{"id":11596,"date":"2024-12-14T05:03:21","date_gmt":"2024-12-14T05:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=11596"},"modified":"2024-12-14T05:03:23","modified_gmt":"2024-12-14T05:03:23","slug":"how-the-us-and-israel-destroyed-syria-and-called-it-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=11596","title":{"rendered":"How the US and Israel Destroyed Syria and Called It Peace???"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>In short, American interference, at the behest of Satanyahoo\u2019s Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins, with over a million dead and open wars raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/palestine\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Palestine<\/a>, and with Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal, being pushed against its own inclinations to this eventuality.All this is in the service of a profoundly unjust cause: to deny Palestinians their political rights in the service of Zionist extremism based on the 7th century BCE\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/opinion\/israel-s-policy-of-genocide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Book of Joshua<\/a>.Remarkably, according to that text\u2014one relied on by Israel\u2019s own religious zealots\u2014the Israelites were not even the original inhabitants of the land.Rather, according the text, God instructs Joshua and his warriors to commit multiple genocides to conquer the land.Against this backdrop, the Arab-Islamic nations and indeed almost all of the world have repeatedly united in the call for a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/opinion\/israel-two-state-solution\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">two-state solution and peace<\/a>\u00a0between Israel and Palestine.Instead of the two-state solution, Israel and the U.S. have made a desert and called it peace.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.unz.com\/article\/how-the-us-and-israel-destroyed-syria-and-called-it-peace\/?utm_source=email&amp;utm_campaign=article\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/www.unz.com\/article\/how-the-us-and-israel-destroyed-syria-and-called-it-peace\/?utm_source=email&amp;utm_campaign=article<\/a>  How the US and Israel Destroyed Syria and Called It Peace, by Jeffrey D. Sachs &#8211; The Unz Review<strong>In the famous lines of Tacitus, Roman historian, \u201cTo ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.\u201dIn our age, it is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/israel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Israel<\/a>\u00a0and the U.S. that make a desert and call it peace.<\/strong>The story is simple.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.icj-cij.org\/node\/204176\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">In stark violation of international law<\/a>, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers claim the right to rule over seven million Palestinian Arabs. When Israel\u2019s occupation of Palestinian lands leads to militant resistance, Israel labels the resistance \u201cterrorism\u201d and calls on the U.S. to overthrow the Middle East governments that back the \u201cterrorists.\u201d The U.S., under the sway of the Israel Lobby, goes to war on Israel\u2019s behalf.The fall of Syria this week is the culmination of the Israel-U.S. campaign against Syria that goes back to 1996 with Netanyahu\u2019s arrival to office as Prime Minister. The Israel-U.S. war on Syria escalated in 2011 and 2012, when Barack Obama covertly tasked the CIA with the overthrow of the Syrian Government in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/08\/02\/world\/middleeast\/cia-syria-rebel-arm-train-trump.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Operation Timber Sycamore<\/a>. That effort finally came to \u201cfruition\u201d this week, after\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ohchr.org\/en\/stories\/2023\/05\/behind-data-recording-civilian-casualties-syria\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">more than 300,000<\/a>\u00a0deaths in the Syrian war since 2011.Syria\u2019s fall came swiftly because of more than a decade of crushing economic sanctions, the burdens of war, the U.S. seizure of Syria\u2019s oil, Russia\u2019s priorities regarding the conflict in Ukraine, and most immediately, Israel\u2019s attacks on Hezbollah, which was the key military backstop to the Syrian Government. No doubt Assad often misplayed his own hand and faced severe internal discontent, but his regime was targeted for collapse for decades by the U.S. and Israel.Before the U.S.