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‘Israel Doesn’t Want a Stable Syria’: The Media Uses Upheaval to Falsely Slander Israel
Rebel fighters holds weapons at the Citadel of Aleppo, after Syrian rebels announced that they have ousted Bashar al-Assad, in Aleppo, Syria, Dec. 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Karam al-Masri
The Independent’s world affairs editor, Sam Kiley, has a long history of reporting from the Middle East for several mainstream media outlets including CNN, Sky News, and London’s Evening Standard. Despite presenting himself as something of an expert, his flawed judgment was most famously on display in 2002, when Kiley conjured up witnesses to speak of Israel’s “staggering brutality and callous murder” in Jenin when the media libeled Israel for a massacre that never was.
Taking on the dramatic fall of the Assad regime in Syria for The Independent, Kiley’s analysis includes the following:
Israel doesn’t want a stable Syria, as the Jewish state has occupied the Syrian Golan Heights since 1967, and captured more in 1973. It won’t ever allow Damascus to return to the eastern banks of the Sea of Galilee.
Israel “doesn’t want a stable Syria.”
Really?
History and common sense suggest otherwise.
1. While the Golan Heights has suffered rocket attacks, including the deadly attack that killed 12 children in the Druze town of Majdal Shams in July 2024, that rocket was fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon. Israel’s border with Syria has actually been one of its quietest over many decades with any security incidents few and far between — stability that has benefited Israel.
2. In the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel and Syria signed the 1974 Agreement on Disengagement, which until now has been the longest successful continuous agreement Israel has ever had with an Arab country. That Israel has reacted to the end of the Assad regime by moving forces into the buffer zone to temporarily secure the area of the Syrian Golan where the Syrian Army has fled is a testament to the stability that the agreement brought for some five decades.
3. When it comes to Bashar al-Assad, for Israeli policymakers, Assad may be the better devil you know. Granted, Assad was a despicable dictator, but he was a known and relatively predictable actor whose primary interest in recent years was his regime’s survival. With Assad gone, Israel is faced with chaos in Syria and a potential takeover by hostile jihadist groups. While Islamist rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani has attempted to portray himself and his forces as relative moderates, footage of a rebel spokesman surrounded by gunmen stating, “From here to Jerusalem. We’re coming for Jerusalem. Patience, people of Gaza, patience,” illustrates the potential dangers from Syria’s new rulers. Israel certainly does not benefit from the instability in Syria.
But then maybe Kiley’s interpretation is based on his own prejudices when it comes to the Jewish state.
He stresses that Israel captured more of the Golan Heights in 1973. What he doesn’t mention is that, as part of the aforementioned Agreement on Disengagement, Israel returned all of that extra territory — an inconvenient truth that doesn’t fit with Kiley’s portrayal of Israel as an aggressive colonizer.
There’s a reason Israel has annexed the Golan Heights and it’s not the land grab that Kiley implies. Prior to 1967, the strategic plateau that sits some 8,700 feet above Israel allowed Syria to dominate Israel’s northernmost communities. Syrian artillery fire regularly plagued northern Israel, and intermittent hostilities broke out, with both sides making incursions into the other’s territory.
Syrian forces regularly attacked Israeli farmers. Between 1950 and 1967, approximately 370 Israelis were hit by Syrian fire, with 121 killed.
After taking the territory in the defensive Six-Day War, the height advantage and strategic location afforded by the Golan Heights ensured that the territory could no longer be used to fire on northern Israel. This is why there is almost wall-to-wall opposition to giving the territory to Syria — whether it is governed by a dictator like Bashar al-Assad or jihadists who could potentially allow extremist groups to build terror infrastructure on Israel’s border in the same way that Hamas and Hezbollah did from Gaza and Lebanon respectively.
Ultimately, Sam Kiley’s “analysis” is both flawed and prejudiced. When it comes to Israel, for a world affairs editor, Kiley appears to have a loose grip on world affairs.
The author is the Editorial Director of HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post ‘Israel Doesn’t Want a Stable Syria’: The Media Uses Upheaval to Falsely Slander Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
The post Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.