Jorge Cadima wrote this article for Avante, the newspaper of the Portuguese Communist Party, published Dec. 5, 2024, before the extremists seized Damascus. Excerpted translation: John Catalinotto.
Philadelphia, January 2019.
Imperialism spreads chaos and war. The war in Syria has erupted again. Events are evolving rapidly. But the fundamentals are already clear.
Israel has accepted a “ceasefire” with the Lebanese government, sponsored by the U.S. and France, because, despite the massacre of civilians, it has been unable to advance on the ground. But it’s just a delaying maneuver.
Former British ambassador Craig Murray says: “Israel has spent 72 hours flagrantly violating the ceasefire without a word of protest from the Western powers. As soon as someone fires a single shot back, the U.S. and its satellites will be outraged, the ferocious bombing of Beirut will resume, and Israel will advance.” (craigmurray.org.uk, Nov. 30, 2024)
The ceasefire also served another purpose: soon after it was signed, the attack on Syria was launched. An attack with Israeli bombardments, a huge media disinformation campaign, regional links and support that are still not entirely clear and fundamentalist terrorist gangs as shock troops.
It’s worth remembering who these gangs are: they’ve changed their name (Al Nusra, HTS), but their origins lie in Al-Qaeda and ISIS (Islamic State). They are the ones who have been spreading terror for years with “Western” support. …
They are the ones that Israel treated in its field hospital in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights (ynetnews.com, Feb.18, 2014), visited personally by Netanyahu (youtube.com/watch?v=9vkksqtOTvs), who claimed that it was a humanitarian action by Israel (as if “Israel” and “humanitarian” fit in the same sentence). They are the ones who “never attack Israel, because they are sponsored by Israel and the CIA,” as former ambassador Murray says. (x.com/sahouraxo/status/1862938100936155610).
And about whom Biden’s current National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, wrote in an email to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012: “AQ [Al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.” (wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/23225)
Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote: “Al-Qaeda, literally, ‘the database,’ was in its origin the computer file with the thousands of mujahideen recruited and trained with the help of the CIA to defeat the Russians” [in Afghanistan in the 1980s.] (Guardian, July 8, 2005)
What’s going on? Israel is trying to cut off Iranian and Syrian support for Hezbollah and the Palestinian groups resisting Israeli genocide. But it is going further: it is preparing an attack on Iran to try to destroy the entire Axis of Resistance. It has the support of the major imperialist powers and the media machine at its service.
The monstrous hydra of imperialism has many heads, including the CIA, NATO, the Ukrainian Nazis, the fundamentalist terrorists, the EU (which is trying to repeat in Georgia the coup of 2014 in Ukraine). But it has a single command center: big transnational financial capital. As history shows, for 14 months in Gaza and 10 years in Ukraine, this imperialist hydra feeds on the blood of its victims. But it is desperate. …