be
governed.
Syria is home to multiple ethnic and religious communities, often divided by
Assad’s regime and years of conflict. Many fear the rise of Sunni Islamist
extremists. The country is also fragmented among various armed factions, with
foreign powers like Russia, Iran, the United States, and Israel all involved,
each with their own interests.
The 42-year-old al-Golani, labelled a terrorist by the United States, has not
appeared publicly since Damascus fell early Sunday. However, he and his
insurgent group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), many of whose fighters are jihadis,
are now poised to play a major role. For years, al-Golani manoeuvred within
extremist organisations, eliminating rivals and former allies. He reassured
Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, forging ties with various tribes and
other groups. Along the way, al-Golani shed his identity as a hard-line Islamist
guerrilla, opting for suits during press interviews. He spoke of building state
institutions and decentralising power to better reflect Syria's diversity.
“Syria deserves a governing system that is institutional, no one where a single
ruler makes arbitrary decisions,” he said in an interview with CNN last week,
offering the possibility that HTS would eventually be dissolved after Assad
falls.
How did he cut his ties with al-Qaida?
Al-Golani’s ties to al-Qaida stretch back to 2003 when he joined extremists
battling US troops in Iraq. The Syrian native was detained by the US military
but remained in Iraq. During that time, al-Qaida usurped like-minded groups and
formed the extremist Islamic State of Iraq, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In
2011, when a popular uprising against Syria’s Assad triggered a brutal
government crackdown and led to an all-out war, al-Baghdadi sent al-Golani to
Syria to establish a branch of al-Qaida called the 'Nusra Front'. The US
labelled the new group as a terrorist organisation and that designation still
remains in place. Washington also has put a $10 million bounty on him.
Battled ISIS in the region
As Syria’s civil war intensified in 2013, so did al-Golani’s ambitions. He
defied al-Baghdadi’s calls to dissolve the Nusra Front and merge it with al-Qaida’s
operation in Iraq to form the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Al-Golani
nonetheless pledged his allegiance to al-Qaida, which later disassociated itself
from ISIS. The Nusra Front battled ISIS and eliminated much of its competition
among the Syrian armed opposition to Assad.
Islamic law with no tolerance
In his first interview in 2014, al-Golani said his goal was to see Syria ruled
under Islamic law and made clear that there was no room for the country’s
Alawite, Shiite, Druze and Christian minorities. In 2016, al-Golani revealed his
face to the public for the first time in a video message that announced his
group was renaming itself "Jabhat Fateh al-Sham" — the Syria Conquest Front —
and cutting its ties to al-Qaida. “This new organisation has no affiliation to
any external entity,” he said in the video, filmed wearing military garb and a
turban. HTS later clashed with independent Islamist militants, further
emboldening al-Golani and his group as the leading power in northwestern Syria,
able to rule with an iron fist.
Al-Golani to al-Sharaa
With his power consolidated, al-Golani began a transformation few could have
imagined. Replacing his military garb with a shirt and trousers, he began
calling for religious tolerance and pluralism. He appealed to the Druze
community in Idlib, which the Nusra Front had previously targeted, and visited
the families of Kurds who were killed by Turkish-backed militias. In 2021, al-Golani
had his first interview with an American journalist on PBS. Wearing a blazer,
with his short hair gelled back, the now more soft-spoken HTS leader said that
his group posed no threat to the West and that sanctions imposed against it were
unjust. So, who will the Syrians have as their new leader? Abu Mohammed al-Golani,
with his strong convictions for an Islamic State or Ahmad al-Sharaa, with his
soft approach mitigating different factions of society where a democracy with
decentralised governance is possible?
Footage shows people emerging
from Assad's notorious prisons
Aleks Phillips and Sebastian Usher - BBC News/Sun, December 8, 2024
Footage has shown prisoners being freed from Syria's notorious Saydnaya prison -
including a small child being held with his mother - after rebels took control
of the country. The child is shown in video showing women being released that
was posted by the Turkey-based Association of Detainees and The Missing in
Sednaya Prison (ADMSP). "He (Assad) has fallen. Don't be scared," a voice on the
video says, apparently trying to reassure the women that they were now safe.
Video verified by AFP showed Syrians rushing to see if their relatives were
among those released from Saydnaya, where thousands of opposition supporters are
said to have been tortured and executed under the Assad regime. As rebel forces
have swept across Syria, they have freed prisoners from government jails as they
went.
Throughout the civil war, which began in 2011, government forces held hundreds
of thousands of people in detention camps, where human rights groups say torture
was common. On Saturday Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) said it had freed more than
3,500 detainees from Homs Military Prison as the group took over the city. As
they entered the capital hours later early on Sunday, HTS announced an "end of
the era of tyranny in the prison of Saydnaya", which has become a by-word for
the darkest abuses of Assad's era.In a 2022 report, ADMSP said Saydnaya
"effectively became a death camp" after the start of the civil war. It estimated
that more than 30,000 detainees had either been executed or died as a result of
torture, lack of medical care or starvation between 2011 and 2018. Citing
accounts from the few released inmates, at least another 500 detainees had been
executed between 2018 and 2021, it said. In 2017, Amnesty International
described Saydnaya as a "human slaughterhouse", in a report that alleged that
executions had been authorised at the highest levels of the Assad government.
The government at that time dismissed Amnesty's claims as "baseless" and "devoid
of truth", insisting that all executions in Syria followed due process. Video
cited by Reuters showed rebels shooting the lock off Saydnaya prison gate and
used more gunfire to open closed doors leading to cells. Men poured out into the
corridors. Other footage, which the Reuters news agency says was taken on the
streets of Damascus, appears to show recently-freed prisoners running down the
street.
In it, one asks a passer-by what happened.
"We toppled the regime," they respond, eliciting an excited laugh from the
former prisoner. Of all the symbols of the repressive nature of the Assad
regime, the network of prisons into which those expressing any form of dissent
were disappeared cast the longest and darkest shadow. In Saydnaya, torture,
sexual assault and mass execution were the fate of thousands. Many never
re-emerged, with their families often not knowing for many years whether they
were alive or dead. One of those who survived the ordeal, Omar al-Shogre, told
the BBC on Sunday about what he endured during three years of incarceration as a
teenager. "I know the pain, I know the loneliness and also the hopelessness you
feel because the world let you suffer and did nothing about it," he said. "They
forced my cousin whom I loved so much to torture me and they force me to torture
him. Otherwise we would both be executed." A Syrian human rights network
estimates that more than 130,000 people have been subjected to detention in
these conditions since 2011. But the history of these intentionally terrifying
institutions goes back much further. Even in neighbouring Lebanon, the fear of
being disappeared to a Syrian dungeon was pervasive during the many years that
Damascus was the dominant foreign power. The deep hatred of the Assad regime -
both father and son - that simmered under the surface in Syria was due in large
part to this industrial-scale mechanism of torture, death and humiliation that
was intended to frighten the population into submission. For that reason, rebels
factions in their lightning drive through Syria that toppled President Assad
made sure in each city they captured to go to the central prison in each one and
release the thousands held there. The image of these people emerging into the
light from a darkness that had shrouded some for decades will be one of the
defining images of the downfall of the Assad dynasty
The fall of Bashar Assad after 14 years of war in Syria
brings to an end a decades-long dynasty
Zeina Karam And Abby Sewell/BEIRUT (AP)/December 8, 2024
The fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad's government Sunday brought to a
dramatic close his nearly 14-year struggle to hold onto power as his country
fragmented amid a brutal civil war that became a proxy battlefield for regional
and international powers.
Assad’s downfall came as a stark contrast to his first months as Syria’s
unlikely president in 2000, when many hoped he would be a young reformer after
three decades of his father’s iron grip. Only 34 years old, the Western-educated
ophthalmologist was a rather geeky tech-savvy fan of computers with a gentle
demeanor. But when faced with protests against his rule that erupted in March
2011, Assad turned to the brutal tactics of his father in an attempt to crush
them. As the uprising hemorrhaged into an outright civil war, he unleashed his
military to blast opposition-held cities, with support from allies Iran and
Russia. International rights groups and prosecutors alleged widespread use of
torture and extrajudicial executions in Syria's government-run detention
centers.
The Syrian war has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the
country’s pre-war population of 23 million. As the uprising spiraled into a
civil war, millions of Syrians fled across the borders into Jordan, Turkey, Iraq
and Lebanon and on to Europe. His departure brings an end to the Assad family
rule, spanning just under 54 years. With no clear successor, it throws the
country into further uncertainty. Until recently, it seemed that Assad was
almost out of the woods. The long-running conflict had settled along frozen
conflict lines in recent years, with Assad's government regaining control of
most of Syria's territory while the northwest remained under the control of
opposition groups and the northeast under Kurdish control.
While Damascus remained under crippling Western sanctions, neighboring countries
had begun to resign themselves to Assad's continued hold on power. The Arab
League reinstated Syria's membership last year, and Saudi Arabia in May
announced the appointment of its first ambassador to Syria since severing ties
with Damascus 12 years earlier.
