After a lightning strike against the five-decade, brutal, rule of the Alawite Assad family, Damascus was in jihadist hands by Sunday, 8 December 2024. It took only 11 days for HTS, led by Ahmad al Sharaa, to sweep through Syria.
However this was not the only lightning strike going on in Syria. The Israelis were not sitting on their hands; they asked themselves ‘why not go to war with a country that no longer has an army?’ Israel never had it so good. The Syrian Army had melted away at the first sniff of the jihadists and the Russians were nowhere to be seen.
This was the Sunday: a lot can happen in a day and by Monday the Israeli Navy was sending missiles into the Syrian ports of Al-Bayda and Latakia, where 15 Syrian naval vessels were docked. It was all in a days’ work after which they could head home for dinner. Tuesday was coming.
Tuesday was a big day: Israel launched 350 lightning strikes in Syria on anything that flew. It was reminiscent of the 1967 war when Egypt’s planes were destroyed on the ground.
Anything connected to Syria’s military structure was destroyed. Weapons production sites in Damascus, Homs, Tartus Latakia and Palmyra were wiped out; Scud tactical missiles were neutralised, as were radar systems, tanks, chemical weapons and anything that could be used to attack Israel.
Syria got a taste of its own medicine for supporting terrorist groups like Hezbollah and allowing Iran to use Syria to transport weapons to them. Assad was financing these groups to the tune of $10bn by industrial production of the drug Captagon.
If you thought the Israelis might let up on Wednesday, think again. There was Gaza business to attend to. On Wednesday, 11 December, the Hamas terrorist Fahmi Salami was killed by the IDF. He was involved with the elite Nukhba Force that killed 1,200 souls on October 7 and took 251 hostages in Israel.
Wednesday was not yet over before Salah Dahman head of the paragliders unit which infiltrated Israel on October 7 was dispensed with at Jabalia, in northern Gaza.
Thursday must have have been a rest day, because by Friday the Israeli Air Force was bombing northern Gaza and explosions were again heard in Damascus. Turkiye itself is not averse to a bit of bombing of Syria, and is dealing to the non Arab Kurds who have an autonomous region protected by 900 US personnel. Neither has Turkiye been slow in a land grab in Syria and has already taken 9,000 sq km. This is half the size of Israel. The Kurdish led Syrian Democratic Forces want a federalised state, which would give protection to Christians, Druze and Kurd minorities. Christians in Aleppo have already been attacked, as have Christian farmers outside of Homs.Turkiye is looking to reestablish the Ottoman Empire and a Sunni Caliphate. Tectonic plates are shifting in Syria.
As the Syrians no longer have an air force, Netanyahu is considering bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities now that the Iranian Axis of Resistance has gone. Now seems to be a good time. Netanyahu is preparing the groundwork by addressing the Iranian people on TV. Russia hopefully is too occupied with with Ukraine to get involved.
The Islamists consider the Levant their own. The call has already gone out at a mosque in Damascus to march on Jerusalem. When Islamists conquer the first thing to go is that country’s holy sites. Consider the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem that was supposedly built over the site of Solomon’s Temple in 691 AD.
Hamas will only respond to threats like the one Donald Trump gave them. He said ‘there will be hell to pay if hostages were not handed over by the time he takes office’. On 3 December Hamas said they would provide a list of hostages. We have our own ‘Gaza shills’ here in New Zealand, mainly the Greens and I would have thought Winston Peters would have run a mile from any ‘Green idea’. There could also be ‘hell to pay’ for Western countries like New Zealand, who are siding with terrorists at the UN against Israel, when Trump comes to power.
