Free Republic

The Syrian people are exuberant about the end of the Bashar al-Assad regime. But there is one atrocity by this notorious family that has been described as “one of the darkest moments in the modern history of the Arab world.” That is the 1982 encirclement, starvation and mass execution of the residents of the Syrian city of Hama. This atrocity was committed by Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad. Last Friday, residents of Hama tore down the statue of Hafez al-Assad while the city fell to rebels. While much of the world just saw it as another Syrian city falling, its significance...

Israel paid Syrian President Bashar Assad’s grand-uncle $100 million for the Golan Heights before the Six-Day War in 1967, says a former close friend to assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Dr. Mahmoud Jame’ said Sadat was briefed on the deal, according to the Jordanian-based Albawaba website. Jame’, a member of the first Consultative Council in Egypt, said, “One morning Sadat took me with him in private and without a guard to the (Syrian part of the) Golan Heights, and I swear by the Almighty G-d that he put his hand on my shoulder and as we were standing on the...

Israel paid Assad’s grand-uncle $100 million for the Golan Heights before the Six-Day War in 1967, says a former close friend of Sadat. Israel paid Syrian President Bashar Assad’s grand-uncle $100 million for the Golan Heights before the Six-Day War in 1967, says a former close friend to assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Dr. Mahmoud Jame’ said Sadat was briefed on the deal, according to the Jordanian-based Albawaba website. Jame’, a member of the first Consultative Council in Egypt, said, “One morning Sadat took me with him in private and without a guard to the (Syrian part of the) Golan...

1. Ahmad Abu Adass In 2005, the last year of his life, Ahmad Abu Adass was 22 and still living with his parents in Beirut, Lebanon. He was kind and liked people, his friends later told investigators, but none of them thought he was very sophisticated. The best way to describe him was simple, one said. He was generous and a little naïve. He was very weak, physically. A Sunni Muslim of Palestinian descent, Adass had become interested in religion and now spent many hours at the Arab University Mosque near his home. It was there, after a prayer session,...

A Facebook post said to be written by the 11-year-old son of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and “liked” or commented on by several people who appear to be the children and grandchildren of other senior members of Mr. Assad’s government, may offer a glimpse into the mindset of Syria’s ruling elite as the country braces for a potential Western strike in response to a chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21. It is impossible to confirm whether the Facebook account does, in fact, belong to the son, Hafez al-Assad, and aspects of it invite doubt. For example, the owner of...

Under President Jacques Chirac, French foreign policy has become increasingly assertive - although one French academic recently described its raison d'être as to "oppose just to exist." But such descriptions are not entirely fair. While Chirac inherited a French foreign policy already tilted toward the Arab world, his pursuit of close personal ties to Arab leaders and his outreach to Islamists, rejectionist Arab states, and groups considered terrorists by the U.S. government is part of a broader strategy to increase French influence in the region. The French approach to the Middle East changed after the Israeli victory in the 1967...