Swallowing Syria
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the summit of Mt. Hermon in Syria, Dec 17, 2024. (Photo: Screenshot/GPO).
I am finding it very hard to swallow the disaster that has occurred in Syria, or to digest its consequences. It makes me sick.
Though it foresaw the looming disaster, my last article was written just before the flight of Assad and the fall of Damascus, and it was still possible to imagine there might be another out to be played. Well, it’s now, definitely, game over, and there’s no denying who won and who lost. The result is depressing and demoralizing.
To reprise what I said in that article, “If Now that Syria is lost to the Erdogan-sponsored Jihadi forces, Russia, Iran, Lebanon, the Axis of Resistance, and the Palestinian people will have lost something very important, something that cannot be recovered without a…more deadly fight than would have been required to prevent the loss.” Correspondingly, US imperialism, Zionism, and Turkish neo-Ottomanism have won a strategic geopolitical victory that gives them advantages that will be hard to overcome.
Since 2012, I’ve written at least 17 articles about the vicious “multiple, concentric proxy war” the US, Israel, Turkey, and the Gulf States (especially Qatar), with their jihadi pawns, have waged to destroy the Syrian state. By 2015, it had become “the most expensive US covert action program in history.” Along with many others, I critiqued and attacked the Axis of Chaos’s arrogant and insouciant destruction of a country and a region, creating hundreds of thousands of casualties and refugees, destroying ancient and vibrant cities and towns, replacing secular pluralism with head-chopping takfiri sectarianism—all to eliminate a polity independent of and resistant to U.S. imperialism, Zionist colonialism, and Turkish ambition. I and many others had been glad to see that project interrupted by a Russian intervention, and, even though most of us knew that it was not stopped, we were too complacent about the ongoing destructive effects of the ongoing U.S. occupation and sanctions (per US thug Diana Stroul) and way too complacent about the persistence and armament of the Turkish-controlled jihadi redoubt in Idlib.
Over the last couple of years, many of us focused on the waning hard and soft power of U.S. imperialism in relation to the rising military power of Russia and China and their allied economic bloc in BRICS, as well as to the waning of Zionism’s hard and soft power in relation to the rising power of Iran, Hezbollah, and the Axis of Resistance and in relation to the world’s (especially the world’s youth) rising understanding of the illegitimacy of Zionist colonialism.
All these factors are still true and in play, but we have foolishly underestimated how strong, tenacious, and diverse the Zio-imperialist team is, and we have to recognize that. We didn’t see him as the team slugger, but, in Syria, Erdogan came in and hit a walk-off home run. And we didn’t even know what inning we were in. It’s going to be a long, hard season.
Here’s where we now stand, what we have to accept:
Syria is gone. The “nation” of Syria exists only as a wished-for abstraction; it is no longer, and will never again be, the geopolitical polity that it was. It is now a territory divided into sectarian—ethnic and religious—cantons, with no central administration or military power, subject to the political and military whims of actual states, especially the United States, Israel, and Turkey, who planned and executed that outcome.
The current “leadership” in Syria is comprised of the rebranded Al-Qaeda, now named Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by Abu Mohammed al-Golani. As I’m writing, Golani is still a “terrorist” with a USG $10-million-dollar bounty on his head, although he’s also meeting with Western media personalities and cabinet officials, who are frantically rebranding him. Haircut, beard trim, new suit, and even a new name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and voila, the old ISIS/al-Qaeda “terrorist” becomes an internationally respected, diversity-loving, moderate rebel.
In fact, the HTS/al-Golani-al-Sharaa “leadership” controls nothing. Its job, that it’s doing very well, is to stand down and allow Israel to bomb the former country over 800 times to destroy every bit of the former Syria’s military and its research facilities, to take its main water resources, and to invade, seize, and settle all the former Syrian territory it wants. HTS’s job is to allow its immediate puppet master, Erdogan, to remind the world that, if it weren’t for that pesky World War a hundred years ago, Aleppo and Damascus would be part of Turkey. HTS’s job is to “shift” the former Syria into a full “free-market” economy so that US and European capital can buy up all its assets. And HTS/Golani has no more important job than constantly to proclaim that their new regime has no quarrel with Israel or the West, and will peacefully accommodate whatever the fuck Israel, or Turkey or the US/Blackrock want to do with the corpse of Syria. It makes me sick.
