In his first remarks on the ouster of Syrian president Basher al-Assad, President Biden made the case that he deserves a share of the credit.
Assad’s “main allies” — Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia — “are far weaker today than they were when I took office,” Biden said. Therefore, their inability to save Assad from the Turkish-backed insurgents’ sweeping advance was “a direct result of the blows that Ukraine, Israel have delivered upon their own self-defense, with unflagging support of the United States.” Beyond the blows inflicted by US client states, Biden also noted that he had maintained crushing US sanctions; kept US troops in Syria’s northeast; “ordered the use of military force against Iranian networks” in Syria; and supported Israel’s “freedom of action” to carry out even more military strikes against similar targets.
Israel is continuing to bomb Syria a week after longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Israeli forces have launched over 800 strikes on Syria over the past week. Meanwhile, the Israeli government has approved a plan to expand illegal settlements in the occupied Golan Heights. “Israel is setting new precedents in the Middle East,”…
For most of the time since its 1946 independence from France, Syria has resisted all attempts to make it a vassal state. It has paid dearly, as a target of subversion, war, occupation and the most onerous economic sanctions in the world, for its anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism, its support for resistance to the occupation of Palestine and its participation in the Axis of Resistance, consisting of the Palestinian resistance groups, Hezbollah, Syria, the Iraqi resistance, Iran, and Yemen (Ansarallah), as well as allied countries and movements in the Arab, Muslim and anti-imperialist world. In this axis, Syria has been a keystone, both geographically and strategically. Removal of this keystone will mean a withering and weakening of the axis to the east and west of Syria, most dramatically in the case of Hezbollah, which loses its most essential lifeline for supplies and support, chiefly from Iran. And it is also why this loss becomes a life preserver thrown to an otherwise floundering state of Israel.
Until November 26, 2024, Israel was failing in almost every way. Even after enduring more than a year of genocide against the civilian population of Gaza, Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza remained as effective a force as ever, despite its reliance on weapons made in its own underground workshops from recycled and captured Israeli ordnance and other materials. In fact, the genocide assured a constant flow of volunteers to its doors, a supply of materials for its workshops, and a network of eyes and ears throughout Gaza.
The result was a guerrilla war of attrition for which the Israeli military, built and structured to deliver rapid, overwhelming blows to destroy its adversaries, was not prepared, nor to which it adapted. Losses were not huge, but they were more than Israel had previously suffered, and it seemed without end, including both soldiers and major ground equipment, such as tanks, armored personnel carriers and lightly armored bulldozers. Furthermore, Israel was simultaneously engaged in a second protracted armed conflict with a well-armed, well-trained and battled-hardened (in Syria) Hezbollah force in Lebanon, which had driven out the Jewish settler population in the north of Israel and had struck numerous military and intelligence gathering targets in the same area and beyond, with considerable effect.
In the meantime, Yemeni Ansarallah “Houthi” forces interdicted shipping from Asia through the Red Sea to the Israeli port of Eilat, and attacked the port with missiles, forcing it to close, and the ships to go around Africa and back through the Mediterranean, restricting and delaying the supply of goods and spare parts and making them more costly – or making them unprofitable to ship at all.
Much of the rest of the world also lost its taste for trade with Israel due to the stigma of its genocide in Gaza. The relatively important tourist industry dried up, as did investment. Even the arms industry slackened. A blank check from the US allowed Israel to keep its citizens supplied with paychecks and with sufficient products and services to buy, but at least 48,000 businesses closed, including agriculture in the north and in the Gaza “envelope”.
The toll on Israel was the greatest and longest in its history of warfare. Israel keeps most of its casualty figures hidden, but it admits to more than 27,000 removed from combat due to wounds suffered. Including deaths on all fronts, the casualty total is, therefore, necessarily above 30,000, almost all military, while Israel’s targets in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon are overwhelmingly civilian and more than half women and children. The Israeli military has complained that it is 20% short of the number of combat troops needed, and increasing numbers of exhausted reservists are refusing to serve. Although Gaza has lost an estimated 10% of its population to genocide, Israel has lost a similar proportion to emigration since October 8, 2023.
This was the state of Israel on November 25, 2024. Would Israel still exist after another year of this? There was reason to doubt its stamina. But the following day a truce was declared with Lebanon. There is no doubt that both Hezbollah and the Israeli military were exhausted and heavily damaged. The truce was not directly with Hezbollah but rather with the Lebanese government, because Hezbollah, in addition to its role as a defender against its aggressive neighbor to the south, participates in what is in practice a loosely consensus government, and it wants to be seen as respecting the will of all the parties.
Initially, the truce only stanched the blood on both sides of the border, and allowed both sides to halt their losses. Unfortunately, its true purpose had been determined months and even years earlier, by Turkiye, the US, Israel and their mercenary and mostly takfiri proxies in Syria. It was to make way for resumption of the war against the Syrian government, which started in 2011 but had been largely on hold since 2020. As we know now, the takfiri mercenaries, backed by Turkiye, US/NATO and Israel and furnished with the latest electronic and drone technology, quickly overwhelmed the Syrian forces, which had been weakened by years of debilitating economic sanctions and the flight of largely economic refugees, such that only half of its original population of 23 million remained. There are some reports that the operation was planned for the spring of 2025 but had been moved forward because of the losses being suffered by Israel, both economically and on the battlefield, and its internal political turmoil, as well as abandonment by a significant proportion of Zionist supporters, both through departure from Israel and from the international Jewish community.
Each of the participants in the plan had its own objectives, which are now coming to fruition in greater or lesser measure. For the takfiri forces, subsidized, trained and armed by Turkiye, the CIA, the Pentagon, and to a lesser extent Ukrainian military advisors, the Israeli military, Mossad, and radical Islamist groups in the Arabian and other countries, the objective was to conquer Syria and create a regime based on a radical and racist version of Islam shunned by most of the Muslim world. They had been recruited from at least 82 countries around the world, with the largest number from central Asia and the Arab world, including Syria, where they and their families formed a radical militant minority of 5-10% of the Syrian population allied with the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda and its affiliates and offshoots, such as ISIS/ISIL, that had been attempting for decades to establish a regime in Damascus that would enforce its Draconian laws on the rest of the population. In the areas of Syria that they had captured off and on since 2011, they showed what such rule might be like, by slaughtering and enslaving much of the non-Muslim, non-Sunni and more secularized Muslim population. Some of that has recommenced in the newly “liberated” territory during the last two weeks, despite attempts in the Western media to make them appear more tolerant. It remains to be seen how useful their sponsors will consider them to be now that their main role has been completed.
In the case of Turkiye, one of the major sponsors, the goals are to resettle its 3.5 million Syrian refugee population back in Syria, to capture the northern portion of Syrian territory for itself, and to reward the Turkmen and Uyghur fighters, which it recruited from central Asia, with land inside Syria, displacing the existing population with one loyal to Turkiye. In addition, Turkiye seeks to crush and displace the Syrian Kurdish population along the northern and northeastern Syrian frontier, which it considers to be terrorists in league with Turkiye’s own suppressed Kurdish population. Turkiye already is calling Aleppo its 82nd province and taking military action against the Syrian Kurds, especially in the western Kurdish communities.
Syria’s Kurdish population is itself a complex participant in the fighting. Although it has maintained a largely autonomous enclave in the northeast portion of Syria under the protection of US occupying forces, it has had nonbelligerent relations with the Assad government, which asked the Kurds to help defend Syria in the early years, and on at least one occasion offered to defend them against Turkish and takfiri forces that were invading Kurdish areas. The aim of the US sponsors of the Kurds, on the other hand, was to deny Syria sovereignty over its petroleum fields and wheat production area, in order to destroy the economy and ultimately replace the government with a compliant puppet regime. In their otherwise desperate situation, the Kurds could hardly turn away the US offer of support. The US has tried to restrain the Kurds from attacks against Turkiye, a NATO ally, but not entirely successfully, and the Kurdish leaders are drawn more from the recent immigrants/refugees from Turkiye rather than the more established population, which had stronger ties to the Assad government. Unfortunately for the Kurds, the US government now has somewhat less reason to support them after the fall of the Assad government, since that was the main reason was for their backing. Nevertheless, the larger neighboring Kurdish community in Iraq is a strong ally of the US and NATO, which may be reason enough for the US to continue support. In addition, the US may consider the Syrian Kurds to be a useful tool in restraining Turkiye’s obvious regional ambitions under Erdogan.
