THE EXPOSURE OF THE ANTI-ZIONISTS

The litmus test of Syria has exposed anti-imperialist commentators' contradictory views

Introduction… and Disclaimer

I have to start with an introduction and a disclaimer.

Over the past few days, we’ve heard the Western pro-Palestine spokespeople — those who have platformed themselves by speaking out against the genocide, those who have become famous from it, those who are invited to talk shows and panels, those who have taken stages, those who have written articles and books and made money from their pro-Palestinian views — being highly critical of the events that happened in Syria. However, their views have turned into rage, and by doing so, they have exposed their latent hypocrisy — that they were never pro-Arab or pro-Muslim lives at all; that their humanity was selective, and it was selective to protest only about those atrocities which promoted their own ideologies.

This was a shock for me. I have platformed these people by promoting their work and speaking highly of them. So I want to warn you now: if you want to keep your heroes as heroes, stop reading. If you have an open mind and want to see the spectrum of what they have said, read on.

Today, I am going to expose some of these people. And I am going to do it with evidence from their own hands.

The anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist commentators I am referring to are all former heroes of mine. They are Craig Murray, Caitlin Johnstone, David Miller and Richard Medhurst. I refer to them as ‘commentators’ throughout.

It is important to note that this piece reflects my personal interpretation of the statements and actions of these commentators, based on their public remarks and interactions. I provide their tweets, and you are free to make whatever opinion you’d like on them.

This piece is long, so buckle up.

A Summary of the Events in Syria…. and Why These Commentators Are So Mad

Syria has been under the brutal tyranny of the Assad family for 54 years. The most recent ruler was Bashar al-Assad, a tyrant who oppressed his own people for decades. This includes torture, murder, imprisonment and disappearances. I have never had a single Syrian friend whose family has not been affected by the brutality of the Assads, and whose stories are nothing but of the breathtaking cruelty of this father and son. These people did not know if their loved ones were dead or alive for decades. Those who hadn’t been murdered returned home years later, toothless, sick and traumatised. Shells of their former selves, their personalities changed completely.

For the last 14 years, there has been civil war in Syria, ignited by the Arab Spring, where the population has tried to rid itself of its tyrant. Many rebel groups emerged in this fight and to gain dominance. Due to Syria’s location, it is a strategic geographical spot and so the world’s strongest powers—that is, the US (allied with Europe and the UK) and Russia (allied with Iran)—joined in the fight, directly and indirectly, in a bona fide proxy war. Each side funded certain rebel groups and factions and also engaged in direct bombing; as did Israel the entire time. Israel has never stopped bombing Syria nor occupying its lands, namely the Golan Heights.

Assad chose to accept the help of Russia and Iran and as such stood against America and, ergo, ostensibly against Israel. This meant that many commentators took Assad’s stance to be anti-US and therefore ‘anti-imperialist’ and by default, ‘pro-Palestinian’. Assad did indeed allow Iranian weapons to travel over Syria and into the hands of those fighting the genocidal IOF. As such, Assad was painted as a stalwart and a vital cog of the ‘axis of resistance’ against Israeli aggression, genocide and annexation.

Last week, the tyrant Assad fell, and a rebel group under the lead of a man named Al-Jolani took over. Assad fled like a coward and ended up in Russia, where he was given political asylum. The whole thing was sudden, and no one expected it. It also signalled the defeat of Russia and Iran in their proxy war against America.

The people of Syria have rejoiced at the fall of their tyrant. They have been fighting for this for 14 years. Since his departure, his notorious underground prison complex has been emptied as much as it can be – as rescuers have been unable to get to or even find every room. Sednaya Prison was a place of torture, where women were raped and gave birth to children who never saw the sun and whose fathers their mothers didn’t even know. People were tortured in ways identical to the IOF’s barbarity on the Palestinians. Men were released, so traumatised and confused they didn’t even know their own names. After the fall of Assad, family members flooded to the prison, trying to find loved ones they’d not seen in years, whom Assad had disappeared, praying that they’d be reunited. So many were; so many who thought their loved ones had died found them after Assad fell. So many didn’t. So many lost their children and their fathers and their mothers.

Since Assad’s departure, mass graves have been uncovered. Tens of thousands of dead.

During Assad’s reign, at least 710,000 Syrians have been murdered. Twelve million have become refugees.

