Syria’s new government may view peace with Israel as a top priority, but Israel seems to be heading in a different direction, as airstrikes continue to escalate against sites across Syria, and Israeli ground forces are taking more and more strategic locations in southern Syria.
Locals reported huge explosions in the northern Syrian city of al-Safira, just east of Aleppo. There were at least seven airstrikes reported against different targets in the city, mostly targeting defense industry factories, but also some hitting research centers in the area.
The attacks were carried out overnight Wednesday into Thursday morning. Locals said the explosions were so huge they “turned night into day.” There are still no official figures on the casualties from any of these latest attacks.
This is a continuation of the Israeli attacks on Syria’s military infrastructure, strikes which have escalated since the recent regime change. Israel may have backed that regime change, but it’s not stopping them from attacking Syria every chance they get.
On Wednesday, Israel also carried out an attack on the Tal al-Shahem military camp. The camp is near Damascus and overlooks the southern Quneitra Province. Since Israel is in the process of occupying more and more of that province, the camp apparently was perceived as a potential obstacle to their ground operations.
Israel used the regime change as a pretext to seize substantial land in the demilitarized zone between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria. Since then they’ve moved deeper into Syria, and Wednesday they reached the al-Mantara Dam in Quneitra Province.
The dam is the largest in southern Syria, and gives them effective control over the six major sources of fresh water in southern Syria. They have also recently taken the al-Wahda Dam along the Yarmouk River Basin.
It is time to bring our friend and ally, Israel, under some kind of control. Expanding conflict is not in our best interest!!!
"Our friend and ally"? Every single word in that phrase sounds wrong, except maybe the conjuntion "and", I guess.
This is clearly evidence that Israel was surprised by the fall of Assad, and is taking advantage of the situation. Israel is terrified of the new government in Syria and thinks that by destroying Syria's military capabilities, expanding its presence in Syria and igniting sectarian divisions it will be in control of the situation. What it is doing in Syria will turn out to be more devastating for it than the repercussions of Gaza. Next time around not only will Syria be an additional war front but part of a more potent axis of resistance that if the groups in the ME get their act together will unify against Israel.
I rather think that they were not at all surprised and are just making sure that Syria is not a viable state ever again, at least not in terms military.
@luisaldamiz:disqus I humbly request that whenever you get a chance to listen to this podcast. While the guest speaker may not be right on each small point I side with his overall perspective. Muslims in the West have the luxury of understanding both perspectives for better evaluations. I know your not going to like his Islamic ideology but just ignore the references and focus on his overall perspective. It can only make you a better analyst not worse.
Also @disqus_qhuce9v5DO:disqus and @donnavolatile:disqus will greatly benefit from this podcast.
Not going to be able to put up with all that religious fanaticism of almost two hours, sorry. Society must be secular. Medieval ideologies are obsolete and pretty much evil, all of them. We did not make revolutions just to go back so many steps into obscurantism (an obscurantism that has actually weakened and defeated the so-called “Muslim World” anyhow and that is always directed by the CIA and the Mossad from the shadows). That’s why I tend to support Algeria, West Sahara and the PLPF, as well as the SDF.
Apoism (which the SDF spouse) is an ideology emanating from West Asia and apt for West Asians. Not only for them: that’s something we should imitate in Europe and the so-called “the West”, as well as everywhere on Earth.
I watched segments anyhow, for example the one on Sharia, and I laugh at the pretense of “covenant with the Jews and the Christians”, all of them are equally fanatic and terribly deceived. Agnosticism is the only thing that allows for a working society invested in respect and science. That’s true even for Muslim history, as Islam was only powerful when it was not fanatic, when it was most open minded, and collapsed when it folded into Sharia ideology. That’s also true for the West, which was weak and barbaric under Christianity and only flourished with free thinkers from the Renaissance onwards. That’s true also for very different civilizations such as China, which also folded into reactionary obscurantism instead of opening themselves to what the broader world had to offer and that ended up with them losing the race to globalization and global hegemony.