There is no doubt that Israel and its US patron gained the most from the fall of Syria, which had been an objective for many decades, and which was a very high priority for Israel, as described at the beginning of this piece. It arguably rescued Israel from total collapse. Besides removing the major remaining frontline belligerent state with Israel, the loss of Syria severed the supply line between Iran and Iraq on the east from Lebanon and the Mediterranean on the west. This means that troops and supplies can no longer easily pass from Iran to Hezbollah. Although Hezbollah retains much of its still unused formidable capability for the time being, it is likely to degrade over time, enabling Israel to reinstate the security of its border with Lebanon and making it safe for the refugees from the northern settlements, currently living in temporary housing, mostly in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, to return to their homes, as soon as they are repaired and rebuilt.
The takfiri seizure of Syria has also enabled Israel to destroy most of Syria’s stored weaponry and munitions in a massive aerial bombing campaign, using the vast quantity of bunker-buster and other bombs and missiles supplied by the US during the last 14 months. The Syrian stores are not only a supply that Hezbollah might have been able to use, but also one that the unpredictable takfiris might eventually decide to use against Israeli forces, should they be so inclined. It has also been an opportunity for Israel to capture additional territory, including the “disputed” Lebanese Shebaa farms region along the border of Lebanon, as well as much of the hitherto unoccupied portion of the Golan Heights, with strategic Mt. Hermon (Jabal al-Sheikh), the highest peak in the region, that has remained under Syrian control until now.
From Israel’s point of view, the disappearance of a very strategic member of the Axis of Resistance and the weakening of Hezbollah also means that Israel regains control of its northern border and will not have to devote as many troops to its defense. This in turn means that the refugee Israeli population that had to abandon its homes along the frontier can now return, although many of them will have to be repaired or rebuilt.
These developments are also likely to reduce or stop the flight from Israel, and perhaps restore confidence in Israel’s leadership and its aims. Foremost among these is the depopulation of the Gaza Strip, using some of the military forces released from the northern frontier, and its repopulation with Israeli settlers. Although Israel’s genocidal policies have alienated much of the world, as well as a growing portion of the Jewish diaspora, Israel retains a hardcore Zionist faithful who encourage and approve of its actions, and its network of sayanim and influencers in the US and other societies and governments, coordinated by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, continues to be enormously effective in delivering to Israel whatever it may need to accomplish its goals, regardless of the views of the electorate in these countries, which are in any case heavily influenced by pro-Zionist media and censorship.
There is, finally, yet another potential benefit to Israel in the not-so-distant future. In 1967, General Moshe Dayan proclaimed at the end of the June war that Israel had achieved all of its [immediate] territorial aims – except in Lebanon. This objective, and especially southern Lebanon, had been a coveted Zionist territory since before the founding of Israel in 1948, not least because of its access to the Litani river, the largest in the eastern Mediterranean. At least four times since then, Israel has invaded the region, emptying it of most of its population of more than a million inhabitants. Each time, the resistance in Lebanon eventually repelled and defeated the incursion. With the fall of Syria, however, and the probable reduction of strength of Hezbollah, this objective now becomes more realistic and more likely in the coming years.
For the United States, the fall of Syria means a major realignment of power in West Asia, a highly important part of the globe, both strategically and for its energy production. It empowers Turkiye, Israel and other US allies in the region. It disempowers Russia, Hezbollah and Iran, and it opens the possibility of assuring that the Gulf monarchies remain in its stable, while discouraging resistance. It also potentially allows the US to reduce its forces in the region and to send them to East Asia, where it has been postponing its planned confrontation with China. For Yemen and the Ansarallah movement, little changes immediately. Its partnership with Iran will undoubtedly remain, but over time its support of the Palestinian resistance may be affected if and when that resistance weakens.
The loss of Syria is therefore a major victory for Zionism and imperialism in West Asia, and a major defeat for the Axis of Resistance and the independence, self-determination and sovereignty of nation states, both in the region and potentially across the globe.
Israel is continuing to bomb Syria a week after longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Israeli forces have launched over 800 strikes on Syria over the past week. Meanwhile, the Israeli government has approved a plan to expand illegal settlements in the occupied Golan Heights. “Israel is setting new precedents in the Middle East,” says Al Jazeera senior political analyst Marwan Bishara. “It’s acting so lawlessly against Syria, as a rogue state basically.” Bishara also discusses Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the Syria strategy of other actors in the region, including neighboring U.S. allies that had previously attempted to normalize relations with Assad and extremist groups that have formed partially in response to U.S. aggression.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
An Israeli air strike has killed Palestinian photojournalist Ahmed Al-Louh and five Palestinian Civil Defence workers in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp as Tel Aviv announces that it will double illegal settlements in the Golan Heights.
Al-Louh, who worked as a cameraman for Al Jazeera alongside other media outlets, was killed yesterday in the strike on the Civil Defence post in the central Gaza camp, according to medics and local journalists.
The attack occurred as Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 28 Palestinians on Sunday, medics said. Allouh is the third journalist killed in Gaza in the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government has approved a plan to increase the number of settlers in the illegally occupied Golan Heights, days after seizing more Syrian territory following the ousting of Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad, reports Al Jazeera.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the government had “unanimously approved” the “demographic development” of the occupied territory, which would seek to double the Israeli population there.
This new settlement plan is only for the portion of the Golan Heights that Israel has occupied since 1967. In 1981, Israel’s parliamentary Knesset moved to impose Israeli law over the territory, in an effective annexation.
Al Jazeera Arabic reported that journalist Al-louh was working while he was killed, wearing a “press” vest and helmet. He was taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza’s city of Deir el-Balah.
Al Jazeera condemns ‘heinous crime’ Al Jazeera Media Network condemned Al-Louh’s killing, and called on human rights and media organisations “to condemn the Israeli Occupation’s systematic killing of journalists in cold blood, the evasion of responsibilities under international humanitarian law, and to bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice”.
Israeli strike kills Al Jazeera journalist. Video: CNN News
“We urge relevant international legal institutions to take practical and urgent measures to hold the Israeli authorities and all those who are responsible accountable for their heinous crimes and to adopt mechanisms to put an end to the targeting and killing of journalists,” the network added.
Al-Louh had been covering Israel’s war on Gaza when it first began in October 2023, embedded with the Gaza Strip’s Palestinian Civil Defence teams, Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary said.
“It’s another heartbreaking day for Palestinians, Civil Defence teams, journalists. We [have been] wondering, how many times are we going to continue reporting on the killing[s] of our colleagues and beloved ones?” Khoudary said, reporting from Deir el-Balah.
Gaza’s media office said the head of the civil emergency service in Nuseirat, Nedal Abu Hjayyer, was also killed in Sunday’s attack.
“The civil emergency headquarters in Nuseirat camp was hit during the crews’ presence. They work around the clock to serve the people,” said Zaki Emadeldeen from the civil emergency service to reporters at the hospital.
“The civil emergency service is a humanitarian service and not political. They work in war and peace times for the service of the people,” he said, adding that the place was hit directly by an Israeli air strike.
The Israeli military said they were looking into the attack.
Journalists ‘paying highest price’
“Since the war in Gaza started, journalists have been paying the highest price — their lives – for their reporting. Without protection, equipment, international presence, communications, or food and water, they are still doing their crucial jobs to tell the world the truth,” said Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna in New York.
“Every time a journalist is killed, injured, arrested, or forced to go to exile, we lose fragments of the truth. Those responsible for these casualties face dual trials: one under international law and another before history’s unforgiving gaze.”