-Israel campaign to overthrow Assad began in earnest in 2011, Syria was a functioning, growing middle-income country. In January 2009,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imf.org\/-\/media\/Websites\/IMF\/imported-full-text-pdf\/external\/pubs\/ft\/scr\/2009\/_cr0955.ashx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the IMF Executive Board<\/a>\u00a0had this to say:Executive Directors welcomed Syria\u2019s strong macroeconomic performance in recent years, as manifested in the rapid non-oil GDP growth, comfortable level of foreign reserves, and low and declining government debt. This performance reflected both robust regional demand and the authorities\u2019 reform efforts to shift toward a more market- based economy.Since 2011, the Israel-U.S. perpetual war on Syria, including bombing, jihadists, economic sanctions, U.S. seizure of Syria\u2019s oil fields, and more, has sunk the Syrian people into misery.In the immediate two days following the collapse of the government, Israel\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2024\/12\/10\/middleeast\/israel-syria-assad-strikes-intl\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">conducted about 480 strikes\u00a0<\/a>across Syria, and completely\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.navalnews.com\/naval-news\/2024\/12\/israeli-navy-destroys-syrian-fleet-in-latakia\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">destroyed the Syrian fleet<\/a>\u00a0in Latakia. Pursuing his expansionist agenda, Prime Minister Netanyahu illegally claimed control over the demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights and declared that the Golan Heights will be a part of the State of Israel \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2024\/dec\/09\/israel-seizes-syrian-buffer-zone-amid-airstrikes-on-regime-weapons-depots\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">for eternity<\/a>.\u201dNetanyahu\u2019s ambition to transform the region through war, which dates back almost three decades, is playing out in front of our eyes. In a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.il\/en\/pages\/spoke-press091224\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">press conference<\/a>\u00a0on December 9th, the Israeli prime minister boasted of an \u201cabsolute victory,\u201d justifying the on-going genocide in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/gaza\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gaza<\/a>\u00a0and escalating violence throughout the region:I ask you, just think, if we had acceded to those who told us time and again: \u2018\u201dThe war must be stopped\u201d\u2013 we would not have entered Rafah, we would not have seized the Philadelphia Corridor, we would not have eliminated Sinwar, we would not have surprised our enemies in Lebanon and the entire world in a daring operation-stratagem, we would not have eliminated Nasrallah, we would not have destroyed Hezbollah\u2019s underground network, and we would not have exposed Iran\u2019s weakness. The operations that we have carried out since the beginning of the war are dismantling the axis brick by brick.The long history of Israel\u2019s campaign to overthrow the Syrian Government is not widely understood, yet the documentary record is clear. Israel\u2019s war on Syria began with U.S. and Israeli neoconservatives in 1996, who fashioned a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dougfeith.com\/docs\/Clean_Break.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Clean Break<\/a>\u201d strategy for the Middle East for Netanyahu as he came to office. The core of the \u201cclean break\u201d strategy called for the Israel (and the US) to reject \u201cland for peace,\u201d the idea that Israel would withdraw from the occupied Palestinian lands in return for peace. Instead, Israel would retain the occupied Palestinian lands, rule over the Palestinian people in an Apartheid state, step-by-step ethnically cleanse the state, and enforce so-called \u201cpeace for peace\u201d by overthrowing neighboring governments that resisted Israel\u2019s land claims.The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dougfeith.com\/docs\/Clean_Break.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Clean Break strategy<\/a>\u00a0asserts, \u201cOur claim to the land\u2014to which we have clung for hope for 2000 years\u2014is legitimate and noble,\u201d and goes on to state, \u201cSyria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon\u2026\u201dIn his 1996 book\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.fr\/books?id=G9xhPwAACAAJ&amp;source=gbs_book_other_versions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Fighting Terrorism<\/em><\/a>, Netanyahu set out the new strategy. Israel would not fight the terrorists; it would fight the states that support the terrorists. More accurately, it would get the US to do Israel\u2019s fighting for it. As he elaborated in 2001:The first and most crucial thing to understand is this: There is no international terrorism without the support of sovereign states.\u2026 Take away all this state support, and the entire scaffolding of international terrorism will collapse into dust.Netanyahu\u2019s strategy was integrated into U.S. foreign policy. Taking out Syria was always a key part of the plan. This was confirmed to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fAnNJW9_KYA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">General Wesley Clark<\/a>\u00a0after 9\/11. He was told, during a visit at the Pentagon, that \u201cwe\u2019re going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years\u2014we\u2019re going to start with Iraq, and then we\u2019re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.