Western governments and media – opposing one dictatorship, supporting extermination of Palestinians

Israel's genocide of the Palestinians continues, with scores murdered in Gaza last night, shortly after the Assad regime in Syria was overthrown. The same media and politicians who have shown a callous indifference to the mass killing of Palestinians, arming and protecting israeli genociders over 14 months, now claim to be interested in the welfare of the Syrian people.

There has been extensive coverage of Assad’s mass imprisonment, torture and killings of suspected or real opponents, which contrasts sharply with the same media's cover-up of Israel's equally grisly or even more barbaric record and continuing practice, including public demonstrations in support of the rape of Palestinian prisoners.

In Gaza and Lebanon, winter cold and rain will join the other allies of Israel - devastation, disease and hunger, the US, UK and NATO - to continue the genocide, while Israel gloats that its most dangerous enemy, Hezbollah, will be isolated by the demise of the Assad regime.

But the record of the Assads, père et fils, shows a violent repressive regime that collapsed because it had few defenders inside devastated Syria or among the majority of the Syrian people, now displaced or living as refugees across the Middle East and Europe.

There is little doubt the majority of Syrians are glad to see the end of a bloody regime that offered no hope to the Syrian people. The situation, however, is one of great peril.

Even after the fall of the Assad regime, harsh and suffocating Western sanctions are to remain in full force, impeding the task of reconstruction that the Syrian people are desperate to undertake. With explicit British Government support, the Israeli military, wholly unprovoked, is bombing military and civilian targets across Syria, including airports. Israeli tanks are advancing into some areas abandoned by the disintegrating Syrian Army.

Israel prefers weak, preferably devastated Arab neighbours.

The vultures in Washington are still squatting on, pillaging Syrian oil and gas wealth. Turkey wants to be repaid in full for its support of the new regime by the crushing of the Kurds. Russia wants to keep its bases and port in the country.

A major element of the jihadist forces now in control across most of Syria, e.g HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) are offshoots of Al Qaeda or similar. The UK and other Western governments are now discussing how to remove HTS from their 'terrorist' lists.

Some of these groups have a record of cooperation with the Zionist regime; as far back as 2017 the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel was supplying financial and logistical aid to some opposition groups. "Israel stood by our side in a heroic way,” it quoted a spokesman for the rebel group Fursan al-Joulan. “We wouldn’t have survived without Israel’s assistance.” More recently, rebel spokesmen have appeared on Israeli TV channels to thank Israel for its attacks on Hezbollah and Syrian government forces that contributed to their victory.

It remains to be seen if the Syrian people can prevent the vultures, domestic and foreign, destroying what is left of Syria and create a popular democratic regime. Any government responsive to the will of the Syrian people will necessarily come into collision with the genocidal regime that is today bombing and occupying part of their country.
10 March 2024
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign www.scottishpsc.org.uk
Gaza Genocide Emergency Commitee - Glasgow https://ggec.org.uk