Several other Palestinian journalists were killed this past week, with 195 killed in Gaza since Israel’s war began, Khoudary said.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said earlier on Sunday that Palestinian journalist Mohammed Jabr al-Qrinawi was killed along with his wife and children in an Israeli air attack that targeted their home in Bureij refugee camp, in central Gaza, late on Saturday.
Earlier on Saturday, Al Mashhad Media said its journalist Mohammed Balousha was killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza.
Several AJ journalists killed
Several Al Jazeera journalists have been killed since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, including Ismail al-Ghoul, Rami al-Rifi, Samer Abudaqa and Hamza Dahdouh.
Also on Sunday, an air strike hit people protecting aid trucks west of Gaza City. Medics said several were killed or wounded but exact figures were not yet available.
Residents also said at least 11 people were killed in three separate Israeli air strikes in Gaza City. Nine were killed in the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoon and Jabalia camp when clusters of houses were bombed or set ablaze, and two were killed by drone fire in Rafah.
The US and Israel bear joint responsibility for the current situation in Syria, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said during a public event in Tehran on Wednesday, December 11. This was the first time Khamenei addressed the topic following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government and the establishment of a Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-backed administration in Syria.
While acknowledging Turkey’s role in supporting HTS, a designated terrorist organization that seized power after President Assad left the country on Sunday, Khamenei said that “the main conspirator, the main planner and the command centre lie in America and the Zionist regime,” IRNA reported.
Liberals and their Western allies, among the social-imperialist left in the U.S. and Europe, are celebrating the end of the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria after the stunning sweep across the country by so-called “rebels” led by the Al-Qaeda offshoot, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Their celebratory mood is informed by a tragic misunderstanding of what appears to be more of a coup d’etat in Syria than a military defeat. This was a coup orchestrated to replace the Syrian government with this coalition of Jihadists, which included the Turkish-supported Syrian National Army (SNA) and a coterie of depoliticized religious and gangster elements from the country’s Southeast. Instead of a new era of peace, stability and prosperity for the Syrian people, now that the “dictator” is gone, the opposite will be true. Just ask the people of Libya who were also “liberated” by NATO and Western-backed forces.
This is not to suggest that the events that unfolded since the HTS captured the city of Aleppo during this new phase of the war on Syria can be completely explained by the machinations of external forces. We are very much aware of the complex internal politics of Syria and the contradictory and outright reactionary, politics of the Syrian state at different points, such as the invasion of Beirut and persecution of leftists in Syria and Lebanon.
However, we must also remember that this set of events in Syria was sparked by the clumsy and predictable interventions of the U.S. to foment a new front through the Western media-created “Arab Spring.” The real character of the “Arab Spring” was revealed when it became clear that many of the activists were embracing, as a model of progress, the historically moribund forms of liberal capitalist democracy.
It must be noted that pro-democracy agitation and rebellion within Syria against the corruption of Ba’athism – the right-wing movement, constructed to counter authentic leftism in the Arab world – created conditions in which organized left resistance was making progress in challenging Assad’s rule. And despite calls from his more aggressive advisors and local political authorities to crack down in the style of his father, Assad actually started to provide some limited political space for opposition forces and the beginnings of a dialog on much needed reforms.
Unfortunately, the potential of the moment to expand more democratic space and alter the correlations of power inside the country was destroyed when the “revolutionary” romantics, the Syrian petit-bourgeoisie opposition, guided by idealistic and subjectivist notions of how revolution is made, decided to accelerate the historical process and support a premature and, ultimately, disastrous call to move from non-violent opposition to armed struggle against the state. Only the most naive or dishonest actors will argue that the abandonment of the political struggle for democratic reform in favor of a U.S-sponsored armed revolt did not play right into the subversive plans of the U.S. and Israel to, at minimum, weaken the Syrian state and, ultimately effect regime change. Despite the confusion and contradictions marking what has unfolded over the past few days in Syria, he bloody and destructive goal is clear: war has been imposed on the people of Syria. This war began a long time ago, as U.S. and Gulf State intelligence agencies armed and trained various elements within Syrian society, including militant Islamicists, to foment sectarian violence. Consequently, the forces that received the lion’s share of the external military support were groups such as the Al-Nusra Front (connected to al-Qaeda) in the Western part of the country, ISIS in the East, with the democratic and more moderate elements of the opposition groups being marginalized. But this was all according to plan. After all, Obama, in initiating the war on Syria, argued that the opposition, “made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth,” could not take on Assad alone. And, per the revelations from Obama’s Director of Intelligence General Michael Flynn, there was a willful decision to enhance the capabilities of various brutal Islamic forces in Syria.
The objective fact that HTS is essentially the rebranded al-Nusra front is one of those unpleasant realities that the anti-anti-imperialist “left” celebrating the fall of Assad tries to either skip over. It’s just as insidious as how these same unprincipled and performative “leftists” continue to whitewash the literal Nazi and extreme right-wing forces that U.S. intelligence agencies engineered into to power in Ukraine in 2014, who, in turn,i mmediately launched a genocidal attack on their own Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens.
The Syrian “civil war” was frozen by an agreement negotiated by the Russians in 2020 that allowed for the oppositional forces to retreat into the Iblid province in Northwest Syria and live in relative peace with the Syrian army. But what happened instead was the rearming of the opposition to be used at the moment most propitious to advance the interests of their paymasters.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, stated that the jihadist offensive in Syria was coordinated by the US and Israel. According to the diplomat, it is no coincidence that these jihadists attacked northern Syria right after Israel struck a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah.
Yet, “leftists” celebrating in the West, do not believe this reality and instead dismiss this analysis as a construction by the “campists” and the mindless Assadists. They refuse to recognize that the Jihadist “rebels” were outfitted with shiny new weapons and equipment to attack at the moment when the Russians are focused on Ukraine, and when Hezbollah is in need of weapons resupply across Syria from Iran. For these “leftists,” the success of the Jihadists only reflects the brilliance of the leadership or, as it were, the miracle of their new heroes in HTS.
The Western White Left Continues to Play the Role of Unwanted Junior Partners to U.S. Imperialism
Operating within the liberal idealist theoretical framework and with an unconscious propensity toward Eurocentrism, large sectors of the white left are completely unable to really grasp the “national question.” They certainly lack the ideological fitness to grasp Stalin’s materialist assertion that anti-colonialist, national liberation movements, even bourgeois ones, shifted the global balance of power away from Western capitalism. This ideological, and even cognitive, affliction renders most of the white left unable to ask the very simple question as to why, from Bolivia to Nicaragua, Peru, Ethiopia, Iran, and on to Ukraine, they always end up holding the same positions as U.S. and Western imperialism. This same white left is also unable to understand and, therefore, articulate the obvious when it comes to how members of their families, friends and colleagues can rationalize support for the genocide in Gaza: it is the entrenched but invisiblized inculcation of white supremacist ideology that explains how Palestinians can be “othered” into oblivion, which is to say that Palestinians just do not really count as human beings.
The fascists in Israel will continue their devastating genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the Occupied West Bank, and the white “left” will find ways to justify supporting the Democratic party which has been enabling the genocide for over a year. This “left” cries “Palestine must be free,” cheers the destruction of the only “Arab” state that has consistently stood with the Palestinians, but fall silent as Israeli tanks approach Damascus.
Reports are emerging that the so-called glorious “liberators” are rounding up and murdering Syrian soldiers and officials. This is just the beginning. The blood of Syrians will flow along the Jordan River and the blood of Palestinians will continue to flow in tandem with the blood of Russians and Ukrainians. And many around the world will continue to suffer from the source of these red rivers: the axis of imperialism formed by criminals from Western colonial nations.
These myopic celebrations will continue in the U.S. and throughout the West among the so-called left every time another “enemy” of the U.S. falls – until the tanks and “liberators” show up on their own streets painted in red, white, and blue.
