Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:02:12In 2013, I was then the commander of the 36th division in the Golan
00:02:15Heights and something big was happening in Syria and we didn't understand
00:02:18it.
00:02:21Rebels from people who are army defectors
00:02:24in Syria.
00:02:26A big mess and then there's news about 600
00:02:30people who crossed from Iraq to Syria and they are called the support
00:02:33front for the Levant and Jabhat
00:02:37al-Nusra.
00:02:40According to their external signs, it looks like something
00:02:43related to global jihad, but something unique, a kind
00:02:46of evolution of al-Qaeda, but
00:02:49with more local Syrian guidance and later
00:02:52they gain great momentum and then the name
00:02:57me, but we are on the media, not Julani first makes headlines.
00:03:30Minister of Warmth,
00:03:32Al-Qardaha. No, it psychopath, you could say, that.
00:03:34his hands. Whoever worked with me, then
00:03:38in 504, he says, we received a strange
00:03:41request. Al-
00:03:43this destructive regime. Julani, the leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, wants his sister to be treated
00:03:46in Israel.
00:03:50Israel, the infidels, the Jews in Rambam hospital who believe
00:03:54in infidel Jews, are not supposed to exist at all as a sovereign
00:03:58entity. At the time. I remind you, Syrian wounded
00:04:01are treated in Israel, not only wounded, it
00:04:05also expanded to the sick, and he wants
00:04:08it and they are deliberating what to do, in the end they decide, you know what, why
00:04:11not, let's understand who these confessors are, one condition, don't come with a suicide
00:04:15belt, and he didn't agree.
00:04:19At the time, the person who now wears different types of suits, then
00:04:23he wore suicide suits, because if he is caught, he is psychologically
00:04:26unstable, whoever catches him, etc.
00:04:30And this gives you a glimpse into the complexity of the fire. On the one hand,
00:04:33compromises and extraordinary flexibility
00:04:37because it contradicts his jihadist Islamic perception to ask for help
00:04:40from Israel, and on the other hand, a certain devilry to remove the
00:04:44suicide belt and come to undress in front
00:04:47of Israelis, this deviates from something he will
00:04:50not do, and this is the complexity that still
00:04:54confuses all researchers of the gate, how a person, on the one hand, is so
00:04:57flexible and pragmatic, and on the other.
00:05:13The interest of the state takes precedence over the interest of the
00:05:16group, and the interest of the group
00:05:19takes precedence over the interests of individuals.
00:06:06As a journalist, I will try to go as deep as possible,
00:06:09everywhere, five times I was inside.
00:06:12Syria. My first entry was in November
00:06:162012 when the rebellion against Assad began to gain
00:06:18momentum. And then my first entry was
00:06:22through Turkey. The moderate rebels smuggled me
00:06:25in. You have to think of Syria like you see
00:06:28in a movie about street gangs taking over a city
00:06:32and dividing it into areas of control. This is my militia's
00:06:35territory. This is her gang's territory. Respect
00:06:39my area and I will respect yours. That's how Syria is. Assad
00:06:42controlled
00:06:4365%.
00:06:47I entered the area of Idlib
00:06:49and the guys who let me in say, with us is the Free Syrian Army, that's
00:06:53fine, but be careful where you wander because in other
00:06:56parts of Idlib, in the city itself, there are
00:06:59people who will like you less. Again, I have a foreign passport, they don't
00:07:03know I'm Israeli, but I'm an infidel by my very definition according to
00:07:07jihad.
00:07:09You see this flag, he raises the flag of Jabhat al-Nusra. This is the area of
00:07:13Jabhat al-Nusra and of a man named Al-Julani.
00:07:17Don't you dare. Understood?
00:07:21Beware of these
00:07:22areas.
00:07:30And this new formation seeks to achieve
00:07:32the following goals: First, to work towards
00:07:36establishing the religion of God Almighty and applying His law
00:07:39and achieving justice among all people.
00:07:43We are talking about a man who is a question mark, he is a very
00:07:46charismatic and very intelligent man, he is
00:07:49intelligent, he sees how all the jihadists who went head
00:07:53first, whether in Syria, whether in Iraq, whether in Libya,
00:07:56ended up in the worst possible
00:07:58way. You know, he wants something
00:08:02else. Although he is
00:08:05a jihadist religiously
00:08:09and jurisprudentially, he has his feet on the ground.
00:08:14He adapts himself to reality, his phenomenal
00:08:18ability to be flexible, to be
00:08:21practical, to recognize reality and adapt himself to it is something
00:08:25that is unparalleled in the Arab arena
00:08:27at all.
00:08:30How he redesigned his image, with a suit, with
00:08:34a well-groomed beard, when Trump
00:08:36says he's a very impressive
00:08:39guy, tall, well-dressed. Right,
00:08:43you can't walk down the street without noticing the presence of this
00:08:47man. He plays the
00:08:50two-facedness perfectly.