Now Assad has fallen, these ‘anti-Zionist’ and ‘anti-imperialist’ commentators have become extremely upset and angry. This is because since his fall, Israel has encroached further into Syrian lands, continuing their project of Greater Israel which requires the annexation of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. Israel has bombed even more ferociously, decimating and destroying nearly the entirety of Syria’s military infrastructure, including all its air force planes. In response, Al-Jolani has said two things. Firstly, Syria is not fighting a war with Israel, and its neighbours have nothing to fear from Syria. Secondly, he has asked Israel to leave, and if they do not, he will respond.

To these anti-Zionists, the overthrow of Assad by the rebels has ended the Palestinian resistance against Israel. This is because they do not think Al-Jolani will continue allowing weapons to pass to Palestinian resistance groups from Iran. As such, they are raging and lamenting at the supposed "short-sightedness" of getting rid of Assad, as they believe a greater evil—the full invasion and annexation by Zionist Israel—is to come. It is unclear who exactly they are raging at in their Twitter rants. It seems they are annoyed with everyone who has welcomed the fall of Assad—as the tyrant he is—as though they had some part in his downfall. Since no one on Twitter was involved - and most are just armchair observers like the commentators themselves - the only people they are truly raging at are the Syrians, those who have celebrated the end of a dictatorship of tyranny. Rather than allow Syrians their happiness at liberation from oppression, these commentators dehumanise them, portraying them as foolish for celebrating, claiming things will now inevitably worsen when Israel acts. They seem to forget that Israel has always been there—bombing, occupying, and funding terror.

To support their worldview, not one of these commentators acknowledges Assad as an oppressor and tyrant. Not a single one. And when called out about this, they respond with rage, insults, and with dangerous Islamophobic sentiments.

None of these commentators can accept the truism that one can simultaneously celebrate the fall of a tyrant and fear what may follow. The two positions are not mutually exclusive. However, their stance is different. They argue that Assad was the "lesser of two evils" because he was "supporting the resistance." Yet, Assad's forces never fought against the genocide being committed by their next-door neighbour. Not a single one of Assad’s army went to resist Israeli aggression, but somehow, he is still lauded as "pro-resistance." Moreover, the fact that it is only since Assad’s fall, that Israel has decided to destroy Syria’s complete military infrastructure – something they never felt they had to do when Assad was in power - revealing that perhaps Israel isn’t so comfortable with the new leadership of Syria as these commentators would have you believe.

There are two glaring problems with these commentators’ position. First, they refuse to accept the well-documented and evidenced reality of Assad’s mass oppression of his own people because it disrupts their anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist ideology, which views Israel and the US as the root of all evil. Second, by denying Assad’s tyranny, they fail to see Syrians as human beings, effectively dehumanising them. Their anger at Syrians stems from the belief that Syrians should have endured Assad’s tyranny for the sake of their broader ideological war against Israel. In other words, they expect Syrians to accept their suffering as pawns in a geopolitical game. Their refusal to accept Assad’s evil and their disdain for Syrians celebrating their liberation is a declaration that Syrians are only valuable as tools in their ideological warfare.

These commentators then employ Islamophobic tropes and faux concern for minority rights to justify their positions. This mirrors colonial powers’ historical strategy of placing minorities in power over majority populations to create division and maintain control. Before colonial intervention, sectarian violence was rare under Muslim rule, where people of different religions and sects lived peacefully. However, colonial policies created artificial divisions, as seen in Rwanda, Iraq, and Syria. In Syria, the vast Sunni majority has suffered oppression under a minority Alawite Shi’aa leadership, specifically put there by the French colonialists, who placed Alawites in all of the most powerful positions. As such, the colonialists weaponised religious nuances into hardened political sectarianism to create tensions – a strategy of divide and rule and ultimate continued control over the country through embedded destabilisation.

The issue with these commentators' faux concern for minority rights is threefold. Firstly, reports from minorities in Syria, written in Arabic, indicate that their rights are being protected. Secondly, these commentators were silent when the Sunni majority was being slaughtered and tortured by Assad. The majority of the 12 million Syrian refugees - including those who risked their lives in boats over the sea, the dead bodies of their drowned children washing up on shore briefly making headlines in the West - are Sunni. Their selective concern for human rights is hypocritical, driven solely by their anti-Zionist agenda, which favours Assad for his purported "resistance" and criticises al-Jolani for his reluctance to wage war against Israel. The question does not seem to occur to them, with what Al-Jolani and the Syrians are meant to fight Israel with? Thirdly, their claims that Sunnis will oppress minorities are baseless and offensive, perpetuating colonialist divide-and-rule tactics to sow division and push their own political ideologies, while demonising Muslims - as up to 90% of all Muslims are Sunni. Sunni as used by them, is simply as a synonym of Muslim.