However, the geopolitical tide turned quickly with a surprise offensive launched
by opposition groups based in northwest Syria in late November. Government
forces quickly collapsed, while Assad's allies, preoccupied by other conflicts —
including Russia's war in Ukraine and the yearlong wars between Israel and the
Iran-backed militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas — appeared reluctant to
forcefully intervene. Assad's whereabouts were not clear Sunday, amid reports he
had left the country as insurgents took control of the Syrian capital. He came
to power in 2000 by a twist of fate. His father had been cultivating Bashar’s
oldest brother Basil as his successor, but in 1994 Basil was killed in a car
crash in Damascus. Bashar was brought home from his ophthalmology practice in
London, put through military training and elevated to the rank of colonel to
establish his credentials so he could one day rule. When Hafez Assad died in
2000, parliament quickly lowered the presidential age requirement from 40 to 34.
Bashar’s elevation was sealed by a nationwide referendum, in which he was the
only candidate. Hafez, a lifelong military man, ruled the country for nearly 30
years during which he set up a Soviet-style centralized economy and kept such a
stifling hand over dissent that Syrians feared even to joke about politics to
their friends. He pursued a secular ideology that sought to bury sectarian
differences under Arab nationalism and the image of heroic resistance to Israel.
He formed an alliance with the Shiite clerical leadership in Iran, sealed Syrian
domination over Lebanon and set up a network of Palestinian and Lebanese
militant groups.
Bashar initially seemed completely unlike his strongman father.
Tall and lanky with a slight lisp, he had a quiet, gentle demeanor. His only
official position before becoming president was head of the Syrian Computer
Society. His wife, Asma al-Akhras, whom he married several months after taking
office, was attractive, stylish and British-born. The young couple, who
eventually had three children, seemed to shun trappings of power. They lived in
an apartment in the upscale Abu Rummaneh district of Damascus, as opposed to a
palatial mansion like other Arab leaders.
Initially upon coming to office, Assad freed political prisoners and allowed
more open discourse. In the “Damascus Spring,” salons for intellectuals emerged
where Syrians could discuss art, culture and politics to a degree impossible
under his father.
But after 1,000 intellectuals signed a public petition calling for multiparty
democracy and greater freedoms in 2001 and others tried to form a political
party, the salons were snuffed out by the feared secret police who jailed dozens
of activists.
Instead of a political opening, Assad turned to economic reforms. He slowly
lifted economic restrictions, let in foreign banks, threw the doors open to
imports and empowered the private sector. Damascus and other cities long mired
in drabness saw a flourishing of shopping malls, new restaurants and consumer
goods. Tourism swelled.
Abroad, he stuck to the line his father had set, based on the alliance with Iran
and a policy of insisting on a full return of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights,
although in practice Assad never militarily confronted Israel. In 2005, he
suffered a heavy blow with the loss of Syria’s decades-old control over
neighboring Lebanon after the assassination of former prime minister Rafik
Hariri. With many Lebanese accusing Damascus of being behind the slaying, Syria
was forced to withdraw its troops from the country and a pro-American government
came into power. At the same time, the Arab world became split into two camps -
one of U.S.-allied, Sunni-led countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the other
Syria and Shiite-led Iran with their ties to Hezbollah and Palestinian
militants.
Throughout, Assad relied for largely on the same power base at home as his
father: his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam comprising around 10
percent of the population. Many of the positions in his government went to
younger generations of the same families that had worked for his father. Drawn
in as well were the new middle class created by his reforms, including prominent
Sunni merchant families.
Assad also turned to his own family. His younger brother Maher headed the elite
Presidential Guard and would lead the crackdown against the uprising. Their
sister Bushra was a strong voice in his inner circle, along with her husband
Deputy Defense Minister Assef Shawkat, until he was killed in a 2012 bombing.
Bashar’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf, became the country’s biggest businessman,
heading a financial empire before the two had a falling out that led to Makhlouf
being pushed aside. Assad also increasingly entrusted key roles to his wife,
Asma, before she announced in May that she was undergoing treatment for leukemia
and stepped out of the limelight. When protests erupted in Tunisa and Egypt,
eventually toppling their rulers, Assad dismissed the possibility of the same
occurring in his country, insisting his regime was more in tune with its people.
After the Arab Spring wave did move to Syria, his security forces staged a
brutal crackdown while Assad consistently denied he was facing a popular revolt,
instead blaming “foreign-backed terrorists” trying to destabilize his regime.
His rhetoric struck a chord with many in Syria’s minority groups - including
Christians, Druze and Shiites - as well as some Sunnis who feared the prospect
of rule by Sunni extremists even more than they disliked Assad’s authoritarian
rule. Ironically, on Feb. 26, 2001, two days after the fall of Egypt’s Hosni
Mubarak to protesters and just before the wave of Arab Spring protests swept
into Syria — in an email released by Wikileaks as part of a cache in 2012 —
Assad e-mailed a joke he’d run across mocking the Egyptian leader’s stubborn
refusal to step down.
“NEW WORD ADDED TO DICTIONARY: Mubarak (verb): To stick something, or to glue
something. ... Mubarak (adjective): slow to learn or understand,” it read.
*Zeina Karam And Abby Sewell, The Associated Press
Auchincloss: Syrian government collapse is a ‘potential win’ but ‘not
uncomplicated’
Sarah Fortinsky/The Hill/December 8, 2024
Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.) said on Sunday that the collapse of the Syrian
government is a “potential win” for the U.S. but noted the dynamic is more
complicated since the rebel forces are still “some pretty bad guys.”“Overall,
this is a potential win for the United States and its allies, but it’s not an
uncomplicated win,” Auchincloss, who served in the region as a U.S. Marine, said
on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday” with Chris Stirewalt. “Because that old saying
that ‘the enemy of your enemy is your friend’ just is not true here,”
Auchincloss continued. “The enemy of our enemy, this Syrian rebel force, are
some pretty bad guys.”“Also, they are an offshoot of al Qaeda, and they are
Sunni Islamists, who could mean harm to Israel and to the United States,” he
added. The Syrian government fell early Sunday after rebels entered the capital
of Damascus, ending the Assad family’s 50-year rule in the war-torn country. The
rebels’ victory concluded a 10-day offensive in which fighters sprinted across
the country and seized much of what had been government-held land, including the
cities of Aleppo and Hama, and the night before, the central city of Homs.
President Bashar Assad was overthrown, according to a statement read by a group
of men on Syrian state television, and all people detained in jails were freed.
Auchincloss noted the broader implications of the political unrest, saying it
serves a blow to Russia and Iran, who have used the Syrian civil war as a proxy
war and “as their playgrounds of geopolitics.”“Russia practiced its tactics that
it’s using in Ukraine first in Syria, and Iran trained Hezbollah in Syria,
before then unleashing it on Israel,” Auchincloss said. “So what happens in
Syria matters to the wider world, and it’s a fulcrum for this axis of
authoritarianism between Russia, China, North Korea and Iran as they seek to
compete against and undermine the United States and its allies.” NewsNation is
owned by Nexstar Media Group, which also owns The Hill.
Former national security adviser: ‘Until Hamas is
destroyed,’ there can’t be ‘better life for the Palestinians’
Lauren Irwin/The Hill/December 8, 2024
Former national security adviser H.R. McMaster argued that the ongoing conflict
in Gaza will continue and life for Palestinians cannot improve “until Hamas is
destroyed.” McMaster joined “Fox News Sunday” where he noted that a ceasefire is
necessary, but Hamas must be defeated first. “We need a ceasefire in Gaza,” he
began. “Actually, until Hamas is destroyed, in my belief, you can’t have any
better life for the Palestinians, and certainly, you have to get the hostages
back.”McMaster, who served in President-elect Trump’s White House from February
2017 to April 2018, acknowledged the difficult international situation the next
Trump administration is going to inherit. He said the Trump administration has a
“huge opportunity” in this moment with Israel, Iran and the proxy groups. “I
would like to see us working more actively with the Israelis and others to get
the hostages back, but also to make Iran pay the price for their terrorist and
proxy network across the region,” McMaster said. He argued that Iran has “always
been weak” and the United States needs to “act strong” and work toward language
of de-escalation. “I think President Trump understands,” McMaster said. Part of
what Trump understands, McMaster argued, is imposing financial costs on Iran and
foreign adversaries. On the campaign trail, Trump touted his tariff plan and has
already said he will take action on Day 1 of his impending term. He’s said he
would impose new tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico and China through an
executive order. The president-elect said the new tariffs are meant to push all
three countries to take stronger efforts on border security and the fentanyl
crisis. McMaster argued that if Trump imposes financial constraints on Iran, it
may work in the war’s benefit. “I think imposing costs on Iran, isolating Iran
financially and economically, I think that’s going to happen immediately in the
Trump administration,” he said. Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights
reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or
redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head
to The Hill.
Gaza health officials say latest Israeli airstrikes kill at
least 14 including children
Wafaa Shurafa And Samy Magdy/DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP)/December 8, 2024
Israeli airstrikes in central Gaza killed at least 14 people including children
Sunday, Palestinian health officials said, while the bombing of a hospital in
northern Gaza wounded a half-dozen patients. Israel’s military continues its
latest offensive against Hamas militants in northern Gaza, whose remaining
Palestinians have been almost completely cut off from the rest of the territory
amid a growing humanitarian crisis. One airstrike flattened a residential
building in the urban Bureij refugee camp Sunday afternoon, according to the Al-Aqsa
Martyrs Hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah, where the casualties were
taken. At least nine people were killed including six children and a woman. An
Associated Press journalist saw the bodies at the hospital’s morgue. Earlier on
Sunday, another Israeli strike hit a tent in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing
at least five people including two parents and their two children, Al-Aqsa
Martyrs Hospital said. In northern Gaza, the Health Ministry said a bombing
targeted the Indonesian Hospital wounding six patients, one of them seriously.
