Syria: The big White elephant in the room no one is talking about

A father sits on a mound of rubble hugging two seemingly perfect twins Ahmad and Aya Al Yousef. He appears to be immune to the devastation around him. However, the pain etched deeply on his face screams a million words. Why?
 
A few hundred miles across the border a doctors receptionist numbly explains. Her mother is dead. Her 3 brothers at different times have taken the risky ride to Germany. Their wives and children are  waiting for the papers to join them . But she and her elderly father are stuck in a bureaucratic vacuum. Why?
 
News channels across the world bombard us with images and analysis. ‘sarin ‘gas’ by Bashar  Al Assad supported by the ‘Russians’. Assad is a ‘butcher’ thunders President Trump as he authorises countless cruise missiles to bomb  government Syrian bases killing nine civilian but  ‘ the signal sent was an important messages’.
 
While Presidents Putin and Trumps posture on the world stage testosterone fuelled while more cluster bombs are thrown. A cools Bashar Assad retorts with denials that there was no sarin attacks. ‘Fake videos’ much like Trumps ‘fake news’. In the corner we have  Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu ‘shocked’ at the dead babies conveniently forgetting his own phosphorous attacks on the people of Gaza. And so history repeats itself. While the superpowers treat the Middle East as some chess games moving pieces to their advantage, the Arab leaders follow their  own agenda with little regard to the bigger picture.
 
Yet somewhere in this mire of destruction, accusations and counter accusations the most important fact is sadly forgotten . The utter human misery and human cost  of years  and years of relentless attacks from the State , the rebels the intermittent international  air strikes . We seem to forget the hundreds of  thousands of families that have been displaced ,separated , living in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon  or Turkey or attempting to undertake perilous journeys to the West for some hope.
 
In the meanwhile we have global  terrorist attacks including  in St Petersburg, London, Stockholm , Cairo, Alexandria. All these horrors and stories have one thing in common. IS . They are the common global enemy whose aim is to create division fear hate of the other.

The rise of IS and the creation of the so called Islamic State carved from Iraq and Syria is a direct consequence of illegal invasion of Iraq, the chaos of Libya due to  the West’s regime change  and the unholy alliance of  some Arab States with US against Syria due to Iran’s support of the beleaguered country. So what is the goal? The aim? To remove Assad and leave a leaderless carved up Syria? To weaken Iran?

It does not take  an expert political analyst to understand what is going on. A messy  IS rogue state plays right into the hand of Israel’ s  broader agenda.  And this is a key factor and the elephant in the room that no one talks about.  Israel needs a weakened Iran  as do certain Gulf States although long term that is of absolutely no benefit to them strategically .  A weakened Iran and Syria, the only two countries in the are who have consistently decried Israel’s illegal  occupation  of Palestinian Territories, only empowers Israel.
 
It is absolutely not in Arabs interest, Syria’s interest or the West’s interest to have a divided Syria that will become and has become as in Iraq a breeding ground for terrorist whose agenda is not a so called ‘Islamic’ caliphate but power to run the world on fear and separation . IS can only survive by creating fear and division. It is in its interest to create havoc in both the West and the Arab world. And we are playing right into their hands.
 
IS corrupts young impressionable youths with pseudo promises of an idyllic  afterlife  all the time creating racial and  religious  schism that is sadly working of division between them and us. There is an increasing political shift in the West that  demonises Islam and ascribes Muslims as the enemy.  It re-confirms far right political ideology that the fleeing migrants are a risk to a democratic way of life, that these refugees are potential terrorist. The scariest repercussions of all this is that we are going back to a time where racisms was part of the norm.
 
Wake up Arab leaders, you need to use any influence you have to maintain the integrity and unity of Syria, claim back Islam and religious freedom because this mess will not stop at Syria. History will judge you.