The rapid fall of the Syrian Arab Republic government was both a shock and a catastrophe for that region and for the world. It was incomprehensible that the state which withstood a sustained attack since 2011 from the United States, Israel, Turkey and other NATO members, and gulf monarch states such as Saudi Arabia, would collapse so swiftly. The defeat was political, not military. There was surprisingly little actual fighting on the battlefield.
Russia, Syria’s most powerful ally, is engaged in Ukraine, while Turkey, Syria’s nemesis, played a two-sided game of working with its NATO allies while claiming to be negotiating in good faith with Russia.
Even as Bashar al-Assad was scrambling to get out of Syria, Israel was mobilizing its military to take advantage of the power vacuum that Assad’s ouster had created. After five decades of a low-level conflict between the two countries, Israel saw an opportunity to change the calculus, and it seized it.
As of Wednesday, Israel had struck Syria nearly 500 times. Their goal with these attacks has been to essentially destroy Syria’s military capability, and they have already succeeded. Reports by Israeli media claim that well over 80% of Syria’s weaponry, ships, missiles, aircraft, and other military supplies have been damaged or destroyed.
The melodramatic ending to 13 years of a horrific civil war in Syria had an additional drama. Muhammad al-Jawlani, who served five years in a U.S. prison in Iraq for terrorist activities, and was noted as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under U.S. Department of State Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, led the National Salvation Front that achieved the victory.
Muhammad al-Jawlani, as a reformed al-Nusra Front leader, may be an issue, but he is not the principal issue; his shadowy figure illuminates the principal issue — contradictions, dubious reports, manufactured facts, selective fancies, and fitting truths to agendas guide U.S. foreign policies influence public opinion, and make it impossible to know who Muhammad al-Jawlani is and what the **!!++// is going on. The real issues that confront Syria and the real reasons for a civil war that left an elevated estimate of 620 thousand deaths, more than six million internally displaced, and about five million refugees, have been obscured. Natural disasters accompanied the human disaster and are also responsible for the catastrophe. Statements and decisions have been inconsistent with reality.
The American Revolution has characteristics that guide an understanding of the Syrian insurrection. In both situations, ardent and semi-popular groups rebelled against injustices and hoped to create new regimes. In both situations, foreign powers, France and Spain in the American Revolution, Russia, Iran, United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other nations in the Syrian revolution, stoked the violence, commanded the direction, and shaped the rebellions. Portrayed as revolutions, the American and Syrian rebellions are more accurately described as battlegrounds for conflicting geo-politics.
By working together to defeat their British enemy and coordinating the supply of weapons and logistics to the colonists, France and Spain enabled the American Revolution to succeed. To obtain assistance, the foreign powers obliged the colonists to obtain sovereignty, declare themselves an independent nation, and provide a unified command so the two European nations could deal directly with an established government. Insistence by the two foreign powers that arms could only be supplied to a sovereign government provoked the issuance of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
In Syria, foreign supporters of the insurgents did not cooperate and were unable to supply weapons and logistic support to a unified command. For these reasons, the insurgency did not succeed. Each day of armed struggle increased the killings of Syrians; another, we had to kill them to save them.
Before the massive insurrection, Syria was a nation with free health care and almost universal education, with capability to supply adequate food, clothing, and housing to its population. Syrians did not breathe the air of freedom, but they inhaled the air of Syria, the oxygen of thousands of years of remembrances, peoples loosely bound together by history, culture, and civilization.
The post-World War I French mandate composed Syria of two states ─ Damascus and Aleppo. The western part became Lebanon and Latakia; the latter mostly aligned with Damascus. The northern part contained the Kurdish region, along the border with Turkey.
In 1936, Syrian nationalists gained Syrian independence in the Franco-Syrian Treaty. After 1970, the Baathist government forged a Syrian identity and guaranteed religious and ethnic freedom to all its citizens. All of that is slowly fading. Even if there is a new Syrian government, will there be a Syrian people, and a Syrian nation?
The map shows Syria’s real problem ─ its divisions. Inability of intelligence agencies to gather the facts, and for competing nations to face the facts, brought the Syrian war to its punishing situation. Can the National Salvation Front gain unique authority? Can an established governing body gain universal approval?
A new government cannot easily resolve Syria’s condition; the catastrophes have been more than man-made. In addition to the religious and social divisions, Syria suffers from an urban/rural divide, ethnic antagonisms, and natural calamities, which have exaggerated the conflict and need immediate attention. From the onset of the civil demonstrations, which began in March 2011 in the city of Dara’a, near the Jordanian border, agricultural unemployment, crowding of urban areas, dislocations, and possible food shortages occupied the time and energy of the Syrian government.
Natural Calamities
A body of social scientists and international political observers concluded that severe drought, during the early part of the 21st century forced 1.5 million Syrian farmers to migrate to urban areas and this added to social stresses that eventually resulted in the uprising during March 2011. An article, The Ominous Story of Syria’s Climate Refugees, Scientific American, December 17, 2015, starts with the following:
Drought, which is being exacerbated by climate change and bad government policies, has forced more than a million Syrian farmers to move to overcrowded cities. Water shortages, ruined land and corruption, they say, fomented revolution.
John Wendle, the article’s author, talked with Mustafa Abdul Hamid, a 30-year-old farmer from Azaz, near Aleppo.
“The war and the drought, they are the same thing,” says Mustafa Abdul Hamid, a 30-year-old farmer from Azaz, near Aleppo. “The start of the revolution was water and land,” Hamid says.
Life was good before the drought, Hamid recalls. Back home in Syria, he and his family farmed three hectares of topsoil so rich it was the color of henna. They grew wheat, fava beans, tomatoes, and potatoes. Hamid says he used to harvest three quarters of a metric ton of wheat per hectare in the years before the drought. Then the rains failed, and his yields plunged to barely half that amount. “All I needed was water,” he says. “And I didn’t have water. So things got very bad. The government wouldn’t allow us to drill for water. You’d go to prison.”
The Scientific American article concluded:
Syria’s water crisis is largely of its own making. Back in the 1970s, the military regime led by President Hafez al-Assad launched an ill-conceived drive for agricultural self-sufficiency. No one seemed to consider whether Syria had sufficient groundwater and rainfall to raise those crops. Farmers made up for water shortages by drilling wells to tap the country’s underground water reserves. When water tables retreated, people dug deeper. In 2005 the regime of Assad’s son and successor, President Bashar al-Assad, made it illegal to dig new wells without a license issued personally, for a fee, by an official, but it was mostly ignored, out of necessity.
The Rural and Urban Conflict
Economic, social, health, and intellectual disparities between urban and rural life have plagued most nations and played a leading role in civil disturbances. China’s 1960s Cultural Revolution and Cambodia’s Pol Pot emptying of the cities during the late 1970s were futile and disastrous attempts by totalitarian governments to resolve the urban/rural divide. China still struggles with the problem and is slowly moving rural dwellers to huge apartment complexes in mega-cities. Syria’s displaced remain displaced because they have no viable place to go. The disparities have continually surfaced and will disturb the new regime
Ethnic and Tribal Differences
Forged from European secret agreements, which created artificial nations without regard to ethnic differences, the Middle East nations struggle to give a unique identity to disparate faces. By populating Kurdish urban areas with Arab Iraqis, Saddam Hussein tried to reduce Kurdish nationalism and turn Kurds into pure Iraqis. Moammar Gaddafi pacified the Libyan tribes but could not reduce antagonisms between the eastern and western provinces ─Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. Syria is a bundle of tribal conflicts, and the Baathist government waltzed through them by applying a strong and authoritarian rule.
Fitting facts to agendas
A one-sided look at the Syrian government was compounded by one-sided reporting.
Back in 2011, at the start of the civil war, police arrested and pommeled several high school students for painting anti-government graffiti on a wall. Considered the spark that lit the flame, the arrests of the children in the southern city of Dara’a triggered a march for political rights and an end to corruption. Syrian police reportedly countered with water cannons and gunfire, and killed three protesters. According to the Syrian government news agency, “infiltrators among the marchers smashed cars, destroyed other property, and attacked police, causing chaos and riots.” And so, it goes – rebel forces accuse and the government excuses. Who should be trusted in the era of ‘false news?’ One problem is that conventional media reports were always slanted against Assad. Other reports often tell a different story.
