Vanessa Beeley

1. The Choice is Ours

A really succinct and pertinent message from Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh . You can also follow the Professor at Qumsiyeh: A Human Rights Web.

The Choice is Ours

Both Netanyahu and Trump have visions of building empires and discarding the remnants of international law and the UN. Will they succeed to lead us to a World War or will we have peace?

Trump immediately acted with executive orders to dismantle the US's connection to the world with a triumphalist inaugural speech full of classic colonialist language of manifest destiny, frontiers, pioneers and so on. But this is only more open empire building that was happening under his predecessors.

His fascist billionnaire supporters are pardoned or even give Nazi Salute (like Elon Musk) while common people (inluding Jews) who speak for Palestinian human rights are dubbed "anti-semitic" by Zionist groups like the ADL. The US is completing its second largest so-called "embassy" (in Beirut, the first in Baghdad). Each accommodates tens of thousands of personnel and the world is bullied to submission.

The world all looks at this stronger push to expand the big genocidal empire (USA) and the small genocidal empire (Israel) with trepidations. But theb reaction has been an expansion of the BRICS group of nations and the lineup for a global war is becoming clearer.

We in the global South were never in doubt that imperialism is deep state and that the only difference between Genocide Joe and lunatic tRump is style of bluster of character. But since the 1962 assassination of John Kennedy, the transfer power in the USA was from one Zionist puppet to another Zionist puppet. The US system of federal elections has slowly and methodically been consumed by moneyed interests of the billionaires. The democrats and republicans become two sides of the same coin which is a Public Relations campaign to give the illusion of democracy while dragging the world to the abyss in service of moneys interests.

Different faces but the essence is the same: making the rich richer and the poor poorer and pardoning criminals wearing different masks. Money flows whether from Edelson and Musk to republicans or Saban, Soros and Streyer to democrats.

In all cases indigenous people and people of color are sacrificed on the altar the new Golden calves (and the chief being the Zionist sacred cow).

Here in the occupied Palestinian territories, pogroms by Jewish colonial settlers and soldiers accelerated after the "ceasefire" agreements in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. The apartheid regime only intensified: lockdown of the cantons/bantustans that we are restricted in. Home demolitions and confiscation of more Palestinian lands, and increase in Jewish colonial settler buildings (squatters on our land).Torching vehicles and homes is now almost a daily occurence supported by the fascist Netanyahu government (a government of settlers).

Without going into a detailed analysis, the trends are clear and could lead to catastrophic outcomes. To reverse this direction requires a global uprising, a global unity of all affected people. What the global imperialist elites want us to think is that our interests and causes are separate or even contradictory. But the struggles of immigrants in the US, of Alaskans, of Californians, of Panamanians, of Syrians, of Palestinians of hundreds of other people are all one struggle against those elites profiting from their hegemony whether they are called Biden, Trump, Modi, or Netanyahu.

By realizing the unity of our struggle can we defeat the greed that causes millions misery and that leads us to mass extinction. For all with eyes to see and brains to examine, the data is now available and the choice is clear. We either allow them to destroy humanity and the environment or we reclaim our humanity and our earth. The choice is ours.

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh previously served on the faculties of the University of Tennessee, Duke, and Yale Universities. He and his wife returned to Palestine in 2008 starting a number of institutions and projects such as a clinical genetics laboratory that serves cancer and other patients. In 2014, they founded (initial personal donation of $250,000) and run (as full time volunteers) the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) at Bethlehem University. Qumsiyeh published over 160 scientific papers, over 30 book chapters, and several books on topics ranging from cultural heritage to human rights to biodiversity conservation to cancer. Currently leading the effort to produce the new National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan for Palestine. He serves on the board of a number of Palestinian youth and service organizations and oversees many projects related to sustainability of human and natural communities. His many published books include "Bats of Egypt", "Mammals of the Holy Land", "Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle" and "Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment". He also published hundreds of articles and letters to the editor and has an activism book published electronically. He gave hundreds of talks in 45 countries around the world. He especially believes in youth empowerment towards social and environmental causes. The programs he & his wife created impacted thousands. He also serves on the board of a number of Palestinian youth and service organizations. PIBS-BU has become an oasis for visitors to Palestine from around the world. He was selected in March 2008 to be honored among "the writers who have enriched our pages with their creative writings and enlightened us with their progressive thinking" by Arab World Books

For his service, community and non-violent resistance he received many awards including American Arab Anti-discrimination Committee (ADC) Alex Odeh award, the American Friends Service Committee AFSC Connecticut chapter 2004 award, the 2011 Social Courage Award from the Peace and Justice Studies Association at the Joint Conference of PJSA and the Gandhi King Conference in October, 2011 at the Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tennessee and in 2021 the Paul K. Feyerabend Foundation and Takreem awards. For these same actions, Qumsiyeh was harassed and arrested. He and his wife and dozens of other volunteers and staff at PIBS continue to have "Joyful participation in the sorrows of this world" and make a real difference for sustainability of nature and human communities.

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2. Child-beheader allegedly appointed advisor to HTS chief, Jolani

In August 2016 a US-funded terrorist group beheaded a 12-year-old Palestinian, Abdullah Issa in Al Mashad Square, Al Insari district, Aleppo. Nour Al Din Zenki, the terrorist group responsible, later featured in a Channel 4 report "Up Close with the Rebels" which Channel 4 tried to remove from the internet after their terrorist-promotion was pointed out.

Despite statements from Palestinian Resistance factions in Syria, the BBC went with the terrorist pretext that Issa was actually a "child fighter", not just a child taken from his hospital bed, tortured and decapitated, his severed head displayed as a gruesome trophy.

It is worth noting that the MI6-Al-Qaeda White Helmets headquarters were less than 200 meters from the square where the execution took place. the alleged "humanitarians" didn't intervene.

According to Mohammed Jajeh on X, one of the Zenki child killers has appointed "advisor" to HTS Junta chief, Jolani.

This is an article that I wrote back in 2018, after an extensive on-the-ground investigation into the White Helmets proximity to the execution. Further reading here:

LAST MEN IN ALEPPO: Al Qaeda Presented as 'White Helmets' for the Annual Terrorist 'Oscar' Nomination

"A lion from Jabhat Al Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria) died today and went to Paradise, I pray that God will accept his soul."

No, that is not a quote from a terrorist group member in Syria. It is a statement taken from the Facebook page of Hasan Kattan, the Assistant Director of the latest White Helmet promotional blockbuster, Last Men in Aleppo. Shortly after this Facebook post was exposed, Kattan scrambled to remove this and all other incriminating images from his page or made them private/invisible to public view. The full testimonial attributed to this Al Qaeda militant, written by Kattan in 2014, is even more gushingly poetic:

" His beautiful smiles that illuminated his face still existing in my tired memory. He wasn't like any other Mujahid (fighter). He loved fighting and dying under the Islamic flag and he already did. He was, among the others, the most fine and religious , had piety and a sense of humour. A lion from Al Nusra Front died today and went to Paradise . I pray that God will accept his soul."

Below, is the image of this "Lion of Nusra Front" on Kattan's Facebook page. There is also a comment from Fadi Al-Halabi, director of photography for Last Men in Aleppo. Halabi's comment reads:

"This is Jaloud who died , he went to paradise."

Post from Hasan Kattan facebook page, including the comment from Last Men in Aleppo's director of photography, Fadi Al-Halabi.

Kattan is described, by CNN, as being "Executive Director" of the Aleppo Media Centre (AMC) a largely French Foreign Office-incubated and subsidized media centre that produced much of the Western media narrative during the Nusra Front-dominated occupation of East Aleppo, for almost five years. A media centre that, like so many, was exclusively embedded with the various terrorist and extremist militant factions and never deviated from the war-lobby-aligned "exclusives" that were sanctioned by Nusra Front aka Al Qaeda, who gave the green light for any video footage production in the districts it controlled.

Kattan was responsible for the AMC iconic footage of Omran Daqneesh. The notorious dishevelled and dusty image of Omran almost changed the course of the war in Syria in favour of the US Coalition of proxy terror as the UN teetered on the brink of No Fly Zones and further faux-humanitarian intervention on the pretext of rescuing more Omrans from the "brutality of the Syrian regime" and its allies, principally Russia.

Only after the liberation of all districts of East Aleppo from its terrorist stranglehold, in December 2016, did we discover the truth behind the Omran chronicle that had been so skilfully manipulated by the AMC, White Helmets and assorted NATO-aligned media outlets worldwide. Kattan had produced a lie packaged as an 'incontrovertible truth' in order to, yet again, swing public opinion against the Syrian government, Syrian Arab Army and allies. It almost succeeded until the family of Omran Daqneesh spoke out, in 2017, against this weaponisation of children which has been a common theme in the information war being waged against Syria by the colonial media in the West and Gulf States.

Even after the purge, Kattan's Facebook page still reveals his allegiance to the Syrian "revolution" and the now-debunked "moderate" extremists in the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Have the audiences of the Last Men in Aleppo simply forgotten that the FSA has been proven to be allied with the more extremist factions inside Syria, such as Nusra Front, and is committing appalling crimes against the Syrian people on a daily basis? Have they also forgotten the White Helmet claims of impartiality and neutrality, their statement that they 'adhere to no political ideology in Syria'?

A number of scenes in Last Men in Aleppo show the White Helmet 'heroes' celebrating and demonstrating enthusiastically with the supporters of the "revolution" in East Aleppo. These 'supporters', of the phony "revolution", incarcerated and brutalised Syrian civilians during their terrorist reign in these districts. They brought nothing but death, poverty, suffering, destruction and misery according to the Syrian civilians who have now returned to their homes since the SAA liberated these areas and the White Helmets departed on the green buses, with Nusra Front, to Idlib in December 2016.

Idlib is the ultimate terrorist front-line and the White Helmets have resumed their role as human shields and producers of the "last hospital" narratives to trigger the cries of "humanitarian disaster" from the BBC and the UN, among others. The Guardian's Kareem Shaheen has even cited the self-proclaimed terrorist supporter and leader of the White Helmets in Khan Sheikhoun, Mustafa Al Haj Yusef, in his eagerness to promote the terrorist perspective from Idlib while, again, condemning the Syrian people to prolonged suffering, in this Nusra Front-occupied province.

Emphasis has been added to demonstrate the indiscriminate hyperbole used by these White Helmet newshounds:

"The bombing is constant. It's not daily but hourly, on the whole region, and it seems to be completely random," said Mustafa al-Haj Youssef, a rescue worker for the White Helmets in charge of Idlib. "The thing that hurts us most is the double-tap strikes, when the regime bombs an area, and we go to it after receiving emergency calls, and then they bomb it again. The displacement [of refugees] is usually out of fear of indiscriminate bombing," he said.

So, to complete the Kattan chapter. This is a French Foreign Office-bankrolled and media-trained operative who has eulogized the death of an Al Qaeda terrorist in Syria. Kattan has already produced one of the most memorable lies of the seven-year-long Syrian conflict – Omran Daqneesh – and hot on the heels of this short-lived propaganda "triumph", he is involved in the second Hollywood blockbuster to glorify the Nusra Front-affiliated White Helmets.

The White Helmet Centre in Al-Insari, East Aleppo

The former White Helmet centre in Al-Ansari, East Aleppo. January 2018. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

While in Aleppo over the New Year 2018, I visited the White Helmet centre that features in Last Men in Aleppo, with local journalist, Khaled Iskef. Iskef had identified the Al Insari area as being the correct location prior to my arrival. We had also previously visited this area in July/August 2017 and ascertained that it was a frontline for Nusra Front and a number of other extremist brigades, all financed by the US Coalition, including the client-states of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Like so many of the buildings occupied by the White Helmets and their Nusra Front associates, this building had been a school prior to its conversion to a centre for "Nusra Front's Civil Defence". The Fenon school for girls and the Abu Ayoub Al Insari school are now being restored to their original use and will be open very soon to continue providing secular education for the children of Aleppo.

