Tag Archive for: Alawites

Israel was Right to Be Aggressive in Syria

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Just a day after the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had seized Damascus, and Bashar Assad had fled to Moscow, Assad’s army crumbled into dust, with soldiers ripping off their uniforms so as to avoid being killed by vengeful, and now triumphant, rebels. Those soldiers left largely unattended huge quantities of weaponry. The IDF seized the occasion to improve its defensive posture against Syria. There was a brief window of just a few days, between the fall of Assad and the regime in Damascus stabilizing and taking control of those abandoned weapons, during which the IDF did two things. First, it moved Israeli soldiers into Syria, where they established two new military outposts, one on the Syrian side of Mt. Hermon, and one extending further into Syria from the pre-existing buffer zone separating Israeli and Syrian troops on the Golan. Now the IDF controls the commanding heights that extend into Syria; the Israelis have a clear unimpeded view of Damascus — now literally in their sights — far below.

The second undertaking, which began just as soon as Assad had left for Russia, was the IDF’s systematic destruction of the Syrian army’s weaponry. The Israelis knew exactly where the weapons were located; they had long been preparing for a possible war against Assad, and had their target bank ready.

The IDF announced on December 10 that its air force and navy had conducted over 480 strikes in Syria in the span of 48 hours, 350 of which targeted airfields, anti-aircraft batteries, missiles, drones, fighter jets, tanks, and weapon production sites, destroying between 70% and 80% of Syria’s strategic weapons. It also sank Syria’s navy. And there was nothing that Ahmed al-Sharaa and the men of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham could do about it. Now Israel has not only made itself much safer, having removed Syria as a viable military threat to the Jewish state, but also has “demilitarized” the Jihadists in Damascus.

We have just seen that after al-Sharaa’s repeated promise that Syria’s minorities had nothing to worry about, decently, the jihadist “security services” — as they call themselves — entered Latakia to capture or kill Alawite members of Assad’s army. They were apparently ambushed by Alawite veterans of Assad’s army, and suffered a loss of 125 men. At that point, they decided to take revenge on the civilian population, killing more than 1,000 Alawite civilians — some reports claim up to 4,000 civilians have now been killed, and they also have been killing Christians — mostly Greek Orthodox but including some Melkites — because, of course, that’s what jihadists like to do. More than a thousand civilians, possibly as many as 4,000 according to some Alawite sources, have been killed in the space of two days. That’s a lot, but imagine what the jihadists could have done if they still possessed all the weapons that Israel destroyed, and had been able to use them not only in campaigns against the three million Alawites in Latakia and Tartous, but also against the four million Kurds, the 600,000 Druze, and also to crush other Sunni groups that have been disabused of their initial hopes for a “moderate” HTS, now that its jihadist ideology has been revealed. All of those threatened minorities in Syria owe the IDF a debt of gratitude, as the unintended beneficiaries of its successful campaign to destroy the weaponry left behind by Assad’s army.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Truth about the Islamic State Slaughter in San Bernardino

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The fourteen victims killed and 21 injured in the December 2nd massacre at a San Bernardino, California Christmas Party by two ISIS-inspired Muslim radicals have been honored by the truth declared by FBI director James Comey that it was an act of domestic terrorism. The eight men and six women slain in this act of Islamic terrorism ranged in age from 26 to 60.

This act of domestic terrorism was perpetrated by a colleague, self radicalized Muslim and U.S. born citizen Syed Razwin Farooq and his Pakistani-born, Saudi raised wife, Tashfeen Malik. The pair had tried to destroy cell phones and  computer drives. Nevertheless,  FBI forensic investigations uncovered a pledge of  fealty to the self styled founder of the barbarous Islamic State, Abu-Bakr al- Baghdadi.  That puts to rest the initial White House and media message that the assault was “workplace violence- related”. Was this equivalent to akin to the U.S. Amy declaration after the November 2009 Fort Hood Jihad massacre by convicted killer, Major Nidal Hassan?

Jennifer and the late Nicholas Thalasinos

Jennifer and the late Nicholas Thalasinos

Some elements of the media presumed that the slaughter of the innocents was triggered by an exchange between Muslim Syed Razwin Farooq and a fellow Department of Public Health restaurant inspector, Nicholas Thalasinos, a Messianic Jew. It was alleged that Thalasinos had contested the views that Islam was a religion of peace and vigorously defended Israel. That despite another victim in this terrorist attack was a Assyrian Christian woman Bennetta Betbadal who had fled the religious tyranny of Shia Iran for sanctuary in the U.S.  The most  disconcerting aspect of the media’s view was the CNN interview by Gary Tuchman with Thalasinos’ grief stricken widow, Jennifer.

Tuchman was endeavoring to place partial blame for Farook-Malik’s deadly attack that killed her husband and his colleagues. Thalasinos, a committed Zionist, allegedly had a “heated, passionate conversation” about politics and religion with the gunman days before the shooting. That might had triggered Farook’s abrupt departure from the Christmas party gathering, only to return with his wife wantonly killing 14 and injuring 21.   Police called to assist the wounded and survivors depicted it as a charnel house scene.   Rabbi Eric Tokajer, editor of The Messianic Times, said, that in preparation for an article, “Remembering  Nicholas Thalasinos” his widow Florence  said  that the Tuchman CNN interview aired only a fraction of the disconcerting questions  directed at her late husband.