It is the largest hospital north of Gaza City. “We demand international
protection for hospitals, patients and medical staff,” the ministry said in a
statement that also urged safe passage to and from hospitals, more medical
supplies and fuel and safe evacuation of the wounded. The Israeli military
Sunday evening said it was unaware of any attack on the Indonesian Hospital “in
the last three to four hours.”Meanwhile, the military said it briefly closed the
key Kerem Shalom crossing after fighters launched mortar shells several meters
(feet) from the nearby humanitarian corridor toward its troops. It said Gaza's
main cargo crossing was reopened after those who fired were “eliminated,” though
it added that the arrival and distribution of humanitarian aid was delayed.
Kerem Shalom is the only crossing between Israel and Gaza that is designed for
cargo shipments and has been the main artery for aid since the Rafah crossing
with Egypt was shut in May. Last month, nearly two-thirds of aid entering Gaza
came through Kerem Shalom. A second cold, rainy winter is beginning in Gaza,
with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in squalid tent camps and reliant on
international aid. The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked
southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians,
and abducting around 250 people. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at
least a third believed to be dead. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed
over 45,600 Palestinians in Gaza, more than half of them women and children,
according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were
combatants. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 militants,
without providing evidence.
Trudeau says a 'new chapter
for Syria can begin here' after fall of Assad: 'Ends decades of brutal
oppression'
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre also commented on the situation, suggesting
Canada shouldn't "get involved in that mess."
Chris Stoodley/Yahoo news/December 8, 2024
Justin Trudeau says Syria can now revel in a new chapter, after the Middle
Eastern country's former president fled on Sunday. The Canadian prime minister
took to social media, noting Syria will be free of terrorism and suffering after
half a century of the Assad family's rule. "The fall of Assad's dictatorship
ends decades of brutal oppression. A new chapter for Syria can begin here — one
free of terrorism and suffering for the Syrian people," Trudeau wrote in a post
on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Dec. 8.
Trudeau added that Canada is closely "monitoring this transition," writing in
his post that "we urge order, stability, and respect for human rights."
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre also spoke on the incident on Sunday,
telling a news conference that Canada should stay out: "Assad was a puppet for
the tyrants of Tehran. He has carried out genocides against the Sunni people in
his own country. ... We don't know who will replace him, but I don't think we
should get involved in that mess."He added he thinks this isn't Canada's
"fight," and that the country should stand with our allies, including Israel.
"We should focus on protecting our own country," he noted. The Syrian government
fell early Sunday, leading to the end of a 50-year rule of the Assad family. A
sudden rebel offensive entered the capital of Damascus in 10 days, and a state
television broadcast indicated former President Bashar Assad had been
overthrown.
A Kremlin source told Russian news agencies that Assad and his family fled to
Moscow, where Russia granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds.
Since the news broke out, Ottawa has been urging Canadians to avoid all travel
to the country, noting people in Syria should "leave now if it's safe to do so."
A Canadian travel advisory updated on Sunday told people to avoid Syria "due to
ongoing armed conflict, terrorism, criminality, arbitrary detention, torture and
forced disappearance." The federal government has urged Canadians to leave Syria
since November 2011, and its embassy in Damascus suspended operations in 2012.
U.S. President Joe Biden also spoke at the White House hours after the take over
in Syria, noting the fall of Assad is a "fundamental act of justice," but also
"a moment of risk and uncertainty" for the Middle East.
The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous
sources
on December 08-09/2024
Analysis: Collapse of Syria's Assad
is a blow to Iran's 'Axis of Resistance'
Jon Gambrell/MANAMA, Bahrain (AP)/December 8, 2024e.
Its decadeslong strategy of building an “Axis of Resistance” supporting militant
groups and proxies around the region is falling apart. First came the crushing
Israeli campaign in Gaza triggered by the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by
Iranian-backed Hamas.
That war spawned another in Lebanon, where Israel has mauled Iran’s most
powerful ally, Hezbollah, even as Israel has launched successful airstrikes
openly inside of Iran for the first time. And now Iran’s longtime stalwart ally
and client in Syria, President Bashar Assad, is gone. As dawn broke Sunday,
rebel forces completed a lightning offensive by seizing the ancient capital of
Damascus and tearing down symbols of more than 50 years of Assad's rule over the
Mideast crossroads. Ali Akbar Velayati, a key adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, once called Assad and Syria “the golden ring of the
resistance chain in the region.”“Without the Syrian government, this chain will
break and the resistance against Israel and its supporters will be weakened.”
That break in the chain is literal. Syria was an important geographical link
that allowed Iran to move weapons and other supplies to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Its loss now further weakens Hezbollah, whose powerful arsenal in southern
Lebanon had put Iranian influence directly on the border of its nemesis Israel.
“Iran’s deterrence thinking is really shattered by events in Gaza, by events in
Lebanon and definitely by developments in Syria,” a United Arab Emirates senior
diplomat Anwar Gargash said at the International Institute for Strategic
Studies’ Manama Dialogue in Bahrain. Iran still holds the card of its nuclear
program. Though it denies that intention, it can use the potential for building
a weapons capability to cast a shadow of influence in the region. “Iran remains
a critical regional player,” Gargash said. “We should use this moment to connect
and speak about what’s next in my opinion.” It’s a dramatic reversal in Iran’s
regional might
Only a few years ago, the Islamic Republic loomed ascendant across the wider
Middle East. Its “Axis of Resistance” was at a zenith. Hezbollah in Lebanon
stood up against Israel. Assad appeared to have weathered an Arab Spring
uprising-turned-civil war. Iraqi insurgents killed U.S. troops with
Iranian-designed roadside bombs. Yemen’s Houthi rebels fought a Saudi-led
coalition to a stalemate.
Syria, at the crossroads, played a vital role.
Early in Syria’s civil war, when it appeared Assad might be overthrown, Iran and
its ally, Hezbollah, rushed fighters to support him — in the name of defending
Shiite shrines in Syria. Russia later joined with a scorched earth campaign of
airstrikes.
The campaign won back territory, even as Syria remained divided into zones of
government and insurgent control. But the speed of Assad’s collapse the past
week showed just how reliant he was on support from Iran and Russia – which at
the crucial moment didn’t come. Russia remains mired years after launching a
full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. For Iran, international sanctions over
its advancing nuclear program have ground down its economy. For Israel, breaking
Iran’s regional network has been a major goal, though it is wary over jihadi
fighters among the insurgents who toppled Assad. Israel on Sunday moved troops
into a demilitarized buffer zone with Syria by the Israel-held Golan Heights in
what it called a temporary security measure.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Assad's fall a “historic day," saying
it was “the direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah and Iran,
Assad’s main supporters.”
Iran’s theocratic rulers long touted their regional network to Iranians as a
show of their country’s strength, and its crumbling could raise repercussions at
home — though there is no immediate sign of their hold weakening. Anger over the
tens of billions of dollars Iran is believed to have spent propping up Assad was
a rallying cry in rounds of nationwide anti-government protests that have broken
out over recent years, most recently in 2022. Iran could respond by revving up
its nuclear program
The loss of Syria does not mean the end of Iran’s ability to project power in
the Mideast. The Houthi rebels continue to launch attacks on Israel and on ships
moving through the Red Sea — though the tempo of their attacks have again fallen
without a clear explanation from their leadership.
Iran also maintains its nuclear program. While insisting it enriches uranium for
peaceful purposes, Western intelligence agencies and the International Atomic
Energy Agency say Iran had an organized nuclear weapons program until 2003.
The head of the IAEA also warned Friday that Iran is poised to “quite
dramatically” increase its stockpile of near weapons-grade uranium as it has
started cascades of advanced centrifuges. “If Iran would develop nuclear
weapons, that would be a great blow to the international nonproliferation
regime,” said Thanos Dokos. Greece’s national security adviser, in Bahrain.
There remains a risk of wider attacks in the region, particularly on oil
infrastructure. An attack in 2019 initially claimed by the Houthis but later
assessed by experts to have been carried out by Iran temporarily halved Saudi
Arabia’s production of oil. “If, as a result of escalation, there are attacks
against the energy infrastructure of Iran or Saudi Arabia, that would be bad
news for the global oil supply,” Dokos warned. Whatever happens next, Iran will
need to make the decision weighing the problems it faces at both home and
abroad.
“Whereas stability is a difficult commodity to export, instability can travel
very fast, which is why stability in the Middle East is very important for all
of us,” Dokos said.
*EDITOR’S NOTE — Jon Gambrell, the news director for the Gulf and Iran for The
Associated Press, has reported from each of the Gulf Cooperation Council
countries, Iran and other locations across the Mideast and wider world since
joining the AP in 2006. ___
The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the
Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely
responsible for all content.