… in an uncharacteristic gesture intended to ease tensions the government offered to release the detained students, but seven police officers were killed, and the Baath Party Headquarters and courthouse were torched, in renewed violence. Around the beginning of April, according to another account, gunmen set a sophisticated ambush, killing perhaps two dozen government troops headed for Dara’a.
President Assad tried to calm the situation by sending senior government officials with family roots in the city to emphasize his personal commitment to prosecute those responsible for shooting protesters. He fired the provincial governor and a general in the political security force for their role. The government also released the children whose arrest had triggered the protests in the first place.
Assad also announced several national reforms. As summarized by the UN’s independent commission of inquiry on Syria, “These steps included the formation of a new Government, the lifting of the state of emergency, the abolition of the Supreme State Security Court, the granting of general amnesties and new regulations on the right of citizens to participate in peaceful demonstrations.” His response failed to satisfy protesters who took to the streets and declared the city a “liberated zone.” As political scientist Charles Tripp has observed, “This was too great a challenge to the authorities, and at the end of April, a military operation was put in motion with the aim of reasserting government control, whatever the cost in human life.”
Described by the United States as an insurrection against the Assad regime in an attempt to achieve freedom and democracy, the conflict in Syria emerged with a different context. Groups of Syrians who want democratic action and freedom existed, but they did not demonstrate great strength and were usurped by better-organized groups — ISIS and Al-Nusra — who eschewed democracy and freedom. The result of the initial battle for Raqqa, where different rebel forces — Free Syrian Army and Islamic brigades — engaged and defeated the Syrian army, validate this statement. Who emerged as victor and in complete control of the city? It was ISIS. Raqqa’s population, swollen in size by hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced by the battles, did not support any side. Mostly Sunnis, they remained neutral or gravitated toward ISIS, uncaring about expressions of liberty, democracy, and freedom.
Attacking the Assad regime and reinforcing the rebellion encouraged the inevitable ─ the destruction of Syria. A great part of its population is in exile; other than Damascus, its major cities are in shambles; its ancient heritage sites are ruins; its infrastructure is wrecked. The shared history, pride in continuity from the start of civilization in the Fertile Crescent, and ability to enable diverse ethnicities and religions to work together, which characterized Syrians, have been smothered. By addressing the causes of the problems of Middle East nations as slogans — lack of democracy and freedom — the United States assured there would be no democracy and freedom. By destroying Syrian sovereignty, the United States elevated ISIS’ claims to sovereignty.
Atrocities
In all wars, combatants vie for public opinion by accusing the other side of atrocities, which are usually true, but exaggerated and hypocritical. No side owns atrocities.
Revelations of alleged gas attacks against populations, shelling and bombing of civilians in rebel-controlled areas, mass incarcerations, and atrocities against prisoners are the principal grievances of international opinion against the Assad regime. These charges may be valid, and cannot be excused, but they have a stimulus; they arise partially out of revenge for mass kidnappings by rebel forces of Assad supporters who are ordinary civilians, executions of captured Syrian soldiers in rebel held territories, and alleged gas and shelling attacks against civilians in government held areas. They are part of many “out of control” internecine wars. Examine the U.S. Civil War, the 1920 Russian Civil War, the 1937 Spanish Civil War, and 15 years of the Vietnam Civil War. Since Cain slew Abel, fraternal animosity is woven into humanity’s fabric.
This is not an attempt to minimize the atrocities and human rights violations committed by the Baathist regime; just the opposite, all atrocities and human rights violations must be exposed, but we should not permit those committed in Syria to divert attention from those committed in Saudi Arabia and its prisons, Israel and its prisons, and by U.S. authorities in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq during the Iraq War, at Guantanamo Bay, and at the CIA’s network of “black sites” around the world, where the agency kept rendered terror suspects for “enhanced interrogations.”
The hypocrisy of preaching law and order and paving a road to peaceful reconciliation appeared immediately after the National Salvation Front consolidated its authority. Israel, once again, thumbed its nose at the world community and received approval from the U.S. government for its hostile actions. After Israel violated international law by seizing additional Syrian territory adjacent to the occupied Golan Heights, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller retrieved the macro that stated, “Israel has right to defend itself and take actions against terrorist organizations.”
As a response to Israel’s 480 air force strikes on Syrian military bases and destruction of the Syrian fleet overnight, The Washington Post reported, “Washington had given its blessing years ago to Israeli freedom of action in Syria, including airstrikes, as a self-defense measure, and that it extended to the present.” Israel has the unique privilege of destroying the military potential of a sovereign nation and render that nation defenseless.
Lack of understanding of Syria’s many problems contributed to the lack of understanding of the nature of the rebellion. Did people rebel because Syria was too authoritarian, or was Syria too authoritarian because that was needed to resolve problems and squash rebellion? Will the new government be less authoritarian and more effective? Will the National Salvation Front allow itself to follow the U.S. and become a satrap for Israel?
Even as Bashar al-Assad was scrambling to get out of Syria, Israel was mobilizing its military to take advantage of the power vacuum that Assad’s ouster had created. After five decades of a low-level conflict between the two countries, Israel saw an opportunity to change the calculus, and it seized it. As of Wednesday, Israel had struck Syria nearly 500 times. Their goal with these attacks…
“Ukrainian intelligence sent about 20 experienced drone operators and about 150 first-person-view drones to the rebel headquarters in Idlib, Syria, four to five weeks ago to help Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the leading rebel group based there, the knowledgeable sources said.
The aid from Kyiv played only a modest role in overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Western intelligence sources believe. But it was notable as part of a broader Ukrainian effort to strike covertly at Russian operations in the Middle East, Africa and inside Russia itself.”
In this week’s bonus episode, we present a recording from our special Gaslit Nation political salon on Monday, where we honored Syria. This episode offers crucial insights on navigating the complex landscape of Syria’s future, highlighting who to trust—and who to be wary of—when it comes to information about the country. We also delve into the disinformation campaigns surrounding Syria and how to prepare for the challenges ahead. Additionally, this week’s bonus show features answers to questions from our Democracy Defender-level members and above on voting and homelessness as well as how to protect trans people. Thank you to our Democracy Defender level supporters who help shape the show!
Want to enjoy Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus shows, ad-free episodes, exclusive Q&A sessions, our group chat, invites to live events like our Monday political salons at 4pm ET over Zoom, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!
Show Notes:
Syria clip: Clarissa Ward of CNN reports from liberted Syria https://x.com/cnnipr/status/1866471510678135162
When Britain and France Almost Merged Into One Country An extraordinary near-miss of history helps explain Brexit. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/dunkirk-brexit/536106/
Protect the LGBTQ Community: An Interview with Chase Strangio of the ACLU https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2022/5/26/chase-strangio-interview
Moral Panic: Fact-Checking the War on Trans Kids https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2024/9/10/moral-panic-fact-checking-the-war-on-trans-kids
This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, has condemned Israel’s extensive airstrikes on Syrian installations — reportedly 500 times in 72 hours, comparing them to historic Israeli actions justified as “security measures”.
He criticised the hypocrisy of Israel’s security pretext endorsed by Western powers.
Asked why Israel was bombing Syria and encroaching on its territory just days after the ousting of the Bashar al-Assad regime after 54 years in power, he told Al Jazeera: “Because it can get away with it.”
Al Jazeera analyst Marwan Bishara . . . Israel aims to destabilise and weaken neighbouring countries for its own security. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Bishara explained that Israel aimed to destabilise and weaken neighbouring countries for its own security.
He noted that the new Syrian administration was overwhelmed and unable to respond effectively.
Bishara highlighted that regional powers like Egypt and Saudi Arabia had condemned Israel’s actions, even though Western countries had been largely silent.
