Israel has conducted hundreds of strikes on Syria since the civil war began in 2011 following Assad’s crackdown on a democracy movement. Since his ouster, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had recorded more than 300 Israeli strikes.
On Monday, Israel said it had struck “remaining chemical weapons or long-range missiles and rockets in order that they will not fall in the hands of extremists”. The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources around Syria, said Israeli strikes had “destroyed the most important military sites in Syria”. The group said the strikes targeted weapons depots, boats from the Assad government’s navy, and a research centre that Western countries suspected of having links to chemical weapons production. AFP journalists on Tuesday saw the defence research centre had been destroyed. Strikes also targeted the electronic warfare administration, the Observatory said.
With Syria in flux and in the absence of a government authority just two days after Assad’s escape, AFP journalists in Damascus were unable to obtain comment from the Syrian side.
Israel, which borders Syria, also sent troops into a buffer zone east of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights after Assad’s fall, in what Foreign Minister Gideon Saar described as a “limited and temporary step” for “security reasons”.
Update 20241210
The UN special envoy for Syria called Tuesday on Israel to halt its military movements and bombardments in Syria, after a war monitor reported 300 air strikes since the fall of president Bashar al-Assad.
Geir Pedersen, the UN special envoy for Syria, on Tuesday called on Israel to stop. “We are continuing to see Israeli movements and bombardments into Syrian territory. This needs to stop. This is extremely important,” he told reporters in Geneva.
The Syrian government collapsed, so naturally they only want a little Lebensraum
Lebensraum: German literal translation “living room” expressed in english as “room to live”.
Lebensraum is a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch nationalism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s.
I prefer the definition that specifically includes that it’s a Nazi idea for Nazis
That would seem to detract from your intended merit. You leverage historical metaphor of Nazi’s but don’t want to include the history of ideological development that allowed it. But, that ideological history is what best describes what’s happening in countries today such as the United States, Germany, and Australia, as well as what’s taken place in Israel.
Rather than redefine an existing word maybe it’s better to use another. “Genocidal colonizers” seems a reasonable alternative.
I made an assumption that people would know what lebensraum was and the context that it was an essential part to the fascist Nazi party. I also assumed people would understand why both it and Israel’s actions are wrong and evil.
Oh, you just wanted the definition to explicitly include the Nazi consequence. I agree that the wiki article could’ve done better in this way.
People worldwide are way dumber than you’re assuming. But, I think that one of the best things we can do about that is to communicate as if they were intelligent.
I expect that a small minority of people would learn what lebensraum was and the context that it was an essential part to the fascist Nazi party. I also expect that those people would perceive the metaphor and understand why both it and Israel’s actions are wrong and evil.