00:08:54There's something here, say a chameleon, when it's here on
00:08:57this brown armrest, it will be brown, when it's on the floor it will be
00:09:01white. I can't catch it and tell it, seriously, once
00:09:04and for all, decide what its color is. Its color is adapted
00:09:08to the context.
00:09:13On the other hand, the man has a basic ideological
00:09:17very rigid layer that accompanies his changes,
00:09:20and people who hold both of these things are cunning
00:09:23and dangerous people. Is
00:09:27Al-Julani working us?
00:09:29Yes, there is a person
00:09:33here who has a very ugly and very
00:09:36dangerous history and should be
00:09:39taken into account as someone who might. Yes, the State
00:09:43of Israel.
00:09:46The Salafi Jihadist sees no
00:09:50alternative other than bringing the full
00:09:53Islamic Sharia regime to the entire world
00:09:57and now.
00:10:00One of the fascinating questions is how a person who grew up in a secular
00:10:04environment turns 180
00:10:07degrees to become one of the most famous
00:10:10jihad fighters in the Middle East. Who also eventually took over
00:10:14Syria and turned it into a state under
00:10:16his protection.
00:10:21Julani, or one for Nusra. He was born
00:10:25in Saudi Arabia, actually, he hides
00:10:28Born on October 29, 1982
00:10:32in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, into a very
00:10:35educated, Syrian family.
00:10:37Al-Julani means the one from the Golan. His parents
00:10:41were born in the Golan.
00:10:45He grew up in a completely
00:10:48secular, normative home. In
00:10:511989, the family decided to return to Damascus.
00:11:00And he grew up in the Hamzeh neighborhood, I was there
00:11:03after Assad's fall, a very
00:11:06colorful neighborhood, by the way, not fanatically
00:11:08Islamic, a neighborhood of
00:11:11bourgeoisie, the Syrian elite
00:11:14actually lived there, he didn't come
00:11:16from poverty,
00:11:19his father has very, very deep feelings for the Palestinians, and
00:11:22the feelings, the... identification with the Palestinian
00:11:25struggle, he also conveys to Ahmad Al-Shara this value of
00:11:29love for Palestine and the need to defend the rights of the
00:11:33Palestinians.
00:11:37During his high school studies, he met an Alawite
00:11:40girl by origin.
00:11:43His parents, as Sunnis, opposed
00:11:46the relationship and together with her parents, they simply
00:11:50ended it. From that moment on, he really
00:11:53alienated himself from his family.
00:11:58And towards the age of 17, he really
00:12:01started to find his monster
00:12:04in religion.
00:12:07And then comes the process of real indoctrination. Slowly, he accepts the
00:12:10religious idea more
00:12:12and more.
00:12:15He started wearing galabiyas and started
00:12:19growing a beard and started
00:12:21behaving in a much more religious way, which was
00:12:25even stranger for Al-Shara's
00:12:28family.
00:12:30Two significant events occur during the period
00:12:34when he finishes high school and begins university
00:12:36studies. He studied medicine at Damascus
00:12:39University. He began to be influenced by the Second Intifada here
00:12:43among us.
00:12:48He actually gained a lot of
00:12:50inspiration from the Palestinians who started declaring
00:12:54in the Arab world a resistance to
00:12:57essentially rebel against the Jewish state, because
00:13:01the state
00:13:01of Israel.
00:13:05And the second event is September 11, 2001.
00:13:09Al-Qaeda's terrorist attack that collapsed the Twin Towers
00:13:13in New York and hit the Pentagon. Al-Shara also said
00:13:16that there wasn't a single person in the Arab world and in the Islamic
00:13:19world in general who didn't feel feelings of joy
00:13:22and pride about this event.
00:13:27In 2003, the US invasion of Iraq,
00:13:31where he abandoned the path he set for himself, and he went
00:13:34to Iraq,
00:13:35to fight.
00:13:39He decided he needed to join what was then called
00:13:42Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Al-Qaeda
00:13:45in Iraq, which was led by Zarqawi, a very
00:13:49extreme
00:13:50Islamist.
00:14:25But he finds himself among the senior commanders of this
00:14:29organization, and they were killing Americans, that was their
00:14:32job, and then they decided that their job was not only to kill
00:14:35Americans who occupied Iraq, but also to kill Shiites,
00:14:39because in Zarqawi's eyes, a good Shiite was
00:14:42a dead Shiite.
00:14:45He had eloquence and charisma
00:14:48that gave him a lot
00:14:50of credit.
00:15:26through september 2008,
00:15:29this was irregular warfare, insurgency, we didn't even have
00:15:33field man for it, in 2006 he was
00:15:36essentially al-qaeda in a rock cell leader, he was
00:15:40caught planting explosives on the roadside,
00:15:43and he was detain for his activities, trying to kill
00:15:47our
00:15:48soldiers.
00:15:52He was in Camp Buka, he was essentially one of
00:15:5627 detainees that
00:15:59we had in the various detention
00:16:02their
00:16:03occupancy.