Below is a very revealing screenshot taken from a BBC Arabic video report, filmed in December 2016, published in April 2017, three months after Last Men in Aleppo had scooped the 2017 Sundance Film Festival award on the 28th January 2017. Extraordinarily, the BBC made no connection between the footage of terrorist activity they had produced and the footage featured in Last Men in Aleppo even though the BBC report was clearly in the same location and filmed just prior to the Last Men in Aleppo win at the Sundance Festival.

It will become clear later in Part Two of this article, quite why the BBC may have been reluctant to make that critical connection that would expose the White Helmets as the terrorist affiliates they really are. However it is clear when you compare the two photographs – 1. My photo from January 2018 and 2. The BBC screenshot – that they are both of the White Helmet centre featured in the Last Men in Aleppo movie, located in the Al-Insari district of Nusra Front-occupied East Aleppo.

The first important point to be made about the location of the White Helmet centre is its proximity to Al Mashad Square, just 200 metres from the Al-Insari centre. It was in this square that the extremist group, Nour Al Din Zenki, publicly tortured and beheaded 12 year old Palestinian child, Abdullah Issa in July 2016. Issa begged his torturers to shoot him, but he was decapitated and his head was held aloft by his executioner standing on the back of a pick-up truck.

Hasan Kattan who raced to feed the photographs & video of Omran Daqneesh to Western media, did not seem so eager to produce images or video footage of the murder of Abdullah Issa commited one month prior to the incident involving Omran. One can only conclude that Kattan was not keen to portray the White Helmet neighbours as de facto terrorists committing atrocities against the Syrian people under their control. That would raise all sorts of awkward questions and speculation as to why the White Helmets would permit such crimes to be carried out on their watch & in their neighbourhood.

I filmed the following video during my visit to the Al-Insari White Helmet centre, while walking from the centre to Al Mashad Square. Watch:

Then lets take a look at the neighbours of the Al-Insari White Helmets. In the adjacent buildings we could identify the previous presence of Nusra Front, Khatib Abu Amara brigade (Nusra Front protection corps), Free Syrian Army, Free Syrian Police, Aleppo Media Centre and Aleppo Today media buildings. How do we know this? Because of the graffitti on the walls and the signage that has been covered up by the Syrian authorities, keen to erase all trace of these US Coalition-backed terrorists that oppressed, starved, raped and tortured Syrian civilians in East Aleppo for the duration of their occupation.

One of the buildings next door to the White Helmet centre in Al-Insari. January 2018. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

When I first mentioned that I had visited this area of East Aleppo and had identified the location of the Last Men in Aleppo footage, the director of the film, Firas Fayyad commented publicly on my Facebook post that I published while still in Aleppo. He tried to protest that I had mistaken the area as so many buildings, especially 'governmental "Ba'ath" buildings look identical':

"This is not where I shoot the film and there are several places in Aleppo look like that colour, and all Colours of Ba'ath headquarters or any governmental places look like each other in Syria. There are no linked or relations between the White Helmets and this group of fighters or Al Qaeda. […] you attack the White Helmet who is the most human group on Earth, and they are Syrian and people who give everything for their society"

Really Fayyad?

Screenshot from Last Men in Aleppo outside the Al-Insari White Helmet centre.

Screenshot from Last Men in Aleppo. Behind the main actor is the Syria Civil Defence sign in Arabic.

Photo of the same street, with White Helmet centre on the right. January 2018. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

I think we can safely say that Fayyad was lying when he tried to throw me off the scent. Does Fayyad feel so confident that his international backers will protect him, no matter what evidence is brought to light in Syria that will condemn the White Helmets as an Al Qaeda support group financed by the same governments who are also arming, equipping & lining the pockets of the terrorist entities that still operate in Syria.

Finally lets take a look inside one of the buildings a little upstream from the former White Helmet centre and on the other side of the road:

In this building, which also features in Last Men in Aleppo, we find the Tamkeen logo on the walls. Tamkeen is the UK FCO financed project,managed by Adam Smith International and Integrity Consulting which was analysed at length in my previous article asking if "Global Britain" is bankrolling terrorist organisations & individuals in Syria. Clearly, Tamkeen had a presence or an influence in the Al-Insari district that was infested with a variety of terrorist groups and their affiliated organisations.

White Helmets & 'Local Councils' – Is the UK FCO Financing Terrorism in Syria with Taxpayer Funds?

We've spent £200m in Syria – for nothing. It is now clear that British backing for the 'rebels' in the Syrian civil war was not just a mistake, it was a disaster. The policy made a horrific war much worse, and facilitated the growth of ISIS. Though the Government said we were helping 'moderates', the main beneficiaries were Al-Qaeda and other jihadists…" ~ Peter Oborne

Second Oscar for Al Qaeda?

Yes, the Last Men in Aleppo has been propelled to the second Oscar nomination for what is little more than an Al Qaeda promotional flick. The first Academy award for the Netflix Documentary on the White Helmets was in 2017, now the Last Men in Aleppo has been nominated for 2018. How on earth have we arrived at such a place in our existence where our Governments can finance both ends of the terrorist spectrum and not be in prison?

Nusra Front and all other rebrands of the terrorist factions are simply the other side of the coin to the White Helmets. One cannot operate without the other and our Governments are arming, funding and equipping both sides.

Sputnik correspondent, Denis Bolotsky, told me that Fayyad likened himself to Shakespeare during his recent speech at Davos:

"We would have never heard about the conflict of Hamlet without Shakespeare" – he says – "We would have listened to a small part of the 15th century. With Shakespeare we understand what kind of lives these people lived, what kind of conflict they lived through. So this here is not to bring them as White Helmets, it's to bring them as humans, I didn't want to make these people as heroes."

Bolotsky went on to describe, to me, how organised groups of children from Davos middle-school were brought to the screening of Last Men in Aleppo. This is a disturbing aspect surrounding the marketing of this latest White Helmet enterprise. Children, aged between 12-14 were subjected to imagery that is surely not suitable for impressionable minds – the flinging of decomposing, dismembered limbs from buildings to White Helmets standing below, the parading of dead, excavated babies for the camera, the endless invective against the Syrian government and its allies.

"Fayyad doesn't flinch from the gruesome details. We see hands, feet and other body parts in the rubble, as well as children's gaping head wounds: there's little break from the tears and desperation." ~ The Guardian review of Last Men in Aleppo.

This is brainwashing and social engineering on an industrial scale and should never have been allowed.

Hanna Elvira, an Academic, who specialises in Psychology, gave this evaluation.

"Through observational learning, children's exposure to media violence leads to increased aggression, emotional desensitization to violence, dispositional and behavioural changes, in both the immediate and long term context. Even after the single viewing of a violent film, short term effects occur that involve children demonstrating an immediate drop in sympathetic attitudes and less concern for and awareness of aggressive acts. Long term psychological effects in both children and adolescents involve chronic sleep disturbances, depression, anxiety, and a desensitization to violence that increases the likelihood of modeling the aggressive behaviours they observe."

Here is the interview I gave to Sputnik regarding the screening of Last Men in Aleppo at Davos.

Who is Promoting 'Last Men in Aleppo'?

Unsurprisingly, the Guardian tops the league table of unquestioning support for the White Helmet feature film. Olivia Solon's recent media-lynch-mob hit piece attempting to discredit all evidence against the White Helmets as produced by Russian trolls, bots and social media dregs, has bombed. Eva Bartlett, one of the Solon-designated "trolls" has written a consummate deconstruction of Solon's transparently biased and singularly unresearched slander, so I won't waste my time going over old ground. Evidence against the White Helmet organisation is mounting beyond all attempts to slur those who expose their criminal, terrorist links.

So, the latest fawning admiration for the White Helmet construct emanates from the Guardian's film reviewer, Charlie Phillips – "A bit doccy, a bit politic, vegan, withering #lufc fan. Head of Documentaries at The Guardian" according to his Twitter profile. Phillips began his review with the bold statement:

"The bravery of the White Helmets in Syria is beyond dispute"

Not true Phillips, the "bravery" of the White Helmets has been disputed multiple times, not by "Russian trolls", but by the Syrian people whose voices the Guardian systematically erases from our consciousness in the UK.

Other voices are also muted by the Guardian. Censorship is rife at the Guardian when comments do not comply with their UK State-sanctioned narratives. Comments were not activated on the Solon hit-piece, comments were closed on the Phillips glowing review of the White Helmet movie when the majority proved to be dissenting. Comments were almost universally deleted and eventually closed when the Guardian shamelessly lobbied for the White Helmets to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016. Do we see a pattern here?

Here is a cosy Twitter exchange between the Director of Last Men in Aleppo and Phillips who says " I work for the Guardian, I'm used to it". Charlie Phillips is 'used' to abuse for blindly amplifying the narratives that serve the "Global Britian" neocolonialist policies and practices but that is as far as it goes.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." ~ Upton Sinclair

Phillips obviously missed some of the more subtle signals contained within the film:

In this section, the "hero" has pulled into a makeshift garage to repair the radiator of the White Helmet vehicle. In the same garage is parked a vehicle displaying a terrorist flag used by a number of brigades in the East Aleppo district but often identified as the Caucusus Emirate that then morphed into ISIS. This would tie in with the identification of the terrorist buildings connected to the Al-Insari White Helmet centre.

This is a curious inclusion in the Last Men in Aleppo movie. Why depict a man throwing tyres onto an already blazing pyre of burning rubber? Particularly, when this has been identified as a tactic employed by the "opposition"- embedded "citizen journalists" and terrorist-friendly "activists" to create the impression of recent attacks from Syrian Arab Army planes or even Navy as in the case of the fraudulent claims of warship attacks on Lattakia's coastal town in 2011:

"It reminds me of August 2011 news reports of warships shelling the coastal city of Latakia. Three separate sources – two opposition figures from the city and an independent western journalist – later insisted there were no signs of shelling. It was also the first time I learned from Syrians that you can burn rubber tires on rooftops to simulate the after-effects of exploded shells." ~ Hollywood in Homs and Idlib, by Sharmine Narwani

I could spend hours going through the Last Men in Aleppo footage to take out the glaringly condemnatory material but I recommend that everyone watches it with a more critical eye. Why would a first responder fling decomposed limbs down from one floor of an already destroyed building to a White Helmet on the ground amid the rubble? Why would these 'first responders' then spend, what feels like forever, discussing the size and age of the toes on the limb, on film. Why film this? It is a macabre and disrespectful scene to present to a public who seem to show no horror at this exploitation of the very real suffering of the Syrian people in East Aleppo. Where is the context? Who caused this severing of a limb from the body of a human being under terrorist occupation?

The filmaker gives you no option, it is the Syrian "regime" or the 'Russian warplanes' – never does this film describe the horror of life under Nusra Front and associates, in fact they are never mentioned! Why not, and why is nobody questioning this omission? Anyone watching Last Men in Aleppo will assume Nusra Front simply never existed in East Aleppo. Those children who were forced to watch this propaganda will walk away with history rewritten for them. Rewritten by the most predatory forces in the world that are trying to ensure their generation inherits an "Empire of Graveyards".

As John Pilger said in his 2012 article, History is the Enemy as 'Brilliant' Psy-ops Become the News

"How much longer must we subject ourselves to such an "invisible government"? This term for insidious propaganda, first used by Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud and inventor of modern public relations, has never been more apt. "False reality" requires historical amnesia, lying by omission and the transfer of significance to the insignificant. In this way, political systems promising security and social justice have been replaced by piracy, "austerity" and "perpetual war": an extremism dedicated to the overthrow of democracy. Applied to an individual, this would identify a psychopath. Why do we accept it?"

Never in history will a more glittering prize be given to the parade of 'psychopaths' on the Academy's red carpet, as for the second year running, the White Helmets are nominated for an Oscar.

The BBC, Channel 4, Guardian, CNN Cabal Defending Terrorism in Syria

In Part Two of this article, I will delve deeper into the connections that link the BBC, Channel 4, the UN, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Guardian and yes, Walt Disney into the apparatus that is promoting the White Helmet-Al Qaeda community in Syria, a network whose majority shareholder is none other than "Global Britain", the 100% neocon-approved UK FCO.

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3. Syria's future and the UK craven hypocrisy

I am slow to get articles written at the moment due to a bad fall in Beirut which means my left arm is fairly useless for a few weeks. Apologies. Very frustrating, typing with one hand.

