-
Unknown A
All right, let's move on to the awful reporting that you guys have up at dropsite. It's not awful reporting, it's reporting on something awful. I should be clear about out of Damascus. Ryan, what can you tell us?
-
Unknown B
You can put up this D1 here. So Tuesday evening Israel launched airstrikes around Damascus after a day earlier Netanyahu came out and claimed that you can put up D2 here. Here's a drop site piece by Murtaza Hussein Ali Yunus. I can put a link down there and people can go read it. So yesterday or Monday, Netanyahu said southern Syria is now off limits for the Syrian government. And Netanyahu referred to it and so did Defense Minister Israel Katz, who confirmed that Israel was the one that carried out these airstrikes as a security zone, quote, unquote security zone. So this is a de facto annexation of Syrian territory way north of the Golan Heights. Effectively saying anything south of Damascus is a no go zone for the Syrian government. This is a heavily Druze community. The Druze are a significant element of Israeli kind of pluralistic propaganda where they will, they will point to the Druze and say, look, you call us an ethnostate, but here are the Druze who are living here in Israel and they have equal rights.
-
Unknown B
And you'll have a lot of Druze who will say, we don't actually have equal rights. You don't treat us as equal citizens, but we do get treated better than Palestinians. And then there's a whole hierarchy. There's the Palestinian who's a citizen of Israel, then there's the Palestinian who lives in different areas of West Bank Palestinians then further who live in different areas of west bank. And then all the way at the bottom, Palestinians who live in Gaza and have effectively zero rights, including the right to life. And so the Syrian government has truly bent over backwards to convey to Israel and to the United States, Europe and everybody else that they want no peace of this axis of resistance, that Assad was a member of this axis of resistance, one of dubious reliability, but a member nonetheless. They overthrew Assad and they have said that they do not want any of this smoke and they can't handle any of it.
-
Unknown B
They're completely destroyed. And immediately upon taking power, Israel bombed all of their military bases, destroyed all their planes, all their anti aircraft. Like they completely wiped out any capacity for this new state to actually defend itself. They are an offshoot of Al Qaeda, which people love to point out has bombed everyone you can think of, gone after everybody you can Think of except Israel. So there's never been this Al Qaeda, Israel hostility. All of this was done in the vain hope of appeasing Israel, that Israel would say, finally, we've gotten rid of the Assad family, which has been our enemy, and has refused to reach full agreement with us, even though they did reach various different deals that are in place. And so finally we can now have a neighbor that we can coexist with. There was hope that Israel would see it that way.
-
Unknown B
Israel does not see it that way. Israel sees it as an opportunity to expand the land that it controls. Continuing with this very confusing thing where on the one hand is Israel has a right to exist, on the other hand, refusing to ever define where the borders of Israel end, because if it has a right to exist, but it doesn't ever define where its borders are, then does it have a right to exist in southern Syria? And is southern Syria now Israel, Southern Lebanon now Israel? Meanwhile, there's a mass invasion of the west bank underway, which we can talk about in a second. So this is putting pressure on the Syrian government. We can put up C3. So these are protesters marching through Damascus. They are chanting in Arabic, but the translation is O beloved Jelani Bam Tel Aviv. This is indicative of the public pressure that the head of Syria is under from the Syrian public to stop just rolling over for Israel, but it's not really up to him.
-
Unknown B
And you can read the piece by Murtazin Ali. They don't have the capacity to do anything against, you know, they're still fighting, you know, with some, you know, gangster elements of the Assad regime that are still around as basically, you know, meth traffickers, captagon traffickers. So the idea that they're going to take on Israel with any, with any seriousness is a fantasy. The real concern that Israel has, and this is talked about in the story as well, is that Turkey is the backer of this new Syrian government. And Israel is worried that Turkey is going to use the foothold in Syria to begin flexing muscles, which is plausible. Yeah, it is plausible. And to re become the great power in the region because they've indicated that's. And also like this period from 1917 would fall. The Ottoman Empire until today is the anomaly in world history.