Syria’s Bloody Dictator Has Fallen
Mac William Bishop/Rolling Stone/December 8, 2024
In 2013, I met a 12-year-old Syrian girl who had been shot in the back by a
government sniper near Aleppo. Her name was Maysaa, and she was paralyzed from
the waist down. “Am I a terrorist? Are all of the children they kill
terrorists?” she asked, recuperating in an improvised medical facility on her
way to a Turkish hospital. Despite her pain, she was overcome with anger, and
she cursed the man responsible. “Children are being torn to pieces. May God tear
Bashar al-Assad and his children to pieces.”Curses like Maysaa’s are seeds that
took root in Syria’s blood-soaked soil and have stubbornly grown. Now, more than
a decade later, they are bearing fruit. The murderous tyrant who presided over
the collapse of Syria, amid a brutal civil war, has finally fallen.
Assad’s regime, responsible for more than 617,000 deaths, has evaporated in the
face of an onslaught that began with a ferocious offensive by rebels in the
northwest, and which was soon joined by anti-government fighters from every
corner of the country.
The end came quickly, in little more than 10 days. But the revolution in Syria
against a regime that kidnapped, tortured, and murdered tens of thousands of its
own citizens has been raging for nearly 14 years.
The paroxysms of pain caused by the war in Syria have wracked the globe. It
became an epicenter of chaos that tore apart the Middle East and changed the
face of Europe. Millions fled into exile, abandoning their homes in a quest for
safety for themselves and their children. The conflict unleashed ghastly
atrocities, from nerve-agent attacks carried out by Assad’s forces that killed
hundreds; to the routine bombing of hospitals by Russian and Syrian aircraft; to
the spread of the Islamic State, which exported its own brand of terror around
the world.
Through it all, Bashar al-Assad ruled, stubbornly clinging to power through
brute force no matter the cost to his people. He remains wanted for war crimes.
Assad was nearly toppled, until he was shored up by a foreign intervention in
2015 that came in the form of Russian bomber aircraft and Iranian mercenaries.
Those who took up arms to defy him have carried on the struggle through long
years of despair, dissension, and indifference.
When he became president in 2000, the son of Syrian despot Hafez al-Assad was
praised as a potential reformer of the totalitarian state he inherited. His
father had built a potent machine of oppression, using the Ba’ath Party — an
anti-imperialist pan-Arab nationalist movement that seized power in 1963 — as a
vehicle to ascend to power over the military and intelligence services, which he
used to neutralize dissent and cement his rule.
When Hafez al-Assad died, Bashar became president. Hopes were high that change
would come to Syria with a leader from a new generation. A brief period of
liberalization, which came to be known as the Damascus Spring, encouraged many
Syrians as some political prisoners were freed and a crackdown on government
corruption began.
But any hope that Assad, who had trained as a medical doctor and had lived in
London for years working as an ophthalmologist, would usher in a new Syria was
swiftly dashed. The regime’s feared internal security and intelligence agency,
the Mukhabarat, reasserted the grip of the authoritarian inner circle, rounding
up intellectuals and dissidents.
Damascus Spring turned into Syria’s winter, until 2011. Widespread civil unrest
erupting across the region from a confluence of economic, ideological and social
factors were soon dubbed the Arab Spring; Syria was not immune. A steady
drumbeat of isolated protests became a movement in March, as Syrians took to the
streets demanding democratic reform and the release of political prisoners. Mass
protests and uprisings spread, starting a cycle of protest-and-crackdown that
led to ever-increasing numbers of slain protesters.
Assad made no meaningful effort to address the widespread discontent that had
started the uprising, choosing instead to blame “foreign powers” for fomenting
unrest, and unleashing the security forces and military against his people. The
country exploded into violence. By the summer, the protest movement had become
an insurgency. Large numbers of soldiers were defecting and joining the
protesters, and then organizing into armed militias. Protest became revolution,
and descended into civil war.
Tens of thousands were killed in fighting and indiscriminate shelling, while
efforts to round up dissidents and critics of the regime went into hyperdrive.
Hundreds of Syrians had long disappeared into the regime’s prisons, where they
were raped, abused, tortured, and murdered. Now they did so in the thousands.
The worst crimes and abuses committed by the regime have been documented in
voluminous detail by human rights groups and international prosecutors. The
broken bodies of the slain were thrown into mass graves, while many families
were left without any clue as to the fate of their loved ones. Under Assad,
people simply disappeared.
The fractious rebel alliance formed the Free Syrian Army in July 2011, but the
reality was that most of the anti-regime units could do little more than conduct
insurgency operations, or hold defensive positions. Many were katiba — an Arabic
word approximating “battalion” — relatively small groups of defectors and
amateur soldiers organized around charismatic leaders or local strongmen.
Coordinating their activities was challenging.
Assad’s forces recognized no rules of war as they tried to crush the rebels,
targeting noncombatants and even children with high explosives, sniper rifles,
and machine guns.
In 2013, they started using chemical weapons. A government unit in Damascus
fired artillery rockets containing the nerve agent sarin against a neighborhood
in the hands of the rebels. Estimates of the number killed range from 500 to
more than 1,700.
The scenes of men, women, and children choking to death — of entire families
turned into piles of corpses as they huddled in the corners of basements to
escape the shelling — shocked the world. Then-President Barack Obama declared
that the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons had crossed a “red line,” and
vowed to take action. In reality, Obama’s response was tepid. The U.S. fired
long-range cruise missiles against a handful of military targets, while the
White House secured a promise from Assad not to do it again. Damascus agreed to
let an international organization oversee the destruction of chemical weapons
stock and dismantle production facilities.
But the U.S. and the West had shown their impotence, lacking the will to
meaningfully support the Syrian rebels amid accusations of warmongering that
grew in the shadow of the WMD lies that had led to the disastrous invasion of
Iraq.
The West wrung its hands over what to do, going back-and-forth for years over
whether to support the revolution, and who to train and arm if it did so.
Secular rebels — the “moderate” opposition preferred by Western leaders who
parachuted in and toured refugee camps along the Turkish border, or met with
opposition leaders with little real influence — struggled to assemble an
effective fighting force amid vague visions of a democratic Syria and sporadic
supplies of weaponry from abroad.
But conflicts inevitably create power vacuums, and something always fills a
vacuum. Insurgents and jihadis who had fought against American occupation in
Iraq and Afghanistan flooded into Syria, sensing opportunity. The jihadis had a
clear idea of what they wanted and how to achieve it. Armed with Gulf Arab cash
and Salafi extremism, the worst of the lot swept aside its opponents and flooded
across the country. They declared the establishment of the Islamic State in
2014.
The same year, Russia — convinced by Western weakness, alarmed by Ukraine’s
lurch toward Europe — annexed Crimea and sent its proxies into Donbas. The next
year, it sent its forces to Syria to prop up Assad, joining the Iranians, who
needed Syria as a bridge to funnel arms, training, and equipment to Hezbollah in
Lebanon. Syria became a cauldron of violence. American warplanes were bombing
the Islamic State in the east. Russian warplanes were bombing the Islamic State
and rebels in the northwest. The Turks were bombing the Kurds in the north.
Iranian proxies fought the Islamic State and rebels in the east, occupying key
towns along the Euphrates River corridor.
Millions fled renewed fighting. On Sept. 2, 2015, the body of 2-year-old Alan
Shemu — widely named as Aylan Kurdi in initial news reports — washed ashore in
Bodrum, Turkey. His family paid human traffickers nearly $6,000 to board a
rubber dinghy to escape to Greece, and the overloaded boat capsized at sea.
Photos of the lifeless toddler spread across the world, a heartbreaking
exclamation point reminding the civilized world it had failed the people of
Syria.
The millions of people making their way out of Syria joined throngs of refugees
from other conflicts and economic migrants trying to get into Europe, and the
political consequences were seismic. Amid fear of terror attacks from the
Islamic State and nativist fear-mongering about alien hordes, there came a surge
of anti-Muslim bigotry as far-right, anti-immigrant political movements grew in
popularity.On June 23, 2016, standing outside the Houses of Parliament in
London, I watched as the Brexit referendum results came in, affirming that the
U.K. would leave the European Union. Many Brits felt they were losing their
country, and they wanted to do something about it. I wondered the degree to
which fears about migrants and terrorism created by the war in Syria had played
a role.
Less than a month later, the morning after Bastille Day, July 14, I stood on the
Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, looking at a still-wet bloodstain on the
asphalt, that marked where a child had died — one among 86 people who had been
run down by a madman in a truck, inspired by the Islamic State. I thought again
of Syria.
I had been in Brussels in March earlier in the year, when the airport was
bombed; I had been in Paris the November before that when people were gunned
down drinking at cafes or listening to a heavy metal concert in the Bataclan.
Both attacks had been the Islamic State. It all went back to Syria.
Around the same time as the attack in Nice in July 2016, rebel forces in Aleppo
— Syria’s second largest city — had been cut off by Assad’s forces. The Russian
air force was pounding the rebels. I spoke to people in the besieged city
regularly — rebel fighters, aid workers, and doctors.
In September, I spoke with a nurse who went by Umm Mohammed, an honorific
pseudonym, while investigating the use of cluster munitions by the Russians. The
maternity ward she worked in had just been bombed.
