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HTS is no ‘liberation movement’ The Islamist rebels that toppled Bashar al-Assad should be viewed with extreme caution. Rakib Ehsan

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/10/hts-is-no-liberation-movement/

The overthrow of Bashar Al-Assad’s despotic regime in Syria this weekend has been cheered on by the UK government as well as much of the mainstream media.

Speaking on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on BBC One, deputy PM Angela Rayner said that she ‘welcomed’ the news of Assad’s fall. Yesterday, foreign secretary David Lammy celebrated the Syrian president’s toppling, telling MPs that Assad is a ‘monster’, a ‘drug dealer’ and a ‘rat’.

In a sense, the government’s response is understandable. No one should mourn the end of the Assad dynasty’s brutal decades-long rule. Furthermore, Assad’s fall deals another significant blow to his despotic backers, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia, depriving both of a key strategic ally. Lammy’s geopolitical analysis leaves a lot to be desired at times, but he is right to say that Assad’s defeat is a humiliation for both Moscow and Tehran.

Yet too often, this understandable happiness over the fall of the Syrian dictator has morphed into an endorsement of the Islamist forces that toppled him. Sir John Sawers, the former head of MI6, even went so far as to describe Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group that led the offensive against Assad, as ‘a liberation movement’.

It’s enough to make you wonder if parts of the British state have mislaid their critical faculties. The HTS-led forces now vying to replace Assad should be viewed much more cautiously.

After all, HTS, which had previously been confined to the Idlib province in Syria’s north-west, is a Sunni Islamist paramilitary group. Its leader, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, was once aligned with the Islamic State (ISIS), and headed up HTS’s predecessor movement, al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. In 2017, the US State Department put up a $10million reward for information that could lead to his capture. This came after its decision in 2013 to classify him as a ‘specially designated global terrorist’. Likewise, the British state lists HTS as a proscribed terrorist organisation, although the government has now mooted removing it from the list.

In the UK, Fantasy Can’t Quite Replace Reality A dying nation pretends it’s still strong enough to victimize others. by Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/in-the-uk-fantasy-cant-quite-replace-reality/

Britain, once the seat of a global empire and a proud civilization, is undergoing a world-historical societal transformation before our very eyes, and yet few have taken notice. In fact, even as this formerly great nation and erstwhile leader of the Western world suffers through its death agonies and last days as a free society, some are even celebrating its imminent demise. And still others are going even farther: amid the death throes of British civilization, they’re still up to their old game of posturing and playing the victim, as if they, not Britain, were in mortal peril. They even claim to have been victimized at the hands of dying Britain itself, as the nation of Shakespeare, Henry V and Churchill still had the will or the strength to get the better of anyone.

The Spectator on Saturday reviewed a new play called “Expendable,” which is playing until Dec. 21 at London’s renowned West End theatre The Royal Court. The play, according to The Spectator, is “an urgent bulletin from the front line of the grooming gang scandal in the north of England.” The Royal Court website is no less effusive, saying: “Playwright Emteaz Hussain‘s Expendable spotlights the often-overlooked voices of Pakistani women, delving into the shortcomings of law enforcement, politicians, and the media.”

Spotlighting the criminally overlooked voices of Pakistani women sounds like a capital idea. They could tell us about how the Qur’an directs men to beat women from whom they “fear disobedience” (4:34). They could tell us about how it devalues a woman’s testimony (2:282) and inheritance rights (4:11), and allows for the marriage, and even the divorce, of prepubescent girls (65:4). They could tell us about honor killings, the jailing of rape victims, and more.

All that, however, is not what “Expendable” is about. “The setting,” The Spectator tells is, “is a kitchen in Yorkshire where Zara is trying to keep her family together after her son, Raheel, was outed as a rape suspect by a national newspaper.” It’s not just the shame of the charge, it’s the attendant harassment: “White thugs dump parcels of excrement on their porch and Zara cowers under the kitchen table, too scared to answer the door. The racists have mounted a mass demonstration, supported by the cops, which causes local bus services to be cancelled.”

