KAN11 — -  -
20260806 203000 UTC
830 transcript segments
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking
Data courtesy of The GDELT Project (https://www.gdeltproject.org/), from the Internet Archive TV News Archive.
Machine transcription. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a verbatim quotation record.

[00:02:12] In 2013, I was then the commander of the 36th division in the Golan
[00:02:15] Heights and something big was happening in Syria and we didn't understand
[00:02:18] it.
[00:02:21] Rebels from people who are army defectors
[00:02:24] in Syria.
[00:02:26] A big mess and then there's news about 600
[00:02:30] people who crossed from Iraq to Syria and they are called the support
[00:02:33] front for the Levant and Jabhat
[00:02:37] al-Nusra.
[00:02:40] According to their external signs, it looks like something
[00:02:43] related to global jihad, but something unique, a kind
[00:02:46] of evolution of al-Qaeda, but
[00:02:49] with more local Syrian guidance and later
[00:02:52] they gain great momentum and then the name
[00:02:57] me, but we are on the media, not Julani first makes headlines.
[00:03:30] Minister of Warmth,
[00:03:32] Al-Qardaha. No, it psychopath, you could say, that.
[00:03:34] his hands. Whoever worked with me, then
[00:03:38] in 504, he says, we received a strange
[00:03:41] request. Al-
[00:03:43] this destructive regime. Julani, the leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, wants his sister to be treated
[00:03:46] in Israel.
[00:03:50] Israel, the infidels, the Jews in Rambam hospital who believe
[00:03:54] in infidel Jews, are not supposed to exist at all as a sovereign
[00:03:58] entity. At the time. I remind you, Syrian wounded
[00:04:01] are treated in Israel, not only wounded, it
[00:04:05] also expanded to the sick, and he wants
[00:04:08] it and they are deliberating what to do, in the end they decide, you know what, why
[00:04:11] not, let's understand who these confessors are, one condition, don't come with a suicide
[00:04:15] belt, and he didn't agree.
[00:04:19] At the time, the person who now wears different types of suits, then
[00:04:23] he wore suicide suits, because if he is caught, he is psychologically
[00:04:26] unstable, whoever catches him, etc.
[00:04:30] And this gives you a glimpse into the complexity of the fire. On the one hand,
[00:04:33] compromises and extraordinary flexibility
[00:04:37] because it contradicts his jihadist Islamic perception to ask for help
[00:04:40] from Israel, and on the other hand, a certain devilry to remove the
[00:04:44] suicide belt and come to undress in front
[00:04:47] of Israelis, this deviates from something he will
[00:04:50] not do, and this is the complexity that still
[00:04:54] confuses all researchers of the gate, how a person, on the one hand, is so
[00:04:57] flexible and pragmatic, and on the other.
[00:05:13] The interest of the state takes precedence over the interest of the
[00:05:16] group, and the interest of the group
[00:05:19] takes precedence over the interests of individuals.
[00:06:06] As a journalist, I will try to go as deep as possible,
[00:06:09] everywhere, five times I was inside.
[00:06:12] Syria. My first entry was in November
[00:06:16] 2012 when the rebellion against Assad began to gain
[00:06:18] momentum. And then my first entry was
[00:06:22] through Turkey. The moderate rebels smuggled me
[00:06:25] in. You have to think of Syria like you see
[00:06:28] in a movie about street gangs taking over a city
[00:06:32] and dividing it into areas of control. This is my militia's
[00:06:35] territory. This is her gang's territory. Respect
[00:06:39] my area and I will respect yours. That's how Syria is. Assad
[00:06:42] controlled
[00:06:43] 65%.
[00:06:47] I entered the area of Idlib
[00:06:49] and the guys who let me in say, with us is the Free Syrian Army, that's
[00:06:53] fine, but be careful where you wander because in other
[00:06:56] parts of Idlib, in the city itself, there are
[00:06:59] people who will like you less. Again, I have a foreign passport, they don't
[00:07:03] know I'm Israeli, but I'm an infidel by my very definition according to
[00:07:07] jihad.
[00:07:09] You see this flag, he raises the flag of Jabhat al-Nusra. This is the area of
[00:07:13] Jabhat al-Nusra and of a man named Al-Julani.
[00:07:17] Don't you dare. Understood?
[00:07:21] Beware of these
[00:07:22] areas.
[00:07:30] And this new formation seeks to achieve
[00:07:32] the following goals: First, to work towards
[00:07:36] establishing the religion of God Almighty and applying His law
[00:07:39] and achieving justice among all people.
[00:07:43] We are talking about a man who is a question mark, he is a very
[00:07:46] charismatic and very intelligent man, he is
[00:07:49] intelligent, he sees how all the jihadists who went head
[00:07:53] first, whether in Syria, whether in Iraq, whether in Libya,
[00:07:56] ended up in the worst possible
[00:07:58] way. You know, he wants something
[00:08:02] else. Although he is
[00:08:05] a jihadist religiously
[00:08:09] and jurisprudentially, he has his feet on the ground.
[00:08:14] He adapts himself to reality, his phenomenal
[00:08:18] ability to be flexible, to be
[00:08:21] practical, to recognize reality and adapt himself to it is something
[00:08:25] that is unparalleled in the Arab arena
[00:08:27] at all.
[00:08:30] How he redesigned his image, with a suit, with
[00:08:34] a well-groomed beard, when Trump
[00:08:36] says he's a very impressive
[00:08:39] guy, tall, well-dressed. Right,
[00:08:43] you can't walk down the street without noticing the presence of this
[00:08:47] man. He plays the
[00:08:50] two-facedness perfectly.
