The Christian Genocide in Syria: An Interview with Yasmine

Posted on March 23, 2017

[ Ed. note – There is a genocide of Christians taking place in Syria. The above is a photo I first posted back in 2014. It shows destruction at the Greek Catholic Church of Our Lady in the Syrian city of Yabroud, and is one of a series of photos I published at the time. The pictures were taken shortly after the city was liberated by the Syrian Arab Army and Hezbollah forces.

British reporter Robert Fisk was on hand when the city was liberated and wrote: “The Greek Catholic Church of Our Lady is a place of shame, of burnt copies of the New Testament, paintings slashed with knives – many were lying in strips of gold and red fabric beside the altar’s broken cross – and mosaics chiselled from the walls.”

Fisk also mentioned that the terrorists had “gouged out the eyes of the mosaic saints.”

You can go here to access the original post. In it I wrote the following:

What is on display in these photos is not merely abomination and sacrilege; it is loathing and hatred of the spirit of Christ; it is detestation for everything Jesus taught, malice and abhorrence at the mere mention of his name; contempt for his memory. Where does this kind of hatred of Christ come from? What accounts for it?

It’s not an easy question to answer. But clearly the hatred is there. In the same post I noted that the terrorists in Syria were being backed by “the West, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.”

Today, three years later, the terrorist proxy armies in Syria are operating under different names in some cases, but the same ideology, the same hatred of Christ, is still in evidence. And the mainstream media, as before, don’t seem terribly interested in what’s going on. Apparently the tweets of Donald Trump are considered more newsworthy than the murder of Christians in Syria. And when occasionally a news organization does report on the issue, as in the case of this AFP report filed in November of last year, the media spin given seems deliberately designed to convey the false impression that it is the “regime forces” who are intent on destroying churches, not the innocent, Western-democracy-loving “rebels.”

Of course, as the photo below would suggest, it is not, I repeat, not Syrian President Bashar Assad who is waging genocide against Christians. Assad has been president since the year 2000, and prior to the outbreak of the conflict six years ago, Syrian Christians lived in peace and prosperity, free to practice their faith. The hatred of Christ I spoke of is far more likely to be harbored by those who are backing the terrorists, rather than those actually and genuinely fighting them. The latter, of course, would be Syria, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.

All of which, in a roundabout way, leads me to the following. Recently a Syrian-American writer by the name of Sarah Abed posted an interview she conducted with an Aramean Syriac Orthodox woman named “Yasmine.” The name is an alias. The city of Damascus is nicknamed the “City of Jasmine” (or Yasmine in Arabic). Abed writes:

Yasmine contacted me on Facebook recently after reading my articles and posts. We discussed the situation there and her frustration with the lies being reported. I asked if she would want to tell her story, she eagerly agreed. Shortly after our talk her Facebook account was blocked and she hasn’t been able to come back on Facebook since then. Also, oddly enough only my messages are visible from our conversation. A few days ago her friend reached out to me and asked for my email and she sent me “Memoir of a Syrian girl” detailing her experience living in Damascus before and during the war. I will be putting that in a separate article. I asked her as a Christian in Syria if she would be willing to answer some questions and she agreed.

Yasmine is an engineer who also holds an MBA degree. She was born in Al Qamishly, in the northeast of Syria, but grew up in Damascus, where she resides at this time. Below is an excerpt from her interview with Abed. The letters “KSA” in the interview refer to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. ]

***

Q: When the West’s terrorist proxies slaughter and commit genocide against the indigenous Christian population, as they did, for example, in Kessab, Syria, are they attempting to “erase history”?

A: Not only history, When Wahhabists started in KSA they destroyed everything that has relation to history, even the grave of the prophet is destroyed, they do not care for it, in Afghanistan they destroyed statues that were thousands years old, they are a destruction machine of everything that has to do with civilization.

Q: When Western terrorists occupy towns like Maloula, Syria, and destroy Christian religious icons is this an attempt to erase history?

A: They want to destroy the history and Christianity, Christians were always targeted by those radicals, it is their ideology to not accept any one who is different.

Q: When the Western terrorists target Muslim and/or Christian communities, are they, or their Imperial masters, attempting to destroy the country by creating sectarian warfare?

A: Of course, the sectarian warfare serves the agenda, it was the plan for ME to be in perpetual state of chaos, which in the days of Bush jr was called the creative chaos or constructive chaos, this chaos serves Israel.

Q: Are the imperialists attempting to create warring ethnic and/or religious enclaves?

A: Of course, it is their targeted, the religion is the opium of nations, it is the method to lead the whole destruction game

Q: Are the Empire’s divide and conquer strategies in Syria working, or does most of the Syrian population remain unified?

A: There must have been some who sympathise with Wahhabists, and these will never seize to exist unless the world fights the source of them, the sources of Wahhabist ideology are in Egypt and KSA, and unless they are totally fought, they will always have followers around the world. Another thing to be honest, A regime like Bashar Assad was able to protect us from those minority, also in the days of Hafez Assad we were protected, If you like to name him a dictator go ahead, but please do not tell me the west is protecting us. Hafez Assad was protecting us, Bashar Assad is protecting us…

Continued here