00:16:08By the way, he is very dominant among the wealthy, you can see he has
00:16:12leadership qualities, it starts already
00:16:15there, there sit all
00:16:19the senior jihadists who were
00:16:22in Iraq, and also who eventually came out of Camp
00:16:26Bucca, among others, one known,
00:16:29Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who also sat with him during that period in prison,
00:16:32who will also be the founder
00:16:35of the Islamic State of Daesh,
00:16:38he and Al-Julani, like that, and I say
00:16:42Al-Julani, not Ahmad Al-Shara, because no one knew the name Ahmad Al-Shara
00:16:46in those years, they only knew Al-Julani.
00:16:49In 2008 he leaves
00:16:53and returns very quickly to the path of fighting, to the path of jihad, whatever you call
00:16:57it, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who thinks highly of him
00:17:00and trusts him deeply, decides that he will be responsible for the fighting
00:17:03in Iraq in the Nineveh region. But then
00:17:07in 2011, the rebellion in Syria
00:17:11begins.
00:17:15The revolutions in the Arab world begin.
00:17:19And when it starts in Syria, Abu Bakr
00:17:21al-Baghdadi sees the opportunity and tells him: "Go
00:17:25command the uprising in Syria."
00:17:29Establish another front.
00:17:32Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sent him to Syria to establish a terrorist
00:17:36infrastructure there. To fight
00:17:38Assad, whoever wants to join, he joins him, he forms
00:17:42connections with everyone, even with other rebel organizations that are perceived
00:17:46as secular, and he goes and establishes
00:17:49Jabhat al-Nusra along the Golan
00:17:52border.
00:17:55Jabhat al-Nusra, the Front for Salvation, the Front for Support
00:17:58of the People of the Levant, meaning the Syrian people, Syria is called
00:18:01the Levant, because this is the Levant in the eyes of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,
00:18:05which is worthy of referring to this region. This is Greater
00:18:08Syria, how great? The term Levant is essentially Syria,
00:18:11Lebanon, Jordan
00:18:12and Israel.
00:18:17And the organization begins to actually carry out suicide
00:18:20attacks, which can be said to change the reality
00:18:23in Syria.
00:18:26Julani is a full-fledged jihadist, he appears to be a charismatic leader,
00:18:30and he appears to have the most successful group in terms
00:18:33of jihad within Syria, because this group, which started
00:18:36with 600. who crossed from Iraq to Syria within weeks
00:18:40and months, expands to many thousands
00:18:43and begins to emerge. There is no shadow of a doubt
00:18:46that as the commander of Jabhat al-Nusra he was a terrible
00:18:50jihadist, and today it is no coincidence that the United States published a poster with a 10
00:18:53million dollar reward for anyone who gives a tip on where al-Julani is
00:18:57located, this is on the level of Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,
00:19:01a person who is unusually cruel.
00:19:04He truly understands
00:19:07that violence is a political
00:19:11tool.
00:19:16The civil war in Syria is a big
00:19:19mess. Our interest was
00:19:23that along the border and the villages adjacent to the border,
00:19:26forces would not be established, for example,
00:19:29jihadists like Daesh who could endanger
00:19:32us.
00:19:35Israeli intelligence paid attention to Jabhat al-Nusra from its very
00:19:38beginning. We immediately identified
00:19:42its very prominent organizational capabilities.
00:19:45This was the worst of all
00:19:48worlds, an extreme Islamic jihadist organization,
00:19:51something much more extreme than Al-Qaeda,
00:19:54focused on Syria and the Golan Heights front, who are very
00:19:58very devoted to classical Salafi jihadism,
00:20:01a very, very unusual
00:20:05and rigid enforcement of Islamic
00:20:08laws, horrific stories of women being shaved
00:20:11in villages they captured and executions
00:20:15according to Quranic methods
00:20:17in the worst possible way
00:20:19imaginable.
00:20:25I remember that Bugie, the Minister of Defense, came to see up close who
00:20:28we were dealing with. They brought three
00:20:31friends, each of whom was a kind of
00:20:34leader in one of the nearby villages.
00:20:42What's your plan? Okay, so you'll conquer your
00:20:45village, and then what? One makes a gesture with his cigar, says,
00:20:57And then Bugie asks one of them, tell me, are you a Salafi?
00:21:01This one says, honestly, before the war, I used to pray once a week on
00:21:05Friday, now I pray five
00:21:07times a day. If that means I'm a Salafi, well,
00:21:10yes, but a Salafi is not supposed to talk to the Minister
00:21:13of Defense, the Minister of Defense,
00:21:17and I'm sitting here talking to you, so maybe
00:21:20I'm not. That means, what exactly
00:21:24are they? It's not a question you bring in a jar to the lab with
00:21:27litmus paper and you say, look, I identified, this
00:21:30is it, and in this Jabhat al-Nusra was different
00:21:33from Daesh.
00:21:35At this stage there are
00:21:39rebels who are much
00:21:42more moderate, some of whom are
00:21:45in contact with us on the Golan border and are working
00:21:48against the Assad regime.
00:21:50Al-Julani also works against the Assad regime, and then there is a strange
00:21:53situation.