On Saturday I will be speaking with Mike Robinson of UK Column - Syria Podcast 5 - more details on the events that led to the shocking fall of Syria. I will try to compensate with more audio interviews with guests in the next few days.

Thank you for your patience.

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Vanessa Beeley is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

4. Barrel bombs are back!

An old meme accusing the Syrian government of barrel bombing their own civilians - 2016

In response to the re-emergence of the "barrel bomb", below is an article I prepared earlier in 2017. Since October 7th, the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza has been using barrel bombs against the genocidal Zionist forces.

In 1964, the US began "Operation Barrell Roll" between 1964-1973, the US dropped around 2.5 million tons of ordinance on Laos during 580,000 bombing sorties - equal to a plane load of bombs every eight minutes 24 hours a day for 9 years.

Anyway I digress, here is the article:

SYRIA: Consign "Barrel Bombs" to the Propaganda Graveyard

Every time one of these barrels strikes, it is the seismological equivalent of a 7.6 magnitude earthquake, and it happens around 50 times a day. (In Syria)You can't dial 911. You can't dial the fire service. You can't call the local police department. They don't exist." ~ James Le Mesurier, British ex-military trainer of the NATO-state, multi-million-dollar-funded White Helmets, based in Gaziantep, Turkey.

In an interview with CNN in May 2015, this is the claim made by British mercenary trainer of the White Helmets to Dr Sanjay Gupta. Again, in June 2015, Le Mesurier made a similar claim to an audience during a speech at The Performance Theatre, Lisbon entitled very grandly, "Act 1: Witnesses to history in the making".

On the front page of the fraudulently named Syria Civil Defence aka the NATO state sponsored, White Helmets, there is the same claim made by the extensively discredited, Ammar Al Salmo, "leader" of the Syria Civil Defence in Aleppo.

Al Salmo's "evidence" was pivotal to the US alliance claims that, on 21st September 2016, Russian jets had targeted a humanitarian convoy to the west of Aleppo – Urum al Kubra, causing international outcry and almost precipitating a terrifying escalation of the conflict between Russia and the US on Syrian soil. Claims that were universally debunked, as were so many before them. Syricide on Twitter produced a video that demonstrates the grave anomalies in the Al Salmo report, that was used to trigger international outrage against Russia and the Syrian government. Read more about Al Salmo here.

In November 2016, Raed Saleh, president of the White Helmets and "humanitarian" poster boy for the international community supporting the terrorist support group, gave an acceptance speech for the Right Livelihood Award. During this speech, Saleh reinforced the barrel bomb/earthquake imagery and increased the magnitude to a whopping 8:0

Here is the segment of the speech in which Saleh presents the barrel bomb case. Watch

Just after the liberation of East Aleppo by the Syrian Arab Army and allies, BBC Radio 4 interviewed James Le Mesurier who trotted out the usual platitudes regarding his band of "selfless humanitarians", described, universally as "Nusra Front civil defence" by Syrian civilians freed from almost five years of Nusra Front-led terrorist and extremist imprisonment, supported by the interventionist alliance of the US, UK, EU, Gulf States, Turkey, Israel, Canada, Jordan & Australia & Co.

This time the BBC, themselves, announce that one barrel bomb is equivalent to an earthquake of an 8:0 magnitude, so parroting the White Helmet and NATO-state-aligned NGO narrative without hesitation. Listen to the interview here.

We have compiled statements by James Le Mesurier into a short video. They include the bare-faced lie, presented to CNN, that in Syria there is no emergency number to call for rescue or fire services, an attempt by this UK regime intelligence operative & OBE recipient, to disappear the REAL Syria Civil Defence, established in 1953:

Do They Have Us Over a Barrel?

Just a casual check on scientific charts correlating Richter scale magnitude with corresponding amounts of explosives will show that anything above a 7.0 magnitude would require as much as 20 billion kilograms of TNT, or according to other charts as much as 10 megatons, something approaching the output of an atom bomb, greater than the one used against Hiroshima by the US.

21st Century Wire had previously debunked CNN claims, in October 2016, that a White Helmet centre in Damascus had been targeted by a barrel bomb:

A NOBEL LIE: CNN's Claim That 'White Helmets Center in Damascus' Was Hit by a Barrel Bomb

In August 2015, Ken Roth, director of Saudi/Soros funded & CIA linked, Human Rights Watch, tweeted that "Assad's barrel bombs" were equivalent to the US nuclear bomb that had destroyed Hiroshima.

YallaLaBarra's blog addressed Ken Roth's unhealthy obsession with barrel bombs:

"This was the first of a whopping 200 Syria tweets that he has posted about "barrel bombs". These don't include at least an equal number of other anti-government tweets that range from Assad's "use of chemical weapons against his people" to fawning praise of militants in Syria. Between 12 November 2013 and December 2014, Ken Roth tweeted about "barrel bombs" (BB) a total of 65 times. This is no small number, but it pales in comparison to the 135 barrel bomb tweets he posted in 2015 – thus far. During the first 8 months of 2015, the frequency of barrel bomb tweets varied from month to month. For example, after having posted 27 BB tweets in February of 2015, he surprisingly controlled his urges and kept it at under 15 for each of the following 4 months (March -June). In July his obsession got the best of him and he graced us with 28 BB tweets.Things got worse in August with a staggering 40 BB tweets. One of the reasons the BB tweeting became so trigger happy in the last two months is because he is now frantically inserting "barrel bombs" into tweets that are unrelated to the topic."

Now lets consider the earthquake magnitude claim, bearing in mind that, at various stages, members of the NATO-aligned White Helmets and associated NGOs, & corporate media outlets have stated that as many as 50 of these earthquakes are hitting Syria per day for possibly the last six years.

Here's a look at the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, which struck January 12, 2010. The earthquake measured a "mere" (by White Helmet standards) 7.0 magnitude:

Figures taken from Dec.org reports.

Corporate Media Plays Along

On the 10th January 2017, the Independent's headline was – "Assad 'dropped 13,000 barrel bombs on Syria in 2016', watchdog claims" . So according to this headline, Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad, personally dropped 13, 000 (equivalent to) atom bombs on his own country and people in 12 months. Even the war-hungry US administration, with its penchant for obliterating entire nations would struggle to match that accolade!

The "watchdog" that has been cited by The Independent is none other than the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a long term purveyor of the barrel bomb myth and one of the multitude of NGOs affiliated with the anti-Syria-war-propaganda-impresario, George Soros, along with the Ford Foundation & the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

'Helicopters Carry Two Bombs'

The British military intelligence officer turned mercenary who founded the White Helmets (yes, that's right, they were set-up and are funded by the UK government) James Le Mesurier confirms what independent warfare analysts had previously told me, that a helicopter will carry two barrel bombs at at time.

SNHR report:

"The report documents that Syrian regime helicopters dropped 12,958 barrel bombs in 2016. Most of these barrel bombs were dropped in Damascus suburbs governorate, followed by Aleppo and then Hama, Idlib, Daraa, and Homs. Furthermore, November 2016 saw the most of these barrel bombs with 1946 dropped followed by June, and then January and August."

In order to achieve this, the Syrian Airforce would have to fly 19 helicopter missions per day every day for the whole year. That is with limited airports available to them, the effect of sanctions,resulting in fuel shortages, and taking into consideration daylight hours and distances to and from alleged targets. Not to mention, downtime, maintenance etc.

Also, if there had been 19 helicopter flights per day over this time period, is it not strange that we dont see footage of these helicopters other than the oft recycled images & video that are used to depict these attacks? The NATO state funded, Turkish based and trained "citizen journalists" cameramen and women, "activists" have the equipment to record such flights, surely?

In this video which is a 9 minute alleged compilation of barrel bomb attacks, we actually see what looks suspiciously like reused shots of barrel bombs, or rudimentary finned Mortar-type bombs, being dropped by helicopters. The majority of the footage is actually of airforce, air to ground missile attacks on various terrorist and extremist held positions in Syria. There is the clear sound of Combat jets prior to the bombing.

James Longman of the BBC, embedded with such "activists & citizen journalists" in Homs & Damascus in 2011, during the early days of the NATO state-fomented armed uprising against the Syrian state, told the Frontline Club that they had impressive technological/media capabilities. So why is there not better coverage of the 19 helicopter missions per day?

The Nusra Front-led factions, with whom these so called "activists" and "citizen journalists" are embedded, certainly have the "equipment" to shoot helicopters down..as with the Russian helicopter flying in humanitarian aid in August 2016.

The Numbers Game

In their report, SNHR claim:

"According to the report, the barrel bombs that were dropped by Syrian regime warplanes in 2016 resulted in the killing of 653 civilians including 166 children and 86 women."

How reliable these figures are, is hard to analyse. The majority of the statistics reported by these weaponized NGOs come from the SOHR (Syrian Observatory for Human Rights) that is notorious for mingling "civilian" deaths with those of the NATO-state funded and armed terrorist & extremist factions. The SOHR is in reality, Rami Abdulrahman, an EU funded one-man-band operating out of Coventry in the UK and communicating with "activists" via Skype.

"Abdulrahman of the SOHR admitted in 2012: "I have thousands of rebels in the civilian list. I put all the non-defectors in the civilian list…It isn't easy to count rebels because nobody on the ground says 'this is a rebel.' Everybody hides it." In another interview he confirmed the view that "most of Syria's dead were combatants, not civilians." ~ The Death Toll in Syria, What do the Numbers Really Say?

According to a former US diplomat who had served in Syria:

"I have serious problems with all the talk about military intervention in Syria. Everyone, especially the media, seems to be relying solely on anti-regime activists for their information. How do we know 260 people were killed by the regime in Homs yesterday? That number seems based solely on claims by anti-regime figures and I seriously doubt its accuracy." ~ Veteran US Diplomat Questions Syria Storyline by Sharmine Narwani.

According to their previous meme, for the period between March 2011 and March 2016, over 35, 956 barrel bombs have been dropped by the Syrian airforce, killing 14, 652 civilians. Now this is a fascinating piece of analysis by SNHR, as even, NATO intervention sympathiser, Elliot Higgins aka Brown Moses of Bellingcat states that the first recorded barrel bomb attack in Syria, was in August 2012. A fact, corroborated by Wikipedia, in their list of barrel bomb attacks.

So if we rely upon Soros-allied SNHR, the barrel bomb attacks started 17 months before they were first recorded. Impressive. This immediately skews the numbers they are presenting.

In "The Barrel Bomb Conundrum", Craig Murray states, (emphasis added):

"It is a fascinating example of a propaganda meme. Barrel bombs are being used by Syrian government forces, though on a pretty small scale. They are an improvised weapon made by packing conventional explosive into a beer barrel. They are simply an amateur version of a conventional weapon, and they are far less "effective" – meaning devastating – than the professionally made munitions the UK and US are dropping on Syria, or supplying to the Saudis to kill tens of thousands of civilians in Yemen, or to Israel to drop on children in Gaza."

East Aleppo Liberation Opens Pandora's Box?

If an earthquake has occurred anywhere in Syria, it is the tectonic plates of corporate media obscurantism and deceit being torn assunder by the truth that has emerged from the liberated districts of East Aleppo. Civilians escaping their almost five year ordeal of life under Nusra Front-led occuption and brutal imprisonment, exposed the truth behind the corporate media pre-fabricated narratives that had in effect prolonged the suffering of these people, while amplifying the voices of their captors, described euphemistically as "rebels" by the majority of the predatory NATO-aligned "mockingbird" media and NGOs.

Nusra Front Hell Cannon, captured in Sheikh Saeed, East Aleppo. 12/12/2016. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Nusra Front Hell Cannon, captured in Sukare, East Aleppo. 24/12/2016. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

No mention is made by this media-propaganda juggernaut of the 11,000 recorded and documented dead civilians, among them thousands of children, murdered by the "hell cannon" mortar fire, sniper fire and explosive bullets from Nusra Front-led terrorists in East Aleppo fired deep into Syrian state protected West Aleppo. These figures were given to me by Head of Forensics in Aleppo, Dr Zahar Hajjo and confirmed by Eva Bartlett during her debate with Dilly Hussain on RT.

