32. Armageddon

Clash of Civilizations

Originating in the Jaish al-Ta’ifa al-Mansurah, founded by Jihad-Salafist Abu Omar al-Baghdadi (1964 – 2010) in 2004, the organization affiliated itself with al-Qaeda in Iraq which they fought alongside during the 2003–2006 phase of the Iraqi insurgency, later changing their name to Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) for about a year, before declaring itself to be a worldwide caliphate, called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or simply the Islamic State (IS). ISIS are merely a caricature of Western prejudices of Islam, deliberately manipulated by the media to feed Evangelical paranoia about the same End Times prophecies, which as Graeme Wood observed in “What ISIS Really Wants” for The Atlantic, are diametrically opposite to the End Times expectations that drive ISIS’ military strategy. The mutual paranoia plays into an orchestrated confrontation known as the Clash of Civilizations. As Gilles Keppel explained:

 

Huntington’s clash of civilization theory facilitated the transfer to the Muslim world of a strategic hostility the West had inherited from decades of Cold War. The parallel drawn between the dangers of communism and those of Islam gave Washington’s strategic planners the illusion that they could dispense with analyzing the nature of the Islamic “menace” and could simply transpose the conceptual tools designed to apprehend one threat to the very different realities of the other.

The neoconservative movement played a crucial role in bringing about this rhetorical permutation. It placed a facile way of thinking in the service of a precise political agenda, aimed at expanding the American democratic model into the Middle East – the only part of the world that it had not penetrated at the end of the twentieth century—and at modifying U.S. policy in the region to give Israel’s security precedence over an alliance with the Saudi petro-monarchy.[1]

 

Being that Islam is derived from the same Judeo-Christian tradition, there are many parallels to the prophecies of the Book of Revelation found in Islamic literature, including the coming of Gog and Magog, and the return of Jesus Christ, who will lead righteous Muslims in vanquishing the anti-Christ (referred to as Dajjal), who in this case will have mislead a coalition Jews and Christians. As noted by Jay Michaelson in “Evangelicals & ISIS Feel Fine About the End of the World,” writing in The Daily Beast:

 

What if two mortal enemies both wanted a cataclysmic, world-ending battle, at roughly the same time, in roughly the same place?

Can you say “self-fulfilling prophecy”?[2]

 

The same eschatological expectations are defining the confused and barbaric mission of ISIS. ISIS are the necessary antithesis in the Clash of Civilizations. They are a caricature of Western prejudices of Islam, deliberately manipulated by the media to feed Evangelical paranoia about the End Times. According to Jay Michaelson, who wrote a PhD dissertation on Sabbatai Zevi:

 

Indeed, as a student of millennialism for some time… it was shocking to see the congruence between the Islamic State’s vision of the End Times and that of evangelical Christianity: a large battle somewhere north to northeast of Jerusalem, a final battle in Jerusalem with the near-defeat of the heroic believers by an Antichrist figure, and then Jesus appearing from heaven to win the battle once and for all.[3]

 

ISIS, explained Graeme Wood, pursues the reestablishment of a territorial caliphate that is believed necessary for the coming of the Mahdi, who is believed to precede the return of Jesus. Wood proposes that the capture of the Syrian town of Dabiq, for example, was heralded as a great victory not because it is strategically important—because it isn’t—but because it has been prophesized as the location of the final battle, much like Megiddo, the plain in Northern Israel Armageddon is to take place. Dabiq is also become the name of the ISIS’ newsletter. The specific prophecy is that the armies of “Rome,” which in Islam and Judaism is a euphemism for Christianity, will come to Dabiq, and lose in a great battle. Then, the victorious caliphate will expand. Then the Dajjal will arise from Persia, or ISIS’s current nemesis, Iran. And though most of the caliphate will be defeated, a remainder will retreat to Jerusalem, where Jesus will emerge and finally defeat the Dajjal.

