Leaders of the Alawite community, which had strongly backed President Bashar Assad, pen letter to Israeli leaders, calling for IDF to intervene in Syria on their behalf against the new regime.
By World Israel News Staff
Leaders of an ethnic-religious group in Syria aligned with the ousted Assad regime have appealed to Israel to intervene militarily against the new government, after soldiers killed over 1,000 members of the minority group.
Since last Thursday, Syrian forces loyal to the new government under President Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Julani, have cracked down on dissidents in the Latakia and Tartus provinces.
The two districts have a majority of Alawites, the ethno-religious minority group which ruled Syria for decades under the regimes of Hafez and Bashar Assad.
The new government, led by Sunni Islamists, ordered the incursion into the two coastal provinces in response to alleged attacks by supporters of the deposed Assad regime.
According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 250 Alawite militia men and 973 civilians have been killed in government reprisals since March 6th. Over 230 regime soldiers have also been killed in the fighting, the SOHR reported.
On Monday, i24NEWS reported that Alawite leaders have sent letters to Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and to Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, requesting that Israel take military action to protect the Alawite community.
“Save us from the brutal regime, we will receive you with songs and flowers,” the letter reads in part, while urging the Israeli media to “shed light on the massacres” in Latakia.
In the letter, the Alawite sheikhs lamented that after “the fall of the Assad regime and the assumption of power in Syria by an extremist Islamic group,” the community has been targeted by the new regime with acts of “killing, kidnapping, displacement, and intimidation as a method and way to rule and dominate.”
The letter’s signatories requested that the Israeli military “move its planes and forces to protect us,” that the Israeli navy be deployed off Syria’s Mediterranean coast, and that Israel’s government “raise the issue of crimes against the Alawites at the international level.”
“We say to the Jewish state, we extend our hands to you and we will be your best and most loyal friends, so that you can rid us of this extremist Islamic rule that will be a place for training and preparing groups from which they will launch their fight against you.”
“In the past, you have suffered from the Islamists and known their crimes, and the treacherous terrorists of Islamic terrorism are the best example of the Hamas movement and terrorism as an example of terrorism and terror. And the Hamas movement is establishing a base in Syria that will be a launching point for action against you.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar condemned al-Sharaa over the killings, calling in an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper for Europe not to “misread reality” or overlook the massacre in Latakia and Tartus.
Alawite leaders noted Sa’ar’s comments in their letter.
“We would like to thank Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar for his words about the Alawites and the revenge and harm they are subjected to, something no Arab, Islamic, or international foreign minister has ever done.”
Considered a sect within Shi’ite Islam, the Alawites also compromise a unique ethnic group within Syria’s Arab population, making up roughly 12% of Syria’s 25 million residents.
Like the Druze, Syria’s Alawite community formed an autonomous state within the French Mandate for Syria during the 1920s and 1930s, spanning the Tartus and Latakia regions, before it was forcibly incorporated into the Syrian Arab Republican in 1936.
