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New Iran-Backed Group Emerges in Syria to Confront Israel
Khaled Brigade, a part of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), hold a military parade, after Syria’s Bashar al-Assad was ousted, in Damascus, Syria, Dec. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
An armed organization calling itself the “Islamic Resistance Front in Syria” has demanded that Israeli forces withdraw from southern Syria and the demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights, claiming responsibility for several recent attacks against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
The Iran-backed group, formerly known as the “Southern Liberation Front,” has emerged as a new force to oppose Israel, which borders Syria’s southern region. On Tuesday, the nascent militant organization announced that it has become a permanent front aimed at countering attempts at “division and displacement.”
According to its statement, the “resistance” group seeks to be a “unifying force for all segments of Syrian society,” regardless of religion, while prioritizing the protection of the country’s security and territorial integrity, Iraqi-based Shafaq News reported.
The group said its formation was a response to “the systematic and coordinated Zionist-Turkish-American transfer plan, backed by Arab support, to divide Syria following the end of the era of the resistant and defiant Syrian regime [of long-time Syrian President Bashar al-Assad], which had been the backbone of all resistance and liberation movements worldwide from 1970 until the end of 2024.”
“The front emerged from the Syrian people to confront any attempts to undermine the country’s security, amid the absence of the political and social forces that previously governed Syria,” the statement read.
In late January, Ahmed al-Sharaa became Damascus’s transitional president after leading a rebel campaign that ousted Assad, whose Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war.
The collapse of Assad’s regime was the result of an offensive spearheaded by Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate.
Part of the Iranian-led “Axis of Resistance” against Israel and US influence in the region, the Islamic Resistance Front in Syria is the religious extension of the battle of “the promise of the Hereafter,” a reference to a Quranic verse that has been interpreted as the final battle to “liberate Palestine,” according to Ahmad Sharawi and Joe Truzman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based think tank.
“The establishment of The Islamic Resistance Front in Syria is still in its infancy, and it’s unclear how the group is structured, what other armed organizations have joined its cause, and if it is a legitimate threat to Israeli troops operating on the Syrian border,” Sharawi and Truzman explained in the Long War Journal, an FDD publication.
In its statement, the group said its goal is “to restore the nation’s glory and protect it from terrorism and occupation,” while calling on Syrians to unite and stand against oppression.
“This step is a natural and legitimate response to the attempts at division and displacement facing the country,” the group’s general commander was quoted as saying in the announcement.
The statement was accompanied by a logo resembling those of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Iranian regime’s chief proxy, the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, featuring a raised hand holding a rifle.
According to Alma, an Israeli research and education center, the Syrian National Socialist Party (SNSP) issued an official statement last year announcing the establishment of the Southern Liberation Front. However, at the beginning of this year, the group’s name was changed to the Islamic Resistance Front in Syria.
First published on the party’s website and social media platforms, the SNSP stated that the organization was established to protect the Syrian people and drive Israel out of Syrian territory. The SNSP also criticized Israel’s presence and activities in the country (referred to in the statement as “the Israeli enemy” and “the Israeli occupation”), as well as the silence from both Damascus’s new government and the broader Arab world on the issue.
Following Assad’s fall in December, Israel moved troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to secure a military position to prevent terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state. The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War. However, Israel considered the agreement void after the collapse of Assad’s regime.
Syria’s new government has called for Israel to withdraw its forces but has used a noticeably less hostile tone than Iran or its proxies when speaking about the Jewish state.
Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would not tolerate the presence of HTS or any forces affiliated with Syria’s new rulers south of Damascus and demanded the area be demilitarized.
During a recent meeting in Brussels of the EU-Israel Association Council, which oversees the European bloc’s relationship with the Jewish state, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar dismissed any hope for real change in Syria despite the formation of a new government, calling for “realistic expectations” in Europe and labeling talks of regime transition as “ridiculous.”
The Islamic Resistance Front in Syria’s announcement came as a top Hezbollah official admitted this week that the collapse of Assad’s regime in Syria was “a major strategic loss” that weakens the terrorist group’s efforts against Israel.
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Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students
Haredi Jewish men look at the scene of an explosion at a bus stop in Jerusalem, Israel, on Nov. 23, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad
Israel’s military said it would issue 54,000 call-up notices to ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students following a Supreme Court ruling mandating their conscription and amid growing pressure from reservists stretched by extended deployments.
The Supreme Court ruling last year overturned a decades-old exemption for ultra-Orthodox students, a policy established when the community comprised a far smaller segment of the population than the 13 percent it represents today.
Military service is compulsory for most Israeli Jews from the age of 18, lasting 24-32 months, with additional reserve duty in subsequent years. Members of Israel’s 21 percent Arab population are mostly exempt, though some do serve.