For the most fanatical, the countdown to Armageddon began with the return of the Jews to Israel, followed quickly by further signs pointing to the nearness of a final showdown: nuclear weapons, European integration, Israel’s seizure of Jerusalem, and America’s wars in Afghanistan and the Gulf.[4] The Brookings Institute recently released the results of their survey entitled “American Attitudes Toward the Middle East and Israel,” which discovered that 73 percent of America’s 50 million Evangelical Christians believe that world events would turn against Israel the closer we get to End Times. Additionally, 79 percent of Evangelicals interpret the unfolding violence across the Middle East as a sign that the End Times are near.[5]

In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush told French president Jacques Chirac, “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East.” In what sounded like a conflation of New Age and Evangelical teachings, he urged the French leader, “This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase His people’s enemies before a new age begins.”[6] Chirac consulted a professor at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Lausanne to explain Bush’s reference.[7] Chirac wondered, “how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”[8] In that same year, Bush is also said to have told the Palestinian minister of affairs that with his invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, he was on a divine mission and had received orders from God himself.[9]

The “Clash of Civilization” was first articulated by Samuel Huntington, a friend of Zbigniew Brzezinski, in an article for Foreign Affairs, a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), as deriving from the new reality that, while the age of ideology had ended, the world’s normal state of affairs would be exposed, and characterized by conflict between cultural blocs. He argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural and religious lines. These are Western civilization, which is comprised of US, England, Western Europe and Australia. Latin America is marked by adherence to Catholic Christianity, and Huntington outlines Sub-Saharan Africa as a possible civilization. Most important is the Orthodox world, consisting of the former Soviet Union, and then China and the Islamic world. Huntington also argues that civilizational conflicts are “particularly prevalent between Muslims and non-Muslims,” identifying the “bloody borders” between Islamic and non-Islamic civilizations. Huntington argues that a “Sino-Islamic connection” is emerging in which China will cooperate more closely with Iran, Pakistan, and other states to augment its international position. Russia and India are what Huntington terms ‘swing civilizations’ and may favor either side.

 

Hamas

The State of Israel has also maintained a long-standing relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, with its most recent manifestation being its participation in the founding of an offshoot organization, Hamas. Dmitry Shumsky reported for Haaretz that, between 2012 and 2018, Netanyahu gave Qatar approval to transfer a total of about a billion dollars to Gaza, at least half of which reached Hamas, including its military wing.[10] According to Robert Dreyfuss, who details the US’ troubling relationship with Islamic fundamentalism, in Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam:

 

And beginning in 1967 through the late 1980s, Israel helped the Muslim Brotherhood establish itself in the occupied territories. It assisted Ahmed Yassin, the leader of the Brotherhood, in creating Hamas, betting that its Islamist character would weaken the PLO.[11]

 

According to Charles Freeman, a veteran US diplomat and former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, “Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet, which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO.”[12] In 1965, Yassin had been arrested by Egyptian intelligence, but after 1967, when Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza, Yassin was freed. In 1973, under approval from Shin Bet, Yassin founded the Islamic Center, and began to establish effective control over hundreds of mosques. In 1976, Yassin created the Islamic Association, with membership branches throughout the Gaza Strip, and the movement grew.[13]

Israel’s formal support for Islamic fundamentalism came with the election of the right-wing Likud party. In 1978, Menachim Begin’s new government formally licensed Yassin’s Islamic Association, as part of a strategy to undermine the power of the PLO. One aspect of that strategy was the creation of the Village Leagues, over which Yassin and the Brotherhood exercised much influence. Up to 200 members of the Leagues were given paramilitary training in Israel, among whom Shin Bet recruited many paid informers. David Shipler, a former reporter for the New York Times, cites the Israeli military governor of Gaza as boasting that Israel expressly financed the fundamentalists against the PLO:

 