00:21:56It's hard for you to distinguish who are the more moderate, who are
00:21:59the rebels, and who are the hardline jihadists, what is my
00:22:03enemy, what is my handle, what is my ally
00:22:05for the war?
00:22:09Regarding Israel, he claims
00:22:11that Palestine is the heart of the Arab world,
00:22:15so for him, and he says it openly, I want to conquer
00:22:19Jerusalem.
00:22:26In 2012, a very difficult dispute arose between
00:22:29al-Julani and Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi.
00:22:33Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was somewhat jealous of the very charismatic
00:22:36young man who was also said to be handsome. And when there is
00:22:40this halo around al-Julani, around Jabhat
00:22:44al-Nusra, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi decides to appropriate
00:22:47the success for himself.
00:22:50And he actually wants
00:22:52al-Julani to join Daesh,
00:22:55and essentially they would become one
00:22:58organization.
00:23:01We are in April 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announces the unification
00:23:04between the Islamic State in Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria
00:23:07and establishes the Islamic State in Iraq
00:23:10and Syria.
00:23:14Here begins an ideological confrontation between
00:23:17the perception of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Daesh, and that of
00:23:20Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Julani.
00:23:24Al-Julani, this is jihad, but he is only interested
00:23:27in Syria. He doesn't care if Sweden also becomes
00:23:30a caliphate. Therefore, in 2013, something very
00:23:33surprising happens in the world of jihad.
00:23:36Al-Julani says no.
00:23:39Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi threatens him.
00:23:41Al-Julani, he asked, I'm not going with you. My ideology
00:23:45is not your ideology. And I think this is an interesting point. Here you
00:23:48see. that the same al-Julani has a backbone.
00:23:52He reaches a point where he actually
00:23:56says, I am breaking away from Abu Bakr al-
00:23:59Baghdadi and I am joining Ayman
00:24:02al-Zawahiri, after Al-Qaeda essentially takes
00:24:05al-Julani under its wing and says, you are our
00:24:08man, you are essentially our number
00:24:11one fighter on the ground, the most senior commander of Al-Qaeda on the ground
00:24:15in Syria.
00:24:17In 2014, the big boom of
00:24:20Daesh, Daesh takes over in four and a half months
00:24:24an area the size of Britain,
00:24:27across Syria and Iraq, they kill
00:24:30hundreds or thousands, a hundred people of
00:24:33al-Julani, Daesh kills them
00:24:37for fun, killing for the sake of
00:24:40pleasure, because the moment you don't go with Daesh, you are al-Julani,
00:24:43you broke away from me, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, you yourself are
00:24:46an infidel.
00:24:52And at this stage, we are more involved with Unit 504
00:24:56which establishes contact with all the elements present on the Golan
00:24:59Heights front.
00:25:04Good Neighborliness is a code name given later to an operation
00:25:08that began in 2012. But in the first
00:25:10years, 2012, 2013, 2014, it's very simple.
00:25:14We all oppose the Assad regime and we all
00:25:18oppose the extremist Islamist jihad that sees us as infidels,
00:25:22therefore we will help you, we, Israel, will help you
00:25:25with small logistical support and with assistance for the wounded, that we
00:25:29will treat the wounded ourselves, we will even open a field hospital.
00:25:31You will prevent
00:25:35these jihadists from approaching the fence and threatening
00:25:39our fence, and from time to time we will even cooperate
00:25:42in the war against the Assad regime, which is considered problematic. This is the main
00:25:46idea.
00:25:50At first it sounds simple, then
00:25:52it gets complicated.
00:25:56I remember at least two intelligence officers, one of them my intelligence officer
00:25:59who told me: Tell me, are we sure we are not helping global jihad here, that we are not
00:26:03helping Salafi jihadists, and I think this criticism
00:26:07was very important because these distinctions are very difficult and you can
00:26:10get confused.
00:26:14We ask someone who has all the signs that he looks like a jihadist. I tell him,
00:26:18tell me who you are. He says, I'm a local resident here. Are you religious? He says,
00:26:21no, I'm not religious, I smoke, I drink, I do everything. So I say, what are all
00:26:24these signs? He says, it's fashionable, these are
00:26:27the heroes, these are the men who go. So I wear it when I go
00:26:31to war, I do.
00:26:33Unit, with this they go out, they go out with fighting
00:26:35spirit.
00:26:39In 2014, he actually manages
00:26:43to kidnap 45 UN
00:26:46fighters, and here he can for the first time
00:26:49really express himself
00:26:53in the context of
00:26:54mass media.
00:26:58They really saw a person who has the
00:27:02ability to create a diplomatic
00:27:05process, and as the former US Ambassador
00:27:09to Syria said, he is a different
00:27:12kind of jihadist.
00:27:14Ahmed Al-Shara actually manages to reach an agreement with
00:27:17the West, and on September 11,
00:27:212014, he releases the
00:27:24hostages, and here intelligence
00:27:28organizations begin to formulate all sorts of insights
00:27:31about him.