Syria was defeated and eliminated primarily by a non-stop twelve-year offensive of direct and proxy military attacks by a number of regional and extra-regional powers—an assault that no less-than-superpowerful country could be expected to defeat. Sure, Assad’s Baathist authoritarianism—which Western countries overlooked and even embraced when convenient—can be criticized; authoritarianism itself, we should all recognize, makes for political weakness. But it’s beyond naïve to think that the foreign forces leading the attack on Syria had any actual interest in their proclaimed goals of “democracy” and “rights,” or will institute a regime better embodying them. It was a foreign invasion using fanatical jihadi proxies to destroy the country, not to make it more “democratic.”
Indeed, Golani is a big fan of uber-authoritarian Saudi Arabia and promises that his movement “will not be a platform to threaten or unsettle any Arab or Gulf country…The Syrian revolution ended with the regime’s fall, and we will not allow it to spread elsewhere.” In other words, not a revolution for “democracy.”
Syria was also defeated and eliminated, proximally, by something very wrong in Syria. A similar, multi-pronged and persistent imperialist offensive has been visited on other, weaker, countries—e.g.., Cuba, Venezuela. It does not explain the complete collapse, in about a week, of a 170,000-man army and air force supported by considerably more powerful countries (Russia, Iran). The “rebel” force coming out of Idlib numbered maybe 30,000, of whom maybe 5-10,000 could be called ”seasoned.” According to Putin. when 350 jihadi forces approached Aleppo, the 30,000-man SAA garrison in the city, “retreated without a fight, blew up their positions and left.” Even if he’s exaggerating the numbers, it’s clear the SAA did not put up a fight.
I do not know what explains this, and there has been nothing—Including Assad’s statement—that definitively does. I suspect the $40/month for SAA soldiers vs. $2000/month for jihadis is indicative of many paths to corruption, but I just do not know. The finger-pointing about it is another propitious, intended, and inevitable result that serves the Zio-imperialist purpose of division. I hope, and think it’s important, that we get a clearer answer, but I also think we should refrain from jumping to divisive conclusions.
The Palestinian resistance has been weakened and the Palestinian people put in more grave and immediate danger. This is obviously so in a material and practical sense. Syria was a linchpin of the axis of anti-Zionist resistance. It provided crucial military and political support to the Palestinian cause, and enabled a territorial link that allowed for Iran’s provisioning of Hezbollah. That’s now gone. The “land bridge” from Iran to Palestine has become an air corridor from Israel to Iran.
Netanyahu’s plan was always to defeat the Palestinians by eliminating all of the states who were supporting them, on the understanding that the military, political, and financial power of a state or states could not easily be replaced. That plan has succeeded via the destruction of a succession of states by the U.S. on Israel’s behalf, and by the co-option of other reactionary Arab states with Abraham-accords type agreements.
The Axis of Resistance is now reduced to Iran, Hezbollah, Yemen, and some militias in Iraq, and Iran, the most powerful support, is in the crosshairs. The ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza over the last 14 months has demonstrated that not one of the world’s powerful nations is willing to risk the direct confrontation with the US and Israel that would be necessary to stop it. Russia and China are not anti-Zionist countries and will not shift their forces from existential conflicts in their own theaters in order to save the Palestinians. Turkey has shown its true face behind the anti-Zionist mask. Yemen is not powerful enough.