Politically speaking, Islamic fundamentalists were sometimes regarded as useful to Israel, because they had conflicts with the secular supporters of the PLO. Violence between the two groups erupted occasionally on West Bank university campuses, and the Israeli military governor of the Gaza Strip, Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, once told me how he had financed the Islamic movement as a counterweight to the PLO and the Communists. “The Israeli Government gave me a budget and the military government gives to the mosques,” he said.[14]

 

As Dreyfuss notes, “during the 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza and the West Bank did not support resistance to the Israeli occupation. Most of its energy went to fighting the PLO, especially its more left-wing factions, on university campuses.”[15] US diplomats and CIA officials were aware that Israel was fostering Islamic fundamentalism among the Palestinians, but, as noted Martha Kessler, a senior analyst for the CIA, “we saw Israel cultivate Islam as a counterweight to Palestinian nationalism,” but neither the CIA nor the State department did anything about it. It was primarily Israel’s far right, Begin, Shamir and Ariel Sharon who pursued this policy. It is with them that we see the very cynical basis for the exploitation of Islamic fundamentalism in the region. This was explained by Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad officer who left the agency and became a strong critic, and wrote two books about the service:

 

Supporting the radical elements of Muslim fundamentalism sat well with Mossad's general plan for the region. An Arab world run by fundamentalists would not be party to any negotiations with the West, thus leaving Israel again as the only democratic, rational country in the region. And if the Mossad could arrange for Hamas… to take over the Palestinian streets from the PLO, then the picture would be complete.[16]

 

Very suspiciously, in 1983, Yassin was arrested by Israeli authorities, but although he was sentenced to 13 years in prison, he was released after only a year. Then, in 1986-7, Yassin founded Hamas. According to Philip Wilcox, counterterrorism expert a former US ambassador who headed the US consulate in Jerusalem at the time, “there were persistent rumors that the Israeli secret service gave covert support to Hamas, because they were seen as a rival to the PLO.” Wilcox said the US officials in Jerusalem dealt “regularly and intensively” with Hamas.[17] After the Palestinian uprising of 1987, the PLO accused Hamas and Yassin of acting “with the direct support of reactionary Arab regimes… in collusion with the Israeli occupation.” Yasser Arafat complained to an Italian newspaper: “Hamas is a creation of Israel, which at the time of Prime Minister Shamir, gave them money and more than 700 institutions, among them schools, universities and mosques.” Arafat also maintained that Rabin admitted to him in the presence of Hosni Mubarak that Israel had supported Hamas.[18]

Essentially, as analyst Ray Hannania pointed out, in “Sharon’s Terror Child,” published in Counterpunch, “undermining the peace process has always been the real target of Hamas and has played into the political ambitions of Likud. Every time Israeli and Palestinian negotiators appeared ready to take a major step forward achieving peace, an act of Hamas terrorism has scuttled the peace process and pushed the two sides apart.”[19] This pattern continued throughout the shifting developments of the stalled peace process. In 2001, when the PLO secured a Hamas pledge to halt its terrorist attacks, then prime minister Ariel Sharon ordered the assassinations of one of their top officials. As Alex Fishman commented in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot, “whoever gave the green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he was thereby shattering in one blow the gentlemen’s agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.”[20] In “Hamas and the Transformation of Political Islam in Palestine,” for Current History, Sara Roy wrote: Some analysts maintain that while Hamas leaders are being targeted, Israel is simultaneously pursuing its old strategy of promoting Hamas over the secular nationalist factions as a way of ensuring the ultimate demise of the [Palestinian Authority], and as an effort to extinguish Palestinian nationalism once and for all.[21]

When Arafat died in 2004, he was succeeded as president of Palestine by Mahmoud Abbas. According to an investigative report published by The Arab Times, Abbas’ real name is “Mahmoud-Mirza Abbas,” and claimed that, “Mahmoud Mirza Abbas was born into a completely Baha’i family and Abbas Effendi [Abdul Baha] was his grandfather. [He] has an important position among the Baha’is. His family left Iran following increasing pressure on the Baha’is. Abbas Effendi, the ancestor of Mahmoud Abbas, titled Abdu’l-Baha, is one of the most important figures in the history of the Baha’i sect.”[22] Abbas, who is also a member of the Fatah, was elected in 2005 to serve as President of the Palestinian National Authority. Hamas and Fatah conducted numerous negotiations, leading to an agreement in 2014 for a Unity Government, which lasted until October 2016, and to the recognition of his office by Hamas.[23]