Nor is there any mention of the recent discoveries of what look suspiciously like barrel bombs, previously stored by Nusra Front and assorted extremist factions in ammunuition depots in the liberated areas of East Aleppo.

Barrel bomb spec

Lets have a look at the technical specification of the barrel bomb. According to an animated depiction of the composition of the barrel bomb, they are filled with "twisted shards of metal shrapnel. When detonated the metal explodes in every direction causing tremendous damage to the immediate area".

Barrel bomb as depicted in video. Screenshot.

Compare this to a description of the Nusra Front Hell Cannon mortars, from an Aleppo resident:

"The terrorists are using mortars, explosive bullets, cooking-gas cylinders bombs and water-warming long cylinders bombs, filled up with explosives and shrapnel and nails, in what they call "Hell Cannon". (google these weapons or see their YouTube clips. The cooking-gas cylinder is made of steel, and it weighs around 25 kg. Imagine it thrown by a canon to hit civilians? And imagine knowing that it's full with explosives?… Yet, the media is busy with the legendary weapon of "barrel bombs"! They came to spread "freedom" among Syrians! How dare they say that Syrian army shouldn't fight them back?"

Can you tell them apart?

Many civilians that I interviewed as they were streaming out of the liberated areas of East Aleppo told me that the Nusra Front-led terrorist and militant gangs had often attacked civilian homes, schools and hospitals in the same areas and then blamed it on the Syrian national army.

Is it so far fetched to suggest that the barrel bomb myth is just that, a myth propagated by those who are claiming to be under attack while attacking civilians in the areas occupied or besieged by these terrorist factions?

Here is one such testimony from one of the first civilians I spoke to, on the 10th December 2016, in Hanano which had been fully liberated two days previously. Watch:

Conclusion

It is surely time to put the barrel bomb to bed? It is now an outdated and debunked, mass produced myth. 50 earthquakes per day of an 8.0 magnitude would have obliterated the entire region. Enough of these theatrics designed to obfuscate the very real bloodshed that is being witnessed daily in Syria as a result of the dirty war being waged against it by the US neocons and war hawks, hell-bent on regime change and the weakening of the sovereign nation to please their Israeli allies in the region.

I leave you with a timeless classic, "The Barrel Bomb Song" featuring Ken Roth, a fitting epitaph for one of the most flagrant media fabrications and distortions of the almost six year war of aggression against Syria led by a multitude of NATO & Gulf state funded and armed atrocity committing extremists.

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5. Carving up Syria and Assad's last moments

Who Betrayed Syria? Assad's Escape and the Fall of the Syrian Government - UK Column News - 8th January 2025

- Mazeej Mix : This is how Bashar al-Assad escaped Damascus. Full interview in Arabic

- Hassan I Hassan (on X): Fascinating details about Assad's last days in this interview with Assad's media "tsar", his media chief and close aide. (Interview summary in English)

- Vanessa Beeley Telegram: Julani interview

- David Miller on X

"A summary here of the bombshell revelations made by Bashar's media adviser Kamel Saqr during an interview on the Mazeej podcast a couple of days ago."

- Akbar Ganji : Causes of the collapse of the Syrian government. Iranian statement.

UK Column Is Member-Funded—Your Support Matters

Syria's Fragmentation: Jolaní, Israel, and the Fight for Power - UK Column News 8th January 2025

- BBC: New elections could take up to four years

-UK closes borders to persecuted Syrians mirroring EU

- GOV.UK (2021): New UK sanctions targeting Assad regime for "lack of constitutional reform" while Jolani says 3 years for new constitution.

- Fiorella Isabel (on X): Syria's New "Minister of Justice:"

"We will implement Islamic law and prevent women judges from holding this position, and they must hand over their cases to male judges."

- Press TV : Images emerged showing Syria's newly appointed Justice Minister Shadi Muhammad al-Waisi overseeing the execution of two women

- Syrian Coast Observatory (Telegram): Members of the HTS militias of Ahmed al Sharaa (Aka alJolani) assaulted a civilian young man in his twenties with severe beatings and whipping because he belongs to one of the religious minorities

- Vanessa Beeley (on X): Syrian Defense Minister General Ali Mahmoud Abbas - Translation under the leadership of President Assad

- Save Christians in Syria (on X): Video destroying statue of Mary

- The Jerusalem Post: Turkey aiming for maritime agreement with Syria

- The Energy Consulting Group: Syrian Oil and Gas

- The Washington Institute (2013): Russia-Syria Offshore Gas Deal

For full news please go to the UK Column website.

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6. HTS close symbolic church in Syrian Christian town sparking fear and controversy

The beautiful symbolic replica of Hagia Sophia in Al Sqeilbiyyeh is boarded up by HTS terrorist gangs.

The Hagia Sophia Church in the northern Hama Syrian Christian town of Al Sqeilbiyyeh (also spelled As Suqalibiyah) has been closed by the terrrorist gangs affiliated with the HTS Junta regime in Damascus.

The move comes after armed gangs set fire to the Christmas tree in the centre of Al Sqeilbiyyeh during Christmas celebrations. During the December attacks on Christian communities the same gangs had also entered the church and desecrated the icons, holy scriptures and stunning murals.

Video of the terrorist destruction inside Hagia Sophia church:

According to one Syrian X account:

The closure was carried out using cement and without any prior announcement or official clarification, while local accounts indicate that verbal threats were directed at those in charge of the church by a security official affiliated with the so-called "Military Operations Administration" in the area.

Soon the Hagia Sophia bell tower and bell will rise above Sqeilbiyyeh to ring out the message that an ignorant, fanatical murderer [Erdogan] will never be able to erase divine wisdom and that Syria will remain, forever, the cradle of Christianity and civilization, regardless of those who would see it destroyed.

Nabel Alabdalla, Syrian citizen. 28th July 2020

The history of the resurrection of Hagia Sophia in Al Sqeilbiyyeh

The building of the Hagia Sophia Church in Al Sqeilbiyyeh. Photo: Vanessa Beeley

3rd February 2021: Yesterday I visited the Syrian Christian town of Al Sqeilbiyyeh, one of the most fertile areas of Syria that was besieged for 7 years by the US Coalition- backed armed gangs. During that time the terrorist groups targeted schools, residential areas, infrastructure with missiles, nowhere was safe. The closest terrorist encampment was only 500m away in Qalaat Al Madiq. Invasion was an ever present danger.

In 2021 people were seen taking selfies on the hills that previously faced the Nusra Front (Al Qaeda) checkpoints and headquarters that regularly rained rockets and mortars down on the civilians of Al Sqeilbiyyeh:

On the 12th of May, 2019, Jaish Al Izza — an armed affiliate of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) — an Al Qaeda rebrand that controls the majority of Idlib province and Northern Hama — targeted the Syrian Christian town of As Suqaylabiyah, situated on the border of terrorist-held areas.

The attacks came just after the Syrian Arab Army liberation of Qalaat Al Madiq, a town only 500 meters from As Suqaylabiyah. The civilians of As Suqaylabiyah had seen this advance by the SAA as a victory — many of the attacks on their town had emanated from Qalaat Al Madiq, a Nusra Front stronghold intermittently populated by other extremist groups, among them Jaish Al Islam, which was evacuated from Douma in April 2018, and Jaish Al Izza, the HTS/Nusra affiliate.

Families grieving the loss of children killed in As Suqaylabiyah, May 12, 2019. Photo | Gaith Al Abdullah

Four children — Bashar Nemeh, Jessica Karajian, Suhair Adnan and Engi Faisal Razouk — along with an adult woman, Hala Mkashkash, were murdered in the horrifying attack on As Suqaylabiyah, their young lives wiped out by Grad missiles almost certainly supplied to the extremist groups by the U.S or its allies.

Hagia Sophia and Erdogan

When Erdogan threatened the history and existence of Christianity in the region through his support of terrorists and extremists in Syria and his erosion of Christian heritage in Turkey – the commander of the Sqeilbiyyeh National Defence Forces, Nabel Alabdalla, decided to take action against Erdogan's neo-ottoman ambitions.

Taken from a former article:

Formerly a museum celebrating regional religious co-existence and secular cultures, it has recently been converted into a mosque by Turkish president, Recip Erdogan. Erdogan in his eagerness to return to the pre- Sevres Treaty (1923) borders and to reinstate the Ottoman Empire, is uprooting Christian identity in Turkey.

In addition to Aya Sophia, Erdogan has reconverted the historic Chora church, one of the most famous Istanbul Byzantine buildings, into a Mosque, one month after Aya Sophia opened for Friday prayer.

Previously, the St. Georgios Greek Orthodox Church, which was restored and transformed into a cultural centre by the Nilüfer Municipality in Bursa, was taken from the municipality and transferred to an Islamic Foundation. The historical building, which was neglected for 7 years, was destroyed recently.

"..known as the "Hagia Sophia of Bursa" since it was used both as a church and a mosque in the past, to future generations, organized various cultural events in the historical building. " ~ Paul Antonopoulos

This is from the Conversation in 2020:

Ever since the reversion of Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, the Muslim call to prayer has been resounding from its minarets.

Originally built as a Christian Orthodox church and serving that purpose for centuries, Hagia Sophia was transformed into a mosque by the Ottomans upon their conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

In 1934, it was declared a museum by the secularist Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

As of June 24 of this year, Hagia Sophia's icons of the Virgin Mary and infant Christ are covered by fabric curtains as the edifice yet again changes functions.

This time around, rather than maintain Hagia Sophia as a monument of coexistence, the Turkish government's actions have sharpened an already tense ideological divide between pious and secular Turks, and between Muslims and Christians worldwide.

When Erdogan converted the historic Hagia Sophia temple into a mosque, Nabel began his project to rebuild a downsized replica of Hagia Sophia in Sqeilbiyyeh. Nabel's vision is that the Sqeilbiyyeh Hagia Sophia will be a place of rememberance of all the martyrs who have sacrificed their lives to defend Syria, including the Russian heroes who fought alongside their brothers in the Syrian Arab Army to liberate this holy land from the sectarian invaders and proxy forces of the West.

I wrote back in 2019:

It is a beautiful thing to see this miracle take shape. It is a miracle because in the midst of all the turmoil in this world, here is someone who is laying the seeds of resistance for the future and leading by example, honouring steadfastness, resilience, justice and hope in a land that has been battered and besieged for ten long years. The building of this symbol of faith in the midst of a world that has fogotten what it is to believe in something better for Humanity, is a gift, not only to Syria but to the world. It is not about religion, it is about peace and honour and dignity.

This is a short video I put together of the photos I took during the construction phase:

Alabdalla reacted the minute that Erdogan declared his intent to convert Aya Sophia in July 2020. Alabdalla undertook to finance the initiative himself while making a statement that explained his vision. Excerpts below:

"Hagia Sophia was originally built as a church and was not a temple for any other religion prior to that. It was a symbol of Christianity for thousands of years before the Ottoman occupied it by force and because he is a barbarian extremist, he converted it to a mosque – the opposite to what Al-Farouk (Omar bin Al-Khattab) did in Jerusalem."

"Our Russian friends heard about this initiative from the media, so they mentioned the project to the Duma and this is evidence of their opposition to Erdogan's actions. However, the church will be built only with hands from Sqeilbiyyeh and with Syrian stone, on my land and I will finance the project personally – just as our ancestors preserved our heritage and our land, so we shall do the same."

Hagia Sophia foundation stone ceremony. Photo: Vanessa Beeley

On the 5th September 2020, the day that Deir Ezzor was liberated from a three year ISIS occupation in 2017, the foundation stone of the new Aya Sophia was laid in an olive-tree lined field in Al Sqeilbiyyeh. This Syrian Christian town was besieged for seven years by the Erdogan-controlled and midwived terrorist groups in northern Hama and Idlib, part of the US Coalition proxy forces that have invaded Syria since 2011.

Sqeilbiyyeh female defenders – mothers, wives, sisters and relatives of martyrs have taken up arms and trained with Russian forces to defend their city. Photo: Vanessa Beeley

The event was attended by an impressive number of Syrian and Russian dignitaries. General Ramadan Ramadan of the Ninth Division of the Syrian Arab Army and the Commander in Chief at the Russian base of Hmemim, General Alexander Chaiko was also in attendance and participated in the laying of the foundation stone. The Archbishop of Hama, Nikolai Baalbek and a number of other Orthodox Christian representatives gave their seal of approval.