That leaves Iran, which, with Syria gone, is the remaining strong front of anti-Zionist resistance. Iran can only reverse the tide of Zionist colonialism if it visits a punishing defeat on Israel, in the course of a battle with Israel and the U.S. in which it will be nuked. But even seriously anti-Zionist Iran, which has yet to carry out its True Promise III retaliation on Israel, has its own national interests, and may prefer to avoid such a destructive war—though I don’t think USrael, now pumped up on its Syria fix, will allow that. There will be a war on Iran.
Despite much wishful thinking, I would not count on Russia or China to enter such a conflict against the US and Israelto save Iran. If either country has a real mutual defense treaty with Iran, they should announce it now. It makes no sense to hide it until after a war starts. If they don’t announce it, they don’t have it. Russia and China can live with a strong Israel and a weak Iran because they are interested in stability, and are confident of their ability to succeed long-term with that. Russia is more likely to urge Iran to avoid a war and take a deal.
Here’s the nut problem for the Palestinians: No powerful country in the world, with the possible exception of Iran, cares about them as much as the U.S. does about Israel. No country is as anti-Zionist as the U.S. is Zionist. The U.S. will risk itself in a total war to protect Israel and the Zionist project. It’s a non-rational, existential, absolute, “If this Capitol crumbled to the ground…” commitment. What country is so non-rationally committed to the Palestinian cause? What country is going to take that on to save the Palestinians and end the Zionist project? Iran will soon have to decide whether it will take the only chance to prevent the completion of Nakba 2, which is well on its way to ending with Israel in control, and occupying parts, of Syria and Lebanon and the only people living in the Gaza Strip being Israeli Jewish settlers.
At least as important as the military and practical effects of the Syrian debacle are the ideological and psychological effects. Bad enough to have to swallow that far-away powerful countries we liked to think would help save the Palestinians won’t, because they have other agendas more important to them. Worse, much worse, to have to confront that their close-by Arab and Muslim neighbors, and the Palestinians themselves, have confusing and conflicting agendas that weaken their struggle.
When Hamas “congratulates the…Syrian people on their success in achieving their aspirations for freedom and justice,” one gags on the line being served. What happened in Syria was not a revolution for “freedom and justice” achieved via some uprising of the “Syrian people.” It was an invasion of jihadi fighters from all over the world—funded, and trained by Turkey and the United States for the purpose of destroying and dispersing the Syrian state on behalf of Zionism and imperialism. Does Hamas really not know this?
When Hamas goes on to “reaffirm our commitment to Syria’s unity, [and] the integrity of its territories…[and] strongly condemns the repeated brutal aggression by the Zionist occupation against Syrian territories and firmly rejects any Zionist ambitions or schemes targeting brotherly Syria,” one only has to point out that what has actually been “achieved” by the jihadi invaders, with no resistance from them, is Israel’s destruction of the entire former Syrian military force and the Israeli invasion and seizure of large swaths of Syria—the end of Syria’s unity and territorial integrity.
When HTS leader al-Golani proclaims that Iran was and is their main enemy, and they are proud to have “set the Iranian project in the region back by 40 years…By removing Iranian militias and closing Syria to Iranian influence,” does Hamas not realize he’s talking about “removing” Hezbollah, the strongest anti-Zionist armed force, which has been fighting the last 14 months on behalf of Gaza, with Iran as its main supporter? If Iran is the last strong front of the Axis of Resistance and the only country capable of hurting Israel enough to stop the slaughter in Gaza, how is the congratulatory attitude of Hamas toward HTS going to affect Iran’s willingness to take enormously destructive hits for that fight?
Unfortunately, a significant cohort of Sunni Arabs share Hamas’s congratulatory attitude toward what they don’t want to recognize as the US-Israeli-Turkish-jihadi overthrow of the Syrian state. Which means—as they also may not want to recognize, but is indisputably true—that for them the principal contradiction is not Zionist colonialism vs. Palestinian freedom but Sunni vs. Shia, or Arab vs. non-Arab, or some such division.