Legend has that Zeus, the Patriarch God of the ancient Greeks, was worried about a prophecy that he’d be dethroned by one of his children, he demanded that Prometheus (lit. “Foresight”) told him who was prophesized to to kill him, but Prometheus, benevolent creator of Humankind, refused to speak. Thus Zeus chained him to the Caucasus and had his pet eagle eat his liver by the day, which regenerated every night (we’re talking gods here, not mortals). Prometheus never spoke but we now know perfectly well who was destinied to overthrow the Patriarch Deity: Athena, Goddess of Reason, who is so powerful that gave Zeus the worst headache ever. That Divine Replacement already happened more than two centuries ago and all what remains of believes on the Patriarchal Deity is nothing but residues, embers of a bygone era.
Update your beliefs.
Thank you Manju, I was just trying to show you a different perspective. The idea was to learn, not to offend or convert. What will win out in the future is the ideology/govt that provides people with justice and a dignified life. He said not thing in principle that was wrong. Sure tradition can be limiting but it can also be stabilizing. What is a given is that the armed resistance is mostly Islamic that's just a fact. Just like the shia in iran and the Taliban inherited the government so will Hamas, hezbollah and in Syria. And any other country like Egypt, Jordan or Saudi Arabia that falls will fall to an Islamic government. The people want Islam and if others hate Islam, than just say we don't support the people.
I understand your intent but I just have no patience for the religious blah-blah. Gods do not exist and all that happens to be nothing but reactionary discourse, very bad for everyone but very especially the peoples dumped into the neocolonial “Sunni Muslim global ghetto” that the USA has been designing since at least the 80s. All that only serves US neocolonialism, sometimes by providing a plausible target, most of the time by de-stabilizing all countries that disobey the Empire.
You just have to observe what Erdogan does (nothing useful, mafioso dealings with Israel) or what Bin Salman does (2/3 of the same) or what Al Julani does (same thing, he’s just a puppet of Erdogan, will never even bark at Israel). Talking is easy but the real deal is Yemen, which do mention their god but focus on doing actual resistance to colonial oppression and may well end liberating all Arabia some day.
There’s a Christian saying (attributed to Jesus): “you will know them by their deeds”, which I like enough to apply literally: less talk, more doing.
People can have Islam at the mosque, society can’t be religious.
Again, the point was to focus on his analysis. Also, keep an open mind of how others view tradition and reason. Our problems in the Middle East are not because of religion, they are in spite of religion. Israel is the foreigner and can't accept a competitor in the region. Turkey, Iran and the Arabs will fight but they are indigenous to the region.
If we look at past colonial revolutions few if any are accomplished in less than 5 years. October 7th has kicked off the war of liberation. It was dubbed Aqsa Flood, and each superceding group attacking israel will latch on to this beginning.
What Israel has been doing for the past seven decades, and what it is doing now in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen has only one price. Its existence. Full Stop.
“Our problems in the Middle East” shouldn’t be our problems, it should be the problems of the peoples of the Middle East — and of course ideally there would be no problems anymore but in any case they shouldn’t be “our problems”. They are “our problems” only because of the colonialist or “imperialist” attitude we have.
We (the West, very especially the USA) have fed those problems very actively and have done so largely by stimulating, deforming, twisting Sunni Islam (or Islam in general), destroying every single secularist regime and replacing them by Islamo-fascist regimes. This is true for Afghanistan (which was doing very well with socialism), Libya, Iraq and now Syria. The only country that avoided such destiny was Algeria, not without a major fight anyhow (not just Afghanistan was attacked by Reagan’s and Bush’ investment on Islamo-fascist terrorism in the 80s, Algeria was too).
In the 90s, you wouldn’t see almost a single headscarf in Istambul and the Muslims opening shop in my city (Bilbao, Basque Country) had no problem with alcohol or pork (they’re typically Moroccans but Bangladeshis and Pakistanis also sold alcohol then, and even in the early 00s). Now, thanks to decades of Western manipulation (and happy Sunni tyrants’ compliance), many if not most Muslims seem like posessed by totalitarian brainwashing: they don’t live in reality anymore but in the dark dreams of religious dogmatism. That’s bad and that’s no “cultural”, it is political, ideological and a tool for Western imperialism.