These tactics are not new. They rely on meaningless Islamophobic labels such as "Islamist" and "Salafist," terms constructed by imperial powers to dehumanise Muslims. The term "Salafist" is made up. The real word is “Salafi” and is not a sect of Islam, but simply refers to Muslims who follow the early generations of Islam—which represent the vast majority of Muslims. Terms like "Islamist" and "Salafist" are used pejoratively to evoke fear and paint Muslims as extremists. Similarly, distinctions like "Shi’aa" and "Alawite" (a subsect of Shi’aaism) are exaggerated to divide Muslims, ignoring the shared faith that unites them. These commentators adopt the very imperialistic tactics they claim to oppose, exposing their hypocrisy and latent dislike of Islam.

Syria, like many other nation-states in the Muslim world, did not exist as a nation-state before 1946. It was artificially created by imperial powers, along with other entities like Pakistan and Palestine, as part of a strategy to divide and control Muslims and their lands. The legacy of this interference continues to devastate these regions.

The real issue these commentators have—and they state it openly—is their desire for a secular nation-state in Syria. Yet, even the artificial entity called Syria has never been truly secular, as its constitution requires the leader to be a Muslim. The vast majority of Syrians are Muslim, and if they choose to establish a Muslim state, that is their right. Demanding that they adopt secularism as a political ideology is inherently Islamophobic. Muslims, who make up 25% of the global population and are projected to reach 30%, are not obligated to conform to Western political models or diktats. Yet these commentators keep repeating their latent Islamophobic rhetoric that secularism is the only way, and that secularism promotes pluralism. This, despite the vast and mass historical evidence that Islamic rule promoted the most religious diversity and coexistence compared to every other empire. Whilst Europe was persecuting Jews, Muslim empires provided them refuge and safety. This included during WW2 itself.

Secularism does not promote diversity; it suppresses it. It demands uniformity, prioritising allegiance to the absence of belief over personal values, morality, and faith. The concept of the nation-state compounds this by fostering loyalty based on arbitrary borders or citizenship rather than shared principles and morality. This system constrains individuals, forcing them to fight for the values of their nation-state rather than their own beliefs.

Western Europe is an example of this. In France, a woman wearing a full swimsuit was ordered to strip on the beach by a group of policemen. She had to strip in public because they thought her swimsuit – which covered her body – was not ‘secular’ and revealed her faith. To be secular, she had to show more of her flesh in public, to men and women alike. Similarly, a French town banned alternatives to school meals containing pork. This meant that when pork was served, children were forced to have that meal as no alternatives were allowed. This was in order to promote ‘secular’ values and prejudice Muslim and Jewish children. Secularism in this way is simply extremism, weaponised to oppress.

Further, the values of the nation-state concept are determined by the government in power on any single day. Today, in the UK, it is at the whim of Keir Starmer, who has decided that, based on his subjective personal views alone, disobeying international treaties aka international law is in the interest of the nation-state and has thus sent British troops to actively participate in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.

The Exposure of The Commentators

The commentators above have exposed their lack of care of humanity in a number of ways. (Where I say ‘all’, that means the evidence provided shows they all have engaged in this. When I don’t mention ‘all’ then it is some of them, and I provide the evidence in their respective sections.) They are:

1). They have all refused to accept Assad was an oppressor.

2). They have all whitewashed or minimised Assad’s crimes.

3). They have all dehumanised the Syrians for their happiness that their tyrant, Assad, has gone.

4). They have engaged in Islamophobic tropes.

5). They have insisted on Syria being in line with their worldview - i.e. secularism.

6). They them have engaged in the divide-and-rule lexicology of the colonial and imperial powers they ostensibly are against, in order to continue their seemingly latent Islamophobic sentiments- namely, their dislike of any state emerging that may be governed by Islamic law (rather than the law inherited by colonial powers, namely secularism). By doing so they expose that they are not anti-imperial at all, but consider human beings to be divided, used and exploited in ways that promote their own ideologies.

7). They expect the Syrians to accept a tyrant and fight against Israel, and they speak negatively about them if they do not. This aligns with their anti-Zionist, anti-imperial worldview which sees Syrians as pawns to be sacrificed rather than human beings whose lives are sacred.

8). By doing this, they have exposed their hypocrisy - whilst advocating for the lives and rights of Palestinians, they simultaneously show a complete disregard for the lives and rights of the Syrians. As such, their humanity is selective and only present when it furthers their worldview.

