Al-Qaeda-linked 'rebels' in Syria say they 'love Israel'. USA gave them billions in weapons & support

The US spent billions arming and training militants in Syria, many linked to Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The extremist “rebels” who took over the country told the Israeli media they “love Israel”.

The United States spent billions over years arming and training militants in Syria, many linked to Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Current US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan admitted back in 2012 that "AQ [Al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria”.

In December 2024, armed extremists overthrew the Syrian government and seized power in the capital Damascus, in an operation sponsored by NATO member Turkey.

This assault was led by a rebranded Al-Qaeda militia that espouses a fanatical Salafi-jihadist ideology.

Some of the Al-Qaeda-linked "rebels" who now rule Syria told the Israeli media that they "love Israel”. They vowed to establish a new pro-Western regime in the country.

Israel has for years given weapons and other forms of support to extremist "rebels" in Syria, including Al-Qaeda. They successfully toppled the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who had refused to recognize Israel and had provided military aid to resistance groups in the region.

Rebranded Al-Qaeda takes over Syria

The Salafi-jihadist militants who seized Syria's second-biggest city Aleppo in late November, and subsequently took over Damascus on December 8, were portrayed sympathetically in Western media as "rebels”, but they were led by rebranded Al-Qaeda.

The main armed group that conquered Syria is called Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which emerged out of the country's Al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra (also known as the Nusra Front). This was previously the largest branch of Al-Qaeda in the world.

HTS superficially distanced itself from Al-Qaeda as part of a Western-backed public relations campaign to depict itself as more "moderate". Neoconservative think tanks in Washington have whitewashed HTS leaders as "diversity-friendly jihadists”, but they still maintain the same fascist ideology.

In fact, despite this cynical rebranding effort, the US government officially recognized HTS as a terrorist organization in 2018, adding the extremist group to its previous designation of Jabhat al-Nusra.

Terrorist designations like this, nevertheless, have not stopped the US and its allies in Israel, Turkey, and the Gulf monarchies from providing support to Al-Qaeda-linked groups in Syria.

HTS had previously established a de facto government in Syria's northwestern Idlib province, where it ruled with an iron fist, with direct assistance from NATO member Turkey.

The rebranded Al-Qaeda militia used Idlib as its base of operations to launch the assault on neighboring Aleppo in November 2024. Major French media outlet AFP reported that Syrian "opposition sources in touch with Turkish intelligence said Turkey had given a green light to the offensive".

After taking Aleppo, the extremists moved south and captured the capital, overthrowing the government.

Israel's far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took credit for the victory of the rebranded Al-Qaeda death squad.

Netanyahu proudly stated that the fall of Assad was "a direct result of the blows we have inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah".

Jake Sullivan: "AQ is on our side in Syria"

The fact that Syrian Al-Qaeda has been allied with the West was acknowledged by none other than Jake Sullivan, who serves as national security advisor in the Joe Biden administration.

When Barack Obama was president, Sullivan was a top aide for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In 2012, he used his State Department email to send Clinton a message -- which was later made public by WikiLeaks.

"AQ is on our side in Syria", Sullivan wrote, using an acronym for Al-Qaeda.

Operation Timber Sycamore: CIA support for Syrian rebels

After violent protests broke out in Syria in 2011, the United States began to flood the country with weapons.

The CIA launched a covert program to arm and train rebel groups attempting to overthrow the Syrian government. The Washington Post reported in 2015 that this initiative had "a budget approaching $1 billion a year”, meaning that "Syria-related operations account for about $1 of every $15 in the CIA’s overall budget".

This CIA program, called Operation Timber Sycamore, was, in the words of the New York Times, "one of the most expensive efforts to arm and train rebels since the agency’s program arming the mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the 1980s", which was known as Operation Cyclone.

Just as Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan set the stage for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria fueled the growth of Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The Pentagon publicly admitted in 2015 that rebels armed and trained by the United States and its allies gave their weapons to Syria's Al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra.

Amnesty International also found that the genocidal fascists in ISIS (also known as ISIL or Islamic State) were using US weapons.

The mainstream British organization Conflict Armament Research, which is funded by European governments, similarly concluded that many of the weapons that the US and allies such as Saudi Arabia provided to rebels in Syria ended up going to ISIS.

DIA document admits Al-Qaeda & Islamic State dominated Syrian opposition from beginning

Although Washington publicly claims it did not intentionally support Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria, internal documents show that US officials knew their policies were strengthening the genocidal extremist groups.

A bombshell declassified 2012 memo from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reveals that, from the start, "The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria". AQI is a reference to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which later evolved into ISIS.

"AQI supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning", the DIA wrote in the cable, which was forwarded to the US State Department, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department of Homeland Security, and FBI, as well as directly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

"The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime", the document added.

The DIA could clearly see in 2012 that "there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime".

Deir ez-Zor was later taken over by ISIS, just as the DIA predicted.