00:27:33around 2015 we noticed something
00:27:36interesting, al-shaira was
00:27:38not talking about or
00:27:41launching what we considered terrorist attacks against
00:27:45western interests, like for example, the Islamic State did
00:27:48famously all over Europe in 2015. He was
00:27:52effectively fighting the Assad regime as uh an
00:27:55unofficial part of the Syrian armed
00:27:57opposition.
00:28:00So the result is we never attacked them.
00:28:32In his view, he must lose his extremist
00:28:36Islamist identity and focus
00:28:38on Syria.
00:28:47And our dialogue is with the founder of the front, Abu
00:28:51Muhammad al-Julani. Abu Muhammad, welcome. I just wanted to
00:28:54clarify to the people why you did not appear with your face. Many people know
00:28:59now from the program. In 2015,
00:29:04he gives an interview to Al-Jazeera
00:29:08Qatar, which tells us that already
00:29:11then the Qataris and probably their Turkish
00:29:14brothers marked him
00:29:18as the person they wanted to work
00:29:21with.
00:29:2330
00:29:27kilometers.
00:29:28The Levant does not end in
00:29:35ends in Damascus. The battle is decided in
00:29:38Damascus, so we focus our attention
00:29:41on what helps to overthrow
00:29:46He changes
00:29:49his updated speech regarding
00:29:52the war he is waging
00:29:54in Syria. The minister says the goal is not to establish an Islamic
00:29:58caliphate in Syria, the goal is to establish a state, a religious
00:30:01state, but...
00:30:06In one way or another, he turns his back on the path of jihad.
00:30:10I thought certain things and did certain things when I was 20.
00:30:13I grew up, I matured, at 30 my world
00:30:17views changed, and it completely turned into something else
00:30:21when I was 40. As part
00:30:23of his need to choose between his Syrian national identity and his
00:30:26Islamist identity, in July 2016 he decides
00:30:29to separate by agreement from Al-Qaeda.
00:30:33And establishes a new organization called Jabhat Fateh
00:30:35al-Sham. The front for the liberation
00:30:39of Syria, Tahrir al-Sham. Now he calls himself the liberation
00:30:42of Syria. Now in 2015 I suddenly
00:30:46come across a speech by one of his two deputies.
00:30:50This leader says: We are
00:30:53the heirs of the Umayyad Empire. We will
00:30:57establish an empire in the Umayyad style, meaning the center will not be Baghdad but
00:31:00will be Damascus. In my Damascus will be the center
00:31:03and from Damascus we will rule the Muslim Empire that will grow
00:31:07one day. This is the man.
00:31:11Until 2017, Abu Muhammad al-Julani actually fails
00:31:14to produce all sorts of strategic
00:31:18victories, and the Assad
00:31:21regime, with Russian support, begins to conquer more and more
00:31:24territories.
00:31:26Assad holds on not thanks to his Alawite
00:31:30Syrian army, which is a weak army, but
00:31:33because Hezbollah and Iran, with
00:31:36Iranian Shiite militias in Syria, will do
00:31:40everything to ensure the Alawite connection that will protect
00:31:43their axis.
00:32:25People who were associated with the active force of
00:32:29Jabhat al-Nusra moved to Idlib.
00:32:32From the Russians' perspective, they exiled them and they supposedly stabilized
00:32:35Syria.
00:32:39He essentially receives a piece
00:32:41of land and now needs to establish himself as.
00:33:15uh tribal militia or other kinds of
00:33:19gatherings, they built true military
00:33:21capability.
00:33:24look, it wasn't liberal democracy there by any stretch of the
00:33:27imagination, but it was different, the governance there was different in
00:33:31character than what you saw in ISIS and rocca or what you've seen in different
00:33:35places of the alnucer front.
00:33:38he was an islamist, but he wasn't
00:33:41a terrorist in the sense of all of the awful things dash.
00:33:58The fact that the last rebel province is very
00:34:01close to Turkish controlled territory
00:34:04leads to a connection between Turkey and Ahmad
00:34:08Al-Shara to establish an organized army of
00:34:10rebels that will be able to fight, among other things,
00:34:14on behalf of.
00:34:19In 2018, the Russians, Assad and
00:34:23Iran were about to launch major attack into
00:34:26Idlib.
00:34:30Pompeo and Trump issued a really strong warning to
00:34:34the Russians. Trump chimed in with one of his tweets, Russia do not
00:34:38attack. The Russians got the message and backed off, so we
00:34:42were indirectly, be it with aid, be it with diplomatic
00:34:45actions, be it was supporting turkish military actions
00:34:48ensuring that
00:34:50also stayed in the
00:34:53fight,
00:34:57my name is work for the international
00:35:00crisis school prevention
00:35:02organization
00:35:06for many years for crisis grew,
00:35:09we were doing research and then a senior
00:35:13person in the organization
00:35:15and we were talking to him and and he said like the shif is ready to meet with
00:35:19you uh, it's not like i had put in a request or
00:35:22anything, but i once and met with him for few
00:35:26hours,
00:35:32he was very cautious, but then the
00:35:35meeting lasted for almost 4 hours, so he opened
00:35:39up.