NYT: Hamas Records Taken By Israel Show UNRWA Top School Administrators Also Were Hamas Terrorists By Hank Berrien

https://www.dailywire.com/news/nyt-hamas-records-taken-by-israel-show-unrwa-top-school-administrators-also-were-hamas-terrorists

“Almost all of the Hamas-linked educators, according to the records, were fighters in the Qassam Brigades.”

Documents shared with The New York Times impelled the media outlet to admit that senior staff at UNRWA schools doubled as members of Hamas’ military wing.

“The agency, which employs roughly 13,000 people, including thousands in the schools, has a duty to maintain the neutrality of its facilities in the conflict zones in which it operates, including by keeping militants off its premises and payrolls,” The Times noted.

But as shown by the detailed records kept by the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, that were seized by Israel, at least 24 people employed by the anti-Israel UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in their schools were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

Where We’ve Been and Why It Matters Shoshana Bryen

https://www.jns.org/where-weve-been-and-why-it-matters/

Incoming President Donald Trump is correct—who governs Damascus and its environs is not a choice that the United States can or will make. However, the United States has interests that include working with our allies and ensuring that our adversaries don’t take advantage of them—or us. While we all cheer the ouster of a war criminal and the shaking of the Islamic Republic, an appropriate future-looking policy requires an understanding of American culpability in the Syrian civil war that began in 2011 and never ended.

Chemical Weapons and Obama’s Role

Russia and Iran, of course, played large roles in this. But so did the Obama administration. Determined to get to an “Iran deal,” Washington appeased Iran directly and vacillated over appropriate policy choices in Syria. The decision to arm and train Sunni rebels was made, but weapons lagged, and it was unclear that the administration knew which militias were which.

The issue of chemical weapons is crucial, as the illegitimacy of their use is one of the few points of international consensus in wartime. The first treaty against it is more than 120 years old—the Hague Declaration of 1899, which was followed by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and the 1925 Geneva Protocol. A “red line” after the use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar Assad resulted in a bizarre decision by the administration to work with Russia to neutralize Syrian chemical weapons at sea:

It was a stab in the dark, utilizing equipment never before used under these circumstances, on a ship not designed for that purpose, using downsized machinery intended for the stability of land-based operations.

The administration crowed about its success, claiming the destruction of the Syrian government’s declared chemical weapon stockpile, heralding the “neutralization of chemical agents … as a watershed moment in the Syrian conflict.” Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said, “In record time, even amid a civil war, we removed and have now destroyed the most dangerous chemicals in the regime’s declared stockpiles.” From an inSIGHT article at the time:

Both acknowledged that it wasn’t quite the whole Syrian stockpile—after all, OPCW (The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) was relying on a self-declared Syrian arsenal. But OPCW was willing to swear that the President’s optimism was warranted. In a remarkably precise statement, Sigrid Kaag, special coordinator for OPCW-UN, said 96% percent of Syria’s declared chemical weapons were destroyed. Not 95% or 87% or 43.5%, but 96% on the nose.

It wasn’t true.

The ‘day after’ chorus was always singing out of tune Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/the-day-after-chorus-was-always-singing-out-of-tune/

The fall of the 54-year Assad regime in Syria (the last 24 of which have been ruled by Hafez’s son, Bashar) isn’t the only major event in the Middle East that took the world by surprise. On the contrary, jaw-dropping developments have been rife in the region for the past 14 and a half months.

Despite all the signs during the period leading up to the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, for instance—including specific warnings passed on to the general staff of the military—the massacre was missed by the very forces charged with preventing such occurrences.

That the rapes, beheadings, immolations and abductions perpetrated that day were the worst atrocities committed against Jews since the Holocaust made the launching of “Swords of Iron” imperative. And let’s be real: The extent of the horrors provided the so-called “legitimacy” for Israel to launch the war that’s still going on today.

Not that Jerusalem ever should have needed justification to wipe out Hamas. Yet until Oct. 7, operations undertaken by Israel Defense Forces in the terrorist enclave were all short and incomplete, to put it mildly. Worse, with each ceasefire, Hamas and auxiliary monsters grew richer and more emboldened.