The day before the event, Erdogan was particularly bellicose. He announced that "Turkish conquest is not occupation or looting – It is spreading the justice of Allah, if anybody wants to stand against us and pay the price, let them come". The social media chatter from his client terrorists in Idlib echoed his belligerence and displeasure that Alabdalla was defying the neo-Ottoman diktats. Apologies for the Memri/Israeli clip but here is the speech with subtitles.

Alabdalla's challenge to Erdogan certainly did not go unnoticed. Alabdalla has been a steadfast military opponent of Turkey and the US Alliance since the war against Syria began ten years ago. Not only has Alabdalla defended his own city against the threat of massacre by the sectarian hordes, he has also fought in many of the most arduous campaigns across Syria and he is considered a legend by his soldiers, many of whom have fought by his side in all the campaigns.

Nabel Alabdalla had the courage of his convictions. He had his detractors who believed the project was foolish but he has proven them wrong. The core belief that Alabdalla has upheld is that Christianity is an integral part of the middle eastern cultural tapestry and that a secular Syria must be defended at all costs.

It is that secular Syria that is now threatened by Erdogan's terrorist proxy Junta that now imposes the anti-minority policies that are undermining Syria's ancient history of inclusivity and co-existence.

HTS affiliated terrorists attack Hagia Sophia opening ceremony

My section on UK Column News covering the heinous Turkish proxy terrorist attack on a Syrian Christian ceremony on Sunday 24th July. During the ceremony to open the Hagia Sophia replica church in Al Sqeilbiyyeh on Sunday, Idlib terrorist carried out a suicide drone attack on more than 1000 civilians, children, teenagers, foreign diplomats, Syrian dignitaries and faith leaders who had come together to honour Syrian and Russian martyrs who have given their lives in the 11 year war against Western-incubated terrorism:

In the midst of the ceremony just as a representative from the Syrian Al Waqf religious institution was talking about forgiveness and leniency towards those who have harmed Syria, the terrorists attacked. Four meters away from our seats the drone struck – a young National Defence Solider Hisham Elias took the full force of the blast shielding us all. The statue also protected us from the shrapnel and deadly debris. Hisham later died from his dreadful wounds. Seven others were injured, soldiers and teenagers.

There was mass panic as people fled to any shelter they could find. Reports of more drones incoming forced us all to leave the vicinity and return to the town center. This is a new warfare funded by the US Coalition, technology most probably supplied by Turkey and training by NATO member state operatives on the ground in Idlib assisting the terrorists to kill Syrian civilians.

The Hagia Sophia Church in Al Sqeilbiyyeh survived this attempt to destroy its existence in Syria and it became the symbol of Resistance for the population of Sqeilbiyyeh who would later get married in the simple church or have their wedding photos taken in the beautiful grounds surrounding the church. Now HTS have concreted the door to the church blocking entry to all who found solace there.

I spent many months with the people of Al Sqeilbiyyeh, both during the terrorist siege and attacks and during the fragile peacetime that followed the Syrian Arab Army allied liberation of the areas surrounding the besieged town, pushing the terrorist groups into the Idlib Al Qaeda haven.

I am proud to say that my name is engraved on the walls surrounding the church and I was offered a burial site in the grounds of the church when my time finally came to an end in this world. This is how connected I was to this tiny corner of Syria that represents the war against the worlds that would see Humanity destroyed and inclusivity consigned to memory under the HTS terrorist regime.

I will include just some of my reports from beautiful Al Sqeilbiyyeh where I consider the people to be family:

1. 2019 - Interview with the Director of Al Sqeilbiyyeh National Hospital, Dr Issam Hawsheh – discussing the effects of the illegal US/EU economic sanctions, the White Helmet frauds and the daily terrorist attacks from the armed groups in Idlib and Hama countryside.

I asked Dr Hawsheh about the western propaganda which claims the Syrian government is deliberately targeting schools and hospitals in #Idlib:

"It is impossible that our government would target our infrastructures after working for 40 years to establish this infrastructure including hospitals and schools.

Those in Idlib are Syrian citizens. If they were given the choice now, none of them would stay for one minute in areas controlled by the terrorists. They are our people, the people of the Syrian government.

If a stone sheltering a terrorist were targeted, the world would be outraged. But our children are deprived of their education every day. They are deprived of health care. They are not allowed to go to the parks because of the terrorist missiles manufactured in Europe […] they are being murdered by shells and weapons manufactured by the West.

What I know (about the White Helmets) is that they are a fake organisation, a deceiving group, established by British Intelligence.

(White Helmets) claim that they represent humanitarian values and serve all mankind – they claim that they help children and rescue people – but they are actors who adhere to the terrorist ideology…"

2. Exclusive Interview with Syrian women NDF volunteers on Idlib borders

Young wives have lost their husbands early in their married life which should be a time of joy and companionship. Sisters have lost their brothers and mothers their sons.

Fadi Ibrahim Salloum was the only son of one of the mothers who speaks to me. As she left the room, his mother reached out to touch the photo of her son displayed among those of all the NDF martyrs from Al Skeilbiyyeh that have given their lives defending the town, she stroked his face in the photo gently before leaving.

"I hope that every mother would understand that if she had children and she loves her homeland, it is her right to defend her homeland when evil threatens it" she told me.

Please watch the faces of these unbelievably brave women as their friends are speaking, just to understand their suffering and pain – despite which they have chosen to stand in solidarity with their brothers in the National Defence Forces and the Syrian Arab Army.

3. UK "vows to protect Christians" while still financing terrorism in Syria

Ford [Peter Ford, former UK Ambassador in Syria] made the same point – "Not only has the British government ignored Syrian Christians but it has tried to stifle their voice, by for example refusing visas for Syrian bishops to visit Britain just to put their case."

Where, for example, are Hunt's or Johnson's condemnations of the massacre of civilians on a regular basis in the Syrian Christian towns of Al Sqeilbiyyeh and Mhardeh and villages in the surrounding countryside? These towns and villages are in the Syrian government-secured areas bordering Al Qaeda-dominated northern Hama and Idlib.

For eight years, these Syrian towns have been shelled and threatened with ethnic-cleansing invasion by the terrorist gangs marketed as "rebels" in the West and staunchly defended by Hunt and Johnson.

Women in these towns, wives, sisters, daughters of "martyrs" –the young men who have sacrificed their lives in the volunteer National Defence Forces to defend their communities against the sectarian hatred camped on their doorstep– have, themselves, taken up arms and trained as fighters to protect their people. The brutal gangs who would drive them from their homes and their land are, effectively, promoted and financed by the British government. As Ford says:

"It is the height of hypocrisy for the British government to affect concern for Christians when, in its obsession with overthrowing Assad, it has completely ignored the plight of Syrian Christians, who regard Assad as their sole bulwark against persecution. Worst of all, the British government continues to this day to support to the hilt jihadi groups in Syria"

4. Syria - on the frontline against International Terrorism

Nabel has often spoken of "holding the candle of peace and love in one hand, with the other hand on the trigger of the gun" – this is the spirit of these Syrian soldiers who fight for peace and the return of love and unity to this land.

My interview with Nabel Alabdalla shortly after a series of terrorist mortar attacks on residential areas of Al Sqeilbiyyeh:

5. Amnesty International silent on Al Qaeda war crimes to criminalise Syrian government

After March 9, the merciless attacks against civilians and infrastructure in Mhardeh and Al Suqaylabiyah continued unabated. On March 16, terrorists targeted another residential area in Suqaylabiyah. Salma Boutros Khalil was seriously injured by shrapnel, her home was destroyed. Her daughter in law, Ayat Al-Mahmoud, a Palestinian originally from Damascus, was killed. Ayat was pregnant, her baby was due in one week. Salma's grandson was also terribly injured by shrapnel and was rushed to Hama National hospital. Two other children were grievously wounded in this attack.

These attacks do not target military centers, they target only residential areas and civilians. They are, in many instances, war crimes, but according to Amnesty International, these attacks never happened.

On March 26, according to the Amnesty report, Syrian government forces fired rockets "at a school in Sheikh Idriss." Again the context is non-existent. On March 23, a suspected chemical weapon attack was carried out by HTS against villages around 10km to the northwest of Al Suqaylabiyah – al-Rasif, al-Aziziyyeh, al-Khandaq, and al-Jayyid. The attack came in from the north, in fact close to Sheikh Idriss.

I was in Al Suqaylabiyah when this attack took place and I was able to visit the local hospital that received the 34 victims which included three children, one severely affected with respiratory problems. Victims complained of breathing difficulties, skin blisters, eye sensitivity, nausea and shock syndrome after the attack. One victim, Nawfal Tawbar, described the 1m high dense white smoke that enveloped the area after the mortars had exploded:

Finally, I will include a gallery of some of the photos I have taken in Al Sqeilbiyyeh:

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7. Is Syria a failed state or will the Syrian civilisation reject the Zionist CIA MI6-imposed dark age?

You can follow the Quantum Nurse conversations on Rumble.

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8. Maaloula - people who speak the language of Jesus Christ under siege again

Easter 2018 in Maaloula. Photo: Vanessa Beeley

Maaloula is synonymous with martyrdom and miracles. Scaling the cliffs that tightly contain it, Maaloula's sacred and secular architectural wonders rise several stories, usually wearing a wash of blue distemper. Were it not for the vineyards and olive and apricot orchards that carpet the surrounding valley, a casual visitor might ponder how the townspeople have survived the mountains' sun-dried, barren landscape for millennia.

Mitchell Prothero 2008

Maaloula is a Christian town some 50km from Damascus in the north-eastern Damascus countryside, overshadowed by the Qalamoun mountains.

Residents of Maaloula still teach and speak the same dialect spoken by Jesus of Nazareth - the ancient language of Aramaic originated more than 900 years before Christ and was widely used throughout the Middle East from B.C. 1200 to A.D. 700.

The Syrian government under President Assad established a new Aramaic Language Institute in Maaloula to preserve the Aramaic language that was gradually dying out in the region. This is from a Guardian article in 2009:

In Syria there are a lot of minority groups: Circassians, Armenians, Kurds and Assyrians, so it's a big decision to allow the teaching of other languages in government schools - But the government is interested in promoting the Aramaic language because it goes back so deep into Syria's history.

Maaloula sits at the head of a fertile valley. Farming is the main local industry, and the village is known for the quality of its produce. It is also known globally for the unique celebration of the Feast of the Holy Cross that has been celebrated here for centuries. The feast commemorates the finding of the 'true Cross' in Jerusalem in the fourth century, by Empress Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine. Tradition states that she ordered fires to be lit on high mountains across the region, to announce the discovery. The night before the celebration on 14 September, bonfires are lit on the summit of both mountains north and south of the town to mark the start of the feast.

Maaloula is home to several of Christianity's oldest holy sites, including the Melkite Greek Catholic Monastery of St. Sergius and the Antiochene Orthodox Convent of St. Thecla.

Built in the early fourth century on the remains of a pagan temple, St. Sergius looms over the town from a high hilltop. Staffed by the Basilian Salvatorian Fathers, the monastery commemorates two Roman soldiers, Sergius and Bacchus, whom the Roman Emperor Maximian exiled to Syria for their Christian beliefs. Resolute in their faith, they were executed (around 303) and buried in Syria. Devotion to Sergius and Bacchus, particularly among officers and soldiers, spread rapidly throughout the empire after Constantine the Great's edict of religious toleration in 313.

Prothero wrote:

Near a gap in the mountain, at the bottom of the ridge, stands a 10th-century convent containing a shrine built around a cave honoring Christianity's first female martyr — St. Thecla, a disciple of the Apostle Paul and considered by the Christian East as "equal to the apostles and protomartyr."

According to the apocryphal "Acts of Paul and Thecla," a second-century text of Coptic origin, the young virgin of noble lineage found the cave as she fled soldiers intent on executing her after denying the advances of a nobleman from nearby Pisidian Antioch. Reaching the side of the mountain, Thecla implored the Lord to save her and the ridge opened, revealing her cavernous refuge. From this story originates the town's name. In Aramaic, Maaloula means "gate" or "entrance."