 

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)

Essentially, the Muslim Brotherhood, with its many manifestations like Hamas, Al Qaeda and ISIS, serve an ever-present and manufactured “terrorist” threat, used constantly as a pretext to justify repressive measures at home and expanded imperialistic objectives abroad. Because, despite all the rhetoric employed in the War on Terror about the threat of “political Islam,” unbeknownst to the general public, the manipulation of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the world is still a mainstay of American foreign policy. According to Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer with experience in Iraq and the Middle East, as well as a neo-conservative hardliner with the notorious American Enterprise Institute (AEI):

 

Most American liberals and conservatives will strongly resist the idea that Islam’s clergymen and lay fundamentalists, who usually dislike, if not detest, the United States, Israel, and progressive causes like women’s rights, are the key to liberating the Muslim Middle East from its age-old reflexive hostility to the West. There men, not the much admired liberal Muslim secularists who are always praised and sometimes defended by the American government and press, are the United States’ most valuable potential democratic allies.[24]

 

A declassified secret Defense Intelligence Agency report, written in August 2012, predicted precisely the outcome in Syria, effectively welcoming the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al Qaeda-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to Western claims at the time, the document identifies al-Qaeda in Iraq—in other words, ISIS—and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” and asserts that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria. Mentioning the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality,” the Pentagon report further adds, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”[25]

A key agent of reviving the specter of al Qaeda in Iraq was another prominent Jihadi Salafi, Abu Musab al Zarqawi (1966 – 2006), whose spiritual mentors included veterans of the “Jihad” in Afghanistan, such as Abu Qatada and the Palestinian-Jordanian Abu Mohammed al Maqdisi (b. 1959). Maqdisi, considered the founder of Salafi-Jihadism, spent time in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1980s, where his writings and speeches legitimizing violence influenced al Qaeda. Originally influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, Maqdisi began to see the rulers of the Muslim world as apostates (Kafirs) who should be fought in order to apply the Sharia.

Abu Qatada is a known MI5 agent. A Palestinian militant of Jordanian citizenship, Qatada is under worldwide embargo by the UN for his affiliation with al-Qaeda, and is considered to have acted as the ideologue for that organization and as the leader of terrorist groups in Algeria, the US, Belgium, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, and Jordan. Abu Qatada became infamous after 1994 when he supported the Fatwa of an Algerian cleric that the killing of women and children by the militants in the Algerian civil war was justified. However, in the mid-1990s Abu Qatada offered his services to MI5, boasting of his wide influence, but promising that he would not “bite the hand that fed him.”[26] Britain then ignored warnings from half a dozen governments about his links with terrorist groups and refused to arrest him.

Zarqawi, the initial leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, achieved notoriety for decapitating hostages. However, an ideological rift emerged between he and Maqdisi in 2004, due to Zarqawi’s Takfiri pronouncements against the Shia of Iraq, who had subsequently become the focus of his violence instead of the Americans. Maqdisi was briefly released from prison and criticized Zarqawi’s car-bombing campaign against the Shiah. Those pronouncements led some to accuse him of becoming a tool for the Jordanian or American authorities, an accusation that has been renewed in recent years.[27] The writings of Maqdisi still have a wide following. A study carried out by the Combating Terrorism Center of the United States Military Academy (USMA) concluded that Maqdisi “is the most influential living Jihadi Theorist” and that “by all measures, Maqdisi is the key contemporary ideologue in the Jihadi intellectual universe.” The current name of the group originally founded by Zarqawi, known as the Organization of Monotheism and Jihad, is now the infamous ISIS, or Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, who by continuing to base their violence on the errant Mardin Fatwa, serve as the new specter used to exaggerate fears about Islam as a violent religion, and to provide Israel with the needed pretext to justify continued American support and to expand its colonial ambitions in the region.