This was due to a combination of international backing and Israel’s conseptzia that Hamas was deterred—that fear of the IDF, work permits for Gazans and a policy of containment regarding weekly riots at the border were doing the job of keeping the peace. Or at least maintaining an illusion of quiet.

President Trump, Beware of the Syrian Volcano Yoram Ettinger

The unpredictable eruption of the Syrian volcano – which could emit molten lava well beyond Syria and the Middle East – sheds light on the following 1,400-year-old features of the radical/fundamentalist segment of the complicated, brutal and frustrating inter Arab/Moslem reality, which are currently menacing every pro-US Arab regime:

ICC Arrest Warrants and the Unacceptable Weaponization of International Law by Robert Williams

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21194/israel-icc-arrest-warrants

A whistle-blower told [ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim] Khan that he knew about the sexual misconduct and Khan responded in apparent shock that he, Khan, was “finished and will need to resign.” Instead of resigning, however, he reportedly threatened both the whistleblower and the victim to not press the matter further. And then he decided to announce the application for arrest warrants….

Why, by the way, did both Khan and ICC President Piotr Hofmanski meet with Qatar’s ambassador to the Netherlands last year? Surely Qatar had nothing to do with influencing the decision to issue the arrest warrants?

The ICC arrest warrants are the final proof that the entire international system is beyond broken. Between South Africa’s baseless case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant by the ICC, justice, accountability and the upholding of international law lie in shambles, as the obsession with the world’s only Jewish state continues for the benefit of the world’s actual war criminals.

What is remarkable is that no arrest warrants to date have been issued for any of the following actual war criminals….

“The ICC is a kangaroo court and Karim Khan is a deranged fanatic. Woe to him and anyone who tries to enforce these outlaw warrants. Let me give them all a friendly reminder: the American law on the ICC is known as The Hague Invasion Act for a reason. Think about it.” — US Senator Tom Cotton, X, November 21, 2024.

On November 21, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and, apparently to pretend to look “balanced,” three Arab terrorists, one of whom was dead.

ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, originally a British barrister, appealed to all ICC member states to do the court’s bidding and arrest Netanyahu and Gallant, and said in a statement:

“[T]he judges of the International Criminal Court have found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that each [Netanyahu and Gallant] has committed the war crime of using starvation as a method of warfare and crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts, as a direct perpetrator, acting jointly with others. The Chamber also found reasonable grounds to believe that they are each responsible for the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against civilians as a superior.”

Why Arabs and Muslims ‘Betrayed’ Hamas by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21193/arabs-muslims-hamas

As far as Hamas leaders are concerned, the involvement of Iran’s other proxies in the Jihad against Israel has been insufficient. Hamas leaders were hoping to see Arab and Muslim armies march on Israel and fulfill their dream of replacing it with a jihadist terror state.

They are also aware that Iran wants to use them to expand its control over the Middle East. Iran already occupies three Arab countries – Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, and until last week, Syria as well – and has brought nothing but death and destruction to the people there.

The “betrayal” of Hamas by Arabs and Muslims is a sign that these people are committed to stopping the Iranian regime from using them as puppets in its plan to destroy the “Zionist entity” and take over the Middle East.

For Hamas leaders, the involvement of Iran’s other proxies in the Jihad against Israel has been insufficient. Hamas leaders were hoping to see Arab and Muslim armies march on Israel and fulfill their dream of replacing it with a jihadist terror state. They were also hoping that the Arab and Muslim masses would revolt against their governments and replace them with regimes that support the annihilation of Israel and serve as puppets in the hands of Tehran’s mullahs. Pictured: Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, meets with Ismail Haniyeh, then leader of Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah, on July 30, 2024 in Tehran. (Photo by the Supreme Leader’s Press Office via Getty Images)

Fourteen months after the Iran-backed terrorist group, Hamas, attacked Israel, murdering 1,200 Israelis and wounding thousands more, Hamas has finally acknowledged that it has been abandoned by many Arabs and Muslims.