Watch Journeyman Pictures - The Village in Syria where they speak Jesus' tongue:

The first Al Qaeda invasion of Maaloula 2013

What follows is a report from BBC's Jeremy Bowen, full of the usual inserts of misleading narratives - "rebels" "Iran and Russia arming the Syrian Arab Army" while he witnesses the Al Qaeda invasion of Maaloula and does not report on the atrocities committed during their reign of terror.

Myself and independent journalist Eva Bartlett would later report on the crimes committed by the so called "rebels" against unarmed Christian civilians. In 2016 Bartlett wrote:

On September 4, 2013, a Jordanian suicide-bomber exploded his truck at the Syrian army checkpoint at the arched gate outside the village. This was immediately followed by attacks on Syrian soldiers nearby, mainly by al-Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) terrorists—including Chechens, Uighurs, Turkestanis, Libyans, and Saudis, as well as locals.

Locals believe that Muslim families and neighbours of the Christian residents had given drugged food to the Syrian Arab Army soldiers at the checkpoint so they were impervious to the warnings and alarms given by the residents when they saw the terrorist truck-bomb driving towards the entrance gate.

According to locals - the fighters included people from the Free Syrian Army, the Al Farouq Brigades, Ahfad al Rasul, Jabhat al Nusra, Jaish al Islam, Ahrar al Sham, Jabhat Islammiya, Palestinian Hamas fighters (Jabhat Tahreer al-Qalamoun), and Jabhat al Ruhr Qalomoun. Amongst them were fighters from Libya, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Uyghur Turkic Chinese as well as Syrians.

Safir Hotel - Photo: Vanessa Beeley

The militants first occupied the northern lands of Maaloula (near Qalamoun) in December 2012. On 8 February 2013, they occupied the popular and spectacularly located Safir Hotel overlooking the town, making it their headquarters.

On September 7, 2013, terrorists point-blank assassinated three unarmed Maaloula men after they refused to convert to Islam, critically injuring one of the men's sisters. I was later told that the men were executed one by one, forced to watch as their friends were killed in front of them for refusing to convert to Islam.

Bartlett writes:

Antoinette recounted how lying bleeding inside the house, she heard her brother, brother-in-law, and nephew being murdered.

"The terrorists told Anton to say the Shahada. Anton told them 'I was born Christian and I will die Christian.'," Antoinette recalled. Mikhael and Sarkis were likewise ordered to convert to Islam, and likewise refusing, were assassinated.

A few days later, on 7^th of September, six young men were kidnapped. What is particularly difficult for the Christian community in Maaloula to forgive is the fact that, "four of the six young men were kidnapped by their Sunni neighbours who were working with the terrorists and then they were executed by the Maaloula Muslim Leader Emad Diab and his local gang." Their bodies were finally discovered in 2016. I attended their funeral in Damascus:

On 2 December 2013, Jabhat-al-Nusra kidnapped 13 Greek Orthodox Nuns from the Convent of St. Thecla. They were held for three months in various locations, finally ending up in Yabroud, before negotiations involving the Qatari, Lebanese and Syrian governments resulted in their release on 9 March 2014, in exchange for 150 women detained in prisons in Syria. (Hart UK)

View from the mountain of Maaloula. Photo: Vanessa Beeley

The terrorists proceeded to take up positions in the hotel and mountainous ridges that overshadowed Maaloula and they were able to snipe residents as they came into the open to collect water or food. Icons were burned and destroyed, including the statue of the Virgin Mary that had always overlooked the town. The terrorist factions would fill tyres with flammable material and roll them down onto the rooves of civilian homes below them.

AP Report from 2016 - Inside Maaloula, ravaged by "militants"

Liberation finally came on April 14th 2014. A year later, a new statue of the Virgin Mary was placed on one of the rocky pinnacles overlooking the town to replace the one that had been destroyed by the Islamist fighters. In Maaloula the scars remain, a testament to the ravages of Western and Zionist-backed sectarian insurgents that again, threaten the town today after the 2024 terrorist coup that finally plunged Syria into the darkest age it has yet faced.

Maaloula 2024 - under attack again by Takfiri elements

On New Year's Eve 2024 reports were circulating on social media that internet services have been cut to Maaloula and no communications were being received from the remaining residents of Maaloula. Members of the Christian community are known to have fled to Damascus just as they were forced to do in 2013. Terrorist factions mocked them as they fled:

The Syrian Arab Army has been replaced by HTS-affiliated factions led by members of the Diab family who were banished from Maaloula in 2014 (by President Assad). The terror of 2013/14 is returning to Maaloula bereft of any legitimate military protection and facing revenge-fueled gangs intent on finishing what they failed to do in 2013 - ethnically cleansing Maaloula of its Christian inhabitants. These factions entered Maaloula chanting:

We will make you taste what we have tasted for 14 years.

Video of armed groups inside Maaloula 2024:

The Catholic news agency ACI MENA confirmed the following:

• Mass displacement of Christians from Maaloula under threat of death if they remain

• Seizure of businesses and property

• Return of exiled militants and accomplices involved in the murder and kidnappings of Christians in 2013/14

• Turkish Takfiri gang is in charge of Maaloula "Sultan Suleyman Shah Brigade"

• Attempted break-in and burglary by armed militia at the farm of a father and son. One of the armed men died during clashes. The Christian farmer handed himself over to the local priest who transferred him to the HTS authorities in Damascus.

The death of an armed insurgent led to the humiliation of Maaloula's Christians, forced to the funeral of the dead militant killed in self-defence by a peaceful Christian farmer whose family and relatives were forcibly expelled from their homes by the armed thugs:

Since the initial post-coup invasion of Maaloula by the Turkish and Diab-led factions, HTS has allegedly deployed their "General Security" forces to the town but only after the flight of multiple families under threat of revenge executions and kidnappings.

While HTS led by Al Qaeda/ISIS-origin Jolani have publicly endorsed Christmas celebrations and decorations, the tree in Maaloula remains undecorated and bare. The tree in the Christian own of Al Sqeilbiyyeh, northern Hama, was set ablaze by the occupation armed gangs.

The US went public with a muted condemnation of revenge attacks on "regime remnants" - a blanket term to justify the extra-judicial execution or abduction of more than 400 individuals since the Turkey-Israel-US-Qatar-backed coup in Syria. It is suspected that many more have disappeared and will have been liquidated.

Jolani, clearly being managed by MI6 rebrand agents, called a meeting with Christian faith leaders providing an antidotal photo op for his western media henchmen:

Almost simultaneously the Orthodox Times issued a report - Christian leaders in Syria issue a joint statement of hope and reconciliation amid transition.

At this historic moment, as Syria is undergoing a new transition, we, the heads of the Christian Churches in Syria, address the public with a message of love and hope.

The leaders refer to the new constitution - Jolani has indicated that constitutional reform will take three years and no elections will be held for four years - contrary to the concept of the HTS regime being transitional while Jolani appoints foreign mercenaries to military command positions and "redeemed" terrorists to regime power slots.

The necessity for the constitution-drafting process to be inclusive and comprehensive, involving all components of Syrian society, including various ethnicities, denominations, men and women, young and old, to ensure the constitution represents the will of the people in all its diversity.

The full statement can be read here.

A united, sovereign, and independent Syria that preserves the dignity of every citizen, regardless of religion, denomination, ethnicity, or political affiliation.

I asked former Ambassador to Syria (2003 - 2006) Peter Ford and Arab Lebanese journalist Myriam Charbaty to comment on the statement in the light of the recent threats to Maaloula by the Turkish armed factions. You can listen to my previous conversation with Charbaty here.

Peter Ford:

The statement by the Patriarchs arouses deep suspicion. Is it really authentic? I have no doubt the Patriarchs gave their possibly coerced approval, but did they really author a statement in perfect English which reads more like it was drafted in Langley, Virginia than Damascus. Syria? No woke button is left untouched, even "hate speech" is referenced!.

The other tell-tale sign of the statement having been drafted by other hands is the prominence given to the call for lifting of sanctions. Would Christian leaders solicitous for their flock really call for the immediate surrender of the main lever Western powers have to ensure good behaviour towards Christians and others by the new jihadi regime?

Why would the US want to engineer this statement, which can only help to launder the terrorists' image and make them internationally respectable? Because the US Deep State has every interest in grooming iits protege Jolani into becoming a domestically and internationally accepted US client and asset rezpectablewith complete comnand over that rump part of Syria the US/Israeli masters choose to allocate him from the carcass of the Syrian Arab Republic.

The statement reads especially oddly at a moment when the Christians' oppressors are particularly active in the Christian stronghold of Maaloula.No word about this? Not even an oblique reference to this and other tribulations being suffered by the Christians of Syria? Only "reconciliation" with the oppressors?

Another curious omission is the signature of any dignitary representing Syria's large Maronite community. Might this be because the Maronite head resides in Lebanon, making it more difficult to pressure him?

In my analysis the Patriarch's text is a hostage statement which it would be a charity towards its signatories to discount. Alternatively it is a sad case of Stockholm Syndrome, where kidnappees come to embrace the cause of their kidnappers.

Myriam Charbaty:

With all due respect, the statement issued by the patriarchs in Syria falls significantly short of addressing the grave challenges faced by the Christian community and the Syrian people as a whole, particularly amidst the rise of Takfiri ideology in its various forms.

While the statement may have been made in good faith, it reflects a limited understanding of the broader regional dynamics. The West continues to tighten its grip on the region, further fragmenting the already divided Sykes-Picot entities—entities that, if united, could form a strong and liberation-capable Arab world.

Amid persistent Western efforts to destabilize the Axis of Resistance and dismantle Arab identity, the patriarchs' statement fails to confront the existential threats posed to the Syrian people. Takfiris are waging a brutal campaign of beheadings, torture, and killings, targeting anyone who defends Syria's historic position as a pro-Resistance, anti-Israel, independent Arab state that embraces all sects and ethnic groups under a unified and collective Arab identity.

As places like Maaloula, Wadi al-Nasara, and Souqailabiyeh face open threats and attacks, Christians and other Syrians have repeatedly called on their Christian leadership to empower them to defend their presence and existence. They have asked to be armed against forces like Abu Mohammad al-Jolani and his Takfiri militia, made up of mercenaries from across the globe.

Instead, under the biblical slogan, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God" (Matt. 5:9), the church leadership appears to advocate pacifism in the face of imminent violence and atrocities. However, the Bible—and Jesus Christ himself—does not call for passivity in the face of injustice. Rather, it calls on us to stand for justice, even at great cost, for only through justice can true peace be achieved. Peace cannot coexist with oppression or subjugation; it must be rooted in liberation.

As Father Gustavo Gutiérrez once wrote, "The denunciation of injustice implies the rejection of the use of Christianity to legitimize the established order." This sentiment is one we must urgently echo today.

While the patriarchs' diplomatic tone may aim to preserve lives, the reality is that the threats we face are existential. What is required now is not mere rhetoric but a firm and active stance of Resistance.

We are confronted with the expansionist ambitions of the Israeli enemy, orchestrated and backed by the United States.

Our people are being killed and displaced, and Syria's rich history—our shared Arab identity and social fabric—is being systematically erased, both from museums and from collective memory.

Regrettably, the only viable path left is one of Popular Armed Resistance. Freedom will not be granted; it must be seized through strength and resolve. Maaloula, Wadi al-Nasara, and Souqailabiyeh have learned that well the first time around and this time it must not be any different. Our existence on this land requires sacrifice and that, by Christ's commandment, is the greatest form of love.

Let it be clear: the conflict in Syria is not a civil war. It is a battle against foreign mercenaries and internal collaborators advancing Western, U.S.-led agendas designed to fragment and dominate our region.

As Myriam later explained to me - Christians are no threat to Takfiris, not like the Alawite, Shia and Sunni communities that oppose foreign-backed Takfirism. The forced exodus of Christians from the region are part of the demographic rearrangement of the Middle East. The removal of Christians leaves the field open to the orchestrated Muslim-centric sectarian wars that serve the Zionist and Western agendas.