 

Project Timber Sycamore 

In the summer of 2012, David H. Petraeus, who was then director of the CIA director, first proposed a covert program of arming and training rebels to fight the Syrian government forces. The proposal forced a debate inside the Obama administration, with some of Obama’s top aides arguing that the chaos in Syria would interfere with the agency’s ability ensure that weapons provided to the rebels could be kept out of the hands of other more pernicious militant groups like the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front. Obama at first rejected the plan, he was convinced otherwise the following year, in part because of intense lobbying by foreign leaders, including King Abdullah II of Jordan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.[28] Obama secretly authorized the CIA to begin arming Syria’s embattled rebels in 2013. Known as Project Timber Sycamore, it was a classified weapons supply and training program run by the CIA and supported by the Great Britain and some Arab intelligence services, in particular Saudi intelligence. The aim of the program was to remove Syrian president Bashar al-Assad from power.

Timber Sycamore, which supplied money, weaponry and training to Syrian opposition groups fighting Syrian government forces in the Syrian Civil War, was, in the words of the New York Times, “one of the most expensive efforts to arm and train rebels since the agency’s program arming the mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the 1980s,” known as Operation Cyclone.[29] According to US officials, the program was run by the CIA's Special Activities Division and has trained thousands of rebels.[30] The Washington Post reported in 2015 classified funds flowing into a CIA program that U.S. officials said has become one the agency’s largest covert operations, with a budget approaching $1 billion a year.[31] US officials said the CIA has trained and equipped nearly 10,000 fighters sent into Syria over years, equating to roughly $100,000. Much of the CIA’s funding went toward running secret training camps in Jordan, gathering intelligence to help guide the operations of agency-backed militias and managing an extensive logistics network used to move fighters, ammunition and weapons into the country. The program did have periods of success, including in 2015 when rebels using tank-destroying missiles, supplied by the C.I.A. and also Saudi Arabia, routed government forces in northern Syria.[32]

In 2019, outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot acknowledged that Israel had provided weaponry to Syrian rebel groups in the Golan Heights during the country’s seven-year civil war.[33] Foreign Policy magazine reported that Israel had started covertly provided arms and funds beginning in 2013 to at least twelve Syrian rebel groups in order to prevent Iran-backed forces and Islamic State Jihadists from setting themselves up along the border. The report, citing interviews with numerous rebel figures, said Israeli support included paying rebel fighters a salary of some $75 a month and providing groups with weapons and other materials. Foreign Policy also reported that Israel’s support went to groups in places such as Quneitra and Daraa. Israel reportedly sent the rebel groups weapons that included assault rifles, machine guns, mortar launchers, and vehicles. It initially sent the rebels US-made MI6 rifles that would not identify Jerusalem as the source, and later began supplying guns and ammo from an Iranian shipment to Lebanon’s Hezbollah group that Israel captured in 2009, according to Foreign Policy.[34]

Timber Sycamore’s principal backers were the United States and Saudi Arabia, but it was also supported by some other regional Arab governments, and by the United Kingdom. The US and Saudi Arabia are the largest contributors, with Saudi Arabia contributing both weapons and large sums of money, and with CIA paramilitary operatives training the rebels.[35] By late 2013, the CIA was working directly with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other nations to arm and train small groups of rebels and send them across the border into Syria. Qatar had paid to smuggle shipments of Chinese-made FN-6 shoulder-fired weapons over the border from Turkey, and Saudi Arabia sent thousands of Kalashnikovs and millions of rounds of ammunition it had bought, sometimes with the CIA’s help. Weapons shipped into Jordan by the CIA and Saudi Arabia have been systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market, according to American and Jordanian officials.[36]