The Pentagon intelligence analysts similarly foresaw that "ISI [the Islamic State of Iraq] could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria", which would attract "terrorist elements from all over the Arab world". They pointed to the Iraqi city of Mosul as another potential location for this "Salafist principality".

All of this is exactly what happened in the years that followed: ISI took over Mosul, and it expanded into Syria, forming ISIS (or ISIL), while using US weapons to commit genocide and mass murder.

This document makes it clear that US officials were fully aware from the start of their dirty war on Syria that their support for the "rebels" would empower extremist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS. They nevertheless proceeded to spend billions of dollars flooding the country with weapons.

Israel supports Syrian rebels, including Al-Qaeda

Israel was directly supporting Al-Qaeda-linked "rebels" in Syria as well. In 2019, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot publicly admitted that Israel had given weapons to Syrian rebels trying to overthrow the government of President Assad.

Israel even directly aided Syrian Al-Qaeda. The Times of Israel reported in 2015 that "Israel has opened its borders with Syria in order to provide medical treatment to Nusra Front and al-Qaida fighters wounded in the ongoing civil war".

Characterizing Al-Qaeda as a "lesser evil”, the Wall Street Journal quoted Israel's former military intelligence chief, Amos Yadlin, who said that Shia Islamic-nationalist political forces like Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iran "are the major threat to Israel, much more than the radical Sunni Islamists".

Yadlin happily noted that Al-Qaeda "hasn't bothered Israel", and was instead focused on fighting Israel's enemies for it. “Those Sunni elements who control some two-thirds to 90% of the border on the Golan [Heights] aren't attacking Israel", remarked the former military intelligence chief. "This gives you some basis to think that they understand who is their real enemy - maybe it isn’t Israel”.

A prominent Israeli think tank that does contract work for NATO published a paper in 2016 arguing that the West should not destroy ISIS, because it was a "useful tool" against Iran, Hezbollah, and the Syrian government. The think tank stressed, "The continuing existence of IS [Islamic State] serves a strategic purpose".

While they were committing genocide against Shia Muslims and other religious minorities, ISIS extremists publicly showed sympathy with Israel. In 2017, Israel's former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon revealed that ISIS had "apologized" to Tel Aviv after accidentally attacking Israeli forces in the Golan Heights, which is sovereign Syrian territory that has been illegally occupied by Israel for decades, according to international law.

Syrian rebels say they "love Israel"

After rebranded Al-Qaeda took over Aleppo in late November 2024, several Syrian "opposition activists" spoke with the Israeli media. As Israel used US weapons to carry out a blatant genocide in Gaza, these Syrian "rebel" leaders heaped praise on the regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over crimes against humanity committed against the Palestinian people.

Israel’s state media outlet Kan interviewed rebels from Aleppo and Idlib, who said, “We love Israel and we were never its enemies... [Israel] isn’t hostile to those who are not hostile toward it. We don’t hate you, we love you very much”.

According to the Times of Israel, the Syrian militants praised Israel for bombing Hezbollah. They credited Israel's war on Lebanon for helping them to conquer Aleppo.

A Syrian rebel commander told Israel’s Channel 12 that the militants sought to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad and to create a new government that has good relations with all countries in the region, "including with Israel".

The rebel commander asked Israel to directly attack Syria, stating, "We call on the Israeli leadership to launch intensive attacks against the positions and troops of the Iran-backed militias in Syrian territory".

Israel has already bombed Syria hundreds of times in the past decade, targeting anti-colonialist fighters from the Axis of Resistance.

The United States has also bombed Syria dozens of times since 2011, including most recently in November 2024.

A map of the Axis of Resistance in West Asia (the Middle East)

US tries to divide and conquer Axis of Resistance

Washington has sought to divide the Axis of Resistance, which consisted of anti-colonialist political forces in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Palestine, including both formal state actors and semi-state armed groups like Hezbollah, Ansarallah (also known as the Houthis), and Hamas.

Syria had been an important part of this network, providing weapons to resistance groups that are fighting against US and Israeli military occupiers.

Reuters reported in December that the US government and its allies in the United Arab Emirates were pressuring Syria to cut its close ties to Iran and to end weapons shipments to national-liberation groups like Hezbollah.

In return for fragmenting the Resistance Axis, Washington offered to lift the suffocating sanctions it has imposed on Syria.

The United States and European Union had for years maintained crushing unilateral sanctions on Syria, in flagrant violation of international law.

The UN's top expert, special rapporteur Alena Douhan, said these Western sanctions on Syria are “outrageous” and are “suffocating” millions of civilians. She wrote that they “may amount to crimes against humanity”.

Western sanctions had devastated Syria's economy, causing high levels of inflation and shortages of food and fuel.

These shortages had been exacerbated by the US military's illegal occupation of Syrian sovereign territory in the east of the country, where its oil reserves are located.

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(Editor's note: When this article was first published on December 6, Salafi-jihadist militants had control of Aleppo and Idlib, and were moving toward the capital. This article was updated on December 9 to note that these extremists led by rebranded Al-Qaeda conquered Damascus and officially overthrew the Syrian government on December 8.)