Watch the CNN Gary Tuchman Anderson 360 interview with Jennifer Thalasinos:

In 1918 U.S. Senator Hiram Warren Johnson was purported to have said: “The first casualty when war comes is truth.”

That is self-evident in the so-called man made war of no name propounded over the past 7 years by the Obama Administration.  President Obama endeavored to pre-empt the news of the San Bernardino massacre by suggesting this was a mass shooting like Sandy Springs in Connecticut or the Aurora, Colorado movie theater episode. The San Bernardino massacre occurred within a few weeks of the Paris Massacre by ISIS European Muslim operatives.  It was contended that access to guns in this latest mass shooting necessitated immediate Congressional actions on new federal controls.  California has one of the nation’s strictest gun laws.  Where the sales of the weapons used were legally purchased?  Were they subsequently modified for deadly use in the rampage?   It was left to the dogged professional investigations of the FBI and its forensic laboratory to uncover the truth. That Farook Malik were adhering to fundamental Qur’anic doctrine.

Dr. Mark H. Elovitz

Dr. Mark H. Elovitz

Last night I attended erev Shabbat services at a small reform congregation, Temple Beth Shalom, to listen to a brilliant exposition by Dr. Mark H. Elovitz. Dr. Elovitz is the Director of the Centre for Strategic Politics.  Elovitz lectures on world affairs and geopolitical issues.  He has a multifaceted background as an ordained Rabbi, former USAF chaplain, professor of law and TV world affairs anchor and commentator.

His talk following services illuminated the ancient ethnic religious sectarian fissures in the complex Middle East confronting Israel; the intractable Syrian conflict and the rise of ISIS. For his temple audience he dissected the various contending ethnicities among the Turks, Persians, Arabs and Kurds.  Further confounding the resolution to combat ISIS with the aid of Sunni allies in the region, he noted there was little difference between Saudi Wahhabism and the Salafist doctrine of the Islamic State. He elucidated how Shiism of Iran and the Alawite sect of Assad in Syria was viewed as idolatrous by Sunnis further exacerbating already inflammatory ethnic hatreds.  At one point in his talk he drew the audience’s attention to Sura 8:12 in the Qur’an that fixed in the minds of his listeners the basis for Islamic terrorism:  “I will throw fear into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Then smite the necks and smite of them each finger.”

The announcement by FBI director Comey underlines the myopia of the President and his National Security Staff on the threat of extremist Islam, the unnamed elephant in the room.  The President retreated from public view immediately following FBI Director Comey’s declaration of domestic terrorism.  He refrained from the President’s traditional role following terrorist events resolving to combat these threats to our collective safety and security.

San Bernardino is a defining moment as it forces the nation to question tolerance of Political Islam, both at home and abroad. It should  also  question the intentions of alleged American Muslim ‘civil rights’ groups like CAIR, who rushed to judgment suggesting that Farook-Malik  were extremists and not part of mainstream Islamic beliefs. It also should question the press conference convened by lawyers for the family of the perpetrators of this heinous crime. They went to extraordinary lengths disputing the evidence of the FBI. They suggested the grandmother of Farook, who lived in the home caring for their six month old baby, knew nothing of the enormous quantities of weapons, ammunitions and pipe bomb IEDs being manufactured in the garage.

There are issues beyond the findings by the FBI of terrorism that are concerning.  Farook went to Saudi Arabia to bring back Ms. Malik to become his fiancée under a K-1 Visa, receiving an immediate green card, without any vetting. There were indications of cell calls made to persons of interest both domestically and internationally involved with extremist Islamist groups. That raises the wisdom of Congress succumbing to both libertarian and civil rights protests about the purported intrusion of privacy under the meta-data collection programs of the NSA, maligned by Snowden and even some Presidential hopefuls.  Without the phone meta-data, national and regional counterterrorism   echelons in this country cannot compile evidence of social networking among political Islamists that might have prevented the 12/2 San Bernardino massacre.  Then there was the abandonment of community profiling programs monitoring local mosques by major metropolitan police departments such as in New York. In France under its counterterrorism program, surveillances of Mosques is far more intrusive to the point of recording Mosque sermons.  It is now time for Congress to correct the errors of its ways and protect us before another ISIS – inspired domestic terrorist event results in deaths and injuries to innocent civilians. Especially protecting soft target venues like malls, movie theaters and office buildings. As the expression goes, perhaps the truth provided by the FBI will make us free to define the threat of Islamic terrorism and resolve to combat it both at home and abroad.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Are we witnessing the end of Syria?