\u201d Iraq would be first, then Syria, and the rest. (Netanyahu\u2019s campaign for the Iraq War is spelled out in detail in Dennis Fritz\u2019s new book,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Deadly-Betrayal-United-States-Invaded\/dp\/168219437X?ref_=ast_author_mpb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Deadly Betrayal<\/a>. The role of the Israel Lobby is spelled out in Ilan Papp\u00e9\u2019s new book,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Lobbying-Zionism-Both-Sides-Atlantic-ebook\/dp\/B0CBKWVX79\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic<\/a>). The insurgency that hit U.S. troops in Iraq set back the five-year timeline, but did not change the basic strategy.The U.S. has by now led or sponsored wars against Iraq (invasion in 2003), Lebanon (U.S. funding and arming Israel), Libya (NATO bombing in 2011), Syria (CIA operation during 2010\u2019s), Sudan (supporting rebels to break Sudan apart in 2011), and Somalia (backing Ethiopia\u2019s invasion in 2006). A prospective U.S. war with Iran, ardently sought by Israel, is still pending.Strange as it might seem, the CIA has repeatedly backed Islamist Jihadists to fight these wars, and jihadists have just toppled the Syrian regime. The CIA, after all, helped to create al-Qaeda in the first place by training, arming, and financing the Mujahideen in Afghanistan from the late 1970s onward. Yes, Osama bin Laden later turned on the U.S., but his movement was a U.S. creation all the same. Ironically, as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/seymour-hersh\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Seymour Hersh<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/seymourhersh.substack.com\/p\/the-fall-of-bashar-assad?utm_source=post-email-title&amp;publication_id=1377040&amp;post_id=152938214&amp;utm_campaign=email-post-title&amp;isFreemail=false&amp;r=1eogb&amp;triedRedirect=true&amp;utm_medium=email\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">confirms<\/a>, it was Assad\u2019s intelligence that \u201ctipped off the U.S. to an impending Al Qaeda bombing attack on the headquarters of the U.S. Navy\u2019s Fifth Fleet.\u201dOperation Timber Sycamore was a billion-dollar CIA covert program launched by Obama to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. The CIA funded, trained, and provided intelligence to radical and extreme Islamist groups. The CIA effort also involved a \u201crat line\u201d to run weapons from Libya (attacked by NATO in 2011) to the jihadists in Syria. In 2014, Seymour Hersh described the operation in his piece\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/the-paper\/v36\/n08\/seymour-m.-hersh\/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cThe Red Line and the Rat Line\u201d<\/a>:\u201cA highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdo\u011fan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi\u2019s arsenals into Syria.\u201dSoon after the launch of Timber Sycamore, in March 2013, at a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/obamawhitehouse.archives.gov\/the-press-office\/2013\/03\/20\/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-netanyahu-israel-joint-press-\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">joint conference<\/a>\u00a0by President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House, Obama said: \u201cWith respect to Syria, the United States continues to work with allies and friends and the Syrian opposition to hasten the end of Assad\u2019s rule.\u201dTo the U.S.-Israeli Zionist mentality, a call for negotiation by an adversary is taken as a sign of weakness of the adversary. Those who call for negotiations on the other side typically end up dead\u2014murdered by Israel or U.S. assets. We\u2019ve seen this play out recently in Lebanon. The Lebanese Foreign Minister confirmed that Hassan Nasrallah, Former Secretary-General of Hezbollah had\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2024\/10\/3\/headlines\/lebanese_fm_claims_israel_killed_nasrallah_shortly_after_he_agreed_to_ceasefire\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">agreed to a ceasefire<\/a>\u00a0with Israel days before his assassination. Hezbollah\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/seymourhersh.substack.com\/p\/the-fall-of-bashar-assad?utm_source=post-email-title&amp;publication_id=1377040&amp;post_id=152938214&amp;utm_campaign=email-post-title&amp;isFreemail=false&amp;r=1eogb&amp;triedRedirect=true&amp;utm_medium=email\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">willingness to accept a peace agreement<\/a>\u00a0according to the Arab-Islamic world\u2019s wishes of a two-state solution is long-standing. Similarly, instead of negotiating to end the war in Gaza, Israel\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2024\/7\/31\/hamass-political-chief-ismail-haniyeh-assassinated-in-iran-state-media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">assassinated Hamas\u2019 political chief<\/a>, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.Similarly