[00:08:54] There's something here, say a chameleon, when it's here on
[00:08:57] this brown armrest, it will be brown, when it's on the floor it will be
[00:09:01] white. I can't catch it and tell it, seriously, once
[00:09:04] and for all, decide what its color is. Its color is adapted
[00:09:08] to the context.
[00:09:13] On the other hand, the man has a basic ideological
[00:09:17] very rigid layer that accompanies his changes,
[00:09:20] and people who hold both of these things are cunning
[00:09:23] and dangerous people. Is
[00:09:27] Al-Julani working us?
[00:09:29] Yes, there is a person
[00:09:33] here who has a very ugly and very
[00:09:36] dangerous history and should be
[00:09:39] taken into account as someone who might. Yes, the State
[00:09:43] of Israel.
[00:09:46] The Salafi Jihadist sees no
[00:09:50] alternative other than bringing the full
[00:09:53] Islamic Sharia regime to the entire world
[00:09:57] and now.
[00:10:00] One of the fascinating questions is how a person who grew up in a secular
[00:10:04] environment turns 180
[00:10:07] degrees to become one of the most famous
[00:10:10] jihad fighters in the Middle East. Who also eventually took over
[00:10:14] Syria and turned it into a state under
[00:10:16] his protection.
[00:10:21] Julani, or one for Nusra. He was born
[00:10:25] in Saudi Arabia, actually, he hides
[00:10:28] Born on October 29, 1982
[00:10:32] in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, into a very
[00:10:35] educated, Syrian family.
[00:10:37] Al-Julani means the one from the Golan. His parents
[00:10:41] were born in the Golan.
[00:10:45] He grew up in a completely
[00:10:48] secular, normative home. In
[00:10:51] 1989, the family decided to return to Damascus.
[00:11:00] And he grew up in the Hamzeh neighborhood, I was there
[00:11:03] after Assad's fall, a very
[00:11:06] colorful neighborhood, by the way, not fanatically
[00:11:08] Islamic, a neighborhood of
[00:11:11] bourgeoisie, the Syrian elite
[00:11:14] actually lived there, he didn't come
[00:11:16] from poverty,
[00:11:19] his father has very, very deep feelings for the Palestinians, and
[00:11:22] the feelings, the... identification with the Palestinian
[00:11:25] struggle, he also conveys to Ahmad Al-Shara this value of
[00:11:29] love for Palestine and the need to defend the rights of the
[00:11:33] Palestinians.
[00:11:37] During his high school studies, he met an Alawite
[00:11:40] girl by origin.
[00:11:43] His parents, as Sunnis, opposed
[00:11:46] the relationship and together with her parents, they simply
[00:11:50] ended it. From that moment on, he really
[00:11:53] alienated himself from his family.
[00:11:58] And towards the age of 17, he really
[00:12:01] started to find his monster
[00:12:04] in religion.
[00:12:07] And then comes the process of real indoctrination. Slowly, he accepts the
[00:12:10] religious idea more
[00:12:12] and more.
[00:12:15] He started wearing galabiyas and started
[00:12:19] growing a beard and started
[00:12:21] behaving in a much more religious way, which was
[00:12:25] even stranger for Al-Shara's
[00:12:28] family.
[00:12:30] Two significant events occur during the period
[00:12:34] when he finishes high school and begins university
[00:12:36] studies. He studied medicine at Damascus
[00:12:39] University. He began to be influenced by the Second Intifada here
[00:12:43] among us.
[00:12:48] He actually gained a lot of
[00:12:50] inspiration from the Palestinians who started declaring
[00:12:54] in the Arab world a resistance to
[00:12:57] essentially rebel against the Jewish state, because
[00:13:01] the state
[00:13:01] of Israel.
[00:13:05] And the second event is September 11, 2001.
[00:13:09] Al-Qaeda's terrorist attack that collapsed the Twin Towers
[00:13:13] in New York and hit the Pentagon. Al-Shara also said
[00:13:16] that there wasn't a single person in the Arab world and in the Islamic
[00:13:19] world in general who didn't feel feelings of joy
[00:13:22] and pride about this event.
[00:13:27] In 2003, the US invasion of Iraq,
[00:13:31] where he abandoned the path he set for himself, and he went
[00:13:34] to Iraq,
[00:13:35] to fight.
[00:13:39] He decided he needed to join what was then called
[00:13:42] Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Al-Qaeda
[00:13:45] in Iraq, which was led by Zarqawi, a very
[00:13:49] extreme
[00:13:50] Islamist.
[00:14:25] But he finds himself among the senior commanders of this
[00:14:29] organization, and they were killing Americans, that was their
[00:14:32] job, and then they decided that their job was not only to kill
[00:14:35] Americans who occupied Iraq, but also to kill Shiites,
[00:14:39] because in Zarqawi's eyes, a good Shiite was
[00:14:42] a dead Shiite.
[00:14:45] He had eloquence and charisma
[00:14:48] that gave him a lot
[00:14:50] of credit.
[00:15:26] through september 2008,
[00:15:29] this was irregular warfare, insurgency, we didn't even have
[00:15:33] field man for it, in 2006 he was
[00:15:36] essentially al-qaeda in a rock cell leader, he was
[00:15:40] caught planting explosives on the roadside,
[00:15:43] and he was detain for his activities, trying to kill
[00:15:47] our
[00:15:48] soldiers.
[00:15:52] He was in Camp Buka, he was essentially one of
[00:15:56] 27 detainees that
[00:15:59] we had in the various detention
[00:16:02] their
[00:16:03] occupancy.
