Peter Crowley
The American mainstream media may have some ability to get away from government policy talking points when covering domestic news. But when it covers international news, it strictlytoes the line of US foreign policy.
Nowhere in the contemporary world has this led to more layers of contradiction than in Syria, following the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
After 13 years of civil war and, in recent years, relatively diminished fighting, SyrianPresident Bashar al-Assad was deposed in December 2024. Thanks in large part to Turkish backing, the former Salafist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an anti-Shia, former Al Qaeda affiliate, descended south at lightning speed and took over Damascus.
Because Israel has been a longtime Assad enemy and Assad helped transfer weapons fromIran to Hizbollah, the US MSM celebrated the US-designated terrorist organization HTS coming to power. Within days, Israel bombed hundreds of Syrian military installations in the country, moved into the Syrian Golan Heights and began creeping closer to the Damascus suburbs.
The glaring contradiction is that since the US MSM celebrated the new Syrian government’s rise to power and if the main elements within it – HTS – have truly “reformed” and shed its jihadist elements, why not call out Israel for bombing the Syrian military and invading its sovereign territory? It would seem such actions would be rather detrimental to a new government.
The answer is simple.
As seen in Gaza, the West Bank, southern Lebanon, Israel can do whatever it likes. This is despite the fact that it has its most extremist government in history and has arguably acted more aggressively than throughout its settler-imperialist history. Now, although the Assad regime has fallen, Israel has taken full advantage of the new Syrian government – which, by the way, seems to hate Shias, Alawites and other minorities more than incursions into its sovereign land or attacks on its own military. The goal of Israel is to ensure that Syria is feeble, in case Assad returns to power or if the former terrorist government starts growing a spine and stops attacking minorities and begins defending its territory from external aggressors.
As alluded to more recently, there have been clashes between government security forces and minority groups. Over the past week or so, this has been a developing situation, so it is hard to know the entire picture. However, initially in the south, there were skirmishes between government forces and Druzes. Later, over the past week, former regime supporters allegedly attacked government security forces in the Alawite northwest, causing severe retaliation by security forces and vigilantes. The dead are mostly Alawites in what has been considered the largest massacre since Assad used chemical weapons in 2013. There are some outlets, such as the Gray zone alleging that this attack on Alawites was unprovoked and a reflection of the former terrorist government’s anti-Shia (anti-“apostate”) stand, which harkens back to HTS’s and ISIS’s actions during the Syrian Civil War.
In response to the skirmishes between Druze and Syrian government forces, Netanyahu saidIsraeli forces were prepared to protect Druze in southern Damascus suburbs.
There are a few major contradictions here.
Again, this new celebrated Syrian government’s targeting of minorities, which Assad had protected, reflects HTS’s behavior during the civil war. Yet the MSM has celebrated this new government and the fall of Assad in depicting the “cautious optimism” and “hope” of the Syrian people. What gives?
The other contradiction is that the US MSM is taking Israel’s claim of preparing for military intervention near Damascus to protect Druzes at face value, as if Israel were a country acting only on universal human rights and international law, rather than a country that has trammeled such universal human rights in its Gaza genocide and in its attack on the West Bank and Lebanon. As if Israel’s imperial goal were anything other than ingesting territory to build a Greater Israel and keeping Syria weak, as stated. Furthermore, the US MSM ignore scalls by Druzes of Syria for Israel not to interfere.
The situation in Syria over the past week or so and even, perhaps, the past 13 years has been a little muddled. Bashar al-Assad was a brutal ruler who killed thousands of his own people and had opponents tortured in secret prisons. Yet, ISIS, al-Nusra and HTS were engaged in torture, mass murder, and extreme human rights abuses. Now HTS has taken over what was a secular Syria. The US MSM celebrated because this was in Israel’s interest and, thereforeAmerica’s. Yet if one is celebrating the new government, why not call out Israel’s taking over its sovereign territory, its bombing of Syria’s military and threats to demilitarize its southern provinces, swallowing up its entire south? The American MSM’s answer is simple: Israel can do whatever the hell it wants. In the American MSM acting as cheerleaders for a “former” terrorist group taking power in Syria because it suits Israel is particularly hypocritical and contradictory. Even for them.
* As a prolific author from the Boston area, Peter F. Crowley writes in various forms, including short fiction, op-eds, poetry and academic essays. In 2020, his poetry book ThoseWho Hold Up the Earth was published by Kelsay Books and received impressive reviews byKirkus Review, the Bangladeshi New Age and two local Boston-area newspapers. His writingcan be found in Middle East Monitor, Znet, 34th Parallel, Pif Magazine, Galway Review, Digging the Fat, Adelaide’s Short Story and Poetry Award anthologies (finalist in both) andThe Opiate.
His forthcoming books, due out later in 2023, are That Night and Other Stories (CAAB Publishing) and Empire’s End (Alien Buddha Press)
Source: https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/03/14/msms-contradictions-regarding-the-new-syrian-government/
