The fall of Syria, Arab media lies and the student movement

By Shawky Darwish

Shawky Darwish, representing Students for Justice in Palestine at The New School, gave this lightly edited presentation at a webinar on the U.S. role in Syria, sponsored by United National Antiwar Coalition, on Dec. 28, 2024.

The inspiration for what I’ll speak on today is this horrible article produced by al-Jazeera on Dec. 9, the day after the fall of the Syrian government at the hands of a U.S./Turkish/Khaleeji-funded offensive by a rebranded offshoot of al-Qaida, now known under the title Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

In their article “How have Palestinian groups reacted to the ouster of Syria’s al-Assad?” Qatari state journalists insist that: “Palestinian factions have largely expressed support for the Syrian people after the ouster of former President Bashar al-Assad while saying that they hope the new authorities will support the Palestinian cause.” Overall, they paint a picture of general Palestinian support for the fall of al-Assad and welcoming of the new HTS regime.

Surprisingly, in my circles of young, university-aged, “socialist” students in New York City, the so-called encamped bastion of resistance in the “belly of the beast,” responses to the fall of one of the major powers in the Axis of Resistance has been met with painstaking insistence on imperialist media demonizations of Bashar al-Assad. Part of it has to do with the pervasiveness of imperialist media among Western leftists, especially when these news organizations carry Arabic names and are moderately sympathetic to the genocide in Gaza.

The lies peddled by al-Jazeera and the collaborator regime in Doha [Qatar] should be exposed for what they are. Their summarization of Palestinian responses to the fall of al-Assad relies mostly on the statement by the morally corrupt Palestinian Authority (which is currently cooperating with Israel to kill Palestinian men, women and children in Jenin and other parts of the West Bank). Otherwise. al-Jazeera entirely leaves out the [Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s] and the Palestinian Resistance Forces Alliance’s statements and removed significant chunks of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s statement, which was entirely critical of the U.S.-backed HTS offensive.

To be clear, the PFLP statement “condemns in the strongest terms the treacherous attack, under direct supervision by the Zionist entity and in coordination with the U.S. administration and its vassals, which aim to undermine Syria’s stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity and to undermine its pivotal role in supporting the resistance in Palestine and in Lebanon.” Even more recently, the PFLP began open clashes with HTS in the border region between Syria and Lebanon and has been expelled from Syria by the rebranded al-Qaida after they assumed power.

The Central Command of the Palestinian Resistance’s Forces Alliance, based in Damascus, similarly “confirmed that the aggression carried out by terrorist organizations on the provinces of Aleppo and Hama is part of an American/“israeli”/Turkish scheme, falling within the framework of the aggressive war being waged against the forces and states of the Axis of Resistance.”

The DFLP again “called for an end to interference in Syria’s national affairs,” called on HTS to stop their offensive before the fall of al-Assad, and sent moral support to the Syrian Arab Army as they fought to “cleanse the country of the filth of terrorism and restore national sovereignty.”

Even Hamas, which has for years faced major concern from international leftists over its association with far-right groups in Qatar and Egypt and whose statement was generally diplomatic to the new administration in Damascus, gave subtle warnings to HTS against collaborating with the zionist entity, claiming, “Allah willing … Syria can continue its pivotal role in supporting the Palestinian people and their resistance … and we categorically reject any zionist ambitions or plans targeting our sister Syria, its land and people.” Hamas’s statement is a clear

acknowledgement of al-Assad’s support of the Palestinian resistance.

Not to mention Hezbollah and Iran, which have openly grieved the fall of the Syrian government and which have vowed to retaliate against the U.S./Zionist/Turkish/Gulf axis.

Why the attack on al-Assad?

Why then is al-Jazeera so insistent that al-Assad had a poor relationship with Palestinians? Again, the efforts of American, Turkish and oil-rich Gulf monarchical journalism – which include most articles which are accessible online in countries like the U.S., [Britain], or Canada – is aim to divorce Syria from the Palestinian resistance project, which is a source of major contention and

fear for reactionary regimes in the region. In particular, Muslim collaborators like Saudi, Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar are facing enormous threats to power from popular protests demanding their regimes take action concerning the Gaza Holocaust.

Saudi, Qatar and Türkiye, which played major roles for many years destabilizing Syria’s government, have to now explain (propagandize) why al-Assad, who

was routinely seen among Arab populations as a champion for the Palestinian people, was actually an enemy against the Palestinian cause.

Remember that after Saudi rejected U.S. plans to base its assault on Iraq and Saddam Hussein in the early-2000s, it was the Qatari government which accepted the American request and helped facilitate the overthrow of Hussein, which became a major point of contention between Arab people and the Qatari regime! Those in Doha do not want to be seen (again) as a U.S. proxy to overthrow sister Arab governments, even though it is clear that Qatar is comfortable playing that role.