[00:16:08] By the way, he is very dominant among the wealthy, you can see he has
[00:16:12] leadership qualities, it starts already
[00:16:15] there, there sit all
[00:16:19] the senior jihadists who were
[00:16:22] in Iraq, and also who eventually came out of Camp
[00:16:26] Bucca, among others, one known,
[00:16:29] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who also sat with him during that period in prison,
[00:16:32] who will also be the founder
[00:16:35] of the Islamic State of Daesh,
[00:16:38] he and Al-Julani, like that, and I say
[00:16:42] Al-Julani, not Ahmad Al-Shara, because no one knew the name Ahmad Al-Shara
[00:16:46] in those years, they only knew Al-Julani.
[00:16:49] In 2008 he leaves
[00:16:53] and returns very quickly to the path of fighting, to the path of jihad, whatever you call
[00:16:57] it, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who thinks highly of him
[00:17:00] and trusts him deeply, decides that he will be responsible for the fighting
[00:17:03] in Iraq in the Nineveh region. But then
[00:17:07] in 2011, the rebellion in Syria
[00:17:11] begins.
[00:17:15] The revolutions in the Arab world begin.
[00:17:19] And when it starts in Syria, Abu Bakr
[00:17:21] al-Baghdadi sees the opportunity and tells him: "Go
[00:17:25] command the uprising in Syria."
[00:17:29] Establish another front.
[00:17:32] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sent him to Syria to establish a terrorist
[00:17:36] infrastructure there. To fight
[00:17:38] Assad, whoever wants to join, he joins him, he forms
[00:17:42] connections with everyone, even with other rebel organizations that are perceived
[00:17:46] as secular, and he goes and establishes
[00:17:49] Jabhat al-Nusra along the Golan
[00:17:52] border.
[00:17:55] Jabhat al-Nusra, the Front for Salvation, the Front for Support
[00:17:58] of the People of the Levant, meaning the Syrian people, Syria is called
[00:18:01] the Levant, because this is the Levant in the eyes of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,
[00:18:05] which is worthy of referring to this region. This is Greater
[00:18:08] Syria, how great? The term Levant is essentially Syria,
[00:18:11] Lebanon, Jordan
[00:18:12] and Israel.
[00:18:17] And the organization begins to actually carry out suicide
[00:18:20] attacks, which can be said to change the reality
[00:18:23] in Syria.
[00:18:26] Julani is a full-fledged jihadist, he appears to be a charismatic leader,
[00:18:30] and he appears to have the most successful group in terms
[00:18:33] of jihad within Syria, because this group, which started
[00:18:36] with 600. who crossed from Iraq to Syria within weeks
[00:18:40] and months, expands to many thousands
[00:18:43] and begins to emerge. There is no shadow of a doubt
[00:18:46] that as the commander of Jabhat al-Nusra he was a terrible
[00:18:50] jihadist, and today it is no coincidence that the United States published a poster with a 10
[00:18:53] million dollar reward for anyone who gives a tip on where al-Julani is
[00:18:57] located, this is on the level of Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,
[00:19:01] a person who is unusually cruel.
[00:19:04] He truly understands
[00:19:07] that violence is a political
[00:19:11] tool.
[00:19:16] The civil war in Syria is a big
[00:19:19] mess. Our interest was
[00:19:23] that along the border and the villages adjacent to the border,
[00:19:26] forces would not be established, for example,
[00:19:29] jihadists like Daesh who could endanger
[00:19:32] us.
[00:19:35] Israeli intelligence paid attention to Jabhat al-Nusra from its very
[00:19:38] beginning. We immediately identified
[00:19:42] its very prominent organizational capabilities.
[00:19:45] This was the worst of all
[00:19:48] worlds, an extreme Islamic jihadist organization,
[00:19:51] something much more extreme than Al-Qaeda,
[00:19:54] focused on Syria and the Golan Heights front, who are very
[00:19:58] very devoted to classical Salafi jihadism,
[00:20:01] a very, very unusual
[00:20:05] and rigid enforcement of Islamic
[00:20:08] laws, horrific stories of women being shaved
[00:20:11] in villages they captured and executions
[00:20:15] according to Quranic methods
[00:20:17] in the worst possible way
[00:20:19] imaginable.
[00:20:25] I remember that Bugie, the Minister of Defense, came to see up close who
[00:20:28] we were dealing with. They brought three
[00:20:31] friends, each of whom was a kind of
[00:20:34] leader in one of the nearby villages.
[00:20:42] What's your plan? Okay, so you'll conquer your
[00:20:45] village, and then what? One makes a gesture with his cigar, says,
[00:20:57] And then Bugie asks one of them, tell me, are you a Salafi?
[00:21:01] This one says, honestly, before the war, I used to pray once a week on
[00:21:05] Friday, now I pray five
[00:21:07] times a day. If that means I'm a Salafi, well,
[00:21:10] yes, but a Salafi is not supposed to talk to the Minister
[00:21:13] of Defense, the Minister of Defense,
[00:21:17] and I'm sitting here talking to you, so maybe
[00:21:20] I'm not. That means, what exactly
[00:21:24] are they? It's not a question you bring in a jar to the lab with
[00:21:27] litmus paper and you say, look, I identified, this
[00:21:30] is it, and in this Jabhat al-Nusra was different
[00:21:33] from Daesh.
[00:21:35] At this stage there are
[00:21:39] rebels who are much
[00:21:42] more moderate, some of whom are
[00:21:45] in contact with us on the Golan border and are working
[00:21:48] against the Assad regime.