While Christians are being "quietly" persecuted, the West can continue a policy of cosmetic defence of the Christians in the region. The drive to conceal the dark agenda and to present life as "normal" in the multi-denominational Christian towns in Syria is designed to prevent any localised resistance until the time that everyone will be displaced or massacred. As Charbaty said:

HTS does not have the numbers to consolidate power in full confrontation with all sects in Syria. It needs to divide and conquer.

Charbaty also added:

These institutions lack the courage to defend our existence. In their desire for a quiet life, they have abandoned righteousness, truth, and solidarity with their brothers in the coastal regions of Syria and beyond. Seeking only to preserve their human form of existence, they have turned away from justice and the noble sacrifices required to uphold it.

They have lowered their heads so that they do not get mistaken for a threat. A move which, in time will prove, was a cheap surrender under the veil of self-preservation.

As Syria begins 2025 in darkness and bloodshed the glimmers of a Resistance against these agendas is beginning to emerge from the initial turmoil, confusion and fear, grounded in love for community, faith and justice. The new Crusader paradigm will not conquer such resistance.

As Malcolm X said:

When the people who are in power want to [..] create an image, to justify something that's bad, they use the press. And they'll use the press to create a humanitarian image, for a devil, or a devil image for a humanitarian. They'll take a person who's a victim of the crime, and make it appear he's the criminal, and they'll take the criminal and make it appear that he's the victim of the crime.

Stay vigilant and don't abandon Syria.

Some of the photos I took of Maaloula on one of my many visits:

***

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9. Syria, a fallen civilization that will rise again

The destruction of Syrian Christian churches in Deir Ezzor 2019 - photo: Vanessa Beeley

Mouin Rabbani on X. A thread covering the chequered history of Syria:

I started writing a thread about recent developments in Syria, and ended up delving into the country's very long history. This first instalment attempts to summarise aspects of Syria's history until the First World War. For those interested, I've here and there included references to a number of accessible texts for further reading. These are included in brackets at the end of the relevant paragraphs.

[My note - I have also added links and videos]

With the unanticipated, rapid collapse of the Syrian government between 27 November and 8 December 2024, sixty-one years of uninterrupted Ba'thist rule over the country has come to a sudden end. The repercussions are expected to be seismic, first and foremost for Syria, but also for the wider region, with potentially geopolitical ramifications. How did we get here?

Roughly the size of New England in the United States or China's Hubei province, Syria is the product of some of the world's oldest civilisations. Its capital, Damascus, sitting astride the Barada river, is a leading candidate for the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth. Syria's second city but at various points its most prominent urban center, Aleppo, situated along the Quwayq river, is among the few competitors for this title, and is believed to be permanently settled since the sixth millennium BCE.

Reputedly even older is Idlib, which was first settled during the ninth millennium BCE (some ten thousand years ago). Periodically abandoned and resettled, it once again re-emerged during the previous millennium as an important center of cotton, olive oil, and soap production in Ottoman Syria. Homs and Hama, sustained by the Orontes ('Asi) river, were permanently settled during the third millennium BCE.

The ancient trading entrepôt of Palmyra (Tadmur), situated in the Syrian desert and nurtured by an oasis, is also several thousand years old. It made its enduring mark on history during the third century CE when its Queen Zenubiya, believed to be of mixed Aramean-Arab descent, rebelled against the Roman Empire then dominant throughout the Mediterranean basin. Proclaiming herself Empress, Zenubiya controlled a realm stretching from central Anatolia to Upper Egypt before being captured by a Roman expeditionary force while on her way to add Sassanid Persia to her possessions.

Over the millennia the Syrian lands spawned or nurtured a breathtaking number of civilizations, cultures, religions, sects, and cults, as well as innovations in material culture, economic relations, statecraft, sciences, and the arts. Most of these have left a mark of some sort on contemporary Syria.

[Trevor Bryce, Ancient Syria: A Three-Thousand Year History (2014) provides a good introduction to ancient Syria.

[For histories of specific cities see, for example, Colin Thubron, Mirror to Damascus (1967) and Philip Mansel, Aleppo: The Rise and Fall of Syria's Great Merchant City (2016).]

To this day Syria remains among the most heterogenous of Middle Eastern states. With its population primarily Arab in composition, there are also substantial Kurdish, Turkmen, Circassian, Armenian, Assyrian, and Yezidi communities. In terms of religion its primarily Muslim population is largely but not overwhelmingly Sunni, and also contains Alawite, Ismaili, and Shia populations. In addition to a substantial number of Druze, Syria boasts a large and diverse Christian population. About half of these are Greek Orthodox, half the remainder Syriac Orthodox, slightly less than half of this remainder Armenian Orthodox, with the rest adhering to a bewildering number of denominations.

[William Dalrymple's "From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East" (1999) provides a fascinating account of this extraordinarily rich diversity.]

The villages of Ma'lula and Jub'adin in Syria's Qalamun mountains are the only places on earth where Aramaic, among the oldest languages that have been in continuous use, remains the native spoken language. Syria's once-thriving Jewish population began, like other Syrians, emigrating westwards during the nineteenth century (Egypt and the Americas were primary destinations), before ultimately falling victim to nationalist and sectarian forces unleashed by Zionism and Israel. By the early 1990s the community had dwindled to approximately 4,000, most of whom left in 1992. Approximately forty per cent of Syrian Jews emigrated to Israel, with most others to the United States and Argentina.

While Syria's various communities tend, as in Lebanon, to be concentrated in particular geographic regions, they have never lived in isolation from each other. Virtually all are to be found in the country's major cities, and regularly in smaller population centers as well.

Boasting one of the Middle East's most sophisticated urban cultures, Syria is also home to several thousand villages, where about half its population lives. Its Bedouin tribes are today largely settled within or on the peripheries of Syria's rural areas, and are often part of larger confederations that extend into Iraq, Jordan, and/or the Arabian Peninsula.

Although the term "Syria" is generally believed to be derived from Assyria ('Ashur), and its territory was under Assyrian rule or domination for extended periods, the latter was in fact centred in Mesopotamia. Whether "Syria" was initially employed to distinguish the lands west of the Euphrates from Assyria in Mesopotamia, or for some other reason remains unclear.

Over time Syria or the Syrian lands, what is often called Greater Syria, came to denote the area encompassing modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, parts of Turkey, and in some cases Cyprus as well. In Arabic, Bilad al-Sham refers to Greater Syria, while Al-Sham can refer to either Syria or, colloquially, Damascus (formally known as Dimashq).

Situated in the Fertile Crescent, Syria is among the regions where animal domestication, agriculture, and settled life made their first appearance. Its first civilizations spoke a variety of Indo-European and Semitic languages. Among the latter, Amorite-speaking tribes, city-states, and kingdoms established themselves in much of Syria during the third millenium BCE, to be followed by Aramaic-speaking successors who dominated much of central Syria, including Damascus.

[My article about the theft of Syrian Arabian horses during the first proxy terrorist invasion of Syria can be read here ]

[The following video is a history of the Syrian Arabian horse by breeder and historian Basil Jadaan]

With its lands extensively cultivated, and situated along vital maritime and overland trade routes including the Silk Road, Syria was a source of great wealth for its various rulers. Predictably, all or parts of it was during ancient times repeatedly conquered by regional powers, including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Alexander the Great, and others. They sometimes replaced local rulers with their own, and occasionally went so far as to deport existing elites, but more often retained existing leaders as vassals in exchange for tribute, soldiers, and a variety of goods and services.

During the final three centuries BCE Syria was part of the Hellenistic Seleucid empire, which established its capital in Antioch. During this period the Greek language and culture, augmented by Greek immigrants, spread throughout its territory and particularly among its elites. This influence would remain for centuries after the Seleucids' demise, continue during the similarly Hellenistic Byzantine era, and persist long after Syria came under Muslim rule during the seventh century.

In 83 BCE the Seleucids were supplanted by Tigran the Great of Armenia, who two decades later lost Syria to Rome. The latter annexed it in 64 BCE in an effort to put an end to persistent civil conflict among various claimants to Syria's wealth and power, establish its own pre-eminence, and keep the Parthians, whose empire was expanding westward from Persia, at bay.

Syria was among the Roman Empire's most productive provinces, which helps explain why a number of its nobles achieved senior positions in Rome including, on several occasions, the supreme office of Emperor. Julia Domna, matriarch of the Severan imperial dynasty which ruled Rome during the late first and early decades of the second centuries CE, hailed from a wealthy Syrian Arab priestly family in Emesa (Homs) devoted to the Arab-Roman sun god Elagabal.

In addition to herself achieving the position of Empress and wielding considerable influence, two of her sons, and several other relatives, became emperors themselves. Emperor Philip I (Marcus Julius Philippus), also known as Philip the Arab, and who ruled during the mid-second century, hailed from what is today Shahba in the Suwayda region abutting the Jordanian border. Philip's tolerance of Christianity would later produce disputed accounts that it was he rather than Constantine in the following century who was the first Roman emperor to embrace the new religion.

During the Byzantine era that commenced during the fourth century, the wealth of its Syrian province was rivalled only by that of Egypt. According to some historians, during this period "Syrian" came to specifically denote its Aramaic-speaking Christians, as distinct from their Hellenistic, primarily urban neighbours. Like Greek, Aramaic remained in widespread use, particularly in rural areas, until well into the Islamic era, during which both were gradually supplanted by Arabic. With few exceptions, Aramaic became a liturgical rather than spoken language.

[The following is a post from Telegram Channel Enemy Watch. Aramaic is still taught in the Syrian Christian town of Maaloula. Now under attack, again, by the HTS-affiliated sectarian forces.]

Syrian Christian Abu George has passed away due to heart attack:

He was the one whose videos we shared. He was very poor, and his farm was looted by terrorists while his grandson was beaten in front of him by Israeli-Turkish terrorists (aligned with Julani's group).

Abu George, a native of Maaloula, was reciting the Lord's Prayer in Western Neo-Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ (A), when the attack occurred.

This is what Israeli jihadists did to him and his family just two days ago.

Just as Roman control of Syria had been challenged by its Persian Parthian rival, so it was between their Byzantine and Sassanian successors. Constantinople's emperors appointed the Ghassanids, an Arab Christian tribe that had migrated north from Yemen after the Ma'rib dam burst during the second century, as rulers of over much of Greater Syria and defenders of its eastern frontiers and associated trade routes.

The Ghassanid Kingdom, which emerged during the early third century and made its capital initially in Jabiya in the Golan Heights but later moved it to Bosra southeast of Der'a in the Hawran, would last for more than three centuries until the Muslim conquest of Syria. Many of its battles would be fought not against the Sassanians but rather the latter's Lakhmid clients.

The Lakhmids had established an Arab Christian kingdom encompassing southern Iraq and the eastern Arabian peninsula. Unlike the Hellenized Ghassanids, who shared the faith and theological doctrines of Constantinople, the Lakhmids belonged to the rival Church of the East and were aligned with the Zoroastrian Sassanids, who supported the Church.

The numerous, mutually debilitating wars fought between the Byzantine and Sassanian empires, and by the Ghassanids and Lakhmids on their behalf, form the crucial background to the rapid expansion of the religion and polity that emerged in the Hijaz during the seventh century. From this springboard, the Islamic Caliphate would expand its dominions from southern France to the Indian subcontinent and eastern fringes of Central Asia in little over 100 years.

[Juan Cole in his landmark Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires (2020), explores how this imperial conflict, as well as Muhammad's journeys to Damascus as a merchant on behalf of his future first wife, the businesswoman Khadija, and his interaction with Christians and Jews in Syria, helped inform his religious development.]

As noted above, Arabs and Arabic-speakers were already part of Syria's demographic mosaic long before it came under Arab-Muslim rule during the 630s, and were already well-established in the areas of Palmyra, Homs, and the Hawran. Indeed, in the campaign led by the Muslim military commander Khalid ibn al-Walid to conquer Syria, whether in the decisive 636 Battle of Yarmuk or others, its main defenders were the Arab Ghassanids, who had already been there for centuries, and had been preceded by others.