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French Mandate of SyriaReuters has a report on how Quds Force Commander Gen. Soliemani mapped out Russian involvement to save beleaguered Syrian President Bashar Assad, “How Iranian general plotted out Syrian assault in Moscow.”  The strategy unraveling now is a joint air and ground assault to carve out an Alawite bastion in Western and Northwestern Syria ejecting CIA and Coalition-trained opposition, Al Qaeda Al Nusrah Front and Free Syrian Army forces. The air assault to date has focused on attacking these units in a strategic line north out of Damascus. The ground component is composed of fresh Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah units. The Russian air assault contingent based in Latakia province is being bolstered by Russian “volunteers” a page out of Putin’s playbook for seizure of the Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine. In the absence of significant US trained Sunni opposition contingents in this scenario; it would appear that Syria may devolve into a series of sectarian cantons akin to the  French Mandate for Syria granted by the League of Nations in the early 1920’s.

The objective of Iran is to build a virtual Shia crescent from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean coast including bringing in Shia extremist Imams and resettling  Shia refugees from Afghanistan and Pakistan in Syrian areas depopulated of Sunnis and Christians. The Alawites, who are secular, are troubled by this development and many have fled abroad. The Kurds have their de facto canton in Northeastern Syria abutting the Kurdish Regional Government in neighboring Iraq.

Turkey is clearly upset with the Russian presence in Syria, as is NATO, while the US is clearly dithering on what to do. Once again Obama has been outfoxed by Soliemani and Putin. That leaves allies like Israel, the Saudis and the Emirates seeking alternatives for their own sovereign protection. The Saudis and Emirates are talking about a jihad akin to that they funded in Afghanistan with CIA and Pakistan’s ISI in a secret war in the 1980’s that led to the rout of the Soviet 40th Army and gave rise to Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda.

A Der Spiegel article, “The Iranian Project: Why Assad Has Turned to Moscow for Help” portrays  President Bashar al-Assad as caught in a dilemma; “fear of friends”, meaning Iran versus “fear of opposition.”That former fear stems from reliance on Iran Revolutionary Guards, Shia auxiliaries from Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Sadr Brigade in Iraq and Shia fighters from Afghanistan and  Pakistan. They are under the command of Quds Force Commander Soliemani and make up for the decimation and desertions of draftees from the Syrian National Defense Forces. Iran’s intention is to build an Islamic Revolutionary State within  the areas along the Mediterranean coast and Mountains of Northwest Syria. To that end Iran has sent in radical Imams to create Shia religious centers directed at conversion of secular Alawites and Sunnis causing them to flee the country.  Thus, Assad has welcomed the Russia military assistance as Putin has allegedly no such interests in the current campaign, excepting protecting Russian interests in naval and military bases, as well as offshore gas developments.

Note these excerpts:

“Assad and those around him are afraid of the Iranians,” the Russian says. Anger over the arrogance of the Iranians, who treat Syria like a colony, is also part of it, the Russian continues. Most of all, though, the Syrians “mistrust Tehran’s goals, for which Assad’s position of power may no longer be decisive. That is why the Syrians absolutely want us in the country.”

Tehran’s goals go far beyond merely reestablishing the status quo in Syria. In early 2013, Hojatoleslam Mehdi Taeb, one of the planners behind Iran’s engagement in Syria, said: “Syria is the 35th province of Iran and it is a strategic province for us.” For several decades, the alliance between the Assads and Iran was a profitable one, particularly in opposition to the Iraq of Saddam Hussein, which long had the upper hand in the region. But today, Assad depends on Iran to remain in power, and Tehran is taking advantage of the situation.

It is, however, primarily in the civilian sector where significant changes are afoot. Just as in Damascus, Latakia and Jabla, increasing numbers of hosseiniehs — Shiite religious teaching centers — are opening. The centers are aimed at converting Sunnis, and even the Alawites, the denomination to which the Assads belong, to “correct” Shiite Islam by way of sermons and stipends. In addition, the government decreed one year ago that state-run religion schools were to teach Shiite material.

All of this is taking place to the consternation of the Alawites, who have begun to voice their displeasure. “They are throwing us back a thousand years. We don’t even wear headscarves and we aren’t Shiites,” Alawites complained on the Jableh News Facebook page. There were also grumblings when a Shiite mosque opened in Latakia and an imam there announced: “We don’t need you. We need your children and grandchildren.”

Talib Ibrahim, an Alawite communist from Masyaf who fled to the Netherlands many years ago, summarizes the mood as follows: “Assad wants the Iranians as fighters, but increasingly they are interfering ideologically with domestic affairs. The Russians don’t do that.”

Putin may have been prompted by Quds Force Commander Soliemani to aid mutual client Assad because he saw an opportunity to make a power play against the US in the region.  However, the secular Ba’athist Syrian tradition has been virtually suborned by the influx of Iranian Revolutionary Guards ‘and Shia proxies’ with the objective of creating a Khomeinist Revolutionary state. The confluence of those opposing interests, secular and religious, may ultimate end the decades’ long rule of the Assad family. That might lead to an ultimate apocalyptic conflict in Syria between nuclear equipped Shia Iran and the Sunni Salafist Islamic State.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.