[00:21:50] Al-Julani also works against the Assad regime, and then there is a strange
[00:21:53] situation.
[00:21:56] It's hard for you to distinguish who are the more moderate, who are
[00:21:59] the rebels, and who are the hardline jihadists, what is my
[00:22:03] enemy, what is my handle, what is my ally
[00:22:05] for the war?
[00:22:09] Regarding Israel, he claims
[00:22:11] that Palestine is the heart of the Arab world,
[00:22:15] so for him, and he says it openly, I want to conquer
[00:22:19] Jerusalem.
[00:22:26] In 2012, a very difficult dispute arose between
[00:22:29] al-Julani and Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi.
[00:22:33] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was somewhat jealous of the very charismatic
[00:22:36] young man who was also said to be handsome. And when there is
[00:22:40] this halo around al-Julani, around Jabhat
[00:22:44] al-Nusra, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi decides to appropriate
[00:22:47] the success for himself.
[00:22:50] And he actually wants
[00:22:52] al-Julani to join Daesh,
[00:22:55] and essentially they would become one
[00:22:58] organization.
[00:23:01] We are in April 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announces the unification
[00:23:04] between the Islamic State in Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria
[00:23:07] and establishes the Islamic State in Iraq
[00:23:10] and Syria.
[00:23:14] Here begins an ideological confrontation between
[00:23:17] the perception of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Daesh, and that of
[00:23:20] Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Julani.
[00:23:24] Al-Julani, this is jihad, but he is only interested
[00:23:27] in Syria. He doesn't care if Sweden also becomes
[00:23:30] a caliphate. Therefore, in 2013, something very
[00:23:33] surprising happens in the world of jihad.
[00:23:36] Al-Julani says no.
[00:23:39] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi threatens him.
[00:23:41] Al-Julani, he asked, I'm not going with you. My ideology
[00:23:45] is not your ideology. And I think this is an interesting point. Here you
[00:23:48] see. that the same al-Julani has a backbone.
[00:23:52] He reaches a point where he actually
[00:23:56] says, I am breaking away from Abu Bakr al-
[00:23:59] Baghdadi and I am joining Ayman
[00:24:02] al-Zawahiri, after Al-Qaeda essentially takes
[00:24:05] al-Julani under its wing and says, you are our
[00:24:08] man, you are essentially our number
[00:24:11] one fighter on the ground, the most senior commander of Al-Qaeda on the ground
[00:24:15] in Syria.
[00:24:17] In 2014, the big boom of
[00:24:20] Daesh, Daesh takes over in four and a half months
[00:24:24] an area the size of Britain,
[00:24:27] across Syria and Iraq, they kill
[00:24:30] hundreds or thousands, a hundred people of
[00:24:33] al-Julani, Daesh kills them
[00:24:37] for fun, killing for the sake of
[00:24:40] pleasure, because the moment you don't go with Daesh, you are al-Julani,
[00:24:43] you broke away from me, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, you yourself are
[00:24:46] an infidel.
[00:24:52] And at this stage, we are more involved with Unit 504
[00:24:56] which establishes contact with all the elements present on the Golan
[00:24:59] Heights front.
[00:25:04] Good Neighborliness is a code name given later to an operation
[00:25:08] that began in 2012. But in the first
[00:25:10] years, 2012, 2013, 2014, it's very simple.
[00:25:14] We all oppose the Assad regime and we all
[00:25:18] oppose the extremist Islamist jihad that sees us as infidels,
[00:25:22] therefore we will help you, we, Israel, will help you
[00:25:25] with small logistical support and with assistance for the wounded, that we
[00:25:29] will treat the wounded ourselves, we will even open a field hospital.
[00:25:31] You will prevent
[00:25:35] these jihadists from approaching the fence and threatening
[00:25:39] our fence, and from time to time we will even cooperate
[00:25:42] in the war against the Assad regime, which is considered problematic. This is the main
[00:25:46] idea.
[00:25:50] At first it sounds simple, then
[00:25:52] it gets complicated.
[00:25:56] I remember at least two intelligence officers, one of them my intelligence officer
[00:25:59] who told me: Tell me, are we sure we are not helping global jihad here, that we are not
[00:26:03] helping Salafi jihadists, and I think this criticism
[00:26:07] was very important because these distinctions are very difficult and you can
[00:26:10] get confused.
[00:26:14] We ask someone who has all the signs that he looks like a jihadist. I tell him,
[00:26:18] tell me who you are. He says, I'm a local resident here. Are you religious? He says,
[00:26:21] no, I'm not religious, I smoke, I drink, I do everything. So I say, what are all
[00:26:24] these signs? He says, it's fashionable, these are
[00:26:27] the heroes, these are the men who go. So I wear it when I go
[00:26:31] to war, I do.
[00:26:33] Unit, with this they go out, they go out with fighting
[00:26:35] spirit.
[00:26:39] In 2014, he actually manages
[00:26:43] to kidnap 45 UN
[00:26:46] fighters, and here he can for the first time
[00:26:49] really express himself
[00:26:53] in the context of
[00:26:54] mass media.
[00:26:58] They really saw a person who has the
[00:27:02] ability to create a diplomatic
[00:27:05] process, and as the former US Ambassador
[00:27:09] to Syria said, he is a different
[00:27:12] kind of jihadist.
[00:27:14] Ahmed Al-Shara actually manages to reach an agreement with
[00:27:17] the West, and on September 11,
[00:27:21] 2014, he releases the
[00:27:24] hostages, and here intelligence
[00:27:28] organizations begin to formulate all sorts of insights
[00:27:31] about him.