Al Aqsa Flood is respectable (even if daredevil) but not a single other Sunni Muslim force is backing Hamas or the Palestinian struggle in general (Hamas is not the only faction in active fighting: Islamic Jihad, the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), etc. are also fighting as much as they can (from Gaza, from Lebanon and now in Syria against HTS as well, as these have made one of their first totalitarian tasks to destroy the Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and thus much of the PFLP, the most important Palestinian Marxist faction).
What neither Hamas, nor Hizbollah, nor Iran are is revolutionary, they are nationalist forces but not progressive in any way, all the opposite. As for the rest, most of Sunni Muslim factions, be them states or outright terrorist organizations, they are not even nationalist but total bootlicking vassals of the US Empire (and by extension Israel). Ansarullah however is rather revolutionary, as they emerged from a real revolution (local version of the Arab Spring, the only one such revolution to have largely succeeded) and are clearly operating with a revolutionary internationalist and very fearless mindset and, unlike the ayatollahs’ regime of Iran, they do not exclude other forces (the repression under Khomeini and up to this very day has been brutal) but actually lead a national coalition.
Tradition is tried and true. Reason sometimes oversimplifies complicated reality; we don’t always understand reality, but we can continue what works well without complete understanding.
Tradition is tried … true.
Tried AND true? Not so much. Circumstances change. Things are discovered.
Tradition isn’t something that should automatically be broken from any time anyone has some new idea. But neither is there anything particularly sacred about it.
A bad tradition, or one that no longer works, should be changed. You start with tradition, not from a blank using reason.
Can’t say I disagree.
No society other than the first starts from a tabula rasa.
Tradition is ALWAYS going to be there.
And societies will ALWAYS evolve from the traditions they have and into new ones.
Reason isn’t a terrible tool for analyzing what forms of evolution might work out better or worse.
In ancient Greece and early Rome, it was permitted to abandon “unfit” infants to die of exposure. That was the tradition. Later, it was abandoned.
You can’t really abandon a tradition like that until you have a means to feed them all. There’s usually a reason for traditions, though they’re often imperfect.
I’m not saying the motive was to reduce excess population. It might have just been an attempt at removing harmful mutations and unsuccessful genetic combinations and phenotypes. I just assume reducing overpopulation was part of it. Maybe the poor tend to look bad when born.
What’s interesting is evolution, adaptation, is always happening. Babies probably looked better as a result, leading to fewer being exposed.
Anyway, reason vs tradition is supposedly one of the left vs right divides.
For me, the divide isn’t reason versus tradition. It’s freedom. Tradition is fine until it tells me I can’t do X — not because there’s a reason argument that doing X is wrong, but simply because X isn’t traditional.
With freedom, better traditions develop to supplant worse ones. Without freedom, worse traditions continue without alternatives.
… and Iran has announced of new resistance developing in Syria…!
Greater Israel…?! If Israel invades Syria for More Land… They would have to confront Russia on its West Coast…!
Maybe Russia is content with having bases in Israeli territory.
But Israel would not be…! Greater Israel ambition doesn't allow that…!
Remember Israeli jets hiding behind Russian plane (without identifying it, or did but ignored it) which ended up on Russian plane being shut down by Syrian fire…!
Besides, Russia main mission in Syria was to fight terrorists and the terrorist are now friend of Israel or vice versa…!
Russia has to stay in Syria to maintain the equilibrium and make sure Israel does not aim to occupy Syrian coast…!
Fortune favours the bold. https://www.rt.com/news/610471-israel-2025-victory-middle-east/
Israel's message to Erdogan: you can have Syria… but only as a wasteland.
Whoever controls the water also controls the land. Because without water, the land is uninhabitable. There are substitutes for oil, but there is no substitute for water.
Israel can now control 30% of Syria's water supply and 40% of Jordan's, according to the hyperlinked article in The Cradle. With seizure of the al-Mantara dam, perhaps even more.
Israel – the largest, most heavily funded terrorist group in history.
Children amidst the rubble….
What a vile, violent excuse for humans. Ugly.
Our news media will not cover this. That indicates control.
The water must flow.
He who controls the water controls the Universe.
Dune references.
How apropos!…