The stunningly rapid fall of Bashar al-Assad’s evil regime in Damascus has been met with a mix of joyous celebration, cautious optimism, and schadenfreude – and rightfully so. The government of Syria has been autocratic and repressive since the rise of the Ba’ath party and the Assad clan under Bashar’s father, Hafez, in the 1970s. The collapse of that tortuous regime is a blessing to all those who suffered under its relentless persecution and brutality. But the Syrian Civil War is not over, despite the lightning advance of the Turkish-backed rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the fall of Assad. The apocalyptic jihadists of the Islamic State still exist, and thousands currently sit in prisons in contested regions of Syria, with lightly-armed Kurdish guards. The Kurds, historically one of the only friendly actors in the area, are prime targets for marginalization at best and destruction at worst. Syria remains a playground for competing regional powers, from Tehran and Moscow to Ankara and Doha. The chaos and danger that has characterized the nation for much of the past decade and a half is not going to dissipate overnight, despite the happy talk of some foreign observers.
One country that clearly understands this reality is Syria’s neighbor to the south, Israel. Jerusalem and Damascus have been embroiled in multiple existential conflicts over the past 75 years, trading blows and engaging in some of the fiercest combat the region has seen in the modern age. Syria has never recognized Israel’s legitimacy, and a state of war still exists between the two, even if direct combat has been vanishingly rare in the 21st century. Israel’s populous and prosperous northern reaches are easily threatened from Syrian territory, even as Jerusalem controls the strategically dominant Golan Heights. Over the past decade of civil war in Syria, Israel has repeatedly struck against Iranian targets that have used Syrian territory as a base of operations and a pass-through for weapons shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Jerusalem has largely avoided hitting Assad regime targets directly, as Damascus tacitly allowed Israel’s anti-Iran strikes to continue by avoiding a response. This complex dance involved other players as well, notably Russia, but the status quo between Israel and Syria was basically stable.
The fall of Assad and his replacement by an Islamist group backed by the very same nations who bankroll Hamas – Turkey and Qatar – changed all of that in less than a fortnight. The return of widespread fighting across the whole of Syria, as compared to the more localized combat of the past several years, creates a far more dangerous reality on Israel’s northern border than had previously existed. And the rise of a former al Qaeda affiliate in Damascus, despite the pseudo-friendly noises it has been making, is a stark reminder that the devil you know may be preferable to the devil you don’t. As such, Israel has taken strong military action to secure its critical border region and push any potential threat from a new Syrian government farther away from the Golan Heights.
Over the course of the past few weeks, Israel has struck hundreds of former regime targets inside Syria, from military bases to chemical weapons depots. It has destroyed much of the Syrian air force and what passed for the nation’s navy, as well as many of the advanced weapons systems and munitions provided by Assad’s allies in Tehran and Moscow. The IDF has pushed into the demilitarized zone between the two nations, clearing Assad regime military bases on the other side of the border and holding key territory meant to provide a secure buffer for the growing Israeli presence in the northeast of the country. It has captured the tallest point in the area, Mount Hermon, setting up a temporary base intended to prevent any ability to launch devastating attacks into Israel itself. The opportunity to create a true safeguard for the Golan Heights – not a toothless and useless UN force – would allow Jerusalem to develop and integrate this beautiful land properly into the nation-state.
Of course, this Israeli action has been lambasted by all of the usual suspects. The same people who criticized Israel for its justified actions in response to the events of October 7 and the subsequent multi-front terror war launched against it have jumped on Jerusalem this time around. The online antisemites that have proliferated over the past year have led the charge, accusing Israel of a conspiracy to depopulate and colonize its neighbors. But the absurd allegations have not remained in the world of social media. The head of the Spanish leftist party Podemos called Israel’s actions in Syria a “genocide,” continuing the process of defining genocide down to the point of utter meaninglessness. Unsurprisingly, the United Nations has joined the anti-Israel chorus. UN chief Antonio Guterres declared that Israel’s destruction of Assadist military machinery were “acts of aggression” that “must come to an immediate end.” As usual, these reflexive anti-Israel voices are dead wrong on the merits; Israel’s actions in Syria are eminently justifiable.
Ensuring a durable and positive security environment for one’s civilian population is the primary responsibility of any national government. The safety of a nation’s populace is paramount to the legitimacy of a state – it does not exist in any meaningful way without this basic need being met. Benjamin Netanyahu and the rest of Israel’s leadership class understand this truth and are acting accordingly. After the horrors of October 7, where the Israeli security establishment was caught flat-footed, resulting in the deaths of more than 1200 innocent civilians, Jerusalem is no longer allowing itself to fall into the trap of complacency. For years, too many in Israel and the West bought what Hamas was selling: rhetorical hostility to Israel paired with very minor actions meant to prove that. In reality, the Gazan terror group was surreptitiously building its military capabilities and biding its time for a truly devastating, epochal assault. Jerusalem will not fall into the same trap vis a vis HTS.
Instead, it is securing the future of the country by bolstering its defenses on the Syrian border, creating a larger and more defensible buffer zone, and demolishing the offensive capabilities of the new Syrian regime. Israel realizes that HTS is a hostile entity barely removed from being an active al Qaeda offshoot and is backed by nations that seek Israel’s downfall. Despite the neutral noises coming from Damascus, the reality is that HTS is an anti-Israel group and will act accordingly once it consolidates power internally. By destroying the offensive capabilities that HTS could have assumed from the Assad regime, Israel is acting in line with a long history of such preemptive action, from the sinking of the French navy before it fell into the hands of the Nazis to the demolition of the Danish navy before it could align with Napoleon. These strikes succeeded at their stated objectives, which were to remove a potential weapon from an enemy, weakening them in the process. Israel is doing the same thing, but with far higher stakes.
Critics push the idea that international law bars Israel from taking such action against Syria, but this assumes that any nation engaged in serious conflict truly operates within the strictures of international law in 2024. That is a deeply flawed assumption. Israel’s enemies ignore international law at every juncture, while Israel itself conducts its warfare with incredible precision and relatively low levels of civilian casualties given the foes it faces. Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis act with impunity and receive almost no pushback, while Jerusalem is chronically castigated by the so-called international community. Enough is enough. Israel should play by the rules that its enemies set, not those that aloof observers in Western Europe unfairly and arbitrarily apply to the conflict.
October 7 will never be repeated, whether from Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, or Syria. Israel is doing what it takes to ensure that. And they are eminently justified in doing so, the critics be damned.
Mike Coté is a writer and historian focusing on great-power rivalry and geopolitics. He blogs at rationalpolicy.com and hosts the Rational Policy podcast. He’s on Twitter @ratlpolicy. His writing has appeared in Providence, National Review Online, and The Federalist.