[00:27:33] around 2015 we noticed something
[00:27:36] interesting, al-shaira was
[00:27:38] not talking about or
[00:27:41] launching what we considered terrorist attacks against
[00:27:45] western interests, like for example, the Islamic State did
[00:27:48] famously all over Europe in 2015. He was
[00:27:52] effectively fighting the Assad regime as uh an
[00:27:55] unofficial part of the Syrian armed
[00:27:57] opposition.
[00:28:00] So the result is we never attacked them.
[00:28:32] In his view, he must lose his extremist
[00:28:36] Islamist identity and focus
[00:28:38] on Syria.
[00:28:47] And our dialogue is with the founder of the front, Abu
[00:28:51] Muhammad al-Julani. Abu Muhammad, welcome. I just wanted to
[00:28:54] clarify to the people why you did not appear with your face. Many people know
[00:28:59] now from the program. In 2015,
[00:29:04] he gives an interview to Al-Jazeera
[00:29:08] Qatar, which tells us that already
[00:29:11] then the Qataris and probably their Turkish
[00:29:14] brothers marked him
[00:29:18] as the person they wanted to work
[00:29:21] with.
[00:29:23] 30
[00:29:27] kilometers.
[00:29:28] The Levant does not end in
[00:29:35] ends in Damascus. The battle is decided in
[00:29:38] Damascus, so we focus our attention
[00:29:41] on what helps to overthrow
[00:29:46] He changes
[00:29:49] his updated speech regarding
[00:29:52] the war he is waging
[00:29:54] in Syria. The minister says the goal is not to establish an Islamic
[00:29:58] caliphate in Syria, the goal is to establish a state, a religious
[00:30:01] state, but...
[00:30:06] In one way or another, he turns his back on the path of jihad.
[00:30:10] I thought certain things and did certain things when I was 20.
[00:30:13] I grew up, I matured, at 30 my world
[00:30:17] views changed, and it completely turned into something else
[00:30:21] when I was 40. As part
[00:30:23] of his need to choose between his Syrian national identity and his
[00:30:26] Islamist identity, in July 2016 he decides
[00:30:29] to separate by agreement from Al-Qaeda.
[00:30:33] And establishes a new organization called Jabhat Fateh
[00:30:35] al-Sham. The front for the liberation
[00:30:39] of Syria, Tahrir al-Sham. Now he calls himself the liberation
[00:30:42] of Syria. Now in 2015 I suddenly
[00:30:46] come across a speech by one of his two deputies.
[00:30:50] This leader says: We are
[00:30:53] the heirs of the Umayyad Empire. We will
[00:30:57] establish an empire in the Umayyad style, meaning the center will not be Baghdad but
[00:31:00] will be Damascus. In my Damascus will be the center
[00:31:03] and from Damascus we will rule the Muslim Empire that will grow
[00:31:07] one day. This is the man.
[00:31:11] Until 2017, Abu Muhammad al-Julani actually fails
[00:31:14] to produce all sorts of strategic
[00:31:18] victories, and the Assad
[00:31:21] regime, with Russian support, begins to conquer more and more
[00:31:24] territories.
[00:31:26] Assad holds on not thanks to his Alawite
[00:31:30] Syrian army, which is a weak army, but
[00:31:33] because Hezbollah and Iran, with
[00:31:36] Iranian Shiite militias in Syria, will do
[00:31:40] everything to ensure the Alawite connection that will protect
[00:31:43] their axis.
[00:32:25] People who were associated with the active force of
[00:32:29] Jabhat al-Nusra moved to Idlib.
[00:32:32] From the Russians' perspective, they exiled them and they supposedly stabilized
[00:32:35] Syria.
[00:32:39] He essentially receives a piece
[00:32:41] of land and now needs to establish himself as.
[00:33:15] uh tribal militia or other kinds of
[00:33:19] gatherings, they built true military
[00:33:21] capability.
[00:33:24] look, it wasn't liberal democracy there by any stretch of the
[00:33:27] imagination, but it was different, the governance there was different in
[00:33:31] character than what you saw in ISIS and rocca or what you've seen in different
[00:33:35] places of the alnucer front.
[00:33:38] he was an islamist, but he wasn't
[00:33:41] a terrorist in the sense of all of the awful things dash.
[00:33:58] The fact that the last rebel province is very
[00:34:01] close to Turkish controlled territory
[00:34:04] leads to a connection between Turkey and Ahmad
[00:34:08] Al-Shara to establish an organized army of
[00:34:10] rebels that will be able to fight, among other things,
[00:34:14] on behalf of.
[00:34:19] In 2018, the Russians, Assad and
[00:34:23] Iran were about to launch major attack into
[00:34:26] Idlib.
[00:34:30] Pompeo and Trump issued a really strong warning to
[00:34:34] the Russians. Trump chimed in with one of his tweets, Russia do not
[00:34:38] attack. The Russians got the message and backed off, so we
[00:34:42] were indirectly, be it with aid, be it with diplomatic
[00:34:45] actions, be it was supporting turkish military actions
[00:34:48] ensuring that
[00:34:50] also stayed in the
[00:34:53] fight,
[00:34:57] my name is work for the international
[00:35:00] crisis school prevention
[00:35:02] organization
[00:35:06] for many years for crisis grew,
[00:35:09] we were doing research and then a senior
[00:35:13] person in the organization
[00:35:15] and we were talking to him and and he said like the shif is ready to meet with
[00:35:19] you uh, it's not like i had put in a request or
[00:35:22] anything, but i once and met with him for few
[00:35:26] hours,
[00:35:32] he was very cautious, but then the
[00:35:35] meeting lasted for almost 4 hours, so he opened
[00:35:39] up.