Craig Murray

Background:

Anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist Craig Murray ran for the Worker’s Party in Blackburn this past general election. Blackburn has a large Muslim population (35%), and this was Mr Murray’s target audience. I know this, as I went to one of his events. This was in a hall where he, Chris Hedges and Richard Medhurst all spoke about Zionism and Palestine in front of a room packed with Pakistani Muslims. Craig Murray was irritated that another man, a Muslim, Pakistani had announced that he was also running for MP for Blackburn. Craig believed himself to be the most qualified for the position and thought these Pakistani Muslims should vote for him over this man, who was from the area. That man, Adnan Hussein won the seat, and this solicitor is now the independent MP for Blackburn.

Tweets:

In these tweets, Craig Murray is responding angrily to a twitter person who calls themselves A. As I happen to know A, I was shocked at the responses people levied at them. What I know is that A is a British Muslim who has undertaken much work in attempting to help British citizens to legally disengage their funds from genocide. It maybe pertinent to add that A makes no money from this work nor have they asked for any, from crowdfunds or otherwise. This already puts A in stark contrast to the Craig Murray, David Miller, Caitlin Johnstone and Richard Murray – all whom ask for money from the public to continue their commentaries on their ideologies, or in the case of David Miller, to pay for his legal fees.

After the fall of Assad, Craig took to twitter to claim that Assad’s regime was ‘flawed.’

A directly challenged this view, commenting that they were happy Craig lost to Adnan, considering he had refused to accept the oppression of Assad. This seemingly set Craig off into a rage.

I found Craig’s rant to both shocking and appalling. It also exposed him entirely:

1). He at all times refused to accept Assad’s oppression and tyranny.

2). He actively whitewashed Assad’s tyranny by calling his regime ‘flawed.’

3). He smeared a Muslim for simply pointing out the word, ‘flawed’ was incorrect. He used well-used Islamophobic tropes such as, ‘Islamicist’ and ‘Salafist’ which have no meaning except, ‘Muslim’. These words were designed to dehumanise Muslims and to portray them as an evil. His comments demonstrate an attempt to discredit critics based on their religious identity.

4). He accused the Muslim of being a "so-called" Muslim, seemingly revealing his belief that any Muslim who disagrees with him or his worldview is not genuinely Muslim—positioning himself as the ultimate authority on who qualifies as a Muslim.

The exposure of Craig Murray was entirely by his own hand, yet remarkably not in response to any disagreement over the events in Syria, to which A agreed. Rather, it stemmed solely from his refusal to acknowledge Assad as oppressive. Why? Because doing so would challenge his worldview, which holds that imperialism and Zionism are the sole evils. Furthermore, he seems to believe that Arab and Muslim lives in the region must be sacrificed, and that they must willingly surrender themselves to fight this evil. Why Craig doesn’t strap on a gun and fight himself if he feels so strongly about it, is of course, not addressed. For him, Syrians and Muslims are the "foolish" ones for not accepting the continuing rule of a tyrant simply because that tyrant didn’t like Israel.

He went further, again seemingly asserting himself as the ultimate arbiter of who is a "real" Muslim—they being of course, only those follow his worldview.

What is more extraordinary and revealing about Craig's tweets is that, as a former British diplomat, he is well aware of the risks and consequences of social media. Yet, Islamophobia is so deeply entrenched and normalised in Western society that he felt entirely comfortable expressing such views without ever offering an apology for his Islamophobic stereotyping.

David Miller

David Miller has also completely whitewashed Assad’s crimes. In fact, he goes so far as to deny that he was tyrant, claiming that to be an ‘infantile description’ and instead portrays him in a heroic light.

Not only is this a completely reckless view of an oppressor, when asked about Syria - and the atrocities by Assad towards the majority Muslim population (Sunni) - this is what Miller had to say:

“Get over it.”

Like Craig Murray, he did not address his comments or offer any retraction. Instead, he simply doubled down:

What is interesting about both men is whilst they criticise and condescend many Muslims for not sharing their views, they then seek to call out to them to see the error of their ways.

David Miller went further in his ideology. In his twitter lectures, he now attempts to reclassify and create a hierarchy of ‘mujahideen’ much like the hierarchy of ‘real’ Muslims these commentators have implicitly created. That being, those who agree with him and whose actions promote his worldview, are the ‘good’ mujahedeen. The ‘bad’ ones are all those who do not.