He said Israel was “taking advantage” of the chaos to “settle scores”.
“One can go back 75 years, 80 years, and look at Israel since its inception,” he said.
“What has it been? In a state of war. Continuous, consistent state of war, bombing countries, destabilising countries, carrying out genocide, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing.
“All of it for the same reason — presumably it’s security.
A “Palestine will be free” placard at today’s Auckland solidarity rally for Palestine. Image: David Robie/APR
“Under the pretext of security, Israel would carry [out] the worst kind of violations of international law, the worst kind of ethnic cleansing, worst kind of genocide.
“And that’s what we have seen it do.
“Now, certainly in this very particular instance it’s taking advantage of the fact that there is a bit of chaos, if you will, slash change, dramatic change in Syria after 50 years of more of the same in order to settle scores with a country that it has always deemed to be a dangerous enemy, and that is Syria.
“So I think the idea of decapitating, destabilising, undercutting, undermining Syria and Syria’s national security, will always be a main goal for Israel.”
“They tried to erase Palestine from the world. So the whole world became Palestine.” . . . a t-shirt at today’s Auckland solidarity rally for Palestine. Image: David Robie/APR
In an Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau solidarity rally today, protesters condemned Israel’s bombing of Syria and also called on New Zealand’s Christopher Luxon-led coalition government to take a stronger stance against Israel and to pressure major countries to impose UN sanctions against Tel Aviv.
A prominent lawyer, Labour Party activist and law school senior academic at Auckland University of Technology, Dr Myra Williamson, spoke about the breakthrough in international law last month with the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants being issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Lawyer and law school academic Dr Myra Williamson speaking at the Auckland rally today. Video: Asia Pacific Report
“What you have to be aware of is that the ICC is being threatened — the individuals are being threatened and the court itself is being threatened, mainly by the United States,” she told the solidarity crowd in Te Komititanga Square.
“Personal threats to the judges, to the prosecutor Karim Khan.
“So you need to be vocal and you need to talk to people over the summer about how important that work is. Just to get the warrants issued was a major achievement and the next thing is to get them on trial in The Hague.”
ICC Annual Meeting — court under threat. Video: Al Jazeera
Liberals and their Western allies, among the social-imperialist left in the U.S. and Europe, are celebrating the end of the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria after the stunning sweep across the country by so-called “rebels” led by the Al-Qaeda offshoot, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Their celebratory mood is informed by a tragic misunderstanding of what appears to be more of a coup d’etat in Syria than a military defeat. This was a coup orchestrated to replace the Syrian government with this coalition of Jihadists, which included the Turkish-supported Syrian National Army (SNA) and a coterie of depoliticized religious and gangster elements from the country’s Southeast.
Israeli forces continued their offensive inside Syria, which began following the collapse of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime last Sunday. Israeli troops breached the demilitarized buffer zone established in 1974 between Syrian-held and Israeli-occupied Syrian territory in the Golan, and occupied new positions in the Golan heights and on Mount Al-Sheikh.
Israel’s new advances according to reports included the occupation of nine Syrian towns in the Golan, where Israeli forces forced inhabitants to leave their homes and move deeper into Syria. Israeli tanks continued to advance, reaching up to 18 kilometers inside Syria, approaching the Damascus-Beirut international highway, at no more than 23 kilometers from the Syrian capital.
Corporate media is heralding the fall of Bashar al-Assad and the emergence of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as the new leader of Syria, despite his deep ties to both al-Qaeda and ISIS.
“How Syria’s ‘diversity-friendly’ jihadists plan on building a state,” runs the headline from an article in Britain’s Daily Telegraph that suggests that Jolani will construct a new Syria, respectful of minority rights. The same newspaper also labeled him a “moderate Jihadist.” The Washington Post described him as a pragmatic and charismatic leader, while CNN portrayed him as a “blazer-wearing revolutionary.”
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Syria, where tens of thousands of people gathered at the Great Mosque of Damascus for the first Friday prayers since longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad was toppled by opposition fighters.
DAMASCUS RESIDENT: [translated] Hopefully this Friday is the Friday of the greatest joy, a Friday of victory for our Muslim brothers. This is a blessed Friday.
AMY GOODMAN: Syria’s new caretaker Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir was among those at the mosque. He’ll act as prime minister until March.
This comes as the World Food Programme is appealing to donors to help it scale up relief operations for the approximately 2.8 million displaced and food-insecure Syrians across the country. That includes more than 1.1 million people who were forcibly displaced by fighting since late November.
Israel’s Defence Minister has told his troops to prepare to spend the winter holding the demilitarized zone that separates Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Earlier today, Prime Minister Netanyahu toured the summit of Mount Haramun in the UN-designated buffer zone. Netanyahu said this week the Golan Heights would “forever be an inseparable part of the State of Israel”.
On Thursday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an urgent deescalation of airstrikes on Syria by Israeli forces, and their withdrawal from the UN buffer zone.
In Ankara, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Turkey’s Foreign Minister and the President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Blinken said the US and Turkey would [work] to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group in Syria. Meanwhile, Erdoğan told Blinken that Turkey reserves the right to strike the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, led by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Turkey considers “terrorist”.
For more, we go to Damascus for the first time since the fall of longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad, where we’re joined by the Associated Press investigative reporter Sarah El Deeb, who is based in the Middle East, a region she has covered for two decades.
Sarah, welcome to Democracy Now! You are overlooking —
SARAH EL DEEB: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: — the square where tens of thousands of Syrians have gathered for the first Friday prayers since the fall of Assad. Describe the scene for us.
Report from Damascus: Searching for loved ones in prisons and morgues. Video: Democracy Now!
SARAH EL DEEB: There is a lot of firsts here. It’s the first time they gather on Friday after Bashar al-Assad fled the country. It’s the first time everyone seems to be very happy. I think that’s the dominant sentiment, especially people who are in the square. There is ecstasy, tens of thousands of people. They are still chanting, “Down with Bashar al-Assad.”
But what’s new is that it’s also visible that the sentiment is they’ve been, so far, happy with the new rulers, not outpour — there is no criticism, out — loud criticism of the new rulers yet. So, I’d say the dominant thing is that everyone is happy down there.
HAYAT AL-TURKI: [translated] I will show you the photo of my missing brother. It’s been 14 years. This is his photo. I don’t know what he looks like, if I find him. I don’t know what he looks like, because I am seeing the photos of prisoners getting out. They are like skeletons.
But this is his photo, if anyone has seen him, can know anything about him or can help us. He is one of thousands of prisoners who are missing. I am asking for everyone, not only my brother, uncle, cousin and relatives.”
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about this mad search by Syrians across the country.
SARAH EL DEEB: This is the other thing that’s been dominating our coverage and our reporting since we arrived here, the contrast between the relief, the sense of relief over the departure of Bashar al-Assad but then the sadness and the concern and the no answers for where the loved ones have gone.
Thousands — also, tens of thousands of people have marched on Sednaya [prison]. It’s the counter to this scene, where people were looking for any sign of where their relatives have been. As you know really well, so many people have reported their relatives missing, tens of thousands, since the beginning of the revolt, but also before.
I mean, I think this is a part of the feature of this government, is that there has been a lot of security crackdown. People were scared to speak, but they were — because there was a good reason for it. They were picked up at any expression of discontent or expression of opinion.
So, where we were in Sednaya two, three days ago, it feels like one big day, I have to say. When we were in Sednaya, people were also describing what — anything, from the smallest expression of opinion, a violation of a traffic light. No answers.
And they still don’t know where their loved ones are. I mean, I think we know quite a lot from research before arriving here about the notorious prison system in Syria. There’s secret prisons. There are security branches where people were being held. I think this is the first time we have an opportunity to go look at those facilities.
What was surprising and shocking to the people, and also to a lot of us journalists, was that we couldn’t find any sign of these people. And the answers are — we’re still looking for them. But what was clear is that only a handful — I mean, not a handful — hundreds of people were found.