[00:35:43] We talked about everything, from history, from his background
[00:35:47] in Iraq. He said, "I was very
[00:35:50] young, I was very impressionable. I was
[00:35:53] influenced by scholars that I would have never been influenced by
[00:35:56] now." Since I've met him, my impression
[00:36:00] has always been that he's very pragmatic and very
[00:36:03] practical. In essence, he's very strategic in
[00:36:07] what he does, so he's willing to take towards and shift
[00:36:10] his positions, basically, to achieve his
[00:36:12] goals.
[00:36:16] And from the moment I met him, his goal was
[00:36:19] over. He's going to take a lot, and after
[00:36:23] all, he's going to take
[00:36:23] Damascus.
[00:38:58] he started making the right decisions, like not
[00:39:00] sending a group of people to blow up an airport in
[00:39:03] Rome, but rather effectively
[00:39:07] stopping and taking on Hezbollah, the toughest fighters
[00:39:10] on the ground that Assad had, and pushing them back. Boy, that impressed us,
[00:39:14] and therefore, we all had an interest in
[00:39:18] them not giving up the fight, of being
[00:39:21] overrun.
[00:39:25] So we found ways through intermediaries to signal that to
[00:39:28] him and to signal that we were not going to do anything to make life
[00:39:32] difficult for him, and when we could, we would make life better
[00:39:35] for him, be it with USAID
[00:39:38] assistance, be it with diplomatic actions to stave
[00:39:42] off Assad's attacks. In return, we got
[00:39:45] messages back that they understood this, and we made it clear
[00:39:49] that the precondition for anything good we could do would
[00:39:53] be no terrorist attacks, and they understood
[00:39:56] that.
[00:39:59] Western intelligence organizations realize that there's
[00:40:02] a person here they can actually work with
[00:40:06] and essentially start producing what is called in English
[00:40:10] "grooming." They start preparing Abu Mohammad
[00:40:12] al-Julani and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham for the day after Assad's
[00:40:16] regime.
[00:40:19] They also give him weapons and provide him
[00:40:22] with an education
[00:40:24] in the strategic field.
[00:40:28] They begin to give him the understanding of who
[00:40:31] he actually is and where these things are developing.
[00:40:52] In October,
[00:40:52] war.
[00:40:58] Also a pretty terrible date, because you understand that Hezbollah entered the war
[00:41:01] with conscience, but then the moment
[00:41:04] Israel strikes with the pagers, takes down
[00:41:07] Hezbollah's supreme command and then finishes Nasrallah, do you remember how
[00:41:11] happy we were that Nasrallah
[00:41:13] was done for? There was a place that was happier,
[00:41:16] even
[00:41:19] in Lebanon, everyone who wasn't Shi'ite was overjoyed, but
[00:41:22] the joy of a feeling of euphoria
[00:41:25] finally was in Syria.
[00:41:28] and in the course of decapitating his bullet, that's when you
[00:41:32] finally saw Julani Al-Sara make the
[00:41:35] move.
[00:41:38] According to foreign publications, and a few things that friends of
[00:41:41] Isaac say, the State of Israel gives a tip to the rebels: if
[00:41:45] you now go against Assad, no Hezbollah
[00:41:48] jeep will start in your direction, no Iranian militia
[00:41:51] will approach you, because we, Israel, will immediately
[00:41:53] take it down.
[00:41:56] You remove all obstacles that prevented
[00:41:59] the rebels from expanding beyond
[00:42:01] Idlib.
[00:42:06] Al-Shar understands that this is the game changer. If not now,
[00:42:10] there won't be a better opportunity. Russia
[00:42:14] is deeply involved in Ukraine, it is reducing
[00:42:17] forces, and Al-Shar conveys that this is the opportunity, and therefore launches an attack
[00:42:21] that ultimately leads to the fall of Assad's
[00:42:23] regime.
[00:42:25] At the same time, the State of Israel prevented
[00:42:29] Iran from sending planes with about 400 Iranian
[00:42:32] fighters to come to help
[00:42:35] Assad's regime. At that moment, we also see
[00:42:39] that the Iraqis, various militias and other
[00:42:43] Iranian proxies, are standing on the border
[00:42:46] of Iraq with Syria, wanting to enter,
[00:42:50] but they cannot do so.
[00:42:53] If the State of Israel had not prevented
[00:42:56] Iran and its proxies from entering
[00:42:59] the Syrian territory, it is
[00:43:02] likely that al-Julani would not have been the Syrian president
[00:43:05] today. November 27,
[00:43:08] 2024, organization.
[00:43:40] disintegrating before him. There was not even a fight. It was quite
[00:43:44] extraordinary. Like almost everyone
[00:43:48] else, no way did I think the Assad regime would collapse in eight
[00:43:52] days. They thought maybe we can take back Aleppo. They
[00:43:56] didn't expect everything just to
[00:43:57] collapse.
[00:44:02] And the road to Damascus was open and he took it, and
[00:44:05] quite rapidly pursued an offensive to liberate the
[00:44:08] capital.
[00:44:41] very significant, very fast,
[00:44:44] and quickly adapted to the new environment
[00:44:48] that made him president, with the understanding that he greatly needs Western
[00:44:51] support, to lift sanctions. He understands
[00:44:55] that Syria is ruined, no one
[00:44:58] will rebuild Syria if not for Western investments.
