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According to a recent report written by the Dor Moria Think Tank,
“Something unthinkable happened in May 2025: Donald Trump shook hands with Ahmed al-Sharaa—a man who recently ran an Al-Qaeda affiliate. The Riyadh meeting, brokered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, capped off a stunning transformation from underground jihadist to internationally recognized Syrian leader.”
The Dor Moria Think Tank added,
“This handshake captures the Middle East’s new reality. Pragmatism trumps ideology. Yesterday’s enemies become today’s partners. Yet beneath the diplomatic fanfare lies an explosive truth: Syria remains torn by bloodshed, regional powers play dangerous games for influence, and Israel scrambles to carve out buffer zones from the Syrian wreckage.”
According to the Dor Moria Think Tank,
“March 2025 shattered illusions about peaceful transition. Systematic Alawite killings in coastal regions shocked observers with their scale and savagery. Latakia and surroundings saw 1,700+ dead in days, mostly civilians. Banyas neighborhoods burned whole. Families wiped out. Jableh’s city square hosted mass executions.”
After massacring Alawites, the Syrian regime went after the Christians and Druze, who after being massacred have turned to Israel seeking protection from their own government. If one examines the plight of the Yezidis, Christians and other minority groups in Syria, there is a case to be made arguing that US President Donald Trump made a grave mistake when he granted international legitimacy to the Syrian regime.
Yezidi journalist Dakhil Shammo stated in an exclusive interview:
“The destiny of the Yazidis is inseparably linked to that of other religious and ethnic minorities across Syria. Today, Yazidis fear the forces aligned with Ahmed al-Sharaa’s regime even more than the remnants of ISIS and its sleep cells. These forces have adopted a familiar playbook—manipulating tribal loyalties, inciting violence, and committing massacres in the name of tribal or religious legitimacy.”
According to Shammo,
“It is critical to recognize that the ideologies of ISIS and al-Sharaa’s regime are fundamentally the same. Both rely on killing, looting, sexual violence, and the systematic destruction of infrastructure to erase communities. What ISIS carried out against the Yazidis in Sinjar, Iraq, in 2014 is echoed in the current threats posed and terrorist acts by al-Sharaa’s forces. Whenever the chance arises, these groups seek to eliminate non-Muslim minorities—Yazidis, Christians, Alawites, Ismailis—as they did with the Druze.
Identity-based killing is a deliberate strategy to dismantle civilization and erase religious and ethnic diversity in the entire region,” Shammo stressed. “Although northern and northeastern Syria—currently under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces—offers a fragile sense of security, minorities and secular individuals living there remain deeply uneasy. The fear of renewed violence, potentially more catastrophic than the near-massacre in Suweyda (averted only by Israeli intervention), continues to haunt these communities.”
A Christian Syrian source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, concurred with Shammo:
“Syrian Christians once aspired to full citizenship rights guaranteed by a constitution that would respect them and allow them to live freely in a just and democratic system. Today, their highest hope is simply to avoid being killed—to be allowed to practice their faith without harassment, to dress and eat as they choose.”
According to the Christian Syrian source,
“Christians are now subjected to direct persecution. They are killed for being infidels, arrested, spat on in the streets, attacked for their faith, their churches and religious symbols are desecrated, harassed for their clothing, culture and traditions, and subjected to physical, verbal, and psychological assaults. They have been expelled from their jobs, barred from trade and private businesses after their shops were attacked, looted and burned. Kidnappings, theft and intimidation continue unabated.”
“After the regime’s fall, Christians were massacred and abused in silence, as Jolani’s followers fear global backlash if they commit large-scale atrocities,” the source added.
“Church leaders remain silent out of fear that speaking up could worsen persecution and trigger mass killings, as has already happened in Syria’s coastal regions against Alawites and Christians and in towns like Jaramana, Sahnaya and Homs, where massacres against Alawites and Christians continue in media blackout.”
The Christian Syrian source stressed:
“Amid this silence, Christians are being killed, kidnapped and dispossessed. They face siege and starvation, prompting many to flee the country in search of safety for themselves and their children. What is happening to Christians cannot be separated from what is happening to Alawites, Druze, moderate Sunnis and other communities. It is a campaign of total terror, threats of extermination, starvation, siege and even manipulated population statistics designed to fabricate a false demographic majority that would legitimate the establishment of a new religious dictatorship. This extremist system, built on a transnational jihadist ideology, represents a clear threat not only to Syria but also to regional and global peace.”