00:35:43We talked about everything, from history, from his background
00:35:47in Iraq. He said, "I was very
00:35:50young, I was very impressionable. I was
00:35:53influenced by scholars that I would have never been influenced by
00:35:56now." Since I've met him, my impression
00:36:00has always been that he's very pragmatic and very
00:36:03practical. In essence, he's very strategic in
00:36:07what he does, so he's willing to take towards and shift
00:36:10his positions, basically, to achieve his
00:36:12goals.
00:36:16And from the moment I met him, his goal was
00:36:19over. He's going to take a lot, and after
00:36:23all, he's going to take
00:36:23Damascus.
00:38:58he started making the right decisions, like not
00:39:00sending a group of people to blow up an airport in
00:39:03Rome, but rather effectively
00:39:07stopping and taking on Hezbollah, the toughest fighters
00:39:10on the ground that Assad had, and pushing them back. Boy, that impressed us,
00:39:14and therefore, we all had an interest in
00:39:18them not giving up the fight, of being
00:39:21overrun.
00:39:25So we found ways through intermediaries to signal that to
00:39:28him and to signal that we were not going to do anything to make life
00:39:32difficult for him, and when we could, we would make life better
00:39:35for him, be it with USAID
00:39:38assistance, be it with diplomatic actions to stave
00:39:42off Assad's attacks. In return, we got
00:39:45messages back that they understood this, and we made it clear
00:39:49that the precondition for anything good we could do would
00:39:53be no terrorist attacks, and they understood
00:39:56that.
00:39:59Western intelligence organizations realize that there's
00:40:02a person here they can actually work with
00:40:06and essentially start producing what is called in English
00:40:10"grooming." They start preparing Abu Mohammad
00:40:12al-Julani and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham for the day after Assad's
00:40:16regime.
00:40:19They also give him weapons and provide him
00:40:22with an education
00:40:24in the strategic field.
00:40:28They begin to give him the understanding of who
00:40:31he actually is and where these things are developing.
00:40:52In October,
00:40:52war.
00:40:58Also a pretty terrible date, because you understand that Hezbollah entered the war
00:41:01with conscience, but then the moment
00:41:04Israel strikes with the pagers, takes down
00:41:07Hezbollah's supreme command and then finishes Nasrallah, do you remember how
00:41:11happy we were that Nasrallah
00:41:13was done for? There was a place that was happier,
00:41:16even
00:41:19in Lebanon, everyone who wasn't Shi'ite was overjoyed, but
00:41:22the joy of a feeling of euphoria
00:41:25finally was in Syria.
00:41:28and in the course of decapitating his bullet, that's when you
00:41:32finally saw Julani Al-Sara make the
00:41:35move.
00:41:38According to foreign publications, and a few things that friends of
00:41:41Isaac say, the State of Israel gives a tip to the rebels: if
00:41:45you now go against Assad, no Hezbollah
00:41:48jeep will start in your direction, no Iranian militia
00:41:51will approach you, because we, Israel, will immediately
00:41:53take it down.
00:41:56You remove all obstacles that prevented
00:41:59the rebels from expanding beyond
00:42:01Idlib.
00:42:06Al-Shar understands that this is the game changer. If not now,
00:42:10there won't be a better opportunity. Russia
00:42:14is deeply involved in Ukraine, it is reducing
00:42:17forces, and Al-Shar conveys that this is the opportunity, and therefore launches an attack
00:42:21that ultimately leads to the fall of Assad's
00:42:23regime.
00:42:25At the same time, the State of Israel prevented
00:42:29Iran from sending planes with about 400 Iranian
00:42:32fighters to come to help
00:42:35Assad's regime. At that moment, we also see
00:42:39that the Iraqis, various militias and other
00:42:43Iranian proxies, are standing on the border
00:42:46of Iraq with Syria, wanting to enter,
00:42:50but they cannot do so.
00:42:53If the State of Israel had not prevented
00:42:56Iran and its proxies from entering
00:42:59the Syrian territory, it is
00:43:02likely that al-Julani would not have been the Syrian president
00:43:05today. November 27,
00:43:082024, organization.
00:43:40disintegrating before him. There was not even a fight. It was quite
00:43:44extraordinary. Like almost everyone
00:43:48else, no way did I think the Assad regime would collapse in eight
00:43:52days. They thought maybe we can take back Aleppo. They
00:43:56didn't expect everything just to
00:43:57collapse.
00:44:02And the road to Damascus was open and he took it, and
00:44:05quite rapidly pursued an offensive to liberate the
00:44:08capital.
00:44:41very significant, very fast,
00:44:44and quickly adapted to the new environment
00:44:48that made him president, with the understanding that he greatly needs Western
00:44:51support, to lift sanctions. He understands
00:44:55that Syria is ruined, no one
00:44:58will rebuild Syria if not for Western investments.