[For an early account of the Muslim conquest of Greater Syria, see Hamada Hassanein and Jens Scheiner, The Early Muslim Conquest of Syria: An English Translation of Al-Azdi's Futh al-Sham (2021).]

Such realities present somewhat of a challenge to those who recently discovered "Arab colonialism" in Syria and other Arab states in order to deflect from Israel's indisputable (and formerly self-proclaimed) colonial practices in Arab – including Syrian – territory. If Arabs were indeed colonial usurpers in Syria, how do Israel flunkies explain that it was also Arabs – in the form of the Ghassanids – who led what they would describe as the "anti-colonial resistance" against them?

The silly polemics deployed to exonerate Israel's contemporary practices additionally fail to account for the reality that after the Muslim conquest Syria's existing population was, in contrast to the Palestinians or Syrians of the Golan Heights under Israeli rule, neither expelled nor exterminated. Evidence that Arab immigrants to Syria ever outnumbered the local population is also non-existent. Rather, and over the course of several centuries, the region's Aramaic and Greek-speaking majority came to adopt Arabic as their lingua franca and eventually as their native tongue.

During the same period most of its overwhelmingly Christian inhabitants and many of its Jews eventually, and for a range of reasons, adopted the religion of Islam as their own. Rather than being excluded by the new rulers Syria's existing elites were, whether or not they converted to Islam, often incorporated into the new polity and would eventually come to dominate the new elite. Contrary to caricature, the forced conversions employed to Christianize Europe were rare in Muslim Syria.

(Parenthetically, Israel flunkies habitually claim that the term "Palestine" disappeared with the Romans and didn't re-appear until the British "invented" it during the 1920s. In fact, and among many other examples, one of the Caliphate's military districts was named "Filastin". Rather, it was "Judea" that fell into permanent disuse, even as Jewish communities remained in these territories).

The second Islamic Caliphate, that of the Umayyads (661-750) established its capital in Damascus. Drawing heavily on Byzantine traditions on matters ranging from administration to architecture, as well as influences from further afield, and fusing these with their own, the Umayyads developed institutions, patterns of rule, and new approaches in fields such as commerce and science that would in many respects serve as a template for those who succeeded them.

[For a standard introduction to the Umayyad Caliphate see G.R. Hawting, The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate 661-750 (1986).]

After the Umayyads were deposed by the Abbasids, the center of gravity of the Islamic empire moved either eastwards to Baghdad or westwards to Cairo, which unlike Damascus were new cities. Syria would once again rise to prominence during the twelfth century when the Muslim military commander and first Sultan of the Ayyubid dynasty, Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi (Saladin), united Egypt and Syria under his rule.

Of Kurdish origin, Saladin hailed not from Syria where Kurds already had a longstanding presence, but rather from Iraq. Saladin would launch his final campaign to defeat the Crusaders from Syria, and in 1187 liberated the Holy City from their control. His name synonymous with chivalry on account of real as well as mythical conduct attributed to him, Saladin lies buried in Damascus' imposing Umayyad Mosque complex, where according to Christian and Muslim tradition the head of John the Baptist also lies buried.

[Amin Maalouf, best known for historical novels such as Samarkand and Leo Africanus, has also produced a fascinating work of history about this period, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1989), drawn primarily from contemporaneous accounts.]

During the thirteenth century Syria was once again dominated by rulers based in Egypt, in this case the Mamluks, a caste of slave-soldiers. In a number of battles in Ain Jalut in Palestine, Homs in Syria, and in the Orontes ('Asi) river valley over the course of half a century, the Mamluks successfully kept the Mongols, who had in 1258 sacked Baghdad, at bay.

In 1516, after a decisive battle at Marj Dabiq near Aleppo, the nascent Ottoman Empire dealt a death blow to the Mamluk Sultanate and added most of the Arab world, from Basra to Algiers, to its Anatolian and Balkan dominions (Morocco, Sudan, Oman, and the interior of the Arabian Peninsula were the main regions that did not come under Ottoman rule). While Mecca and Medina in the Hijaz along with Jerusalem held the greatest significance on account of their religious status, Damascus and Aleppo together with Cairo would form the most important cities in the new Ottoman domains.

The initial Ottoman province of Syria, corresponding to its Mamluk predecessor, comprised much of Greater Syria, and was governed from Damascus. That said, Aleppo was for much of the Ottoman period the more prominent and wealthy urban center. Improvements in security and administration along with widespread public works and expanding trade networks produced substantial economic growth and increases in agricultural output throughout Ottoman Syria. Persistent conflict between rival empires based in Anatolia and Persia continued, this time between the Ottomans and Safavid Iran, but to Syria's good fortune their wars were primarily fought in Iraq.

[The distinguished Syrian historian Abdel-Karim Rafeq, who passed away earlier this year at the age of 93, published one of the seminal studies of Ottoman Syria, The Province of Damascus, 1723-1783 (1966). Jane Hathaway, The Arab Lands Under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800 (2020), extensively discusses Syria/Greater Syria.]

Prior to the nineteenth century Ottoman rule in its Arab provinces was fairly decentralised. Governors and other senior officials were directly appointed by Istanbul, while revenue was primarily generated by tax farming, in which the right to collect taxes from particular lands, goods, or trades was auctioned by the state in exchange for fixed payments to the treasury.

The Ottomans, who until the nineteenth century related to those under their rule as subjects rather than citizens, also organized society according to religious affiliation. Muslims held a legally privileged position. With respect to religious minorities, the Sultan would appoint/confirm a religious leader from each of the various communities. These leaders were responsible for organising the affairs of their community in accordance with its own laws, traditions, and courts, and for ensuring the community's loyalty to Sultan and state.

While hardly a recipe for equality, which arrived only during the second half of the nineteenth century, it allowed for considerable autonomy which served the interests both of these communities and of the state. On the whole, Syrian religious minorities and Jews in particular fared much better during this period than their European counterparts.

The nineteenth century was a period of profound change and disruption in the Middle East. An Egyptian rebellion against Ottoman suzerainty led by Muhammad Ali Pasha, its Albanian-born governor who is often considered the founder of modern Egypt, saw Greater Syria fall under Egyptian rule from 1831-1840. The effectiveness of the Egyptian administration led by Muhammad Ali's son, Ibrahim Pasha, and particularly its tax and conscription regimes led to widespread opposition.

This culminated in a peasant rebellion that erupted in Palestine in 1834, and quickly spread to other sectors of society and as far as the province of Aleppo. The Egyptian interlude ultimately strengthened the population's Ottoman loyalties as well as local identities.

[Incidentally, Israeli scholars Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, in their Palestinians: The Making of a People (1998) trace the formation of a distinct Palestinian national identity to this rebellion, which long preceded both the Zionist movement and the British Mandate]

A combination of growing European influence in Ottoman affairs coupled with inter-European rivalries, together with a series of administrative and constitutional reforms emanating from Istanbul designed to consolidate central rule and modernize the Empire, during this period helped transform largely inconsequential sectarian distinctions into tensions and ultimately violent conflict.

In 1840, during the waning days of Egyptian rule, in what is known as the Damascus Affair, the city's Jews were subject to a blood libel after an Italian monk and his Muslim assistant disappeared. Incited by the French consul, the city's Egyptian governor Sharif Pasha imprisoned and tortured to death a number of prominent Jews before extracting the required confessions, which in turn led to a rampage through the Jewish quarter by a Christian-Muslim mob.

When Ottoman rule was restored later that year the authorities publicly denounced the blood libel as a fabricated slander against the Jews, released the surviving prisoners, and executed Sharif Pasha.

Two decades later the city's Christians would meet a more calamitous fate. Amidst Franco-British rivalry that saw London and Paris not only sponsor different communities but also seek to define and promote their interests, a peasant uprising in Mount Lebanon in 1859, initially by Maronite Christian peasants against their Maronite landlords, descended into sectarian warfare that primarily pitted the British-sponsored Druze against French-sponsored Maronites.

The unprecedented sectarian slaughter, fomented by a combination of local and foreign agitation, spread to Damascus, where in July 1860 some 5,000 of its Christians were massacred over the course of eight days in an orgy of violence that also left many of their properties and institutions in ruins.

In sharp contrast to the Ottoman authorities' conduct during the subsequent Armenian genocide, the Sublime Porte on this occasion intervened decisively, imposed accountability and reparations, and restored the co-existence that had for so long dominated relations between the region's various communities. [Leila Tarazi Fawaz, An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (1995) and particularly Eugene Rogan, The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Making of the Modern Middle East (2024) provide excellent accounts of this traumatic episode.

[Indispensable for a broader discussion of these themes is Ussami Makdisi's Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World (2019).]

During the latter half of the nineteenth century intensified European political and economic encroachment in the Middle East; the accelerating centralization of Ottoman governance; the growing dominance of Turks in administering the Empire's Arab provinces – perceived as transforming the multinational empire into a Turkish state; the dissemination of European concepts of nation and nationalism; Ottoman territorial losses in the Balkans, Caucasus, and North Africa; and a revival of interest in the Arabic language and culture known as the Nahda, or Arab Awakening, laid the basis for the emergence of Arab nationalism.

Although the Arab nationalist movement had prominent Christian leaders from the outset, the caricature of an ideology imported into the region by Western missionaries and pioneered by Arab Christians in order to replace Islam as the region's unifying bond with an Arabism that would provide them with full equality does not hold up well against reality.

As C. Ernest Dawn has demonstrated, for example, Christians were in fact underrepresented among the first generation of Syrian Arab nationalists relative to their proportion of the general population, and most of this generation were graduates of Ottoman state schools rather than missionary institutions. Additionally, Islamic modernists also significantly contributed to its development. Not all forms of Arab nationalism were secular, and those that were often acknowledged Islam's prominence in the region's culture.

[For a study of the development of Arab nationalism in Syria during this period see Philip S. Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus 1860-1920 (1984).]

Some Arab nationalists took their inspiration from German romantic nationalism. Sati' al-Husri, for example, who was born into a Syrian Muslim family, promoted the view that the Arabs had been a people united by bonds of blood, soil, and language long before the advent of Islam, and saw little room for any Muslim dimension in Arab national identity. Shakib Arslan, who was born into a Druze family (and is the grandfather of Lebanon's Walid Jumblatt), by contrast viewed Islam as the central component of Arabism and the basis for nationalism.

In other words, like its counterparts elsewhere nationalism in the Arab world came in multiple forms, some of them contradictory or even incompatible.

[William L. Cleveland has written detailed biographies of both individuals mentioned: The Making of an Arab Nationalist: Ottomanism and Arabism in the Life and Thought of Sati' al-Husri (1972), and Islam Against the West: Shakib Arslan and the Campaign for Islamic Nationalism (1985).]

Syria and particularly Damascus emerged as important centers in the development of Arab nationalism, complemented by Syrian émigrés based in Egypt. The activities of these advocates, who tended to focus their aspirations on Greater Syria and Iraq (and at times Egypt and the Hijaz), and tended to exclude North Africa from their calculations (Arslan was an exception in this regard), took more organised forms in secret societies such as al-Fatat and, for military officers, al-'Ahd. But until the First World War their ideas gained only limited traction, with most politically-engaged Syrians either remaining loyal to the empire to which they had belonged for four centuries, or advocating greater regional autonomy and political freedoms within it.

The Great War changed everything. Most importantly, the Ottoman Empire was defeated, lost all its Arab provinces by 1918, and in 1922 ceased to exist.

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Thank you all for reading, watching, listening and subscribing. Wishing everyone a peaceful new year and a 2025 of resistance against the powers that would steal our Humanity.

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10. Syria Podcast Episode 4 - why did Syria fall?

UK Column - My most detailed podcast to date as I uncover more of the truth behind what really happened in Syria that led to the Al Qaeda coup and Zionist, Neo-Ottoman land grab with the US, UK, Gulf States and EU in the wings.

I wish you all a peaceful Christmas and I salute the true Resistance wherever you are. See you after the break. Please look after yourselves - 2025 is going to be even tougher.

You can also follow the Syria podcasts at the UK Column website.

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Please do consider subscribing. Thank you to everyone who does. After a very short hiatus while I sort a few things out, I will be back to normal very soon. xxx

Vanessa Beeley is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.