Spanish party leader accuses Israel of genocide in Syria

Spanish Podemos Party general secretary Ione Belarra attacked Israel's bombardment of Syrian military assets remnant from the Assad regime as genocide.

By MICHAEL STARR DECEMBER 12, 2024 10:50

Newly elected Podemos´party secretary-general Ione Belarra gives a speech during a party assembly in Alcorcon, near Madrid on June 13, 2021. (photo credit: OSCAR DEL POZO/AFP via Getty Images)

Spanish Podemos Party general secretary Ione Belarra claimed on Tuesday that the state of Israel was committing genocide in Syria.

"Israel is taking advantage of the instability in Syria to advance its colonial and genocidal plan, bombing several areas, including Damascus," Belarra wrote on social media. "Virtually no Western media outlets are reporting on it. International inaction in the face of genocide endangers humanity as a whole."

Since the collapse of former Syrian president Bashir al-Assad's regime on Sunday, Israel launched Operation "Bashan Arrow" to destroy Syrian qualitative and strategic military asset.

The hundreds of airstrikes destroyed chemical and conventional weapons factories, cruise missiles, surface-to-sea missiles, UAVs, fighter jets, radar emplacements, tanks, naval vessels, and attack helicopters in Damascus, Homs, Latakia, Palmyra, and Tartus.

Spanish pro-Israel NGO Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM) decried Belarra as "filth." 

Ione Belarra (credit: WIKICOMMONS)

Belarra cried because the chemical weapons factory with which her colleague Assad gassed the Syrians has been disabled by Israel, which has also carried out surgical attacks on the Syrian air and naval fleet to prevent it from falling into the hands of jihadists," ACOM said on X.

Radical Islamic groups on the rise 

Podemos on Monday blamed Israel, Turkey, and Western powers for the rise of radical Islamic groups in Syria. 

"Armed jihadist groups financed by external powers already control a large part of the country, while Israel takes advantage of the situation to invade it from the south," said Podemos. "Kurdish areas in the north are also threatened by attacks by jihadists, mercenaries and Turkey."

The Israeli military on Sunday seized the Syrian side of the strategic Mount Hermon mountain range to expand its demilitarized buffer zone along the border of the failed state.

"Stopping the genocide and occupation in Palestine is an urgent and strategic interest of the utmost importance for the EU and the world," Podemos continued on social media. "We ask the Spanish government and the EU to make a real commitment to stop the genocide: A break with the Zionists, an embargo, sanctions and justice for the crimes."

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French Ecological Revolution Party member Aymeric Caron shared Belarra statement and translated it into French on Wednesday.