Hence, much of the propaganda we now see contains media from Arab media channels (al-Jazeera, al-Araby, Middle East Eye) which unwittingly became channels that Western anti-genocide audiences came to trust as reliable alternatives to the far more explicitly zionist Western publications. It’s important to note here that these channels, which are effectively arms of the Saudi and Qatari governments, are not to be immediately trusted, especially when [Gulf Cooperation Council] interests are opposed to those of the Axis of Resistance.

Failures of solidarity movement on Syria

I’m going to reorient a bit in this second part, which is to acknowledge some of the failures of the international solidarity movement, including the student movement in [New York City] of which I consider myself a member, in relation to the fall of Syria, and also some failures in regard to proper principles for anti-imperialism. This unfortunately is not an extensive list of failures of the student movement, of which there are many, including in terms of the encampment strategy and general political confusion among students, which I won’t properly address here.

I suggest that the student movement accept a proper orientation towards imperialism, and specifically towards the American empire, which includes many vassal states and many Arab vassal states and which represents the greatest danger to oppressed people everywhere.

The student movement must clearly articulate a stance against all forms of U.S. intervention under any circumstances. In conversation with a comrade who became entirely convinced that Bashar [al-Assad] was a genocidal tyrant as equally responsible as the Israelis for the dispossession of Palestinians, I was (quite belittling) told that being against U.S. intervention in Syria was the moral equivalent of being opposed to U.S. intervention to stop the European Holocaust in the 1940s.

Thankfully, another comrade jumped in and reminded us all that U.S. intervention had nothing to do with the mass extermination of European Jews, but everything to do with an imperialist opportunity to expand influence and resource domination in Western Europe and the Asia-Pacific, which the U.S. then used to inflict many more holocausts via NATO proxies throughout Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia!

Not to mention, the U.S. actively assisted former Nazis facing prosecution for their crimes against humanity and denied Jewish refugees from Europe entry into the U.S. at the outset of the Holocaust.

Anti-imperialists must reject U.S. intervention

Being anti-imperialists means we must reject American efforts to occupy other countries, no matter how sympathetic the propaganda they pitch seems. If there’s anything I’ve learned from watching the fall of Gaddafi and Hussein and having family members flee from a war-torn Libya, it’s that no matter how horrible America argues that an Arab “dictator” is, the Yankees will always manage to commit unspeakable horrors to oppressed peoples of the world.

We must reject all efforts at normalizing or furthering the propaganda of the American imperialist regime and liberal hawk agendas.

The student movement is particularly relevant to this point because we are one group that is very close to the production of information, misinformation or propaganda in the imperial core. We have a heightened responsibility to educate people about, for instance, the role of sanctions and their relationship to American myths of governments that refuse to bend to imperialism’s will, whether in Syria, Cuba, Burkina Faso, Russia, China or North Korea. There is overall a

significant lack of understanding about the role of American sanctions in strangling “rebellious” governments into either death or submission.

We must reject imperial lies aimed at destabilizing governments, as we know the effect these efforts have had in Libya, Sudan, Iraq, Haiti and elsewhere. There are no “good” forms of U.S. intervention.

One final point is about internationalism and the need to further develop our principles within the student antiwar movement. I think it is fantastic that 14 months into the Gaza Holocaust, we all generally agree that genocide is a bad thing and that all states and individuals should take efforts to prevent genocide. This is wonderful.

It is also absolutely pathetic. If our politics as “the resistance” in the belly of the beast is solely defined by opposition to genocide, and this is the bar for organizing, then the bar is on the literal floor. Good politics goes beyond being anti-death; it is an important element to be sure, but it cannot be our only principle. We must understand anti-imperialism as the only legitimate way to end genocide in general. Students need to have conversations about political principles that move beyond just Palestine and just a politics of anti-genocide.

Anti-imperialism as an ideology requires us to understand geopolitics, complex networks of support between states and resistance groups and how to critically support governments which we may have legitimate concerns about. We should remain vigilant to U.S. narratives which portray themselves as performing divine interventions against moral catastrophes abroad, which are most of the time the result of American imperial efforts in the first place!

In Syria, we have watched for 13 years as America and its vassals systematically armed counter-insurgency groups aimed at the assassination of al-Assad, imposed sanctions which deprived millions of Syrians of water, food, electricity and cooking gas and occupied the eastern half of Syria, which conveniently contained the majority of the country’s oil fields and farmland.

The fall of al-Assad to rebranded al-Qaida is a major blow to the Axis of Resistance, and it’s unclear how they will respond to this loss. The international solidarity movement has again failed, as it has failed Libya and failed Iraq. We must act now to prevent future appendages of the U.S. empire in the Middle East.