“I didn’t know what to do with the children in the incubators,” she said, so she
grabbed them two by two, using a small penlight to navigate the rubble and carry
them to safety with the help of another nurse. “These kids are innocent, and
they came into this world under very difficult circumstances. They came into
this world during a war.”Few choose to live amid war. But when it comes, it is
always the innocent who suffer the most. By December 2016, Aleppo had fallen to
Assad’s regime. More than 30,000 people died before it was taken, two-thirds of
them civilians.
As war raged across Syria, the Kurds sought to forge their own enclave, along
the lines of Kurdistan in Iraq. The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)
were instrumental in defeating the Islamic State; now the SDF provided the
firepower to maintain a multi-ethnic autonomous region home to Kurds, Syrian
Arabs, Turkmen, Circassians, and Yazidis, among other ethnic groups, free from
Assad’s rule.
The success of the revolutionary Kurdish project in Syria, known as Rojava, drew
the ire of the Turks, long wary of Turkey’s own Kurdish independence movement.
Turkey, with its well-equipped military, had taken to intervening in the north
of Syria with regular incursions when it felt its interests demanded action. In
2019, Turkey secured a promise from President Donald Trump to withdraw support
for the SDF while Turkish-backed militias created a buffer zone separating the
Kurds in Syria from those in Turkey. In Mardin, overlooking the Tigris and Upper
Mesopotamia, I listened to Kurdish refugees sing songs of freedom and loss as
their misty dreams of a transnational homeland were dispelled in the thunder and
fire of Turkish artillery, and they were cut off from their homes in Syria.
In 2022, when war came to Ukraine, I was there, too. I went to the front with
elite Ukrainian Marines and airborne infantry, and with civilians who knew
nothing of soldiering but volunteered to bear the burden of arms to defend their
homes. I saw Russian fighter-bomber aircraft, and knew many of them were being
piloted by the same men who had bombed hospitals in Aleppo.
Little did anyone know at the outset of that invasion, Ukraine’s dogged
resistance would sap the strength of Russia’s military machine. When Syrian
rebels made their move starting last week, Moscow lacked the resources to send
an expeditionary force to rescue Assad. Tehran, too, had seen its fortunes
shift: its main proxy supporting the regime in Syria, Hezbollah, was decapitated
by Israel after throwing in its lot with Hamas, after the surprise attack on
Israel of Oct. 7, 2023.
When contemplating current events, it can never be quite correct to say: “It all
started here.” Everything that happens is a knot of the overlapping skeins that
weave the pattern of history, and each individual thread can be traced back for
generations, until we’re all sitting around arguing about the choices made by
people who went to dust 1,000 years ago.
We live in the now, and Syria is a nexus for our times. Syria’s civil war is an
intricate web of violence, inhumanity, and unfulfilled dreams — whose pattern
became the shape of modernity.
Bashar al-Assad and the decisions he made have been at the center of that web,
and it has touched the lives of millions.
A Syrian friend who has been living in London returned to Damascus a few weeks
ago, on her first visit to family in years. She was there when the offensive led
by the militant Islamist group Hayat Tahrir ash-Sham (HTS) began. She changed
her flight to leave earlier than originally planned, and tried to get out on
Friday, but it was too late. She’s stuck there now, hoping for the best.
There have been millions of Syrian stories like hers over the long years of war
— of people compelled to make compromises; of being forced to abandon families
and possessions; of getting trapped as a cyclone of violence descends.
My colleague Anthony Shadid was a correspondent for The New York Times who died
covering the war in Syria in 2012. The last time I saw him in person was as he
visited the newsroom in New York with his son in his arms. He wrote once:
“Cultures that may seem as durable as stone can break like glass, leaving all
the things that held them together unattended. I believe that the craftsman, the
artist, the cook, and the silversmith are peacemakers. They instill grace; they
lull the world to calm.”
No one can say what the future holds for Syria. Russia, the U.S., Turkey, and
Iran all have a presence there. Every one of Syria’s neighbors will try to shape
its future to their liking; every outside power will say it knows best what
Syrians should do as they untangle 50 years of dictatorship.
The myriad rebel groups that overthrew Assad represent a dizzying array of
ideologies, religious sects, and ethnicities — Sunni Islamists, Kurdish
separatists, Druze militias, Shia defectors. The group that led the charge which
finally brought the dictator down, HTS, has a vision for Syria under sharia law.
Its leader presents himself as a reformed jihadist, willing to accommodate
Syria’s polyethnic, multi-religious reality.
The dissident writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh — hated by the regime and jihadis alike
— writes that the group’s “worldview is hostile to modernity and its values.”
But he isn’t giving up. As thousands of prisoners are freed from Syria’s
prisons, some for the first time in decades, and statues and photos of the
dictator are torn down, there is cause for celebration, and hope.
“Jihadists can’t be countered with despair, liberal critique, or secular
sloganeering. We need a strong social and political coalition mobilizing across
society,” al-Haj Saleh says. “Millions of politically active Syrians are the
best safeguard against any extremist hijacking of the revolution.”
Syria will need its peacemakers now. It will need those who instill grace and
lull the world to calm. The only thing uniting Syria’s opposition forces over
the past 10 days as they have taken the country has been hatred of Assad and his
vile regime.
Syria’s Bloody Dictator Has Fallen
Mac William Bishop/Rolling Stone/December 8, 2024
In 2013, I met a 12-year-old Syrian girl who had been shot in the back by a
government sniper near Aleppo. Her name was Maysaa, and she was paralyzed from
the waist down. “Am I a terrorist? Are all of the children they kill
terrorists?” she asked, recuperating in an improvised medical facility on her
way to a Turkish hospital.
Despite her pain, she was overcome with anger, and she cursed the man
responsible. “Children are being torn to pieces. May God tear Bashar al-Assad
and his children to pieces.”Curses like Maysaa’s are seeds that took root in
Syria’s blood-soaked soil and have stubbornly grown. Now, more than a decade
later, they are bearing fruit.
The murderous tyrant who presided over the collapse of Syria, amid a brutal
civil war, has finally fallen.
Assad’s regime, responsible for more than 617,000 deaths, has evaporated in the
face of an onslaught that began with a ferocious offensive by rebels in the
northwest, and which was soon joined by anti-government fighters from every
corner of the country.
The end came quickly, in little more than 10 days. But the revolution in Syria
against a regime that kidnapped, tortured, and murdered tens of thousands of its
own citizens has been raging for nearly 14 years.
The paroxysms of pain caused by the war in Syria have wracked the globe. It
became an epicenter of chaos that tore apart the Middle East and changed the
face of Europe. Millions fled into exile, abandoning their homes in a quest for
safety for themselves and their children. The conflict unleashed ghastly
atrocities, from nerve-agent attacks carried out by Assad’s forces that killed
hundreds; to the routine bombing of hospitals by Russian and Syrian aircraft; to
the spread of the Islamic State, which exported its own brand of terror around
the world.
Through it all, Bashar al-Assad ruled, stubbornly clinging to power through
brute force no matter the cost to his people. He remains wanted for war crimes.
Assad was nearly toppled, until he was shored up by a foreign intervention in
2015 that came in the form of Russian bomber aircraft and Iranian mercenaries.
Those who took up arms to defy him have carried on the struggle through long
years of despair, dissension, and indifference.
When he became president in 2000, the son of Syrian despot Hafez al-Assad was
praised as a potential reformer of the totalitarian state he inherited. His
father had built a potent machine of oppression, using the Ba’ath Party — an
anti-imperialist pan-Arab nationalist movement that seized power in 1963 — as a
vehicle to ascend to power over the military and intelligence services, which he
used to neutralize dissent and cement his rule.
When Hafez al-Assad died, Bashar became president. Hopes were high that change
would come to Syria with a leader from a new generation. A brief period of
liberalization, which came to be known as the Damascus Spring, encouraged many
Syrians as some political prisoners were freed and a crackdown on government
corruption began.
But any hope that Assad, who had trained as a medical doctor and had lived in
London for years working as an ophthalmologist, would usher in a new Syria was
swiftly dashed. The regime’s feared internal security and intelligence agency,
the Mukhabarat, reasserted the grip of the authoritarian inner circle, rounding
up intellectuals and dissidents.
Damascus Spring turned into Syria’s winter, until 2011. Widespread civil unrest
erupting across the region from a confluence of economic, ideological and social
factors were soon dubbed the Arab Spring; Syria was not immune. A steady
drumbeat of isolated protests became a movement in March, as Syrians took to the
streets demanding democratic reform and the release of political prisoners. Mass
protests and uprisings spread, starting a cycle of protest-and-crackdown that
led to ever-increasing numbers of slain protesters.
Assad made no meaningful effort to address the widespread discontent that had
started the uprising, choosing instead to blame “foreign powers” for fomenting
unrest, and unleashing the security forces and military against his people. The
country exploded into violence. By the summer, the protest movement had become
an insurgency. Large numbers of soldiers were defecting and joining the
protesters, and then organizing into armed militias. Protest became revolution,
and descended into civil war.
Tens of thousands were killed in fighting and indiscriminate shelling, while
efforts to round up dissidents and critics of the regime went into hyperdrive.
Hundreds of Syrians had long disappeared into the regime’s prisons, where they
were raped, abused, tortured, and murdered. Now they did so in the thousands.