Whatever its terms, it is divisiveness—a divisiveness that’s been weaponized by the Zionist colonial entourage that has already conquered Syria, and that will conquer all of Palestine if it is not ended. Mistrust and division are as powerful as nuclear weapons.
I hate to say it, but it does no good to pretend: The destruction of Syria has seriously, perhaps fatally, damaged the Palestinian cause. It is likely the case that, absent the defeat of U.S. imperialism and Zionism, via some combination of military defeat and internal revolution in both polities, the Palestinians are screwed.
On the other hand, Be careful what you ask for. Turkey and USrael have succeeded in destroying the Syrian state. The only schadenfreude point is that Turkey and USrael now own, and are going to have to manage, the chaotic shit-show they’ve created—jihadis, ethno-religious conflicts, socio-economic demands, refugees, and all
What was a politically repressive (like so many) and stable secular, pluralist, quasi-socialist regime of religious, ethnic, and sexual equality with literacy, education, healthcare, and employment is being broken up into a set of ethno-religious sectarian Bantustans in conflict with each other, and with natural and social wealth sold off to foreign “investors,” throwing off more hordes of refugees—all of it policed by different countries working at cross-purposes. Turks, Kurds, and Israelis vying for power. Different bands of U.S.-supported forces fighting each other. Pissed-off Syrians resisting the various occupations. The Israelis have already begun shooting Syrian protestors. The Syrian army was not attritted or defeated but disbanded. Remember what happened with the disbanded Iraqi army?
In other words, the Empire of Chaos has succeeded in bringing… chaos. It’s going to be hard—virtually Impossible—to manage it in a way that suits all the players. There are too many cooks, and they’ve brewed up a stew that’s going to be very hard to swallow.
It makes me sick, and I hope they choke on it.
Israeli troops unfurl Israeli flag on Mount Hermon in Syria. Photo credit: Times of Israel
The United States, Turkey and Israel all responded to the fall of the Assad government in Damascus by launching bombing campaigns on Syria. Israel also attacked and destroyed most of the Syrian Navy in port at Latakia, and invaded Syria from the long-occupied Golan Heights, advancing to within 16 miles of the capital, Damascus.
The United States said that its bombing campaign targeted remnants of Islamic State in the east of the country, hitting 75 targets with 140 bombs and missiles, according to Air Force Times.
A long-standing force of 900 U.S. troops illegally occupy that part of Syria, partly to divert Syria’s meagre oil revenues to the U.S.’s Kurdish allies and prevent the Syrian government regaining that source of revenue. U.S. bombing badly damaged Syria’s oil infrastructure during the war with the Islamic State, but Russia has been ready to help Syria restore full output whenever it recovers control of that area. U.S. forces in Syria have been under attack by various Syrian militia forces, not just the Islamic State, with at least 127 attacks since October 2023.
Meanwhile, Turkiyë is conducting airstrikes, drone strikes and artillery fire as part of a new offensive by a militia it formed in 2017 under the Orwellian guise of the “Syrian National Army” to invade and occupy parts of Rojava, the autonomous Kurdish enclave in northeast Syria.
Israel, however, launched a much broader bombing campaign than Turkey or the U.S., with about 600 airstrikes on post-Assad Syria in the first eight days of its existence. Without waiting to see what form of government the political transition in Syria leads to, Israel set about methodically destroying its entire military infrastructure, to ensure that whatever government comes to power will be as defenseless as possible.
Israel claims its new occupation of Syrian territory is a temporary move to ensure its own security. But while Israel bombed Syria 220 times over the past year, killing about 300 people, Syria showed restraint and did not retaliate for those attacks.
The pattern of Israeli history has been that land grabs like this usually turn into long-term illegal Israeli annexations, as in the Golan Heights and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. That will surely be the case with Israel’s new strategic base on top of Mount Hermon, overlooking Damascus and the surrounding area, unless a new Syrian government or international diplomacy can force Israel to withdraw.
Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Russia and the UN have all joined the global condemnation of the new Israeli assault on Syria. Geir Pedersen, the UN Special Envoy to Syria, called Israel’s military actions “highly irresponsible,” and UN peacekeepers have removed Israeli flags from newly-occupied Syrian territory.
The Qatari Foreign Ministry called Israel’s actions “a dangerous development and a blatant attack on Syria’s sovereignty and unity as well as a flagrant violation of international law… that will lead the region to further violence and tension.”
The Saudi Foreign Ministry reiterated that the Golan Heights is an occupied Arab territory, and said that Israel’s actions confirmed “Israel’s continued violation of the rules of international law and its determination to sabotage Syria’s chances of restoring its security, stability and territorial integrity.”
The only country in the world that has ever recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights is the United States, under the first Trump administration, and it is part of Biden’s disastrous legacy in the Middle East that that he failed to stand up for international law and reverse Trump’s recognition of that illegal Israeli annexation.
As people all over the world watch Israel ignore the rules of international law that every country in the world is committed to live by, we are confronted by the age-old question of how to respond to a country that systematically ignores and violates these rules. The foundation of the UN Charter is the agreement by all countries to settle their differences diplomatically and peacefully, instead of by the threat or use of military force.
As Americans, we should start by admitting that our own country has led the way down this path of war and militarism, perpetuating the scourge of war that the UN Charter was intended to provide a peaceful alternative to.
As the United States became the leading economic power in the world in the 20th century, it also built up dominant military power. Despite its leading role in creating the United Nations and the rules of the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, it came to see strict compliance with those rules as an obstacle to its own ambitions, from the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of military force to the Geneva Conventions’ universal protections for prisoners of war and civilians.
In its “war on terror,” including its wars on Iraq and other countries, the United States flagrantly and systematically violated these bedrock foundations of world order. It is a fundamental principle of all legal systems that the powerful must be held accountable as well as the weak and the vulnerable. A system of laws that the wealthy and powerful can ignore cannot claim to be universal or just, and is unlikely to stand the test of time.
Today, our system of international law faces exactly this problem. The U.S. presumption that its overwhelming military power permits it to violate international law with impunity has led other countries, especially U.S. allies but also Russia, to apply the same opportunistic standards to their own behavior.
In 2010, an Amnesty International report on European countries that hosted CIA “black site” torture chambers called on U.S. allies in Europe not to join the United States as another “accountability-free zone” for war crimes. But now the world is confronting a U.S. ally that has not just embraced, but doubled down on, the U.S. presumption that dominant military power can trump the rule of law.
The Israeli government refuses to comply with international legal prohibitions against deliberately killing women and children, by military force and by deprivation; seizing foreign territory; and bombing other countries. Shielded from international accountability behind the U.S. Security Council veto, Israel thumbs its nose at the world’s impotence to enforce international law, confident that nobody will stop it from using its deadly and destructive war machine wherever and however it pleases.
So the world’s failure to hold the United States accountable for its war crimes has led Israel to believe that it too can escape accountability, and U.S. complicity in Israeli war crimes, especially the genocide in Gaza, has inevitably reinforced that belief.
U.S. responsibility for Israel’s lawlessness is compounded by the conflict of interest in its dual role as both Israel’s military superpower ally and weapons supplier and the supposed mediator of the lopsided “peace process” between Israel and Palestine, whose inherent flaws led to Hamas’s election victory in 2006 and now to the current crisis.
Instead of recognizing its own conflict of interest and deferring to intervention by the UN or other neutral parties, the U.S. has jealously guarded its monopoly as the sole mediator between Israel and Palestine, using this position to grant Israel total freedom of action to commit systematic war crimes. If this crisis is ever to end, the world cannot allow the U.S. to continue in this role.
While the United States bears a great deal of responsibility for this crisis, U.S. officials remain in collective denial over the criminal nature of Israel’s actions and their instrumental role in Israel’s crimes. The systemic corruption of U.S. politics severely limits the influence of the majority of Americans who support a ceasefire in Gaza, as pro-Israel lobbying groups buy the unconditional support of American politicians and attack the few who stand up to them.