[00:45:01] המערב,
[00:45:07] With the fall of the regime, Israel immediately
[00:45:10] moves quickly and enters Syria. The goal is first
[00:45:13] to capture the buffer zone in order to create a separation between what
[00:45:17] we see as a big unknown, a jihadist
[00:45:20] regime of a jihadist at the end. Israel
[00:45:24] enters the buffer zone and simultaneously works to eliminate all
[00:45:28] military infrastructures: air force, navy, tanks,
[00:45:31] cannons, artillery of Assad's army, so that they won't, God forbid,
[00:45:35] fall into the hands of this jihadist, whose intentions
[00:45:38] we don't exactly know.
[00:45:43] "We were the first American officials that
[00:45:47] Ahmad met. We
[00:45:51] were 12 days into a new Syria. It's
[00:45:54] absolutely critical that we go in and assess, we figure
[00:45:58] out what this guy is about.
[00:46:01] We set off from Embassy Amman,
[00:46:05] somewhere between 4 AM, 5 AM, got to the
[00:46:07] border. We're met on the other side by..."
[00:46:12] fighters in pickup
[00:46:14] trucks. So it was an interesting
[00:46:18] meetup, and then we drove about two hours
[00:46:21] that it took us to get into Damascus, and then we
[00:46:25] got to the meeting with Shaibani and
[00:46:28] Ahmad. So we came up in the
[00:46:31] elevator just to an open door, and there was
[00:46:34] Ahmad. So it was kind of just astonishing. It was, you just
[00:46:38] ride up in the elevator, there he
[00:46:40] is.
[00:46:44] You know, when people ask you what's
[00:46:47] charisma, it's really hard to define it, but you can feel
[00:46:50] it."
[00:46:55] "And he had very
[00:46:57] strong charisma, not of a flashy
[00:47:00] kind.
[00:47:04] In fact, he was very calm, very still. It's a
[00:47:08] quiet sort of charisma that comes from
[00:47:11] a thinking, thoughtful, very
[00:47:14] sharp political
[00:47:16] leader.
[00:47:20] The issue of the $10 million
[00:47:22] bounty, which was something that had been put on his
[00:47:26] head some years back. So I told him,
[00:47:30] 'We've decided to lift the bounty from your
[00:47:32] head.'
[00:47:35] At this point, Shibani started
[00:47:38] laughing and turned to him and said, 'You know, we should have
[00:47:42] offered to turn you over so you could collect the
[00:47:44] money.'
[00:47:48] Early on in our meeting, he brought up Israel before I
[00:47:51] could. To my surprise, every time he talked about the new
[00:47:55] Syria no longer being a threat to its
[00:47:59] neighbors, he would invariably say, 'including to
[00:48:01] Israel.' And he said, 'Could you tell the
[00:48:04] Israelis to please stop bombing the south? They're
[00:48:08] scaring my people, and inshallah
[00:48:11] in the future, perhaps
[00:48:14] America could help us in negotiating the return of the
[00:48:18] Golan.'
[00:48:22] I finished... came to that discussion very well
[00:48:25] prepared, having thought through a lot of things, being ready to
[00:48:28] really argue with me a couple of key priorities of his
[00:48:32] own: sanctions, lifting of U.S.
[00:48:34] sanctions. Displaying a kind of
[00:48:38] pragmatism that perhaps I hadn't
[00:48:42] expected, and it struck me that he was already
[00:48:46] transforming from a military or militia
[00:48:49] commander, and he spent literally half of his life
[00:48:52] as such, he was already transforming into a political
[00:48:56] leader. I left the meeting and left that
[00:49:00] day, thinking, 'Trust, but
[00:49:03] verify.' I thought he's saying all the right things.
[00:49:06] Literally, he said all the right things at every point
[00:49:09] along the way in the discussion, but let's see what he
[00:49:12] does.
[00:49:15] The population of Syria at the beginning of the war was 23 million. You're
[00:49:19] talking about half the population became refugees.
[00:50:00] You learn in the CIA, you learn in the military very quickly that you have to deal with the world the way that it
[00:50:04] is, not necessarily the way you'd like it to be. I don't think
[00:50:08] that I would have chosen a former al-Qaeda cell
[00:50:12] leader and then leader of the Nusra front as the ideal candidate
[00:50:15] to be president of
[00:50:16] Syria.
[00:50:21] President of the United States met him first in Saudi Arabia, and he was
[00:50:24] invited to see the president in the White
[00:50:27] House. Throughout the entire time that I worked,
[00:50:31] we never had Hafez al-Assad come to the White House. Now, for that, he would have had
[00:50:34] to make peace with Israel. Why President Trump
[00:50:38] has been open to him is because of the
[00:50:41] displacement of Iran. It is a huge
[00:50:44] strategic development that
[00:50:46] Iran is out of
[00:50:48] Syria.
[00:51:22] with a lot of money, and today he receives
[00:51:25] legitimacy, first from abroad, and then
[00:51:29] gradually, bit by bit, tries to earn the internal legitimacy
[00:51:33] that has not yet been given to him by the other Syrians. He
[00:51:36] is in a very, very challenging internal
[00:51:39] reality, specifically. His own people look
[00:51:42] from the side and say, "Wait, has he really
[00:51:46] changed his positions?" The jihadists around him are starting
[00:51:49] to understand that what they are seeing is not what
[00:51:52] they like.
[00:51:55] Al-Shar tries somehow to unite Syria, its various
[00:51:59] parts, and continue to rule it and be a leader
[00:52:03] on a historical scale. Meanwhile, the parts are breaking
[00:52:07] away from him.