The worst crimes and abuses committed by the regime have been documented in
voluminous detail by human rights groups and international prosecutors. The
broken bodies of the slain were thrown into mass graves, while many families
were left without any clue as to the fate of their loved ones. Under Assad,
people simply disappeared.
The fractious rebel alliance formed the Free Syrian Army in July 2011, but the
reality was that most of the anti-regime units could do little more than conduct
insurgency operations, or hold defensive positions. Many were katiba — an Arabic
word approximating “battalion” — relatively small groups of defectors and
amateur soldiers organized around charismatic leaders or local strongmen.
Coordinating their activities was challenging.
Assad’s forces recognized no rules of war as they tried to crush the rebels,
targeting noncombatants and even children with high explosives, sniper rifles,
and machine guns.
In 2013, they started using chemical weapons. A government unit in Damascus
fired artillery rockets containing the nerve agent sarin against a neighborhood
in the hands of the rebels. Estimates of the number killed range from 500 to
more than 1,700.
The scenes of men, women, and children choking to death — of entire families
turned into piles of corpses as they huddled in the corners of basements to
escape the shelling — shocked the world. Then-President Barack Obama declared
that the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons had crossed a “red line,” and
vowed to take action.
In reality, Obama’s response was tepid. The U.S. fired long-range cruise
missiles against a handful of military targets, while the White House secured a
promise from Assad not to do it again. Damascus agreed to let an international
organization oversee the destruction of chemical weapons stock and dismantle
production facilities.
But the U.S. and the West had shown their impotence, lacking the will to
meaningfully support the Syrian rebels amid accusations of warmongering that
grew in the shadow of the WMD lies that had led to the disastrous invasion of
Iraq.
The West wrung its hands over what to do, going back-and-forth for years over
whether to support the revolution, and who to train and arm if it did so.
Secular rebels — the “moderate” opposition preferred by Western leaders who
parachuted in and toured refugee camps along the Turkish border, or met with
opposition leaders with little real influence — struggled to assemble an
effective fighting force amid vague visions of a democratic Syria and sporadic
supplies of weaponry from abroad.
But conflicts inevitably create power vacuums, and something always fills a
vacuum.
Insurgents and jihadis who had fought against American occupation in Iraq and
Afghanistan flooded into Syria, sensing opportunity. The jihadis had a clear
idea of what they wanted and how to achieve it. Armed with Gulf Arab cash and
Salafi extremism, the worst of the lot swept aside its opponents and flooded
across the country.
They declared the establishment of the Islamic State in 2014.
The same year, Russia — convinced by Western weakness, alarmed by Ukraine’s
lurch toward Europe — annexed Crimea and sent its proxies into Donbas. The next
year, it sent its forces to Syria to prop up Assad, joining the Iranians, who
needed Syria as a bridge to funnel arms, training, and equipment to Hezbollah in
Lebanon.
Syria became a cauldron of violence. American warplanes were bombing the Islamic
State in the east. Russian warplanes were bombing the Islamic State and rebels
in the northwest. The Turks were bombing the Kurds in the north. Iranian proxies
fought the Islamic State and rebels in the east, occupying key towns along the
Euphrates River corridor.
Millions fled renewed fighting. On Sept. 2, 2015, the body of 2-year-old Alan
Shemu — widely named as Aylan Kurdi in initial news reports — washed ashore in
Bodrum, Turkey. His family paid human traffickers nearly $6,000 to board a
rubber dinghy to escape to Greece, and the overloaded boat capsized at sea.
Photos of the lifeless toddler spread across the world, a heartbreaking
exclamation point reminding the civilized world it had failed the people of
Syria.
The millions of people making their way out of Syria joined throngs of refugees
from other conflicts and economic migrants trying to get into Europe, and the
political consequences were seismic. Amid fear of terror attacks from the
Islamic State and nativist fear-mongering about alien hordes, there came a surge
of anti-Muslim bigotry as far-right, anti-immigrant political movements grew in
popularity.
On June 23, 2016, standing outside the Houses of Parliament in London, I watched
as the Brexit referendum results came in, affirming that the U.K. would leave
the European Union. Many Brits felt they were losing their country, and they
wanted to do something about it. I wondered the degree to which fears about
migrants and terrorism created by the war in Syria had played a role.
Less than a month later, the morning after Bastille Day, July 14, I stood on the
Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, looking at a still-wet bloodstain on the
asphalt, that marked where a child had died — one among 86 people who had been
run down by a madman in a truck, inspired by the Islamic State. I thought again
of Syria.
I had been in Brussels in March earlier in the year, when the airport was
bombed; I had been in Paris the November before that when people were gunned
down drinking at cafes or listening to a heavy metal concert in the Bataclan.
Both attacks had been the Islamic State. It all went back to Syria.
Around the same time as the attack in Nice in July 2016, rebel forces in Aleppo
— Syria’s second largest city — had been cut off by Assad’s forces. The Russian
air force was pounding the rebels. I spoke to people in the besieged city
regularly — rebel fighters, aid workers, and doctors.
In September, I spoke with a nurse who went by Umm Mohammed, an honorific
pseudonym, while investigating the use of cluster munitions by the Russians. The
maternity ward she worked in had just been bombed.
“I didn’t know what to do with the children in the incubators,” she said, so she
grabbed them two by two, using a small penlight to navigate the rubble and carry
them to safety with the help of another nurse. “These kids are innocent, and
they came into this world under very difficult circumstances. They came into
this world during a war.”
Few choose to live amid war. But when it comes, it is always the innocent who
suffer the most. By December 2016, Aleppo had fallen to Assad’s regime. More
than 30,000 people died before it was taken, two-thirds of them civilians.
As war raged across Syria, the Kurds sought to forge their own enclave, along
the lines of Kurdistan in Iraq. The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)
were instrumental in defeating the Islamic State; now the SDF provided the
firepower to maintain a multi-ethnic autonomous region home to Kurds, Syrian
Arabs, Turkmen, Circassians, and Yazidis, among other ethnic groups, free from
Assad’s rule.
The success of the revolutionary Kurdish project in Syria, known as Rojava, drew
the ire of the Turks, long wary of Turkey’s own Kurdish independence movement.
Turkey, with its well-equipped military, had taken to intervening in the north
of Syria with regular incursions when it felt its interests demanded action.
In 2019, Turkey secured a promise from President Donald Trump to withdraw
support for the SDF while Turkish-backed militias created a buffer zone
separating the Kurds in Syria from those in Turkey. In Mardin, overlooking the
Tigris and Upper Mesopotamia, I listened to Kurdish refugees sing songs of
freedom and loss as their misty dreams of a transnational homeland were
dispelled in the thunder and fire of Turkish artillery, and they were cut off
from their homes in Syria.
In 2022, when war came to Ukraine, I was there, too. I went to the front with
elite Ukrainian Marines and airborne infantry, and with civilians who knew
nothing of soldiering but volunteered to bear the burden of arms to defend their
homes. I saw Russian fighter-bomber aircraft, and knew many of them were being
piloted by the same men who had bombed hospitals in Aleppo.
Little did anyone know at the outset of that invasion, Ukraine’s dogged
resistance would sap the strength of Russia’s military machine. When Syrian
rebels made their move starting last week, Moscow lacked the resources to send
an expeditionary force to rescue Assad. Tehran, too, had seen its fortunes
shift: its main proxy supporting the regime in Syria, Hezbollah, was decapitated
by Israel after throwing in its lot with Hamas, after the surprise attack on
Israel of Oct. 7, 2023.
When contemplating current events, it can never be quite correct to say: “It all
started here.” Everything that happens is a knot of the overlapping skeins that
weave the pattern of history, and each individual thread can be traced back for
generations, until we’re all sitting around arguing about the choices made by
people who went to dust 1,000 years ago.
We live in the now, and Syria is a nexus for our times. Syria’s civil war is an
intricate web of violence, inhumanity, and unfulfilled dreams — whose pattern
became the shape of modernity.
Bashar al-Assad and the decisions he made have been at the center of that web,
and it has touched the lives of millions.
A Syrian friend who has been living in London returned to Damascus a few weeks
ago, on her first visit to family in years. She was there when the offensive led
by the militant Islamist group Hayat Tahrir ash-Sham (HTS) began. She changed
her flight to leave earlier than originally planned, and tried to get out on
Friday, but it was too late. She’s stuck there now, hoping for the best.
There have been millions of Syrian stories like hers over the long years of war
— of people compelled to make compromises; of being forced to abandon families
and possessions; of getting trapped as a cyclone of violence descends.
My colleague Anthony Shadid was a correspondent for The New York Times who died
covering the war in Syria in 2012. The last time I saw him in person was as he
visited the newsroom in New York with his son in his arms. He wrote once:
“Cultures that may seem as durable as stone can break like glass, leaving all
the things that held them together unattended. I believe that the craftsman, the
artist, the cook, and the silversmith are peacemakers. They instill grace; they
lull the world to calm.”
No one can say what the future holds for Syria. Russia, the U.S., Turkey, and
Iran all have a presence there. Every one of Syria’s neighbors will try to shape
its future to their liking; every outside power will say it knows best what
Syrians should do as they untangle 50 years of dictatorship.
The myriad rebel groups that overthrew Assad represent a dizzying array of
ideologies, religious sects, and ethnicities — Sunni Islamists, Kurdish
separatists, Druze militias, Shia defectors. The group that led the charge which
finally brought the dictator down, HTS, has a vision for Syria under sharia law.