The Christian Syrian source concluded:
“Allowing the creation and consolidation of a terrorist regime in Syria, on Europe’s doorstep, is a direct threat to international security, particularly to the United States. The world must not enable this system but confront and dismantle it before it further destabilizes the region and exports jihadists and extremists across borders.”
Rachel Avraham is the CEO of the Dona Gracia Center for Diplomacy and an Israel-based journalist. She is the author of “Women and Jihad: Debating Palestinian Female Suicide Bombings in the American, Israeli and Arab Media.”
We should know who advised President Trump to make this grave mistake. He has had some very bad advisors; fewer it seems than during his first administration, but bad enough.
That should not mean he cannot see what is going on over there in Syria. Israel can tell him. He needs to have a way to keep tabs on these things with honorable advisors…if he can find any. But someone who has his ear could tell him. Marco Tubio, HUCKABEE??
If the UN did the job per the UN charter, they would be helping to stop the genocide and oppression of peoples in the name of whoever’s religion in nations.
It sucks – but I’m focused on Israel and that war being won by Israel.
It is horrific that people located in various Islamic-based nations live under the despots seeking to inflict suffering using dominance over those they see nominally as subjects but more correctly as kafir. This includes the obviously unobservant Muslim along with any people existing within those borders who are of other faith-belief systems.
Al Shara is a Wahhabism-following Islamist, formerly part of ISIS. Osama bin Laden was also a Wahhabist and from Saudi Arabia as is Al Sharaa.
Al Sharaa is a murderer with untold innocent blood on his hands and who knows how many young girls and young women he may have previously raped in his ISIS exploits. Needless to say, a statesman he is not. But, even as the west watches him remove his Islamic dress and put on a suit, a rapidly induced amnesia covers his multitude of sins while those of different faiths and ethnic backgrounds live in terror.
Western nations bring a very uneducated eye in witnessing this, and other atrocities, to which they spend more time trying to justify them than they do in recognizing the inherent evil they represent.
There are multiple countries throughout the world where genocide is used as the answer to removing from life those who do not submit to Islam.
Unfortunately, many being murdered in the name of Islam are impoverished and with limited education making them at even greater risk of being easily violated, enslaved or eliminated.
Don’t let the suit fool you, the man is a murderous monster!!
First, thanks for this excellent piece, Rachel.
Second, I wouldn’t place too much weight on Trump’s handshake with Ahmed al-Sharaa, which I take as a mere, shallow, symbolic courtesy with an adversary, nothing more. Don”t read too much into it beyond that.
Trump is “dumb like a fox”: Shrewd, perceptive, unbribable, a 100% loyal American patriot of unshakable principles and honor who would never betray us or our solid allies, most of all Israel.
Remember, for most of his career as a builder and real estate tycoon, he knew how to deal effectively with the Mafia, the Teamsters, and NYC’s most corrupt politicians to get what he wanted without giving them much of anything. He always won.
As President, he’s been dealing (successfully so far) with much more powerful and dangerous enemies: the “Deep State” and a Federal behemoth infested with deeply embedded swindlers, traitors, gangsters, and careerists determined to thwart, imprison, and even assassinate him. The entire “Democrat” Party, of course, since he stands in the way of their Master Plan for the final destruction of our nation. And, of course, 95% of the so-called “media,” determined similarly to destroy our nation and Trump himself.
Last, I can’t think of a single case since WW II in which the CIA, or a dumb, naive President, overthrew, or at least cheered the overthrow of, a foreign “strongman” who was little or no threat to us but had a less-than pristine “human rights” record, only to see him replaced by a regime that was much, much worse, both for us and for the people of his own country.
Jimmy Carter’s pressure on the Shah of Iran to abdicate, and replace him with the mad ayatollah Khomeini, comes to mind as just one recent example of that.
As JFK once replied when someone mentioned that some South American dictator (who despite his imperfect “human rights” record was on friendly terms with us) was a “sonofabitch,” “Yes, he’s a sonofabitch; but he’s OUR sonofabitch!”
That’s the kind of cold pragmatism we need, not Carter’s sanctimonious idiocy when it comes to our foreign policy.
As far as Syria goes, “We’ll see what happens,” as Donald Trump likes to say, never revealing in advance what his strategy and plans are.
Thank you Rachel Avraham for this striking wake up call. How can it be that so much of the killing has not reached TV screens and mass publications in the West? There is a demonic silence and cloud over the reality.
Renanah Gemeiner
volunteer Yezidi Human Rights Organization – International