Well, there’s a surprise.
The Syrian leader Abu Mohammed al Jolani has presided over an appalling massacre of the Druze in Suweida, Syria. At time of writing an estimated 300 have been slaughtered by his troops.
Despite the fact that al Jolani was previously a jihadi with both al Qaeda and Isis, that the US designated his faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) as a terrorist group and that between 2006 and 2011 he was jailed by the Americans, people in the west have been falling over themselves to hail him as a born-again moderate and statesman. All he had to do was trim his beard, put on sharply-cut western clothes, replace his nom-de-guerre of al Jolani by Ahmad al-Sharaa and declare that he had no quarrel with Israel and even wanted to join the Abraham Accords — and the west duly swooned.
The fact that almost immediately after taking power his people massacred Syrian Alawites was brushed aside. Who cared about them? After all, they were the same faction that included the tyrannical and newly deposed President Assad.
An ISIS human bomb attack that killed at least 20 Christians was similarly brushed aside. So were videos posted on social media in May that showed HTS forces executing Druze civilians in the town of Sahnaya. Other HTS footage showed Druze civilians being abducted and humiliated. A leader of Syria's Druze minority, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, condemned the jihadist violence as a “genocidal campaign” and urged immediate intervention by “international forces to maintain peace and prevent the continuation of these crimes”.
This was also all brushed aside as merely a symptom of the factional chaos that al Jolani had inherited. The good news was that in the person of the reformed jihadi president, a new pragmatic Syrian dawn had broken.
President Trump, declaring al Jolani to be a “handsome” guy, duly de-listed HTS and lifted sanctions. The west’s Israel-bashers queued up to fawn over their new romantic hero. President Macron of France was pictured embracing him. The BBC’s international editor and non-stop Israel-baiter, Jeremy Bowen, was pictured scurrying along beside him like a star-struck teenager trying to get his idol’s autograph.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, took time out from trying to jail Israeli leaders for defending themselves against genocidal Islamists in order to pose for a photograph shaking Jolani’s hand. The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, paused from his own attempts to defame and delegitimise Israel to do the same.
Two British political podcasters, Tony Blair’s former director of communications Alastair Campbell and former Conservative MP Rory Stewart, were so excited they made their way to newly liberated Syria to interview al Jolani and have their picture taken with him.
Oh dear. Over the past four days, their hero’s forces have been attempting the mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Syria’s Druze. Gruesome pictures and videos have been posted online. The troops — some of whom were pictured wearing the insignia of ISIS — reportedly kidnapped and raped girls under the age of ten in front of their parents. They cut off supplies of food, water and basic necessities from the Druze community and emptied whole villages.
Videos showed al Jolani’s troops humiliating Druze men by shaving off their beards — which are religiously significant to them — in a chilling echo of what the Nazis did to the Jews of Germany. The respected Druze religious leader, 80 year-old Sheikh Marhaj Shaheen, died after being thus shaved and abused.
After murdering the Druze, Jolani’s forces mutilated their bodies and drove over people they shot. They reportedly bombed hostels, homes and schools, carried out field executions inside Druze houses — and horrifically, slaughtered the entire staff of Suweida’s hospital along with patients.
The Druze are Israel’s staunch allies. They also form a significant minority of Israeli citizens. Israeli Druze are intensely loyal and brave, and many of them serve in the IDF.
So Israel went into Syria to defend them. No-one else lifted a finger. The IDF launched dozens of air-strikes targeting Syrian government troops and convoys heading into Suweida, and today struck the Syrian defence ministry headquarters in Damascus and sites near the presidential palace.
Israeli Defence Minister Yisrael Katz said that the IDF “will continue to attack regime forces until they withdraw from the area — and will also soon raise the bar of responses against the regime if the message is not understood”. Tonight, Syrian forces reportedly began withdrawing from Suweida.
And so what have the paragons of conscience and humanitarianism in the west done or said about this monstrous attempt to wipe out the Druze?
Guterres posted on X that he was “alarmed by continued escalation of violence in Syria and unequivocally condemn all violence against civilians. I condemn Israel’s escalatory airstrikes and reports of the IDF’s redeployment of forces in the Golan”.
No condemnation of al Jolani’s forces for humiliating, abusing and slaughtering the Druze; only condemnation of Israel for coming to their aid.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said today that Washington was “very concerned” about the Israel-Syria violence, which he attributed to a “misunderstanding”. What??
From the thousands of demonstrators in the streets and on campuses screaming about a fictional Israeli genocide in Gaza, empty space.
From the likes of Amnesty or Human Rights Watch, which falsely paint Israel as human rights abusers, silence.
From Campbell and Stewart, who relentlessly traduce Israel for causing horror and starvation, silence.
From the British government and parliament today, silence.
But the House of Commons did find time for an MP to accuse “Netanyahu’s ministers” of wanting to “lock the whole population of Gaza into what is effectively a giant prison — a plan that would clearly amount to ethnic cleansing” (equating incarceration with expulsion is certainly an imaginative notion) and to demand that the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, “make it clear to the Israeli Government that the UK will not stand idly by and will act, starting by sanctioning Prime Minister Netanyahu himself”.
To which Starmer said three times that he was “appalled” by “what we are seeing and hearing” about Gaza. But not sufficiently appalled, apparently, by the massacre of the Druze to say a word about that, let alone condemn al Jolani’s government upon which Starmer recently showered £94.5m of UK taxpayers’ money.
Over this real attempted genocide and ethnic cleansing, the hypocrites of the west — who falsely accuse Israel of these and other crimes — are silent. Their professed concern for the oppressed of the world is a lie. They care only about demonising the Jews. Israel is the only country standing up for the Druze. Yet Israel is being condemned for doing so. The moral perversity and bankruptcy of the west know no bounds.
These western hypocrites are infatuated with al Jolani largely because a reformed jihadist confirms their belief that Islamist mass murderers are really just nice, polite, charming men who are only too delighted to give up the beheading and raping and burning alive in order to hobnob with world leaders, swan around in official cars and leave all their youthful bolshieness and acting-out behind. See, there’s no need to be frightened by people like that at all. They’re basically fine. All they need is to be given a chance.
These westerners aren’t going to give up that image of al Jolani any time soon. Because nothing can be allowed to derail their fixed belief that the real horror in the world is not psychotic, psychopathic jihadis intent upon wiping out all other faiths, but Israel’s Jews — whose unforgiveable crime is their determination to prevent evil from winning.