Despite America’s undemocratic political system, its people have a responsibility to end U.S. complicity in genocide, which is arguably the worst crime in the world, and people are finding ways to bring pressure to bear on the U.S. government:
Members of CODEPINK, Jewish Voice For Peace and Palestinian-, Arab-American and other activist groups are in Congressional offices and hearings every day; constituents in California are suing two members of Congress for funding genocide; students are calling on their universities to divest from Israel and U.S. arms makers; activists and union members are identifying and picketing companies and blocking ports to stop weapons shipments to Israel; journalists are rebelling against censorship; U.S. officials are resigning; people are on hunger strike; others have committed suicide.
It is also up to the UN and other governments around the world to intervene, and to hold Israel and the United States accountable for their actions. A growing international movement for an end to the genocide and decades of illegal occupation is making progress. But it is excruciatingly slow given the appalling human cost and the millions of Palestinian lives at stake.
Israel’s international propaganda campaign to equate criticism of its war crimes with antisemitism poisons political discussion of Israeli war crimes in the United States and some other countries.
But many countries are making significant changes in their relations with Israel, and are increasingly willing to resist political pressures and propaganda tropes that have successfully muted international calls for justice in the past. A good example is Ireland, whose growing trade relations with Israel, mainly in the high-tech sector, formerly made it the fourth largest importer of Israeli products in the world in 2022.
Ireland is now one of 14 countries who have officially intervened to support South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – the others are Belgium, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Libya, the Maldives, Mexico, Nicaragua, Palestine, Spain and Turkiyë. Israel reacted to Ireland’s intervention in the case by closing its embassy in Dublin, and now Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has smeared Ireland’s Taoiseach (prime minister) Simon Harris as “antisemitic.”
The Taoiseach’s spokesperson replied that Harris “will not be responding to personalized and false attacks, and remains focused on the horrific war crimes being perpetrated in Gaza, standing up for human rights and international law and reflecting the views of so many people across Ireland who are so concerned at the loss of innocent, civilian lives.”
If the people of Palestine can stand up to bombs, missiles and bullets day after day for over a year, the very least that political leaders around the world can do is stand up to Israeli name-calling, as Simon Harris is doing.
Spain is setting an example on international efforts to halt the supply of weapons to Israel, with an arms embargo and a ban on weapons shipments transiting Spanish ports, including the U.S. naval base at Rota, which the U.S. has leased since it formed a military alliance with Spain’s Franco dictatorship in 1953.
Spain has already refused entry to two Maersk-owned ships transporting weapons from North Carolina to Israel, while dockworkers in Spain, Belgium, Greece, India and other countries have refused to load weapons and ammunition onto ships bound for Israel.
The UN General Assembly (UNGA) has passed resolutions for a ceasefire in Gaza; an end to the post-1967 Israeli occupation; and for Palestinian statehood. The General Assembly’s 10th Emergency Special Session on the Israel-Palestine conflict under the Uniting for Peace process has been ongoing since 1997.
The General Assembly should urgently use these Uniting For Peace powers to turn up the pressure on Israel and the United States. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has provided the legal basis for stronger action, ruling that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories Israel invaded in 1967 is illegal and must be ended, and that the massacre in Gaza appears to violate the Genocide Convention.
Inaction is inexcusable. By the time the ICJ issues a final verdict on its genocide case, millions may be dead. The Genocide Convention is an international commitment to prevent genocide, not just to pass judgment after the fact. The UN General Assembly has the power to impose an arms embargo, a trade boycott, economic sanctions, a peacekeeping force, or to do whatever it takes to end the genocide.
When the UN General Assembly first launched its boycott campaign against apartheid South Africa in 1962, not a single Western country took part. Many of those same countries will be the last to do so against Israel today. But the world cannot wait to act for the blessing of complacent wealthy countries who are themselves complicit in genocide.
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