Although the Nusra Front was widely seen as an effective fighting force against Assad’s troops, and its al-Qaeda affiliation made it impossible for the Obama administration to provide direct support for the group, nevertheless, as reported by the New York Times, weapon supplies from Timber Sycamore made it through to them.[37] In April 2013, the Nusra Front was publicly confirmed as the official Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda, after Emir Ayman al-Zawahiri rejected the forced merger attempted by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and ordered the dissolution of newly-formed Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.[38] In March 2015, Nusra joined other Syrian Islamist groups to form a joint command center called the Army of Conquest. In July 2016, Nusra formally re-packaged itself from Jabhat al-Nusra to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (“:Front for the Conquest of the Levant”) and officially announced that it was breaking ties with Al-Qaeda.[39] On January 28, 2017, following violent clashes with Ahrar al-Sham and other rebel groups, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS) merged with four other groups to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).[40]

The combined America, Israeli and Saudi plot finally succeeded in toppling the Asad regime on November 27, 2024, when a coalition of Syrian revolutionary factions called the Military Operations Command led by HTS and supported by allied Turkish-backed groups in the Syrian National Army (SNA), launched an offensive against the pro-government Syrian Arab Army (SAA) forces in Idlib, Aleppo and Hama Governorates in Syria. On November 29, 2024, HTS and later the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) entered Aleppo and captured most of the city. By December 8, they had captured Homs. That same day, rebels also captured the capital Damascus, toppling Bashar al-Assad's government and ending the Assad family’s 53-year long rule over the country.

Speaking to reporters, a jubilant Netanyahu claimed Israel was defeating its enemies “step by step” in a “war of existence that was imposed upon us,” and cited Assad’s Syria as a “central element of Iran’s axis of evil.”[41] Netanyahu repeated his previous assertion that Assad’s fall was the “direct result of the heavy blows we landed on Hamas, on Hezbollah, and on Iran,” and said that ever since the October 7 attacks, Israel has been working in a “systematic, measured and orderly fashion” to dismantle the Iranian axis. Lazar Braman.[42]

“Nobody knows if Iran and the regime would have been weakened without the recent Israeli attacks in Syria, which have allowed us to return and free the lands and the country,” a man described as an opposition activist from the Aleppo area told Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.[43] Another rebel from the Idlib area thanked Israel and said the opposition was “very satisfied” with its actions against Hezbollah and other Iran-backed players. Both said the rebels had no issue with Israel. “We love Israel and we were never its enemies,” the man from the Idlib area said. “[Israel] isn’t hostile to those who are not hostile toward it. We don’t hate you, we love you very much.”[44]

In an interview with the Saudi state-owned Al Arabiya news television channel, the leader of HTS, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, a former member of al-Qaeda and the founder of the Nusra Front, also known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani provided a convoluted list of excuses to disguise the role his organization played in accomplishing Israel’s goals in Syria, which also clearly illustrates the utterly pitiful state the Muslim world finally finds itself today, who are now hostages in their own lands:

 

The region was exposed to a very large regional war. There was a talk about Israel’s intervention in the region and in Syria, and it was said that it would be the biggest war after Gaza and Lebanon, and this was the reality. Because if the Israeli forces enter Syria, it is necessary that the Iranians and Iraqis will clash to confront this advance. Therefore, Turkey will feel pressure by the advance. It will have, in my opinion, required Turkey to take a position in favor of the Iranians over Israel. This will certainly be taken advantage of by Russia to divert attention from the Ukrainian war, and there will be a US response, and it will not be without targets inside Tehran and the attacks of the US from some of the Gulf bases, which will lead to Tehran attacking some of the US Gulf bases, and it will cause a very big crisis. This war secured all the region from these potential threats, and secure the security of the Gulf [Saudi Arabia] for 50 years to come, as well as the security of the Turkish people, and the national security of Syria in the first place, and the entire region.[45]