Many of them were also found in morgues. There were apparent killings in the last hours before the regime departed. One of them was the prominent activist Mazen al-Hamada. We were at his funeral yesterday. He was found, and his family believes that — he was found killed, and his family believes his body was fresh, that he was killed only a few days earlier. So, I think the killing continued up until the last hour.
AMY GOODMAN: I was wondering if you can tell us more about —
SARAH EL DEEB: What was also — what was also —
AMY GOODMAN: — more about Mazen. I mean, I wanted to play a clip of Mazen’s nephew, Yahya al-Hussein.
YAHYA AL-HUSSEIN: [translated] In 2020, he was taken from the Netherlands to Germany through the Syrian Embassy there. And from there, they brought him to Syria with a fake passport.
He arrived at the airport at around 2:30 a.m. and called my aunt to tell her that he arrived at the airport, and asked for money. When they reached out to him the next day, they were told that air intelligence had arrested him.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Mazen’s nephew, Yahya al-Hussein. Sarah, if you can explain? This was an activist who left Syria after he had been imprisoned and tortured — right? — more than a decade ago, but ultimately came back, apparently according to assurances that he would not be retaken. And now his body is found.
SARAH EL DEEB: I think it’s — like you were saying, it’s very hard to explain. This is someone who was very outspoken and was working on documenting the torture and the killing in the secret prisons in Syria. So he was very well aware of his role and his position vis-à-vis the government. Yet he felt — it was hard to explain what Mazen’s decision was based on, but his family believes he was lured into Syria by some false promises of security and safety.
His heart was in Syria. He left Syria, but he never — it never left him. He was working from wherever he was — he was in the Netherlands, he was in the US — I think, to expose these crimes. And I think this is — these are the words of his family: He was a witness on the crimes of the Assad government, and he was a martyr of the Assad government.
One of the people that were at the funeral yesterday was telling us Mazen was a lesson. The Assad government was teaching all detainees a lesson through Mazen to keep them silent. I think it was just a testimony to how cruel this ruling regime, ruling system has been for the past 50 years.
People would go back to his father’s rule also. But I think with the revolution, with the protests in 2011, all these crimes and all these detentions were just en masse. I think the estimates are anywhere between 150,000 and 80,000 detainees that no one can account for. That is on top of all the people that were killed in airstrikes and in opposition areas in crackdown on protest.
So, it was surprising that at the last minute — it was surprising and yet not very surprising. When I asked the family, “Why did they do that?” they would look at me and, like, “Why are you asking this question? They do that. That’s what they did.” It was just difficult to understand how even at the last minute, and even for someone that they promised security, this was — this would be the end, emaciated and tortured and killed, unfortunately.
AMY GOODMAN: Sarah, you spoke in Damascus to a US citizen, Travis Timmerman, who says he was imprisoned in Syria. This is a clip from an interview with Al Arabiya on Thursday in which he says he spent the last seven months in a prison cell in Damascus.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: My name is Travis.
REPORTER: Travis.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: Yes.
REPORTER: So, [speaking in Arabic]. Travis, Travis Timmerman.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: That’s right.
REPORTER: That’s right.
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: But just Travis. Just call me Travis.
REPORTER: Call you Travis, OK. And where were you all this time?
TRAVIS TIMMERMAN: I was imprisoned in Damascus for the last seven months. … I was imprisoned in a cell by myself. And in the early morning of this Monday, or the Monday of this week, they took a hammer, and they broke my door down. … Well, the armed men just wanted to get me out of my cell. And then, really, the man who I stuck with was a Syrian man named Ely. He was also a prisoner that was just freed. And he took me by the side, by the arm, really. And he and a young woman that lives in Damascus, us three, exited the prison together.
SARAH EL DEEB: I spent quite a bit of time with Travis last night. And I think his experience was very different from what I was just describing. He was taken, he was detained for crossing illegally into Syria. And I think his description of his experience was it was OK. He was not mistreated.
He was fed well, I mean, especially when I compare it to what I heard from the Syrian prisoners in the secret prisons or in detention facilities. He would receive rice, potatoes, tomatoes. None of this was available to the Syrian detainees. He would go to the bathroom three times a day, although this was uncomfortable for him, because, of course, it was not whenever he wanted. But it was not something that other Syrian detainees would experience.
His experience also was that he heard a lot of beating. I think that’s what he described it as: beating from nearby cells. They were mostly Syrian detainees. For him, that was an implicit threat of the use of violence against him, but he did not get any — he was not beaten or tortured.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Sarah, if you could also —
SARAH EL DEEB: He also said his release was a “blessing.” Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: If you could also talk about Austin Tice, the American freelance journalist? His family, his mother and father and brothers and sisters, seem to be repeatedly saying now that they believe he’s alive, held by the Syrian government, and they’re desperately looking for him or reaching out to people in Syria. What do you know?
SARAH EL DEEB: What we know is that people thought Travis was Tice when they first saw him. They found him in a house in a village outside of Damascus. And I think that’s what triggered — we didn’t know that Travis was in a Syrian prison, so I think that’s what everyone was going to check. They thought that this was Tice.
I think the search, the US administration, the family, they are looking and determined to look for Tice. The family believes that he was in Syrian government prison. He entered Syria in 2012. He is a journalist. But I think we have — his family seems to think that there were — he’s still in a Syrian government prison.
But I think, so far, we have not had any sign of Tice from all those released. But, mind you, the scenes of release from prisons were chaotic, from multiple prisons at the same time. And we’re still, day by day, finding out about new releases and people who were set free on that Sunday morning.
U.N. Calls on Israel to Stop Bombing Syria and Occupying Demilitarized Zone https://t.co/iHNIkKKOrs
I want to turn to Gaza. Tell us about the Palestinians searching for their family members who went missing during raids and arrests by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. And talk about the lack of accountability for these appearances. You begin your piece with Reem Ajour’s quest to find her missing husband and daughter.
SARAH EL DEEB: I talked to Reem Ajour for a long time. I mean, I think, like you said, this was a pivot, but the themes have been common across the Middle East, sadly. Reem Ajour last saw her family in March of 2024. Both her husband and her 5-year-old daughter were injured after an Israeli raid on their house during the chaotic scenes of the Israeli raids on the Shifa Hospital.
They lived in the neighborhood. So, it was chaotic. They [Israeli military] entered their home, and they were shooting in the air, or they were shooting — they were shooting, and the family ended up wounded.
But what was striking was that the Israeli soldiers made the mother leave the kid wounded in her house and forced her to leave to the south. I think this is not only Reem Ajour’s case. I think this is something we’ve seen quite a bit in Gaza. But the fact that this was a 5-year-old and the mom couldn’t take her with her was quite moving.
And I think what her case kind of symbolises is that during these raids and during these detentions at checkpoints, families are separated, and we don’t have any way of knowing how the Israeli military is actually documenting these detentions, these raids.
Where do they — how do they account for people who they detain and then they release briefly? The homes that they enter, can we find out what happened in these homes? We have no idea of holding — I think the Israeli court has also tried to get some information from the military, but so far very few cases have been resolved.
And we’re talking about not only 500 or 600 people; we’re talking about tens of thousands who have been separated, their homes raided, during what is now 15 months of war in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Sarah El Deeb, we want to thank you for being with us, Associated Press investigative reporter based in the Middle East for two decades, now reporting from Damascus.
Next up, today is the 75th day of a hunger strike by Laila Soueif. She’s the mother of prominent British Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah. She’s calling on British officials to pressure Egypt for the release of her son. We’ll speak to the Cairo University mathematics professor in London, where she’s been standing outside the Foreign Office. Back in 20 seconds.
If the world knew about the extent of the brutality of Assad’s regime against its own people, it was in part because of Mazen, an activist who was an outspoken critic of the regime. On Sunday 8 December 2024, his body was found in the notorious “slaughterhouse”, Seydnaya prison in Damascus. It bore signs of horrific torture. A doctor who examined it told the BBC he had fractures, burn marks and contusions all over his body, allegations corroborated by Mazen’s family.
“It’s impossible to count the wounds on his body. His face was smashed and his nose was broken,” his sister Lamyaa said.
A protester when the uprising in Syria began in 2011, Mazen Al-Hamada was arrested and tortured. Released in 2013, he was given asylum in the Netherlands. He began to speak openly about what he was subjected to in prison. In the documentary Syria’s Disappeared by Afshar Films, Mazen describes how he was raped, his genitals clamped, and how his ribs were broken by a guard jumping on his chest over and over again.
While in asylum, Mazen’s nephew Jad Al-Hamada says he began suffering from severe depression and other mental health issues. …In 2020, he decided to return to Syria.
“The government told him he had a deal and that he would be safe. He was also told that his family would be arrested and killed if he didn’t return,” Lamyaa said. He was arrested as soon as he arrived in the country. And his family believes he was killed after rebels took Hama last week, shortly before the regime fell.
Hamada was detained and tortured alongside tens of thousands of people after the 2011 uprising against Assad’s rule. “Mazen had endured torture so cruel, so unimaginable, that his retellings carried an almost otherworldly weight. When he spoke, it was as if he stared into the face of death itself, pleading with the angel of mortality for just a little more time,” wrote Hamada’s friend, the photographer and director Sakir Khader. He “became one of the most important witnesses against Assad’s regime”, he said.
The Syrian network for human rights (SNHR) recorded 15,102 deaths caused by torture in prisons run by the regime between March 2011 and July this year. It said 100,000 more people were missing and thought to be detained, and some might be found now that prison populations have been set free.
Fadel Abdulghany, the head of SNHR, which tracks people who have been “forcibly disappeared”, broke down on live television this week as he said that all 100,000 people had probably “died under torture” in prison.
Hamada was released in 2013 and granted asylum in the Netherlands in 2014, after which he began touring western capitals, bringing audiences to tears as he showed them his scars and described what he had endured at the hands of the Syrian authorities. Then, in a decision that terrified and confused his friends and rippled through the community of dissident exiles, Hamada disappeared in early 2020 after seemingly deciding to return to Syria.
That someone who had experienced the worst of Syria’s torture chambers would choose to return led many to believe he was enticed to do by elements of Assad’s regime to prevent him from speaking out.
Rebel forces said they found 40 corpses piled in the morgue at Sednaya showing signs of torture, with an image circulating online showing Hamada among them.
The discovery of his body indicated he was probably killed shortly before prison inmates were liberated by insurgents. Khader described his friend’s suffering as “the unimaginable agony of a man who had risen from the dead to fight again, only to be condemned to a slow death in the west”.
We go live to Damascus for the first time since the fall of longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad, where the country’s populace is still reeling from the power struggle that forcibly displaced more than a million people over the last months. Investigative reporter Sarah El Deeb joins Democracy Now! while looking over the joyous scenes in the city, but reports there is a marked “contrast…
The global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has revealed an “alarming intensification of attacks on journalists” in its 2024 annual roundup — especially in conflict zones such as Gaza.
Gaza stands out as the “most dangerous” region in the world, with the highest number of journalists murdered in connection with their work in the past five years.
Since October 2023, the Israeli military have killed more than 145 journalists, including at least 35 whose deaths were linked to their journalism, reports RSF.
Also 550 journalists are currently imprisoned worldwide, a 7 percent increase from last year.
“This violence — often perpetrated by governments and armed groups with total impunity — needs an immediate response,” says the report.
“RSF calls for urgent action to protect journalists and journalism.”
Asia second most dangerous
Asia is the second most dangerous region for journalists due to the large number of journalists killed in Pakistan (seven) and the protests that rocked Bangladesh (five), says the report.
“Journalists do not die, they are killed; they are not in prison, regimes lock them up; they do not disappear, they are kidnapped,” said RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin.
“These crimes — often orchestrated by governments and armed groups with total impunity — violate international law and too often go unpunished.
“We need to get things moving, to remind ourselves as citizens that journalists are dying for us, to keep us informed. We must continue to count, name, condemn, investigate, and ensure that justice is served.
“Fatalism should never win. Protecting those who inform us is protecting the truth.
A third of the journalists killed in 2024 were slain by the Israeli armed forces.
A record 54 journalists were killed, including 31 in conflict zones.
In 2024, the Gaza Strip accounted for nearly 30 percent of journalists killed on the job, according to RSF’s latest information. They were killed by the Israeli army.
More than 145 journalists have been killed in Palestine since October 2023, including at least 35 targeted in the line of duty.
RSF continues to investigate these deaths to identify and condemn the deliberate targeting of media workers, and has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes committed against journalists.
RSF condemns Israeli media ‘stranglehold’
Last month, in a separate report while Israel’s war against Gaza, Lebanon and Syria rages on, RSF said Israel’s Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi was trying to “reshape” Israel’s media landscape.
Between a law banning foreign media outlets that were “deemed dangerous”, a bill that would give the government a stranglehold on public television budgets, and the addition of a private pro-Netanyahu channel on terrestrial television exempt from licensing fees, the ultra-conservative minister is augmenting pro-government coverage of the news.
RSF said it was “alarmed by these unprecedented attacks” against media independence and pluralism — two pillars of democracy — and called on the government to abandon these “reforms”.
On November 24, two new proposals for measures targeting media critical of the authorities and the war in Gaza and Lebanon were approved by Netanyahu’s government.
The Ministerial Committee for Legislation validated a proposed law providing for the privatisation of the public broadcaster Kan.
On the same day, the Council of Ministers unanimously accepted a draft resolution by Communications Minister Shlomo Kahri from November 2023 seeking to cut public aid and revenue from the Government Advertising Agency to the independent and critical liberal newspaper Haaretz.
‘Al Jazeera’ ban tightened
The so-called “Al-Jazeera law”, as it has been dubbed by the Israeli press, has been tightened.
This exceptional measure was adopted in April 2024 for a four-month period and renewed in July.
On November 20, Israeli MPs voted to extend the law’s duration to six months, and increased the law’s main provision — a broadcasting ban on any foreign media outlet deemed detrimental to national security by the security services — from 45 days to 60.
“The free press in a country that describes itself as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ will be undermined,” said RSF’s editorial director Anne Bocandé.
RSF called on Israel’s political authorities, starting with Minister Shlomo Karhi and Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, to “act responsibly” and abandon these proposed reforms.
Inside Israel, journalists critical of the government and the war have been facing pressure and intimidation for more than a year.
There are some weeks when decades happen. In just a few days, the Syrian government has fallen, President Bashar al-Assad has fled to Moscow, and Al-Nusra founder Abu Mohammad al-Julani has taken power.
How could all of this have happened so quickly? Only last year, it appeared that Assad was entrenching his position internationally, being invited back into the Arab League. Assad also moved away from Russia and Yemen and towards a closer relationship with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.
Two guests, Kevork Almassian and Mohammad Marandi, will join the MintCast this week to discuss Syria’s collapse and what it means for the regional Axis of Resistance.
Kurdish militants in northern Syria have been reaching out to Israel for “assistance” after their villages were stormed by extremist groups who were involved in the assault that resulted in the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government, according to a 12 December report by Hebrew newspaper Israel Hayom.
“Senior Kurdish militia figures are turning to Israel for urgent help, in light of the seizure of territories from them by Islamist militias backed by Turkiye,” the report said.
The daily added that the Israeli security establishment is deliberating on whether or not it should respond to these Kurdish requests for aid, highlighting there has been ongoing communication between Tel Aviv and the Kurds, which has increased since Assad’s government fell on 8 December.
The fall of the Assad regime in Syria continues to reshape the country and the greater Middle East. In Damascus, leaders of the armed group HTS have retained most services of the civilian government but vowed to dissolve Assad’s security forces and shut down Assad’s notorious prisons. “People have this sense of regained freedom,” says Syrian architect and writer Marwa al-Sabouni in Homs. Still…