Mujahedeen is another word taken and abused by colonial and imperial powers. Jihad - the root verb from where ‘Mujahedeen’ comes from - means to struggle, and does not mean war or fighting - (those are the words qatl and harb). The groups on the ground using it are doing so because it means those ‘struggling’ - in this case, struggling against oppression. In other words, the word Mujahedeen is used to mean resistance fighters.

Mujahedeen of course has become synonymous with groups that Western governments will label terrorist or not, depending on who is promoting their interests on any given day.

There are Mujahadeen groups who have previously committed crimes yet are also fighting against Israeli occupation. That is a factual reality. But just like with Assad, such crimes are whitewashed if they support these commentators’ agendas.

In reply to Moazzam Begg’s pretty astute tweet on this very issue, David Miller replied, proving Moazzam’s point completely:

You may think this is all satire. I assure you it is not. While David Miller lectures Moazzam Begg about the Muslim victims of the Muslim world, he again completely ignores the mass murder of Muslims by Assad. Why? Because it doesn’t fit his narrative and everything to him is a geopolitical game. Miller fell into Begg’s trap - and exposed his hypocrisy in one fell swoop. Touché Mr Begg, touché.

Richard Medhurst

Now we come to Richard Medhurst, who has been particularly upset at the events in Syria. He has engaged in false equivalence, whataboutery, Islamophobia and straight-up irritation.

Anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist Richard refuses to call Assad an oppressor or a tyrant and instead engages in whataboutery:

The weird thing about this tweet is that the Muslim world has long called America ‘murderous’ ‘oppressive’ ‘tyrannical’ and the English speaking world calls Biden, ‘genocide Joe’ and Keir Starmer, ‘Sir Kid Starver’. Despite these glaring facts, Medhurst refuses to accept Assad’s crimes.

Medhurst got so upset that his wargames scenario wasn’t playing out as he wanted, that in response to the horrific pictures coming out of the underground Sednaya prison, he tweeted this:

Whatever your worldview may be, and whether you think the figures of the numbers imprisoned in Sednaya may have been exaggerated, the fact is that the prison did exist, people were tortured horrifically there, imprisoned for years and disappeared. To make fun of this fact is a level of callousness that provides full exposure that any care of collective humanity is non-existent, and any proposed care - such as for the Palestinians - may only be due to political ideology.

Richard goes on, lamenting Al-Jolani’s policies and priorities, despite him not even being in power for 2 weeks:

I don’t think he gets it. He’s acknowledging and admitting that this law was a law under Assad for decades - yet he turns his ire on Al-Jolani for it. He complains it has not been repealed, rather than criticise its instigation in the first place! I mean there’s clutching at straws…and then there’s this.

Just like Miller, Richard continues with an extraordinary lack of self-awareness. As I mentioned above, I went to Craig Murray’s event where he had both Richard and Chris Hedges as speakers. They spoke about Palestine - a majority Muslim land - to a room full of Muslims. Not a single Palestinian nor a single Muslim was given a platform to speak. These three non-Palestinians, non-Muslims lectured us all.

I then received this email:

Again, no Syrian voice from Syria, no Syrian under oppression and no Muslim invited to speak. Only Medhurst could claim some Syrian identity, his mother being Syrian Christian, though he does not live in Syria and was not oppressed by Assad. Further, he does not represent the Syrian Muslim voice, with Syrian Muslims making up 87% of the country. Again, Muslim voices are silenced and everyone else speaks for them, as are too the actual victims of these crimes.

Despite this, Medhurst actually tweeted this:

That’s right, despite not being Palestinian, Richard thinks he is qualified to speak on their behalf. Despite not being the victim of Syrian oppression, he thinks he is qualified to speak on it, though he minimises it and refuses to accept the scale of its brutality.

His tweet is also concerning because by it he seems to confirm that he harbours deep pro-imperialist views. As I described above, Syria as a faux nation-state was only created in 1946. This was done by colonial powers to create divide-and-rule politics and weaken the region. In fact, the people from the area are all the same people: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine. They share faith, customs, culture, language, history etc. As such, people from that region are part of it and by claiming they are not by virtue of ‘passport’ or nation-state ‘nationality’ is an adoption of the divide-and-rule lexicology of the imperialists who destroyed the region.

The other thing that his tweet does is deny agency to Muslims and enforces upon them secularism. Whether the Western and non-Muslim world like it or not, the Islamic faith - and Islamic law - consider Muslims as a brotherhood - Ummah - to one another. Syria is a majority Muslim country and with the identity of that majority comes the fact that they accept other Muslims as their Ummah who they identify with. This is their faith and as such, this is their choice. Using western values of secularism to deny agency to Muslims within their own brotherhood is deeply insidious.

