Syria’s rebel leader Abu Mohammad al Julani is promising to build a secular, inclusive society that respects minority rights. Western leaders are eating it up. They’re salivating at the chance to snatch Syria from Russia’s autocratic axis and parade it as a new democracy. President Biden is so impressed he scrapped the $10 million bounty the US had on Julani’s head.
But Western leaders should take note. Julani’s promises today, after toppling Russian-backed Bashir al-Assad, echo everything Fidel Castro said in 1959 after kicking out America’s puppet, Fulgencio Batista. Just sayin’…
Meanwhile, Israeli PM Netanyahu is doing his damndest to rain on Julani’s revolutionary parade. He seems hell-bent on casting Julani as a weak Turkish stooge rather than a rising Muslim caliph. That’s the only explanation for Netanyahu’s creeping annexation of Syrian land — treating it like a fire sale and daring Julani to stop him.
Netanyahu would love nothing more than to do to Julani and Syria what he did to Nasrallah and Lebanon — turn them into cautionary tales, not regional powerhouses. The last thing Netanyahu wants is Syria threatening Israel’s long-standing monopoly as the Middle East’s “only democracy.” But if he’s not careful, he’ll push Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan into defending his stooge. And NATO’s Erdogan and Turkey are no Nasrallah and Lebanon — or Assad and Russia, for that matter.