When Hamas launched the October 7, 2023 assault on Israeli communities near the border with the Gaza Strip, its leaders were hoping that many Arabs and Muslims would join the fight to murder as many Jews as possible to eliminate Israel. Hamas officials expressed hope at the time that the October 7 atrocities would prompt the formation of a large Arab-Islamic battlefront against Israel. The hope was that the Iran-backed Hezbollah organization in Lebanon would launch a similar invasion of Israel, that Iran would unleash thousands of ballistic missiles against Israel, and that tens of thousands of Muslims would invade Israel from Jordan.

Hatred and Indifference in Modern Australia Examining Australia’s leadership vacuum in the wake of the Melbourne synagogue firebombing. Claire Lehmann

https://quillette.com/2024/12/08/hatred-and-indifference-in-modern-australia-antisemitism-synagogue-ripponlea/

Two days after Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis, I was sitting at my desk in the Sydney Central Business District. Zoe, my colleague, stood up from her desk with a worried look. Holding her phone, she told me that the New South Wales Board of Deputies had received a police warning: the safety of Jews in the city could not be guaranteed. The message she had just received was encouraging them to leave.

That message, combined with the knowledge of an upcoming pro-Palestinian protest in the city, made me feel something that I’d never felt before as an Australian citizen. I felt queasy as I remembered other times when Jews had felt safe in their own cities—then suddenly no longer.

It was during that moment of fear that I realised what antisemitism really was. Not being Jewish myself, I had never had a personal connection with the Holocaust. My knowledge of antisemitism was purely theoretical and abstract. It was a phenomenon I had read about in books, seen in films and documentaries, but it hit me that day like a slap to the face. I realised that antisemitism is two things: active, vicious hatred and cool institutional indifference towards that hate. And it was that institutional indifference that made me feel afraid.

The vicious hate manifested that night when a mob congregated on the steps of the Opera House chanting “where’s the Jews,” “fuck the Jews,” and “fuck Israel.” But what unnerved me was the indifference of authorities who had permitted this celebratory march from Sydney Town Hall in the first place. This was compounded when only one person was arrested at that rally where flags were burned—and that was a bystander carrying an Israeli flag.

Since that day, Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese has followed the model of indifference shown by the NSW Police. He says “antisemitism has no place in Australia,” while anti-Israel protesters freely demonstrate in front of synagogues. He takes no responsibility for surging attacks on Jews while simultaneously undermining the world’s only Jewish state. While Albanese might not be personally antisemitic, his intentional paralysis speaks of something more damning.

Why young British Jews are leaving for Israel The vicious intolerance sweeping Europe is now impossible to ignore. Neil Davenport

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/08/why-young-british-jews-are-leaving-for-israel/

For most British teenagers in their final year of A-levels, thoughts are now turning to choosing universities, attending open days and organising accommodation. But for a growing number of young British Jews, these familiar rites of passage are being replaced by more urgent concerns: joining the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) or volunteering in Israel.

The change in the priorities of young British Jews shows how much their world has changed since 7 October last year. First, Hamas’s brutal slaughter of civilians in Israel provided a horrifying wake-up call. And then the subsequent surge in anti-Semitism in Britain and Europe made it clear that many supposedly tolerant institutions are anything but.

‘I had always intended to join the IDF’, 17-year-old Thalia Cohen tells me. ‘But the events of 7 October solidified my decision. I want to help Israel defend itself and make sure something like that never happens again.’

Orli Miller completed her sixth-form studies this year. Visiting British university campuses since 7 October has transformed her view of the UK. ‘I visited one of the universities I’d applied to, and I was deeply unsettled by what I saw’, she recalls:

‘Posters of hostages taken by Hamas had been torn down. I realised this wasn’t an environment where I’d feel comfortable or supported. As a Zionist, I knew I’d be much happier in Israel, where I can align my actions with my beliefs without fear of judgement.’

Orli initially applied to serve in the IDF but was turned down on medical grounds. But rather than return to a university campus in the UK riddled with anti-Semitism, she chose to sign up for Sherut Leumi, Israel’s alternative national-service programme. Participants get to work in a wide range of areas, including healthcare, nursing homes and in disadvantaged communities.