By MICHAEL SLOVANOS
VARIOUS western and Middle Eastern sources believe Israel and the Washington establishment are behind the coup that has toppled the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, leaving some 200,000 Syrian Christians at the mercy of a new “Islamist” regime.
However western media, including Al Jazeerah, are claiming it’s another dictatorship akin to Saddam Hussein’s former Iraqi regime being overthrown “for the cause of democracy”. An Al Jazeerah reporter at the border was surrounded by apparently happy Syrian men claiming “we are not terrorists”.
The narrative of western media is that Assad ran a “brutal dictatorship” for the past 50 years. But Assad has been repeatedly attacked by Israel and US-backed rebels since the so-called Arab Spring and the civil war that broke out in 2011. Russia will now lose its only Mediterranean naval base for its Black Sea Fleet in the Syrian port city of Tartus.
Syria has been in a state of civil war since 2011, but long before that, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, it was one of the seven countries that US General Wesley Clark said the US neoconservatives had targeted for overthrow in a five-year plan. The other countries were Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.
UK journalist and historian Craig Murray says the “Syrian rebels” are “a creation of the US – funded, armed, and supported to destabilise Damascus and disrupt regional stability. This isn’t a revolution; it’s foreign interference,” he said.
HTS, or Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which officially took over Syria over the weekend after Assad’s troops surrendered, is being described as “Islamist”. According to Middle East commentator Dr Richard Malouf, HTS announced Sharia law would soon be implemented.
“Christian families have also been told that they might search their homes in the next days. Syria will become Afghanistan 2.0,” he said. HTS is listed by the UN as a terrorist organisation.
Who this new Islamist regime is aligned with soon became clear. A video posted by a former UN staffer Aviva Klompas showed a representative of the “rebels” appearing on an Israeli TV channel begging for peace with Israel.
“Dear neighbors from the State of Israel…I’m speaking on my behalf and for all the free people of Syria. The next phase will be a phase of harmony and of peace with the state of Israel,” the Syrian rebel told Israel’s Channel 11 news station.
Sure they’ll have peace with Israel, as long as Israel has military and economic control of the country – so it in effect becomes part of “Greater Israel”. Let’s see how that works for “Syrian freedom and democracy”. Let’s also see how this new Syrian regime handles the Christian minority of Syria, who were previously supported by Assad.