Its leader presents himself as a reformed jihadist, willing to accommodate
Syria’s polyethnic, multi-religious reality.
The dissident writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh — hated by the regime and jihadis alike
— writes that the group’s “worldview is hostile to modernity and its values.”
But he isn’t giving up. As thousands of prisoners are freed from Syria’s
prisons, some for the first time in decades, and statues and photos of the
dictator are torn down, there is cause for celebration, and hope.
“Jihadists can’t be countered with despair, liberal critique, or secular
sloganeering. We need a strong social and political coalition mobilizing across
society,” al-Haj Saleh says. “Millions of politically active Syrians are the
best safeguard against any extremist hijacking of the revolution.”
Syria will need its peacemakers now. It will need those who instill grace and
lull the world to calm. The only thing uniting Syria’s opposition forces over
the past 10 days as they have taken the country has been hatred of Assad and his
vile regime.
Jew-Hunting: Open Season in the West
Guy Millière/Gatestone Institute./December 8, 2024
"We have become the Gaza of Europe. I will NOT accept that. NEVER. The
authorities will be held accountable for their failure to protect the Israeli
citizens. Never again". — Dutch MP Geert Wilders, X, November 8, 2024.
In Europe, saying that one is for the Palestinians has become the politically
correct way of saying one loathes Israel and Jews.
So long as courageous politicians like Geert Wilders are pushed to the margins,
the situation in Europe can only get worse. European political leaders are
afraid of Muslim unrest and of losing potential votes. They have commensurately
become increasingly anti-Israel. French President Emmanuel Macron urged
completely stopping arms deliveries to Israel.
"Offering to negotiate with Islamic terrorists is a statement of weakness.
Jihadists only offer to negotiate out of fear, weakness or to entrap us, and
they assume we do the same thing. Nothing would ever convince them that we
genuinely want to live in peace with them, or that we prefer alternatives to
violence. So any time we offer to negotiate, they see it as weakness or a trick.
If our diplomats ever understood this cultural reality, they would stop being
baffled when the negotiations fall apart." — Daniel Greenfield, Gatestone
Institute, December 2, 2024.
On November 7 in Amsterdam, visiting Israeli soccer fans were chased through the
streets, beaten, thrown to the ground, punched, kicked, stabbed, and thrown into
the icy water of the city's canals. While the attackers shout anti-Semitic
slurs, the victims, in an attempt to escape, shout back that they are not
Jewish. No one was arrested during or after the pogrom. The attackers were only
put on buses and dropped off on the outskirts of the city.
November 7. Amsterdam. As soon as a soccer match between the Netherlands' AFC
Ajax, a Dutch soccer club, and Israel's Maccabi Tel Aviv ends, Maccabi
supporters who came from Israel and several European countries to attend the
match, are attacked. Many are chased through the streets, beaten, thrown to the
ground, punched, kicked, stabbed, and thrown into the icy water of the city's
canals. While the attackers shout anti-Semitic slurs, the victims, in an attempt
to escape, shout back that they are not Jewish.
The attackers film what they do, then post the videos on social networks. Five
Israelis are hospitalized; dozens of others, some wounded, lock themselves for
hours in their hotel rooms. The Israeli government sends planes to rescue the
Jews. A jihadi pogrom has just taken place in the city where Anne Frank and her
family hid until they were turned over to the German occupiers and sent to death
camps.
"This is a very dark moment for the city, for which I am deeply ashamed," said
Femke Halsema, Amsterdam's "left wing" mayor.
"We must not look away from antisemitic behavior on our streets," King
Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands was even more explicit.
"History has taught us how intimidation goes from bad to worse, with horrific
consequences. Jewish people must feel safe in the Netherlands, everywhere and at
all times."
"There is nothing, absolutely nothing to serve as an excuse for the deliberate
search and hunting down of Jews," stated Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, also
"left-wing".
"We have become the Gaza of Europe," said Dutch MP Geert Wilders.
"I will NOT accept that. NEVER. The authorities will be held accountable for
their failure to protect the Israeli citizens. Never again."
One of the victims wrote:
"I finished four months reserves in Gaza and what I experienced here is no less
scary. There is war out here. I got run over and someone pulled a knife on me. I
am lightly injured but not willing to get treatment here, only in the country...
They are everywhere. No police. Whole chaos. Everything was preorganized.... One
in four persons walking around the street is Muslim who comes to attack Jews".
The attackers appeared to be mostly Muslims with Palestinian flags. In Europe,
saying that one is for the Palestinians has become the politically correct way
of saying one loathes Israel and Jews.
Wilders, who lives under constant police protection after his life was
threatened in 2005, has for years been warning of the dangers that arise from a
growing Muslim presence in his country.
The Netherlands has long been filled with Islamic hatred. Filmmaker Theo Van
Gogh was brutally murdered in Amsterdam in 2004 by an Islamist who claimed that
making a film, "Submission," about Muslim women filling shelters for victims of
abuse, was offensive to Islam. A paper with a knife stuck into van Gogh's belly
threatened that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders, who had both worked on film,
would be next.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a victim of female genital mutilation, had fled her native
Somalia to escape a forced marriage, became Dutch, went through university, and
was elected to the Dutch parliament. After van Gogh was murdered, when she too
received 'round-the-clock protection, her neighbors complained that her presence
was endangering them. She was accused of having lied in her asylum application
-- apparently an excuse to harass her for being critical of Islam – was stripped
of her citizenship, and fled to the United States.
Wilders won the Dutch general election in November 2023 and his Party for
Freedom (PVV) became the largest in the Dutch parliament. He should have become
prime minister, but other parties blocked him from forming a coalition. The
coalition government that was formed rejected his participation, a move Wilders
declared unfair and "constitutionally wrong."
No one was arrested during or after the pogrom. The attackers were only put on
buses and dropped off on the outskirts of the city.
Israel's Mossad had warned Dutch authorities and police that plans for violence
against Jews were circulating on November 7 and urged them to increase security
at the stadium, hotels, train stations and in the Amsterdam city center -- to no
avail.
When violence did break out, the police did almost nothing to stop it.
Ayan Hirsi Ali wrote:
"Today, a large part of the police force in Amsterdam is made up of
second-generation migrants from North Africa and the Middle East. Since October
7 last year, some officers have already refused to guard Jewish locations such
as the Holocaust Museum."
Demonstrations in Amsterdam were banned the day after the pogrom for an
indefinite period, but took place anyway. On November 11, a tram was set on
fire, windows smashed, and police officers pelted with stones by young men
shouting, "cancer Jews". Five men were arrested on November 12, then released.
Forty-five suspects were identified. Eight were arrested.
What is happening in the Netherlands is happening in other Western European
countries as well.
Anti-Semitic attacks are becoming more numerous in France, as with the torture
and murder of Ilan Halimi, the murder of two elderly women, Mireille Knoll and
Dr. Sarah Halimi, and a slaughter in Toulouse in 2012, where an Islamist
murdered Jewish schoolchildren. A massacre in Paris in 2015 showed that
Islamists would murder Jews who had simply come to shop in a Jewish supermarket.
In Paris, at the pro-Hamas demonstrations that followed the massacre of Jews in
Israel by the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas on October 7, 2023,
demonstrators shouted "Death to the Jews" and "Death to Israel." Several
demonstrations ended in riots, with Jewish businesses attacked or covered with
Stars of David, sometimes accompanied by the German word Jude.
When Jews were attacked on the streets, or students on the London Underground
were attacked by groups of young Muslims, the British police ignored the
attacks.
On November 12 in Berlin, members of a Jewish youth soccer team were assaulted
by a "pro-Palestinian" mob wielding sticks and knives.
In the United States, Jewish students have been attacked, sometimes violently,
and anti-Semitic attacks have been increasing. Anti-Israel and pro-Hamas
demonstrations are accompanied by anti-Semitic acts. Jewish students at the
University of Pittsburgh were recently beaten with a glass bottle by a man
wearing a keffiyeh, and another student, wearing a Star of David, was beaten by
a group of Muslim students.
In Canada, a report by the Canadian Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA)
concludes: "increasingly Canada is becoming a physically unsafe country for
Jews." Last month, an Iranian plot to assassinate a Jewish human rights lawyer
and former federal minister, Irwin Cotler, was foiled. A Vancouver resident
recently remarked:
"Walking around the city, you would think that we live next door to the Gaza
Strip. Pro-Hamas protests and bomb threats to Jewish institutions make me feel
uncomfortable disclosing I am Jewish and for my own safety."
Similar testimonies come from Toronto and Montreal.
The Muslim anti-Semitism so common in Muslim countries has spread by immigration
to Western Europe and North America, accompanied by Islamic organizations and
the arrival of radical imams who constantly incite hatred of Jews, Israel and
the West. In Western Europe, Muslim neighborhoods have become hotbeds of
delinquency and crime, from which non-Muslim populations have fled.
Western European political leaders first claimed that Muslim populations would
integrate and not cause any friction. When it became clear that many Muslims
were not integrating, and were instead creating unrest, political leaders chose
to practice willful blindness and presumably gave in out of fear of riots.