in Syria, instead of allowing for a political solution to emerge, the U.S. opposed the peace process multiple times. In 2012, the UN had\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dppa.un.org\/en\/mission\/special-envoy-syria\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">negotiated a peace agreement<\/a>\u00a0in Syria that was blocked by the Americans, who demanded that Assad must go on the first day of the peace agreement. The U.S. wanted regime change, not peace. In September 2024, Netanyahu\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\/liveblog_entry\/netanyahu-holds-up-maps-illustrating-the-blessing-and-curse-facing-mideast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">addressed the General Assembly<\/a>\u00a0with a map of the Middle East divided between \u201cBlessing\u201d and \u201cCurse,\u201d with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran as part of Netanyahu\u2019s curse. The real curse is Israel\u2019s path of mayhem and war, which has now engulfed Lebanon and Syria, with Netayahu\u2019s fervent hope to draw the U.S. into war with Iran as well.The U.S. and Israel are high-fiving that they have successfully wrecked yet another adversary of Israel and defender of the Palestinian cause, with Netanyahu claiming\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\/netanyahu-claims-credit-for-starting-historic-process-that-led-to-syrian-regimes-fall\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201ccredit for starting the historic process.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Most likely Syria will now succumb to continued war among the many armed protagonists, as has happened in the previous U.S.-Israeli regime-change operations.In short, American interference, at the behest of Netanyahu\u2019s Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins, with over a million dead and open wars raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/palestine\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Palestine<\/a>, and with Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal, being pushed against its own inclinations to this eventuality.All this is in the service of a profoundly unjust cause: to deny Palestinians their political rights in the service of Zionist extremism based on the 7th century BCE\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/opinion\/israel-s-policy-of-genocide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Book of Joshua<\/a>. Remarkably, according to that text\u2014one relied on by Israel\u2019s own religious zealots\u2014the Israelites were not even the original inhabitants of the land. Rather, according the text, God instructs Joshua and his warriors to commit multiple genocides to conquer the land.Against this backdrop, the Arab-Islamic nations and indeed almost all of the world have repeatedly united in the call for a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/opinion\/israel-two-state-solution\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">two-state solution and peace<\/a>\u00a0between Israel and Palestine.Instead of the two-state solution, Israel and the U.S. have made a desert and called it peace<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Reference Link:- <a href=\"https:\/\/mail.yahoo.com\/d\/folders\/1\/messages\/AIPpg_50DGEnZ1x0hA6WYFW0bhs?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9sb2dpbi55YWhvby5jb20v&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAIsCTAlGMsUo7BC3WCARme_5kctch94QzIfOtcVu6WHc57tynlwqfXpVmHXTV6cnUr5vOe4Fci2GUDDmtgib1HjlPoXqSbIf1pYS8n5bM95wItI31cBGFvAI28bh71o2Br9NjWEWqQVLIg-JEeYV7hIM1P4CR8-WCcP1km-110ic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/mail.yahoo.com\/d\/folders\/1\/messages\/AIPpg_50DGEnZ1x0hA6WYFW0bhs?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9sb2dpbi55YWhvby5jb20v&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAIsCTAlGMsUo7BC3WCARme_5kctch94QzIfOtcVu6WHc57tynlwqfXpVmHXTV6cnUr5vOe4Fci2GUDDmtgib1HjlPoXqSbIf1pYS8n5bM95wItI31cBGFvAI28bh71o2Br9NjWEWqQVLIg-JEeYV7hIM1P4CR8-WCcP1km-110ic<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reference Link:- https:\/\/mail.yahoo.com\/d\/folders\/1\/messages\/AIPpg_50DGEnZ1x0hA6WYFW0bhs?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9sb2dpbi55YWhvby5jb20v&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAIsCTAlGMsUo7BC3WCARme_5kctch94QzIfOtcVu6WHc57tynlwqfXpVmHXTV6cnUr5vOe4Fci2GUDDmtgib1HjlPoXqSbIf1pYS8n5bM95wItI31cBGFvAI28bh71o2Br9NjWEWqQVLIg-JEeYV7hIM1P4CR8-WCcP1km-110ic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[58,8050,105,8047,1361,290,52,8049,8048,607,40],"class_list":["post-11596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sample-category","tag-america","tag-destabilizing-syria","tag-geopolitics-2","tag-how-the-us-and-israel-destroyed-syria-and-called-it-peace","tag-humanatarian-crisis","tag-instability","tag-israel","tag-israel-is-beneficiary","tag-region-in-trouble","tag-syria","tag-us"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11598,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11596\/revisions\/11598"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}