00:45:01המערב,
00:45:07With the fall of the regime, Israel immediately
00:45:10moves quickly and enters Syria. The goal is first
00:45:13to capture the buffer zone in order to create a separation between what
00:45:17we see as a big unknown, a jihadist
00:45:20regime of a jihadist at the end. Israel
00:45:24enters the buffer zone and simultaneously works to eliminate all
00:45:28military infrastructures: air force, navy, tanks,
00:45:31cannons, artillery of Assad's army, so that they won't, God forbid,
00:45:35fall into the hands of this jihadist, whose intentions
00:45:38we don't exactly know.
00:45:43"We were the first American officials that
00:45:47Ahmad met. We
00:45:51were 12 days into a new Syria. It's
00:45:54absolutely critical that we go in and assess, we figure
00:45:58out what this guy is about.
00:46:01We set off from Embassy Amman,
00:46:05somewhere between 4 AM, 5 AM, got to the
00:46:07border. We're met on the other side by..."
00:46:12fighters in pickup
00:46:14trucks. So it was an interesting
00:46:18meetup, and then we drove about two hours
00:46:21that it took us to get into Damascus, and then we
00:46:25got to the meeting with Shaibani and
00:46:28Ahmad. So we came up in the
00:46:31elevator just to an open door, and there was
00:46:34Ahmad. So it was kind of just astonishing. It was, you just
00:46:38ride up in the elevator, there he
00:46:40is.
00:46:44You know, when people ask you what's
00:46:47charisma, it's really hard to define it, but you can feel
00:46:50it."
00:46:55"And he had very
00:46:57strong charisma, not of a flashy
00:47:00kind.
00:47:04In fact, he was very calm, very still. It's a
00:47:08quiet sort of charisma that comes from
00:47:11a thinking, thoughtful, very
00:47:14sharp political
00:47:16leader.
00:47:20The issue of the $10 million
00:47:22bounty, which was something that had been put on his
00:47:26head some years back. So I told him,
00:47:30'We've decided to lift the bounty from your
00:47:32head.'
00:47:35At this point, Shibani started
00:47:38laughing and turned to him and said, 'You know, we should have
00:47:42offered to turn you over so you could collect the
00:47:44money.'
00:47:48Early on in our meeting, he brought up Israel before I
00:47:51could. To my surprise, every time he talked about the new
00:47:55Syria no longer being a threat to its
00:47:59neighbors, he would invariably say, 'including to
00:48:01Israel.' And he said, 'Could you tell the
00:48:04Israelis to please stop bombing the south? They're
00:48:08scaring my people, and inshallah
00:48:11in the future, perhaps
00:48:14America could help us in negotiating the return of the
00:48:18Golan.'
00:48:22I finished... came to that discussion very well
00:48:25prepared, having thought through a lot of things, being ready to
00:48:28really argue with me a couple of key priorities of his
00:48:32own: sanctions, lifting of U.S.
00:48:34sanctions. Displaying a kind of
00:48:38pragmatism that perhaps I hadn't
00:48:42expected, and it struck me that he was already
00:48:46transforming from a military or militia
00:48:49commander, and he spent literally half of his life
00:48:52as such, he was already transforming into a political
00:48:56leader. I left the meeting and left that
00:49:00day, thinking, 'Trust, but
00:49:03verify.' I thought he's saying all the right things.
00:49:06Literally, he said all the right things at every point
00:49:09along the way in the discussion, but let's see what he
00:49:12does.
00:49:15The population of Syria at the beginning of the war was 23 million. You're
00:49:19talking about half the population became refugees.
00:50:00You learn in the CIA, you learn in the military very quickly that you have to deal with the world the way that it
00:50:04is, not necessarily the way you'd like it to be. I don't think
00:50:08that I would have chosen a former al-Qaeda cell
00:50:12leader and then leader of the Nusra front as the ideal candidate
00:50:15to be president of
00:50:16Syria.
00:50:21President of the United States met him first in Saudi Arabia, and he was
00:50:24invited to see the president in the White
00:50:27House. Throughout the entire time that I worked,
00:50:31we never had Hafez al-Assad come to the White House. Now, for that, he would have had
00:50:34to make peace with Israel. Why President Trump
00:50:38has been open to him is because of the
00:50:41displacement of Iran. It is a huge
00:50:44strategic development that
00:50:46Iran is out of
00:50:48Syria.
00:51:22with a lot of money, and today he receives
00:51:25legitimacy, first from abroad, and then
00:51:29gradually, bit by bit, tries to earn the internal legitimacy
00:51:33that has not yet been given to him by the other Syrians. He
00:51:36is in a very, very challenging internal
00:51:39reality, specifically. His own people look
00:51:42from the side and say, "Wait, has he really
00:51:46changed his positions?" The jihadists around him are starting
00:51:49to understand that what they are seeing is not what
00:51:52they like.
00:51:55Al-Shar tries somehow to unite Syria, its various
00:51:59parts, and continue to rule it and be a leader
00:52:03on a historical scale. Meanwhile, the parts are breaking
00:52:07away from him.
