SAN DIEGO (SDJW) — The fall of the Assad regime in Syria was the “direct result of our blows to Iran and Hezbollah, the Assad regime’s main supporters,” Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday during a visit to the Syrian-Israeli border.
The Assad regime was a “central link in the Iranian axis of evil,” he said. “If we can establish neighborly relations and peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that’s our desire. But if we do not, we will do whatever it takes to defend the State of Israel and the border of Israel”
IDF troops moved protectively into the neutral zone between Israel and Syria to guard against a possible invasion by the Syrian rebels. Meanwhile, Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s now former president, was reported to have been granted asylum in Russia.
U.S. President Joe Biden said Assad’s main backers – Iran, Russia and Hezbollah – “are far weaker today than when I took office. And let’s remember why, after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, 2023, when most of the world responded with horror, Iran and its proxies chose to launch a multifront war against Israel. That was an historic mistake on Iran’s part. Today, Iran’s main territorial proxy, Hezbollah is also on its back.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S will support efforts to hold Assad and his regime “accountable for atrocities and abuses perpetrated against the Syrian people, including the use of chemical weapons.”
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Stephen Miller, whom President-elect Trump has chosen to be White House deputy chief of staff, told Fox News on Sunday that incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) has promised quick action to increase the size and pay of U.S. agents at the border as a first step toward mass deportation of immigrants in this country illegally.
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President-elect Trump told Kristen Welker on Meet the Press that members of the House Jan. 6 select committee who investigated the assault on the U.S. Capitol in 2021 should “go to jail.” The seven Democrats and two Republicans on that committee included two Jewish members of Congress: Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who was elected by Californians to the U.S. Senate, and Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat whose bid for the Democratic leadership of the House Judiciary Committee prompted its current Democratic leader, Jerrold Nadler of New York, to not seek reelection to the post. Trump also has stated that he plans to pardon those arrested at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
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San Diego Jewish World staff report