Some organizations claim that those who say Muslim integration is a failure, or
that Muslim hatred of Jews is pervasive, are accused of being racist,
xenophobic, or belonging to the far right. Organizations fighting anti-Semitism
never speak out about Muslim anti-Semitism. Instead, they accuse the "far-right"
of anti-Semitism. "Far-right" anti-Semitism does exist, of course, but for the
most part, since World War II, does not attack Jews or murder them.
Conversely, far-left movements have drawn closer to Islamic organizations,
perhaps based on their common wish to re-order society more to their
everyone-equally-poor-and-tyrannized liking. They have supported the
"Palestinian cause" with increasing vehemence: the "far-left" in Europe is now
resolutely "anti-Zionist" and filled with an anti-Jewish hatred similar to that
of the most radical Muslims.
So long as courageous politicians like Geert Wilders are pushed to the margins,
the situation in Europe can only get worse. European political leaders are
afraid of Muslim unrest and of losing potential votes. They have commensurately
become increasingly anti-Israel. French President Emmanuel Macron urged
completely stopping arms deliveries to Israel. "You can't defend a civilization
by sowing barbarism" he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, without
mentioning the incessant poundings on Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah.
The pro-Hamas demonstrations and the occupations of universities by violent
anti-Semites in recent months should be seen as red alerts. History shows that
letting the hatred of Jews and Israel without a firm response only grows and can
only lead to anarchy.
"Israel is the only place, where Jews are defended," wrote the Columnist
Caroline Glick. "[W]ithout Israel, there would be no Jewish people."
Israel tried to keep the much-touted "ceasefire" from vaporizing. As the
journalist Daniel Greenfield noted:
"The ceasefire lasted approximately 4 days.
"Lucy and the football.
"Ceasefires with terrorists always play out the same way. An elaborate series of
understandings are reached through an extended process of negotiations.
"The terrorists start violating them within 24 hours.
"If Israel is involved, the world immediately blames Israel.
"Biden's Lebanon ceasefire lasted approximately 4 days. During that time,
Hezbollah began advancing back to its old positions, setting up rocket
launchers, fortifying and preparing to launch new attacks. All in violation of
the ceasefire. Israel responded by taking out the incoming forces and Hezbollah
is back to firing rockets into Israel.
"So much for the ceasefire."
And:
"Offering to negotiate with Islamic terrorists is a statement of weakness.
Jihadists only offer to negotiate out of fear, weakness or to entrap us, and
they assume we do the same thing. Nothing would ever convince them that we
genuinely want to live in peace with them, or that we prefer alternatives to
violence. So any time we offer to negotiate, they see it as weakness or a trick.
"If our diplomats ever understood this cultural reality, they would stop being
baffled when the negotiations fall apart."
*Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27
books on France and Europe.
© 2024 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do
not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No
part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied
or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21185/jew-hunting-open-season
Lessons from Syria
Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al Awsat/December 08/2024
For a long time, I have been writing that the Syria we had known is gone. As
things develop on the ground, we are discussing signs of deterioration, and
consequently, the lessons that this deterioration offers our region. That is
what matters.
These lessons must be retained if we are to see a better Syria- a Syria of
citizenship and stability. There are many lessons, and it would be foolish not
to overlook them. The first of these lessons in our region is when something
goes it does not come back; Somalia provides a prime example, and there are many
others. The lessons of decline have taught us that whoever falls in our region-
whether due to chaos, mistakes, or a group of dreamers- is succeeded by even
greater extremism. There are also many examples of this: Iran, Iraq, Libya...
We have been receiving these lessons since what was falsely called the Arab
Spring broke out. The only real revolution was the Syrian revolution. Everyone
knows that Egypt is not Tunisia, Libya, or Yemen; each country has a different
context, fabric, and risks.
Egypt, for example, stands out because of its strong, effective military
established, which saved the polity. Thus, all Egyptians turned to it as the
savior when the Muslim Brotherhood hijacked the state and attempted to entrench
its president through changes to the constitution.
That did not happen in Libya or Yemen, but we did see something similar in
Tunisia. However, it will not happen in Syria now. Syria is not Iraq, which had
its army disbanded after the American invasion. Rather, Syria and its regime are
in precipitous decline as a result of armed conflict.
I say "armed" not because it was a coup; it is the result of years of armed
conflict. Since 2011, the regime has relied on external forces to confront
demands sparked by the boys who wrote "Your time is coming, Doctor" on the wall.
These issues could have been easily resolved, but the regime was haughty and
obstinate. The regime's crack emerged because of its disregard for the nation
and its citizens, and its destructive role in the region. I cannot think of any
regime that had committed all these mistakes and been granted as many
opportunities as the Assad regime, but that is a story for another time.
The most important lesson we can draw from the decline of our region is that the
future is not necessarily better. The path to reform and reconstruction is long,
and few sincere friends are found on this path, if any, as in the world of
politics everyone seeks their own interests.
Iran has lost its historical project, and its militias have lost their supply
lines. Israel cannot be trusted in the region at this moment. Then there are the
Russians and their interests in the Mediterranean, and beyond.
Thus, the real asset of the Syrians now is the Syrians themselves. They have no
state institutions. Their only institution is the minds of educated and cultured
Syrian citizens aspiring for a state for all, a state that has a place for
everyone and embraces minorities and others.
This state that every sensible person seeks, everyone who wants stability and
believes in citizenship- not a state of ideology but a state of development and
technology. With it, the Syrian people will find themselves in a better position
than ever before, a space that connects the Gulf, the Levant, Türkiye, and
Europe. They will find real partners in the Gulf states uncontestedly led by
Saudi Arabia, economically, socially, and culturally. Accordingly, the most
important lesson of decline is to now safeguard Syria’s most crucial
institution, which is the mind.
Syria has a bright future without Assad
Ghassan Ibrahim/Arab News/December 08, 2024
Today we are witnessing the emergence of a new Syria, one that exists without
the Assad regime. This marks the end of more than five decades of rule, from
Hafez Assad to his son Bashar. This change represents not only a shift for the
Syrian people, but also a transformation for the region as a whole. We are
seeing the beginnings of a new Middle East, free from the external interventions
that have long troubled the region. What we have observed over the past few
days, with Syrian opposition forces advancing in the north and gradually
entering cities without destruction or bloodshed, signifies the transition to a
new phase. This phase does not involve reopening old grievances with Syrian
figures from the previous government, nor does it aim to provoke civil wars.
This sentiment is shared not only by the opposition but also by many former
officials who recognize the necessity of moving beyond Bashar Assad’s rule.
There has been cooperation and coordination among various factions to ensure a
smooth transition to a new governance structure that embodies the aspirations of
the Syrian people, who have endured significant sacrifices.I am optimistic about
the recent developments and proud to have been among the first to report on the
escape of Assad and his family.
This change represents not only a shift for the Syrian people, but also a
transformation for the region as a whole.
This new phase is merely the beginning. From my observations of recent military
and political developments, it is clear there is a collective desire to serve
the nation. People want a Syria that is governed by its citizens, not by a
family that has long prioritized its own narrow interests over those of the
country. The goal is to create a military that represents all Syrians,
protecting the rights and interests of the populace instead of retreating to
specific strongholds. We envision a transitional stage characterized by justice,
free from destruction and revenge — a period dedicated to planning for the
future rather than dwelling on the past. Future discussions should focus on the
structure of the new government, drawing lessons from previous experiences. This
transition calls for emphasis on state institutions over individual power,
fostering a civil, secular or liberal state that aligns with the diverse
identities of the Syrian people.
As Syrians, we strive to depict the most optimistic vision of what can be
achieved. However, we must acknowledge that challenges may arise along the way.
Nevertheless, I believe that the country is on a path toward stability and the
reestablishment of normal relations with neighboring countries, leading to a
future where Syria becomes a crucial part of the axis of moderation in the
region.
Syria should foster relations with both the East and the West, focusing on
reconstruction — not just rebuilding infrastructure but also reshaping the
entire state. There is a dire need for comprehensive changes in various sectors,
from educational curricula to the internal operations of governmental
institutions.
Syria requires a new approach to service delivery, emphasizing wise management
that improves performance and combats the widespread corruption that has plagued
the nation. There is a dire need for comprehensive changes in various sectors,
from educational curricula to governmental institutions.
The events we have witnessed in recent days are a dream come true for countless
Syrians. I am confident this transformation will contribute to stability in
Syria and beyond. This new chapter could pave the way for comprehensive peace
among Syrians and with Israel, as there are no insurmountable differences.
The future Syria will be friendly to all nations. Half of the Syrian population
living abroad has gained valuable experience and holds high aspirations,
positioning them to participate effectively in the country’s reconstruction.
The door remains open for the international community and Arab nations to assist
Syrians in preparing for this transitional phase. While challenges still exist,
particularly from groups with militant backgrounds, I believe that the
experiences of cities liberated from regime control demonstrate a collective
desire to avoid the imposition of a strict religious governance. Locals want
autonomy in managing their affairs, which represents a glimmer of hope.
We must pursue the vision of an inclusive Syria, one that stands as an
exceptional model, having emerged from the shadows of one of the worst regimes
in history.
• Ghassan Ibrahim is a British-Syrian journalist and researcher on issues
regarding the Middle East, most notably Turkiye, Syria and Iran. He can be
reached at www.ghassanibrahim.com.