00:52:12The Druze are finding autonomy, the Alawites
00:52:15want autonomy, and the Kurds want autonomy. And what
00:52:18do they all have in common? They all turn to Israel and say, "We want
00:52:22to be your allies, we don't trust
00:52:24Damascus."
00:53:58Khamenei, enemies on Saturday night
00:54:02on Kan 11 and KanBox. We
00:54:10don't know
00:54:10how to say
00:54:18is this a direct action and his direct intention
00:54:21or that of people close to him, that he says he closes an eye and in silence says
00:54:25do what you
00:54:26want.
00:54:30I am convinced that Ahmed Al-Shara had a
00:54:33hand in all that.
00:55:07The Druze in Syria
00:55:10suffered a terrible massacre, there were
00:55:1448 very, very difficult hours, that was the peak of
00:55:17the massacre, where they tried first
00:55:20of all to defend themselves. The Druze in Israel did
00:55:24everything they could to help them, to assist them, mainly
00:55:27to put pressure on countries around the world and especially on the government
00:55:31of Israel to act, to intervene and stop
00:55:33the atrocities. Especially after October 7th, when these
00:55:37sights return in a very similar way.
00:55:41When I said that in my opinion al-Julani could change and that he had actually
00:55:45changed, I added a very important caveat. I don't think
00:55:48his army can change that much. Certainly not
00:55:52all of them, some yes, but some no. Some are jihadists with
00:55:55the idea of killing, which is also fun. It is a commandment
00:55:58to kill infidels, to kill them, to burn them, to take
00:56:02women as spoils of war, as sex slaves.
00:56:08What we saw was that Al-Shar did not really control
00:56:12the territory, there were other forces that
00:56:15had an influence. And the question
00:56:18arises here: if he is so weak, then how can
00:56:22he be trusted? And if he is, on the other
00:56:25hand, a strong but complicit partner, then
00:56:29he is still a terrorist capable of committing
00:56:31atrocities.
00:56:35Al-Shar has a clear
00:56:38practice. What does he do? He exploits local
00:56:40conflicts to strengthen them by not
00:56:44controlling his crazy jihadists,
00:56:47who come and commit the most horrible atrocities
00:56:50they know how to do. And then Israel intervened, stopped
00:56:53it, and punished him
00:56:56with an attack in the middle of the day on the Ministry of Defense
00:56:58in Damascus.
00:57:03And then he came as the enforcer of order.
00:57:50Al-Shar's soldiers are declaring anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish
00:57:54troubles in the streets of Damascus,
00:57:57All these voices are voices coming
00:58:00from a radical Islamist camp. This is part
00:58:04of a very large ecosystem
00:58:06that the Turks and the Qataris
00:58:09built.
00:58:13The biggest fear from Syria
00:58:16today is, first, its instability. The fact that
00:58:20we have militias of jihadists who are not loyal
00:58:24to al-Shar, militias that are loyal to Turkey and even receive funding
00:58:28from Turkey, whether covertly or directly. ISIS is still
00:58:31in the picture. Iran has not completely left the Syrian
00:58:35arena.
00:58:39No one guarantees that al-Shar will survive in power,
00:58:42and therefore Israel takes him with limited trust, gives
00:58:46him due respect and conducts
00:58:49negotiations. They are trying to reach some kind of arrangement, but with
00:58:53much caution and suspicion.
00:58:57Behind the scenes, they say his
00:59:00chances of success are slim, and therefore
00:59:03the West sees al-Julani as someone,
00:59:06even if he is lying to them now, as
00:59:09someone who can be manipulated. Al-Shar
00:59:12plays a very complex game of messages
00:59:15that everyone can interpret as they wish. Some
00:59:19say he is playing a role to get money and manipulate Trump, and others
00:59:23say he has truly changed, he wants to strengthen Syria as a
00:59:27moderate person, he has abandoned jihadist Islam, he
00:59:29is post-Islamist.
00:59:33Today, I still see al-Shar as an enemy of Israel, an enemy of the Western
00:59:37world.
00:59:41I think he still represents very, very
00:59:44radical ideas. More like a wolf in sheep's clothing
00:59:47than a new, liberal,
00:59:50open figure. We must take everything
00:59:53with limited trust, with great
00:59:55doubt.
00:59:58If you were to ask him, what are you, al-Shar? A jihadist
01:00:02in a suit, or a person who has transitioned? He does not
01:00:05know,
01:00:09because he is an adaptable person, he is a person who changes, he
01:00:12only knows that he is undergoing a process of change designed
01:00:16to achieve his goals. And what will be at the end of the change process, what is his next
01:00:20evolutionary stage between the kuffiyeh and the suit, what will be
01:00:24next? He still does not know.
01:00:28What I recommend for ourselves, instead of constantly
01:00:30dealing with the question of what is he really? To understand that there are
01:00:34sides to both, coordinate what is possible, knowing
01:00:38that tomorrow it can change. This is an approach that basically
01:00:41says, get on the field and be ready
01:00:45always.