A statement by the military spokesperson confirmed the orders on Sunday just as local media reported legislative efforts by two ultra-Orthodox parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition to craft a compromise.
The exemption issue has grown more contentious as Israel’s armed forces in recent years have faced strains from simultaneous engagements with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and Iran.
Ultra-Orthodox leaders in Netanyahu’s brittle coalition have voiced concerns that integrating seminary students into military units alongside secular Israelis, including women, could jeopardize their religious identity.
The military statement promised to ensure conditions that respect the ultra-Orthodox way of life and to develop additional programs to support their integration into the military. It said the notices would go out this month.
The post Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich sharply criticized on Sunday a cabinet decision to allow some aid into Gaza as a “grave mistake” that he said would benefit the terrorist group Hamas.
Smotrich also accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to ensure that Israel’s military is following government directives in prosecuting the war against Hamas in Gaza. He said he was considering his “next steps” but stopped short of explicitly threatening to quit the coalition.
Smotrich’s comments come a day before Netanyahu is due to hold talks in Washington with President Donald Trump on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day Gaza ceasefire.
“… the cabinet and the Prime Minister made a grave mistake yesterday in approving the entry of aid through a route that also benefits Hamas,” Smotrich said on X, arguing that the aid would ultimately reach the Islamist group and serve as “logistical support for the enemy during wartime”.
The Israeli government has not announced any changes to its aid policy in Gaza. Israeli media reported that the government had voted to allow additional aid to enter northern Gaza.
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The military declined to comment.
Israel accuses Hamas of stealing aid for its own fighters or to sell to finance its operations, an accusation Hamas denies. Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe, with conditions threatening to push nearly a half a million people into famine within months, according to U.N. estimates.
Israel in May partially lifted a nearly three-month blockade on aid. Two Israeli officials said on June 27 the government had temporarily stopped aid from entering north Gaza.
PRESSURE
Public pressure in Israel is mounting on Netanyahu to secure a permanent ceasefire, a move opposed by some hardline members of his right-wing coalition. An Israeli team left for Qatar on Sunday for talks on a possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal.
Smotrich, who in January threatened to withdraw his Religious Zionism party from the government if Israel agreed to a complete end to the war before having achieved its objectives, did not mention the ceasefire in his criticism of Netanyahu.
The right-wing coalition holds a slim parliamentary majority, although some opposition lawmakers have offered to support the government from collapsing if a ceasefire is agreed.
The post Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks to the media during a press conference with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Aug. 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Tracey Nearmy
Australian police have charged a man in connection with an alleged arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue with worshippers in the building, the latest in a series of incidents targeting the nation’s Jewish community.
There were no injuries to the 20 people inside the East Melbourne Synagogue, who fled from the fire on Friday night. Firefighters extinguished the blaze in the capital of Victoria state.
Australia has experienced several antisemitic incidents since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023.
Counter-terrorism detectives late on Saturday arrested the 34-year-old resident of Sydney, capital of neighboring New South Wales, charging him with offenses including criminal damage by fire, police said.
“The man allegedly poured a flammable liquid on the front door of the building and set it on fire before fleeing the scene,” police said in a statement.
The suspect, whom the authorities declined to identify, was remanded in custody after his case was heard at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Sunday and no application was made for bail, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported.
Authorities are investigating whether the synagogue fire was linked to a disturbance on Friday night at an Israeli restaurant in Melbourne, in which one person was arrested for hindering police.
The restaurant was extensively damaged, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella group for Australia’s Jews.
It said the fire at the synagogue, one of Melbourne’s oldest, was set as those inside sat down to Sabbath dinner.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog went on X to “condemn outright the vile arson attack targeting Jews in Melbourne’s historic and oldest synagogue on the Sabbath, and on an Israeli restaurant where people had come to enjoy a meal together”.
“This is not the first such attack in Australia in recent months. But it must be the last,” Herzog said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incidents as “severe hate crimes” that he viewed “with utmost gravity.” “The State of Israel will continue to stand alongside the Australian Jewish community,” Netanyahu said on X.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese late on Saturday described the alleged arson, which comes seven months after another synagogue in Melbourne was targeted by arsonists, as shocking and said those responsible should face the law’s full force.
“My Government will provide all necessary support toward this effort,” Albanese posted on X.
Homes, schools, synagogues and vehicles in Australia have been targeted by antisemitic vandalism and arson. The incidents included a fake plan by organized crime to attack a Sydney synagogue using a caravan of explosives in order to divert police resources, police said in March.
The post Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue first appeared on Algemeiner.com.