Sophie Fullerton

In shattered Yarmouk, the Palestinians of Syria mourn their 'paradise' lost to war The Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus was once a desirable neighbourhood. Now it is all but totally destroyed

In shattered Yarmouk, the Palestinians of Syria mourn their 'paradise' lost to war

www.middleeasteye.net/news/shatter...

To claim that Assad would somehow be more humane toward the current wave of displaced people requires intentionally ignoring how brutally he treated the refugee populations he governed over while in power. (2)

Under Syria’s former dictatorship, the regime leveled Yarmouk refugee camp, once home to the largest Palestinian refugee population in Syria. To this day, Yarmouk remains vastly depopulated as a result of the Assad regime’s scorched-earth campaign. (1)

Lest we forget, Turkey housed roughly 3.1 + million Syrian refugees, while much of the Western world failed to act against the Assad regime who was responsible for the refugee crisis to begin with (all while they themselves were tightening their own asylum policies.) (4)

For the U.S. to even entertain the kind of argument presented in the original think piece about hanging a NATO ally like Turkey out to dry (especially when Turkey has historically borne the humanitarian brunt of regional conflicts) would be a serious mistake. (3)

I have yet to see a single U.S. official say they will house civilians while they continue to carpet-bomb Tehran. I guess the expectation is that Turkey and neighboring countries will once again absorb the refugees? (2)

Reminder of who ends up dealing with this humanitarian cleanup.

Here in Turkey, the country is already beginning to mitigate some of the civilian fallout created by U.S.–Israel regime-change miscalculations, as Iranians slowly start to trickle across the border. (1)

What exactly was the Syrian government doing to deserve such strong condemnation from Graham?

They were freeing more than 100+ child detainees from SDF prisons.

Keep this in mind while he continues with this rhetoric.

“Jihadists” is one of Graham’s go-to buzzwords he deploys to stoke flames of fear while hiding his own superficial understanding of the region

A couple months ago he was threatening “bone-breaking” sanctions on Syria and insinuating they were acting “radical” with their policies in Raqqa.

In all honesty, we really haven’t seen a military miscalculation of this magnitude in the region in decades. Again make it make sense...

Important to note that this piece is being published not even a week after Israel and the U.S. spectacularly miscalculated their regime-change abilities in Iran, destabilizing the entire Gulf region in a matter of hours.

Anyone looking honestly at the realities of contemporary MENA politics cannot claim these arguments are rooted in fact. Do not let ideological warmongers and their passion projects set the terms of this debate while they are the ones actively destabilizing the region.

Make it make sense.

Please keep in mind that while pro-Israeli voices attempt to manufacture consent for war with a NATO ally, one of these countries (Israel) is currently striking Lebanon & Iran, while Türkiye yesterday was busy neutralizing an ISIS attack in Syria in coordination with the new Syrian government. (1)

New blog video! Assessing U.S. Public Opinion on Trump’s War, a conversation in an Iranian restaurant with @sophiefullerton.bsky.social
renanetjes.substack.com/p/assessing-...

Keep in mind Johnson is saying this the very same day U.S. ally Israel bombed a Christian-majority neighborhood in Beirut.

If this is the argument they want to make, then why are they beating the drums of war for a conflict that is also targeting Christian-majority areas?

While such statements are bemusing it is worth noting that hour by hour the comparisons between Putin’s supposed “2–3 day military operation” & Trump’s regime change ambitions are looking more similar, particularly in the hubris surrounding both leaders assumptions of control over the situation. (2)

Many of these pro-Russia promoters have been living in a continued fantasy world that somehow Putin is playing the “long game” in Ukraine and that this years-long war is simply not the result of Russia’s miscalculation of its ability to carry out regime change within Ukraine. (1)

This rhetoric becomes even more alarming in light of recent leaks showing that some U.S. military officials were reportedly likening the conflict to a kind of religious crusade. (4)

Couple this with the American religious far right’s long-standing fetishization of Israel through their own fundamentalist lens, this creates a dangerous cocktail. (3)

The argument that Türkiye poses some kind of existential threat to Israel is not grounded in reality. It reflects Israel’s continued need to manufacture existential threats in order to justify destabilizing actions across the region. (2)

The American public needs to wake up and start treating these pastors for what they truly are, religious radicals completely removed from geopolitical reality and driven by an extremist ideological worldview rooted in their own extreme Christian fundamentalist interpretations of theology (1)

Trump’s base is loyal, but the admins inability to settle on a clear narrative for why this is happening also suggests even they know this is a difficult sell to their own voters. (4)

Pair that with the continued frustration over quality of life inside the United States, and the disconnect between DC’s foreign policy and the base becomes even harder to ignore. (3)

A reminder that many within the MAGA base are hardline isolationists who were drawn to Trump’s rhetoric precisely because it presented itself as an alternative to decades-long establishment Republican approaches to foreign policy. (2)

I wouldn’t fully discount this pushback from MAGA influencers as simple online discourse, but rather tremors of discontent within the wider MAGA movement across the US. (1)

Get angry America…

If US officials were aware of potential regime change plans for weeks or even months beforehand, Americans should be asking why contingency planning for citizens appears to have been such an afterthought for this admin. (2)

We are now more than 72 hours into a conflict ignited by the U.S., and Americans still do not have a clear repatriation plan from their own government.

What have Americans received? A basic notice urging them to leave multiple MENA countries days AFTER the conflict began. (1)

These blatant media violations unfolding in real time point to a Netanyahu government that has grown far too comfortable with a kind of wartime impunity it has been afforded. (2)