-
Unknown B
For more than 2,000 years, you had two empires that controlled the entire Middle east. The Byzantine Empire and then the Ottoman Empire. Like just two. Like that's an enormous amount of stability going back to B.C. and so you can imagine like, so nationalism was kind of forced on this region after World War I in a fake way where there weren't really random borders. Random borders and fake made up nationalities with people deliberately pitted against each other so that the west could keep them poor and struggling and extract their resources. If we actually cared about reducing the amount of conflict in the region, you'd probably go back to everybody unified under some type of government. This was the dream that kicked around as the kind of pan Arab socialist movement which said, we're not Iraqis and Iranians and Turks and Syrians, we're all Arabs and Persians and we're all in this area together.
-
Unknown B
Now, Turkey has a different idea in the back of Erdogan's mind where he's going to say, well, how about we just bring back the Ottoman Empire? And then Israel's like, well, wait a minute, where do we, where do we fit into that?
-
Unknown A
Sets off some red flags.
-
Unknown B
Yeah, hold on a second. Because this whole area over here of Palestine, when it was in the Ottoman Empire was not an independent country called Israel.
-
Unknown A
And what do we know about both Hegseth and Rubio? What can we assume or how can we assume they'll handle Israel's move here?
-
Unknown B
Essentially, you know, Ruby. Ruby. Well, Rubio is an interesting case because he is completely hemmed in and has no, basically no authority left and doesn't even seem like I was for a minute complaining that the State Department wasn't having daily briefings. I'm like, why would I want to go to a State Department daily briefing as if they have anything to share with us, which would imply that they know what's going on. They have no idea they're learning from us what's going on.
-
Unknown A
Rubio, because Trump calls the shots in a way that Biden didn't like. The Trump, the Trump presidency calls the shots in foreign affairs in a way that Biden really let Blinken call the shots. Yeah, very different.
-
Unknown B
Rubio, this is my forecast got played in the most hysterical fashion. Like Trump plucked him out of the Senate so he could make his daughter a senator from Florida. And the second that she is a senator from Florida. Not the second, but give it 45 days, Rubio will be fired as Secretary of State. So he will have lost his Senate seat.
-
Unknown A
I don't know. Trump seems very happy with Rubio so far because, I mean, as long as.
-
Unknown B
Rubio keeps kissing his butt, but Rubio.
-
Unknown A
Also, like cleaning up his face, plays the role like Trump. We know that Trump sees these literally as casting decisions and Rubio has really.
-
Unknown B
Keeps playing his role, then he can stay in that role. So I think the US Is just going to be as they have been for ever. Just let Israel. Israel said it would withdraw from southern Lebanon as part of the ceasefire deal that we negotiated. The time for that expired and they said they're not really going to do that. They then go invade and bomb Syria. And right now they are launching. They've sent tanks and a major military incursion into Jenin and Tulkaram, really trying to wrestle full control of the west bank, displacing tens of thousands of people, seizing homes, seizing entire villages and cities, and in the direction of complete annexation of the West Bank. So they're going for it.
-
Unknown A
CPAC passed a resolution last week.
-
Unknown B
What was that?
-
Unknown A
Annexation of the. Before it or against Judea and Samaria?
-
Unknown B
Before it. Yeah.
-
Unknown A
So we'll see. But that I just.
-
Unknown B
CPAC to weigh in on another country, like, just getting to annex territory.
-
Unknown A
I mean, I just say that because it's an interesting indication of where the people who are pressuring the Trump administration are right now. Like, they didn't even really have to do. Like, they didn't have to talk about that, but it's a priority.
-
Unknown B
So, yeah, so look, Israel has unlimited weapons from the United States and it has the military capacity to throw. Throw people out of their homes and seize more land. It's 2025, and they're going to do that. So I guess I hope that they're proud of themselves.
-
Unknown A
Well, Trump obviously is not the ideologue that Mike Huckabee, his ambassador to Israel, is, and the people who Huckabee represents ideologically, which is a big chunk of professional Republican politics. But Trump has, you know, did the ceasefire, for example, as Biden was leaving office, helped the ceasefire, sent Steve Witkoff to aid Blinken in the ceasefire agreement, to the chagrin of the Huckabees of the world. So it's not as though they're fully in control. Trump will push back when he thinks it's detrimental to his goal of looking like the peacemaker in chief, as we hear the White House repeatedly refer to him, too, but not always. So that'll be an interesting one to watch, for sure. Hey, if you liked that video, don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe to Breaking Points.
-
Unknown B
If you want to see the rest of counterpoints, go to breakingpoints.com to become a premium member and get the full uncut show every morning in your inbox and on Spotify.