 

One of HTS’s first decisions was to ban Palestinian military action in all of Syria, in addition to closing any headquarters or corridor that serves the resistance. Although Israel also launched extensive aerial and naval strikes on Syrian military targets across the country, under an operation codenamed Operation Arrow of Bashan, HTS chose not to respond Israel’s open aggression against their country.[46] Although they are not talking about normalizing relations with Israel, they are talking about practical steps by the new government to prevent any existing or potential resistance against Israel from Syrian territory.[47] The newly appointed governor of Damascus Maher Marwan said that Syria’s new government did not want to seek conflict with Israel. “We have no fear towards Israel and our problem is not with Israel,” Marwan said. “We don't want to meddle in anything that will threaten Israel's security or any other country’s security.”[48]

 


[1] Gilles Keppel. The War for Muslim Minds, p. 62.

[2] Jay Michaelson. “Evangelicals & ISIS Feel Fine About the End of the World.” The Daily Beast (March 8, 2015).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Richard G. Kyle. Apocalyptic Fever: End-Time Prophecies in Modern America. (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2012), p. 4.

[5] Shirley Telhami. “American Attitudes Toward the Middle East and Israel.” Centre for Middle East Policy at Brookings (November, 2015).

[6] Jean Edward Smith. Dictionary of Biblical Prophecy and End Times (Simon and Schuster, 2016) p. 339.

[7] Wessels. The Torah, the Gospel, and the Qur’an, pp. 193, fn 6.

[8] Clive Hamilton. “Bush’s Shocking Biblical Prophecy Emerges: God Wants to ‘Erase’ Mid-East Enemies ‘Before a New Age Begins’” Alternet (May 24, 2009)

[9] Wessels. The Torah, the Gospel, and the Qur’an, p. 193.

[10] Dmitry Shumsky. “Why Did Netanyahu Want to Strengthen Hamas?” Haaretz (October 11, 2023). Retrieved from https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-11/ty-article/.premium/netanyahu-needed-a-strong-hamas/0000018b-1e9f-d47b-a7fb-bfdfd8f30000?dicbo=v2-8zKZWu8&utm_source=traffic.outbrain.com&utm_medium=referrer&utm_campaign=outbrain_organic

[11] Dreyfuss. Devil’s Game, p. 191.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., p. 196.

[14] David Shipler. Arabs and Jews: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land (New York: Penguin, 1987), p. 177. Cited in Dreyfuss. Devil’s Game, pp. 196–197.

[15] Dreyfuss. Devil’s Game, p. 207.

[16] Ostrovsky. The Other Side of Deception, pp. 196-97. Cited in Dreyfuss. Devil’s Game, p. 207.

[17] Dreyfuss. Devil’s Game, p. 208.

[18] Corriere della Sera (December 11, 2001). Cited Dreyfuss. Devil’s Game, p. 209.

[19] Ray Hanania. “How the Likud Bloc Mid-wifed the Birth of Hamas.” Counterpunch (January 18– 19, 2003).

[20] Cited in Dreyfuss. Devil’s Game, p. 212.

[21] Sara Roy. “Hamas and the Transformation of Political Islam in Pales­ tine.” Current History (January 2003), p. 14.

[22] Fajr News Agency (February 2008); Cited in “Fajr News Agency: Baha’i origins of Mahmoud Abbas.” Archives of Bahai Persecution in Iran. Retrieved from https://iranbahaipersecution.bic.org/archive/fajr-news-agency-bahai-origins-mahmoud-abbas

[23] Herb Keinon. “Politics: Fatah-Hamas unity talks breed Likud harmony.” The Jerusalem Post (May 10, 2014).

[24] Reuel Marc Gerecht. The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Funda­mentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy (Washington, D.C.: The AEI Press, 2004), p. 10. Cited in Dreyfuss. Devil’s Game, p. 212.

[25] Seumas Milne. “Now the truth emerges: how the US fueled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq.” The Guardian (June 3, 2015).