Not only do some of the speakers on the poster Medhurst tweeted come from the nation-state, Syria, they also come from the surrounding areas. All are Muslim and therefore can identify completely with the Muslim majority population. That is an objective fact. As such, they speak from their shared Islamic identity and not from a secular or political ideology.

Medhurst’s seemingly latent Islamophobic sentiments also came to the fore in another of his tweets:

In this Richard - an Arabic speaker - uses the Muslim Shahada to depict ‘Wahhabism’ which his worldview says is committing genocide. The Shahada is the Muslim declaration of faith which says, “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his Messenger”. All Muslims - Shi’aa, Sunni, Alawite, Agha Khani, Ahmedi - all say this. They all believe this.

Richard has ostensibly used the Saudi flag, which he has superimposed upon a skull to depict Wahhabism. The Saudi flag consists of the Shahada and two swords against a green background. However, instead of choosing to depict the swords - the iconic imagery of the Kingdom’s flag which everyone recognises - he chooses instead to superimpose on this skull - to represent his perceived ‘axis of genocide’ - the Shahada.

Richard has used the Shahada to depict ‘the axis of genocide’ despite the fact that those being genocided are being so largely because they utter the Shahada.

As an Arabic speaker, Richard knows what he has done and he knows what he is depicting. It is hard to believe he does not know that it is grossly offensive and Islamophobic. It is also the exact same thing that the Israeli state produced. The State of Israel made a promotional video claiming mass rape on Oct 7 - a claim which has now been debunked. In that video, young women were blindfolded with green scarves, also with the Shahada written on them.

Caitlin Johnstone

Caitlin Johnstone is famous for her disdain of Biden and Trump. She often takes aim at Trump supporters who she portrays as ignorant and stupid. In light of that background, she tweeted comparing what she perceives as the absurdity of Trump supporters and their claim that Trump winning is a revolution, with an actual revolution in Syria, where an actual tyrant was toppled. (Before anyone engages in whataboutery here, I am not making any comment about the whether the revolution was achieved by positive or negative actors - just that a tyrant was toppled and ergo a revolution took place).

Caitlin believes the Syrian revolution was a fake revolution akin to Trump supporter’s claims. Again, A calls out her callousness, to which Caitlin engages in an aggressive tirade against them:

Not content with misconstruing A’s words and - like Craig Murray above - deflecting with insults, she continues using insulting - and arguably, abusive - language. When called out about her lack of acknowledgement of Assad’s crimes, Johnstone doubled down on her ad hominem vitriol:

A asked Caitlin one question:

Caitlin did not answer.

Conclusion

Palestine was not the litmus test of humanity. Palestine simply separated the selfish and uncaring among us from those who recognised that genocide was a clear red line.

With Syria however, things are completely different. Those ostensibly for the human rights of Palestinians have shown that in fact, their worldview and agendas take precedence over human lives. They will not accept facts if it goes against their political views. Even when that fact is one of rampant, undeniable evil oppression.

Those they criticise and despise - such as Democrat and Republican supporters who don’t accepts facts - they themselves mimic. They have exposed latent Islamophobic sentiments and their beliefs that secularism should be imposed upon the Middle East without any acknowledgement of history or without any care of what the people there may actually want.

The uniformity of their reactions; the unbridled aggression when challenged, the dismissal of oppression, the latent Islamophobic sentiment - reveals a deep flaw in ‘anti-imperialistic’ ideology which has exposed it as a hypocritical political theory and a danger in and of itself.

As for me, I make my position clear. I am against all oppression. I rejoice at the ending of all oppression. I do not believe in the ‘lesser of two evils’ as evil is evil. I fear worse is to come in the Middle East but that does not mean I lament the fall of a tyrant - I will always rejoice when a tyrant falls. Above all, I cannot read the future.

Syria is the litmus test of humanity, and it has exposed so many and so much of their hypocrisy. It has exposed those who truly care for the sanctity of human life and see all life as sacred, and those whose humanity is selective and directed by what they can gain in calling out oppression, or what they can gain by ignoring it; in effect, exploiting human lives for their own political ideologies.

I will leave you with the words of Syrian Ibn Abu Tareq to describe the situation in Syria, two weeks after the fall of the oppressor, Assad, and the end of the Assad tyrannical dynasty: