Ezra Levant examines Syria’s power shift as Bashar Assad—possibly fleeing to Moscow after a rumored downed Russian plane—is replaced by Al-Jalani, a former al-Qaeda and ISIS deputy with a $10M U.S. bounty, linked to the Golan Heights. While Syrian refugees in Europe celebrate, governments like the UK and Germany pause asylum claims, fearing extremist backlash. Israel seizes border control but warns of chaos, citing Assad’s fall as both an opportunity and a threat to the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement. Levant contrasts this with Canada’s cultural erasure of figures like Sir John A. MacDonald, whose legacy is demonized despite his pivotal role in nation-building, questioning whether Syria’s future will mirror past instability or offer lasting peace. [Automatically generated summary]
I just can't even believe what's happening in Syria.
It's happening so quickly and so dramatically.
I'm trying to wrap my head around it.
I'll share with you my thoughts today and some images.
Just astonishing.
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Tonight, who's better as the leader of Syria?
The Stalinist Bashar Assad or the terrorists who just took over?
It's December 9th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
shame on you you sensorious bug sometimes nothing happens for decades Sometimes decades happen in a matter of weeks.
I think that's where we are right now.
Who would have thunk it?
Bashar Assad crumbling before terrorist rebels in a matter of days taking over the country, driving Assad out.
He's reportedly in Moscow seeking asylum, although there's no independent footage verifying that.
There was an allegation that as he attempted to escape, his Russian airplane was shot down.
That's quite a possibility.
It was incredible how quickly the end came.
Of course, Assad was strengthened in power for years by Russia, which deployed its air power in Syria unopposed by the rebels.
The rebels did do brutal damage, but Russia was able to hold them off.
Russia also using Syria as a port for the naval vessels.
Well, they pulled out in a hurry, taking their military equipment with them.
They weren't foolish enough like Joe Biden was to leave billions of dollars worth of equipment behind for the terrorists.
And when I say terrorists, that's exactly what I mean.
The new leader of Syria, if you can call a warlord a leader, is named Al-Julani.
That's not his real name.
That's an Arabic way of saying the Golan Heights, Julani, Golani.
That's the mountain range between Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.
And it was the site of a major battle in 1973 between Syria and Israel.
The fact that this terrorist has named himself after those border mountains is somewhat disconcerting, suggesting he has bigger ambitions than just conquering and ruling Syria.
I should tell you that he has a resume that would be the star of any al-Qaeda LinkedIn.
In fact, he was a deputy in al-Qaeda.
was a deputy in ISIS.
He worked for al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS before Trump killed him.
In fact, here's a picture published by the U.S. Diplomatic Corps a few years ago, offering $10 million for the capture of al-Jalani.
Now we're supposed to take him as a world leader.
He is a terrorist who perhaps will turn Syria into even more of a terrorist state.
It reminds me of this astonishing newspaper article that praised Osama bin Laden as a man who was taking his army and dedicating them to peace.
This was after Osama bin Laden's war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Little did they know that he would go on to become the mastermind of 9-11.
I can understand why there was jubilation, though, that someone, anyone at all, had dethroned Bashar Assad and his family.
Bashar Assad took over from his father, Hafez Assad, both of them brutal.
In the case of his father, Hafez, there was the story of the city of Hama, not to be confused with Hamas, but a city called Hama, where rebels once gathered.
Hafez Assad, the father, sealed off the city and for days and days just fired artillery into the place, killing an estimated 40,000 of his own citizens.
And of course, the United Nations had nothing to say about that.
Bashar learned his cruelty at his father's hand, his father's side.
Although Bashar had cultivated a Western image of sophistication and he wore Western clothing and he attended school in the UK.
He became an ophthalmologist.
His wife was in a vogue fashion spread.
He was normalized.
Here's a picture of John Kerry meeting with him.
Here's a picture of Nancy Pelosi meeting with him.
He was the delight of the Democrats, which is odd because they now accuse the Republican Tulsi Gabbard of being a Russian agent for having similar ideas that perhaps Assad could be turned towards the West.
If I had to compare Assad to other leaders in the region, I would compare him to two other leaders that were deposed by Western-backed forces, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who was deposed directly by the United States, and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, who was deposed by rebels.
In both cases, in all three cases, that is, the men were butchers, absolutely brutal.
We're seeing images now of some prisons, including underground prisons, where people were kept in atrocious conditions, some of them born in the prisons and never having let out of it.
Absolute atrocities, crimes against humanity.
Absolutely, Saddam Hussein with his rape rooms, Gaddafi.
But all three of those tyrants did have something to offer, I suppose, which is they were a gate barred against the sheer chaos and brutality that was to come.
What happened with the deposing of Gaddafi was the growth of the Islamic state and the re-emergence of open air slave markets and the mass migration from North Africa and the Middle East into Europe.
Muammar Gaddafi was an awful man, but actually towards the end of his career, he attempted to make amends, paying more than a billion dollars to victims of his own terrorism, giving up his weapons of mass destruction program and pledging to become part of the West.
It was Hillary Clinton who had him killed and then joked about it.
Remember this?
Unconfirmed.
Unconfirmed.
Yeah.
Unconfirmed.
No.
Unconfirmed reports about Gaddafi being captured.
Unconfirmed.
Yeah.
We've had too many.
We've had a bunch of those before.
We've had, you know, have had him captured a couple of times.
Unconfirmed ideas.
We came.
We saw.
He died.
Did it have anything to do with your visit?
No, I'm sure it did.
Saddam Hussein was awful as well, but he kept a lid on things on Iraq.
Now it is mayhem, a colony of Iran, and all sorts of Islamists.
Bashar Assad held back things.
We don't quite yet know what they'll come.
There is a Christian population in Syria.
It's obviously been in decline, as the Christian population throughout the Arab world is.
Lebanon used to be majority Christian.
Christians have been fleeing that country.
Even places like Iraq used to have a significant Christian population.
There is no safe place in the Middle East for Christians.
They despise Jews, but they don't have much time for Christians either.
There's a slow ethnic cleansing.
You might find it hard to believe, but Egypt was once a fully Christian country.
Now less than 10% of that is Christian, and the Coptic Christians are under constant pressure.
Will this Al-Jalani be an anti-Christian terrorist, as so many of his colleagues are?
The astonishingly macabre snuff videos of ISIS terrorists beheading Christians when they found them.
We'll find out quite quickly what Al-Jalani is like.
What's been interesting from a political point of view is how quickly it all happened and how quickly Iran's plans in the region have become undone.
A year and a half ago, before the attack on Israel by Hamas, Iran seemed to be strong.
But then with the Hamas attack on Israel, it unleashed an Israeli response that has decimated Gaza and Hamas.
Israel then set its sights on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
And with the fall of Bashar Assad, it seems like Iran's power in the region has been clipped, and Russia's too.
I saw a video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing in the northern border with Syria exuberant.
Here's a clip of how that looked.
This is a historic day for the Middle East.
The collapse of the Assad regime, the tyranny in Damascus offers great opportunity, but also is fraught with significant dangers.
This collapse is a direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah and Iran, Assad's main supporters.
It set off a chain reaction of all those who want to free themselves from this tyranny and its suppression.
But it also means we have to take action against possible threats.
One of them is the collapse of the Separation of Forces Agreement from 1974 between Israel and Syria.
This agreement held for 50 years.
Last night it collapsed.
The Syrian army abandoned its positions.
We gave the Israeli army the order to take over these positions to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel.
This is a temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found.
Equally, we send a hand of peace to all those beyond our border in Syria, to the Jews, to the Kurds, to the Christians, and to the Muslims who want to live in peace with Israel.
We're going to follow events very carefully if we can establish neighborly relations and peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria.
That's our desire.
But if we do not, we'll do whatever it takes to defend the state of Israel and the border of Israel.
I suppose it's true that Iran has long been the greatest strategic threat to Israel in the region.
And so having Iran knocked down to size a bit would be exhilarating for any Israeli leader.
But I wonder if what is to come is even more dangerous.
Israel has taken Mount Hermon inside Syria to stop any terrorists from setting up too close to the border.
I don't know how long that will be able to continue for Israel to have a presence in a buffer zone in Syria.
I don't know the outcome here.
I put it to you that Netanyahu's exhilaration is premature and will not be long-lasting.
I'm worried about what's to come, but the Syrians who migrated en masse to the West, they seem to be cheering, whether it's in Europe or even in Canada.
Syrian migrants, Syrian refugees, are thrilled with the news.
Again, I understand their hatred for Bashar Assad and his father.
For more than 50 years, that family terrorized them.
And you can understand that they're delighted that he's fallen.
But I fear that some of the cheers is for the Islamic extremist nature of those who have taken over.
I see news that a number of European countries have announced they will no longer process asylum claims for people from Syria.
The United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, and Austria have all announced they will take no more migrants from Syria claiming to be refugees.
And France is considering the same.
My fear is that Justin Trudeau, perhaps the stupidest leader in the Western world, will do the opposite.
He'll take even more Syrian migrants.
Truth we'll find out soon enough.
I can't help but notice the curious timing of this and so many other things between when Donald Trump won the election in early November, but before he takes office on January 20th.
It's almost like the Pentagon, the CIA, the deep state, the diplomats, and other forces in the world realize they have a very short period of time to do things to set the world up in a way that either Donald Trump can't undo or they give him the least favorable hand possible.
I think it may have been plausible that Trump could have come to some sort of understanding with Bashar Assad.
It wouldn't surprise me if in the course of time we learn that he was deposed to prevent Trump from having that power.
That may sound like a conspiracy theory, but the question is why are so many things happening there and in Georgia and in Romania, color revolutions everywhere before Trump takes office.
I can't believe it's all a coincidence.
Sir John A. MacDonald's Journey00:11:49
That said, I am optimistic.
I think that Iran, which is a power that hopes to have the atomic bomb and wield it like a terrorist would, I think they are in retreat.
And I think even though Trump will have his plate full of problems, he will take off, he will pick up where he left off with the Abraham Accords peace deal still intact despite four years of Joe Biden.
I actually am hopeful for peace in the world, not just in the Middle East, but between Russia, Ukraine, and around Taiwan.
I think Donald Trump's strength and frankly his mean tweets are enough to hold back half of the evil in the world.
And I think his plan to reinvigorate the American economy and the American military are enough for the other half.
Hopefully some of that will slosh over us up here in Canada.
I think that, frankly, it's more dangerous in Canada for Jews, for Canadians who value our liberal freedoms than it is in many other parts of the world.
There haven't been any pro-Hamas rallies in the streets of Saudi Arabia or Dubai, have there?
Stay with us.
An interview with our friend Lindsey Shepard is next.
Welcome back.
You know, whenever I go into a bookstore, which is not that often these days, I feel like I'm under assault.
I feel like the books are designed to antagonize me.
I love books.
I was a reader at a very early age.
I love historical books.
I love poetry.
And I know that sounds a little bit funny to say, but I do.
I love Kipling.
I like books that tell it like it is.
But these days, I walk into a bookstore and I feel like all I'm getting is a political agenda.
If it's not trans this, it's woke that.
It's your inner racist this.
And even ancient books that I love, like I've complained to you before about how I go to see a Shakespeare play, a play that I may know and love.
And they've altered the words.
They've literally changed Shakespeare's play to updated.
And of course, they don't say that when they sell you the ticket.
It's just, it's an astonishing act of historical vandalism.
And if you think it's bad for books for grown-ups, well, oh my heavens, the books targeting kids are nothing but recruitment tools.
So it is a pleasure.
It is a rare respite to see a book, to learn of a book that at least is calling it neutrally as opposed to being anti-Canadian propaganda.
And I am so delighted to talk to our guest today who has produced a children's book called A Day with Sir John A.
And you probably know the author before I even introduce her.
Her name is Lindsay Shepard.
She's been a reporter for True North until very recently.
And years ago, she took a principled stand against canceled culture at Wilfrid Laurier University.
A pleasure to have the author join us now via Skype.
Great to see you again, Lindsay.
Thanks for having me.
Well, it's our pleasure.
I tell you, even if I didn't like the subject, it would behoove me to give you a platform to talk about your book because I think in the culture wars, our side is not well represented in the arts, in film, in TV, in documentaries, and certainly not in kids' books.
Tell me why you made a book called A Day with Sir John A.
Yeah, so I spend a lot of time at libraries and at bookstores because I have two young children of my own who are five and almost three.
And you'll see often that the featured displays for children's books, it's always something to do with gender, race.
It's always very bleeding heart.
It's always very ideological and politicized.
And like you said, I just wanted to make something neutral, something that you might read in the late 90s or the early 2000s.
And so we chose to do a book called A Day with Sir John A.
And it's about Sir John A. MacDonald.
And it's a picture book.
So it's a blend of fiction and nonfiction.
And as far as I know, this is actually the only storybook about Sir John A. MacDonald on the market.
So imagine you have, you know, Father of Confederation, first prime minister of Canada, and there aren't really a lot of books for children.
In fact, no storybooks, like I said, about him.
Whereas if you think about the states, children are very aware of who their heroes are.
They're aware of, you know, Roosevelt, Washington, Lincoln, but it's just not the same over here.
And so we wanted to address that gap.
Yeah, when you think about it, there's so much of this genre in the U.S.
But I mean, Sir John A., he was stripped off the $10 bill by Trudeau.
And I think that was a signal of where things were going.
I think it's designed to, if you cut off the roots to your past, you're unmoored for the future.
And I think that's the point of destroying our national heroes, to demoralize us, to tell us that we believe in nothing.
And absolutely, they're targeting kids.
Now, I was looking at some of the pages of the book while you were talking there.
And you don't avoid those slurs against MacDonald.
You sort of deal with them up front.
In the storybook, children are saying, well, I heard he was locking kids up in residential schools.
I heard he was evil.
So you're not even starting from a clean slate.
You're starting from the default in 2024, which is hostility to Sir John A. MacDonald, aren't you?
Like you're, it's almost like you're undoing some lies or preparing young kids to hear lies about Sir John A. Exactly.
Yeah.
So the concept is that there's a young boy who's, you know, an elementary school student.
His name is Emerson.
He's going on a field trip to a fictionalized museum called the Museum of Canada's First Prime Minister.
And he starts hearing how all of his classmates and the tour guide at this museum, they all seem to only have negative things to say about Sir John A. MacDonald.
And so, and he kind of starts off from the point of, hey, like, I thought this is the guy who, you know, got the railroad built that went all across the country.
You guys think this is so bad?
And then throughout the book, he goes on a journey.
And like you mentioned, he kind of, we kind of address significant historical moments without demonizing.
Because if there's one thing we want people to take away from the book, children, parents, grandparents alike, anyone who reads it, is we can't demonize our great figures of the past.
And we can't look at them through the lens of just the present day and think, oh, you know, we're so enlightened now.
Look at how bad they were back then.
Well, the fact is we live in Canada now, and that's thanks to Sir John A.
Yeah, and everything we are is as a result of what he and others did before us.
And so you can't reject, it would be like rejecting your parents or your grandparents because they had a certain fashion sense or a certain slang.
I mean, and there's a hubris to thinking that we are the ultimate in moral evolution, that we've got it absolutely right.
I dare say some of the diabolical things being done in our culture will in a generation or less be regarded as abominable.
I won't get into those things now, but we could probably come up with a list of them.
Now, in addition to writing the book, of course, it's lovely illustrated by Tatiana Gubich.
Who's she and how did you connect with her?
Yeah, so she's our illustrator.
She's actually not Canadian.
So considering, you know, the very detailed work she had to do with kind of reconstructing Canada in the 1880s, we're really happy with what she was able to do because there was a lot of research that had to go into it.
So, yeah, we're happy about how the illustrations turned out.
At the end of the day, we want the book to appeal to children.
And so, you know, the illustrations are vivid and they'll be appealing.
But hopefully, you know, parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles will also want to buy this book for the children in their lives because it's like, okay, finally there's a book that will tell an element of Canadian history that won't be over-politicized and just an over-correction and apologetic because that's such a big part of it for me was I just hated to see all this apologizing and guilt and shame.
Because when kids go through the K-12 system, that's all it's going to be, right?
When they do their social studies and humanities courses.
It's just going to be those years of apologizing and feeling guilt over the past.
Well, here's a book, A Stay with Sir John A., that we're targeting for, that we wrote for ages three to seven.
So we want to get in there early and say, you know, this is a father of Confederation.
These are all the great things he did.
He was a man of spirit.
He had a progressive worldview.
And so we're addressing that actually before a lot of kids will learn about McDonald in the school system, in the curriculum.
And when they do learn about McDonald, for a lot of people, the takeaway has been and will be, oh, this is the guy of residential schools and head tax, Chinese head tax.
And that's all they'll retain.
So we're hoping that people will retain so much more.
Well, I'm excited about it.
And you say the market is children ages three to seven.
There's a building in the city I'm in.
It's called Queen's Park.
It's the provincial parliament of Ontario.
And there used to be a statue of Sir John A. McDonald right out front.
But for years now, that statue has been entombed in a kind of coffin or sarcophagus.
They don't have the courage to take it down yet, but they have the cowardice to build a wooden entomb, a tomb around it because they don't dare look Sir John A. in the eye, but they don't dare take him down.
And that's in a conservative government like Ontario's.
What a crazy day we live in.
Lindsay, it's great to see you.
The book is called A Day with Sir John A. Where can people get it?
I take it Amazon is the best bet.
Amazon is the best bet, yes.
Well, it would be wonderful if bookstores actually stocked it, but I think I'm savvy enough to know that would never happen in Canada.
Lindsay Shepherd, great to catch up with you.
Congratulations on the book.
Thanks so much, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Well, what do you think?
Downfall of Assad?00:00:34
Do you think that the downfall of Bashar Assad will make that region better?
It certainly is like the ice breaking up after a thaw.
It's been more than 50 years since the Assad family has run that country in a Stalinist way, but I think we've learned that the Middle East can always get worse.
And I fear that is what is to come.
If you look at the biography of Al Jelani, he's one of the worst people in the world.
But I suppose for the moment it feels good to depose a Stalinist.