[26] Daniel McGrory & Richard Ford “Al-Qaeda cleric exposed as an MI5 double agent.” Times Online (March 25, 2004).

[27] Robert F. Worth. “Credentials Challenged, Radical Quotes West Point,” New York Times (April 29, 2009).

[28] Mark Mazzetti, Adam Goldman & Michael S. Schmidt. “Behind the Sudden Death of a $1 Billion Secret C.I.A. War in Syria.” New York Times (August 2, 2017). Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/world/middleeast/cia-syria-rebel-arm-train-trump.html

https://archive.ph/bsC4Z#selection-1029.0-1047.434

[29] Ibid.

[30] Mark Mazzettii & Ali Younes. “C.I.A. Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say.” The New York Times (June 26, 2016). Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/world/middleeast/us-relies-heavily-on-saudi-money-to-support-syrian-rebels.html

[31] Greg Miller & Karen DeYoung. “Secret CIA effort in Syria faces large funding cut.” Washington Post (June 12, 2015). Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/lawmakers-move-to-curb-1-billion-cia-program-to-train-syrian-rebels/2015/06/12/b0f45a9e-1114-11e5-adec-e82f8395c032_story.html

[32] Ibid.

[33] Judah Ari Gross. “IDF chief finally acknowledges that Israel supplied weapons to Syrian rebels.” Times of Israel (January 14, 2019). Retrieved from https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-chief-acknowledges-long-claimed-weapons-supply-to-syrian-rebels/

[34] “Inside Israel’s Secret Program to Back Syrian Rebels.” Foreign Policy (September 6, 2018). Retrieved from https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/06/in-secret-program-israel-armed-and-funded-rebel-groups-in-southern-syria/

[35] Mazzettii & Younes. “C.I.A. Arms for Syrian Rebels Supplied Black Market, Officials Say.”

[36] Ibid.

[37] Mark Mazzetti, Adam Goldman & Michael S. Schmidt. “Behind the Sudden Death of a $1 Billion Secret C.I.A. War in Syria.” New York Times (August 2, 2017). Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/world/middleeast/cia-syria-rebel-arm-train-trump.html

https://archive.ph/bsC4Z#selection-1029.0-1047.434

[38] “Zawahiri disbands main Qaeda faction in Syria.” Agence France-Presse (November 8, 2013). Retrieved from http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/131108/zawahiri-disbands-main-qaeda-faction-syria-0

[39] “Syrian Nusra Front announces split from al-Qaeda.” BBC News (28 July 2016). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20160730021539/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36916606

[40] Thomas Joscelyn. “Al Qaeda and allies announce ‘new entity’ in Syria.” Long War Journal (January 28, 2017). Retrieved from https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2017/01/al-qaeda-and-allies-announce-new-entity-in-syria.php

[41] “After fall of Assad, PM says Israel is ‘transforming the face of the Middle East’.” The Times of Israel (December 9, 2024). https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-fall-of-assad-pm-says-israel-is-transforming-the-face-of-the-middle-east/

[42] Ibid.

[43] “Syria rebels appear to credit Israeli strikes on Hezbollah with aiding shock advance” Times of Israel (December 2, 2024). Retrieved from https://www.timesofisrael.com/syria-rebels-appear-to-credit-israeli-strikes-on-hezbollah-with-aiding-shock-advance/

[44] Ibid.

[45] Islamic Resistance. X (January 1, 20254). Retrieved from https://x.com/iran_amazing/status/1875106678347383080

[46] Ibrahim al-Amin. Al Akbar (December 13, 2024), Retrieved from https://x.com/sayed_ridha/status/1867582612476506225

[47] Ibid.

[48] Hadeel Al-Shalchi. “New leaders in Damascus call for cordial Syria ties with a resistant Israel.” NPR (December 27, 2024). Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2024/12/27/g-s1-40144/syria-israel-relations-hts-damascus-governor

Divide & Conquer