Pardon my saying so, but I must say this: “How could those Alawites be so dumb naive?” And the second thing I want to say is: “How can people be so evil?” And the third and last thing for today is, “Where are the protests? Where is the condemnation? Where are world leaders and the media?”
Actually, there is a fourth thing, but I’ll leave it till the end of this article.
In a previous article, Haydar explained how the Alawite Hafiz al-Assad got to be president of Syria, a Muslim country that has a constitution stating that only a Muslim can be president. The rule under Hafiz and his son, Bashar, only put a temporary hold on Islamist intent to wipe out the “infidel” sect.
This article is a paraphrasing of Haydar’s words (in italics) both from a Zoom talk and a WhatsApp conversation. It describes the fate of the Alawites between the fall of the Assad regime up to the present day.
In a moment all hell broke loose
Assad’s regime fell on 8 December 2024. There were killings and ethnic cleansing campaigns and pogroms almost immediately but after that, they were sporadic.
Fellow Israelis, who does this next bit remind you of?
Just to show you how unjust and depressing everything is, Haydar continues, once the Assad regime collapsed, a lot of Alawites who had been imprisoned under both Assads were released. They were happy to see their families. Happy to see members of their communities.
They told their fellow Alawites that this was a new day, a new dawn.
‘Any weapons you have,’ they said, ‘give them up because we do not want to pose a threat. We don’t want to be seen to be loyal to Assad. Assad didn’t care about the sect or the community. He left us all to die. Took all his money, went to Russia, took his Sunni wife and his half-Sunni kids and they all fled to Russia and he left us all to die. So what’s the point of fighting in his name? Let’s give up our arms as a show of good will.’
And that’s exactly what happened. The Alawites gave up their weapons.
The Druze refused to do that; they still have their weapons. They still have their autonomy. Israel is helping them out in the south as well.
The Alawites were naive. Let’s build a new future, they thought.
Haydar tells me that we Israelis can understand because we have lived through one of the worst human catastrophes in history. Those killing the Alawites are the same people with the same Islamic mindset. It’s an exclusionary mindset – they pretend, in their official warnings, that they are slaughtering us Alawites because we oppressed them.
But in reality, they just hate Alawites because of our identity. They hate us because of what we believe in. They know that’s not going to sell to the West so they say, we hate you because you oppressed us.
Then, on 6 March, a few Alawite officers staged an uprising where they attacked military checkpoints.
The Jolani regime was caught by surprise and his military sent “reinforcements” from Idlib, Homs and Aleppo. Idlib is their stronghold and where they have been located over the last eight years before taking over the country. These “reinforcements” came from the Turkish-funded and backed SNA (Syrian National Army) that committed the majority of rapings and killings after the fall of Assad.
There were also calls in the mosques for jihad against the apostates (the Alawites). In video clips, they called for the killing of all Alawites. Many Muslims volunteered and were given weapons, the weapons given up by the Alawite soldiers and civilians who were told to deposit their weapons at the nearest mosque and who, in a vote of trust, did.
The Turkish-funded SNA factions, the Jolani regime’s public security forces, and civilian volunteers all went to the coast [where the bulk of the Alawites live and fled to] and committed unspeakable atrocities.
We Israelis know what those unspeakable atrocities look like.
On 7-8 March, the Alawite insurgents fled to Lebanon, leaving only the civilians behind.
In two days, 8000-10,000 people had been murdered. All of these were unarmed civilians. My uncle was killed by the SNA and my sister was shot by Jolani’s security forces, that consisted of mostly non-Syrian Chechens and a few Syrian Sunni volunteers.
Here is the face of evil in a video clip so similar to the one we witnessed from Oct 7th in which a regular Gazan called his parents to gleefully declare he had just killed ten Jews and was calling them on the phone of one of them. Here is the Syrian version:
The massacres are still ongoing, even if sporadic now
In Homs, an Alawite mother and her two daughters were murdered by militants riding on motocycles shouting:
جاييكون الموت يا تاركين الحجاب -- “Death is coming for you, hijab leavers.”
I know these three women.

They are Louna and Lyn and their mother Manal. All were gunned down in the street.
Lyn and Manal died instantly; Louna was taken to the hospital and later succumbed to her wounds. Louna was a Computer Engineering student at the University of Homs and Lyn was an English Literature student. They were scared to go to their university campus. Their father was killed in 2011 so their mother decided to put on a strong face and walk them to campus so they wouldn't go alone. Their fears came true as they were shot down in the street.
For not wearing a hijab.
Although Jolani's factions ARE committing a lot of crimes and atrocities, the currently random murders are being executed by Sunni Muslims who were freed from Assad's prisons. While many were political prisoners, there was also a large number of rapists and murderers who were released from Sednaya Prison, for example, immediately after the fall of the Assad regime.
When Jolani's factions freed all of them, CNN and BBC and other Western media outlets celebrated.
They did not understand that many of the prisoners were former members of the Islamic State and radical jihadists. All of Syria's prisons were emptied. This meant that hundreds of thousands of radical jihadists were released back into society and can pick up weapons at any mosque, using them to threaten and murder anyone they want as long as they're not Muslim.
So my final question is: are you waiting for this to come to you?
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I have recently posted reflections on Theo Padnos memoir of being imprisoned by the terrorists who now run Syria. He shared cells with or was next to many imprisoned Alawites. They all told him there was no hope for them to survive the Sunni Islamists. https://anarrowbridgeburning.substack.com/p/the-dream-of-a-caliphate-isc5
You ask the right questions. Sadly, the no one has the answers. So tragic and sad.