[00:52:12] The Druze are finding autonomy, the Alawites
[00:52:15] want autonomy, and the Kurds want autonomy. And what
[00:52:18] do they all have in common? They all turn to Israel and say, "We want
[00:52:22] to be your allies, we don't trust
[00:52:24] Damascus."
[00:53:58] Khamenei, enemies on Saturday night
[00:54:02] on Kan 11 and KanBox. We
[00:54:10] don't know
[00:54:10] how to say
[00:54:18] is this a direct action and his direct intention
[00:54:21] or that of people close to him, that he says he closes an eye and in silence says
[00:54:25] do what you
[00:54:26] want.
[00:54:30] I am convinced that Ahmed Al-Shara had a
[00:54:33] hand in all that.
[00:55:07] The Druze in Syria
[00:55:10] suffered a terrible massacre, there were
[00:55:14] 48 very, very difficult hours, that was the peak of
[00:55:17] the massacre, where they tried first
[00:55:20] of all to defend themselves. The Druze in Israel did
[00:55:24] everything they could to help them, to assist them, mainly
[00:55:27] to put pressure on countries around the world and especially on the government
[00:55:31] of Israel to act, to intervene and stop
[00:55:33] the atrocities. Especially after October 7th, when these
[00:55:37] sights return in a very similar way.
[00:55:41] When I said that in my opinion al-Julani could change and that he had actually
[00:55:45] changed, I added a very important caveat. I don't think
[00:55:48] his army can change that much. Certainly not
[00:55:52] all of them, some yes, but some no. Some are jihadists with
[00:55:55] the idea of killing, which is also fun. It is a commandment
[00:55:58] to kill infidels, to kill them, to burn them, to take
[00:56:02] women as spoils of war, as sex slaves.
[00:56:08] What we saw was that Al-Shar did not really control
[00:56:12] the territory, there were other forces that
[00:56:15] had an influence. And the question
[00:56:18] arises here: if he is so weak, then how can
[00:56:22] he be trusted? And if he is, on the other
[00:56:25] hand, a strong but complicit partner, then
[00:56:29] he is still a terrorist capable of committing
[00:56:31] atrocities.
[00:56:35] Al-Shar has a clear
[00:56:38] practice. What does he do? He exploits local
[00:56:40] conflicts to strengthen them by not
[00:56:44] controlling his crazy jihadists,
[00:56:47] who come and commit the most horrible atrocities
[00:56:50] they know how to do. And then Israel intervened, stopped
[00:56:53] it, and punished him
[00:56:56] with an attack in the middle of the day on the Ministry of Defense
[00:56:58] in Damascus.
[00:57:03] And then he came as the enforcer of order.
[00:57:50] Al-Shar's soldiers are declaring anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish
[00:57:54] troubles in the streets of Damascus,
[00:57:57] All these voices are voices coming
[00:58:00] from a radical Islamist camp. This is part
[00:58:04] of a very large ecosystem
[00:58:06] that the Turks and the Qataris
[00:58:09] built.
[00:58:13] The biggest fear from Syria
[00:58:16] today is, first, its instability. The fact that
[00:58:20] we have militias of jihadists who are not loyal
[00:58:24] to al-Shar, militias that are loyal to Turkey and even receive funding
[00:58:28] from Turkey, whether covertly or directly. ISIS is still
[00:58:31] in the picture. Iran has not completely left the Syrian
[00:58:35] arena.
[00:58:39] No one guarantees that al-Shar will survive in power,
[00:58:42] and therefore Israel takes him with limited trust, gives
[00:58:46] him due respect and conducts
[00:58:49] negotiations. They are trying to reach some kind of arrangement, but with
[00:58:53] much caution and suspicion.
[00:58:57] Behind the scenes, they say his
[00:59:00] chances of success are slim, and therefore
[00:59:03] the West sees al-Julani as someone,
[00:59:06] even if he is lying to them now, as
[00:59:09] someone who can be manipulated. Al-Shar
[00:59:12] plays a very complex game of messages
[00:59:15] that everyone can interpret as they wish. Some
[00:59:19] say he is playing a role to get money and manipulate Trump, and others
[00:59:23] say he has truly changed, he wants to strengthen Syria as a
[00:59:27] moderate person, he has abandoned jihadist Islam, he
[00:59:29] is post-Islamist.
[00:59:33] Today, I still see al-Shar as an enemy of Israel, an enemy of the Western
[00:59:37] world.
[00:59:41] I think he still represents very, very
[00:59:44] radical ideas. More like a wolf in sheep's clothing
[00:59:47] than a new, liberal,
[00:59:50] open figure. We must take everything
[00:59:53] with limited trust, with great
[00:59:55] doubt.
[00:59:58] If you were to ask him, what are you, al-Shar? A jihadist
[01:00:02] in a suit, or a person who has transitioned? He does not
[01:00:05] know,
[01:00:09] because he is an adaptable person, he is a person who changes, he
[01:00:12] only knows that he is undergoing a process of change designed
[01:00:16] to achieve his goals. And what will be at the end of the change process, what is his next
[01:00:20] evolutionary stage between the kuffiyeh and the suit, what will be
[01:00:24] next? He still does not know.
[01:00:28] What I recommend for ourselves, instead of constantly
[01:00:30] dealing with the question of what is he really? To understand that there are
[01:00:34] sides to both, coordinate what is possible, knowing
[01:00:38] that tomorrow it can change. This is an approach that basically
[01:00:41] says, get on the field and be ready
[01:00:45] always.