The origin of the rocket that killed 12 kids in Majdal Shams, Occupied Golan Heights, on the 27th of July is still unknown: Israel and Hezbollah are blaming each other. The Western mainstream media is failing in its job of providing accurate information on this event by merely reproducing the narratives of the Israeli military. An escalation of the increasingly regional war must be prevented by all means.
by Nour Kanj and Haya Kanj
Since last October we have been witnessing, day after day, one bloody chapter after the other of the ongoing Israeli genocide and countless massacres against the Palestinians in Gaza. The onslaught has resulted in a death toll of around 40,000 people not to mention the many more who have been displaced, injured or are missing under the rubble. Gaza’s hospitals, schools, residential houses, and infrastructure have been massively and almost completely demolished. The multiple failed attempts for a permanent ceasefire, mainly rejected by Israel, have led to the expansion of the war horrors. On the 27th of July, a rocket reached the occupied Golan Heights and hit a football field in the village of Majdal Shams, resulting in the tragic death of 12 children and leaving numerous others injured.
The severe lack of information provided by the Western mainstream media regarding the history and the present reality of the Israeli occupation, and the misleading vocabulary used in the offered information, is delivering a wrong impression to the public on Gaza, which resulted in people assuming, that the brutality of the 7th of October marks page one in the Palestinian story and justifies the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip. Most of the Western public are unmindful of the fact that this Zionist terror has been rooted in the region for almost a century. The same lack of information on the Golan Heights’ history and reality may now lead to equivalent results. This article is an attempt to offer an opposite narrative to the misinformation delivered by most of the mainstream media platforms in Germany. This piece aims to motivate the public to read beyond the daily headlines and research about the region’s political history and not participate in the chain of misinformation provided by the German media on this matter.
Brief History of Majdal Shams and the Golan Heights
Majdal Shams is one of the five villages of the Golan Heights, which is located at the southwest corner of Syria and belongs, according to international law, to Syria but it has been under Israeli military occupation since the 1967 war, in which Israel illegally occupied roughly two-thirds of the Syrian Golan Heights. Ironically, the Israeli government used the Term „The Syrian Plateau” in its statement announcing the occupation of the Golan Heights on the 10th of June 1967.
According to the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, which was a treaty named after the British Mark Sykes and the French François Georges-Picot and signed to define their countries‘ mutually agreed spheres of influence and govern in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire, the Golan Heights belonged to Syria that France occupied and became a part of Syria when the French mandate ended in 1944.
On the 5th of June 1967, Israel started what was later to be known as the „Six Days War”, mainly on Egypt and eventually also on Syria and Jordan. The occupation of the Golan Heights was one of the final chapters of this war in which Israel managed to occupy around 1,260 square kilometers of the Golan Heights and to forcibly displace most of the Golan Syrian citizens, on the 9th of June 1967. Only around 6,000 out of 138,000 citizens back then were able to stay in their villages under the Israeli military occupation. During the War in 1973, the Syrian military launched an unsuccessful attempt to reclaim the Golan Heights from Israel. This attempt resulted in Syria regaining control over only 60 square kilometers of the Golan, and only as a part of the Agreement on Disengagement in 1974 between the Syrian and the Israeli Forces. The parts from which Israel had to withdraw, were brutally destroyed before they were returned to the Syrians, and the destruction was intentional, not accidental. The Syrian regime claims that the area was deliberately destroyed by Israeli forces in the few days before its withdrawal. The Israeli government denies these accusations. In 1974, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Syrian position in Resolution 3240, expressing its deep conviction that; „the Israeli forces and the occupying Israeli authorities were responsible for the complete deliberate destruction of the city of Quneitra.”
On the 14th of December 1981, Israel declared the „Golan Resolution“ imposing Israeli law and administration on the Golan Heights. Despite the refusal of various Israeli politicians to use the term annexation, the Israeli authorities understood this law as annexation, and, since then, began treating the Golan Heights as Israeli Territory. The international community did not recognize this Israeli decision which was rejected by the UN Security Council in Resolution 497 on December 17th, 1981. UN documents consistently refer to the Golan region as the “Occupied Syrian Golan.” Nonetheless, the Security Council did not impose sanctions against Israel.
On March 25th 2019, the former president of the United States, Donald Trump signed a presidential decree stating that the United States of America recognizes the Golan Heights as part of Israel. Concerning that matter, Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres issued a statement in which he declared that „the American President’s decision does not change the legal status of the Golan as Syrian territory under Israeli occupation.”
The Golan Heights’ strategic location is one of the multiple reasons why Israel has an interest in conquering the area. Covering the borders with Syria, the Golan reveals the Syrian territory up to the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus. Israel set up military warning stations in the highest locations in the north of the Golan to monitor the movements of the Syrian army. In addition to its important strategic location, the Golan water resources covered 14 per cent of the Syrian water reserves before 1967, and a third of Lake Tiberias water, which is considered the primary water source for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
On the 14th of February 1982, the people of the Golan Heights started a general strike to refuse the imposition of Israeli citizenship on them, and to reassure their Syrian identity by openly rejecting the annexation decision and the Israeli occupation. The strike led to complete paralysis in various regions, coinciding with massive demonstrations. The occupation force used all tools of oppression and intimidation against the people of the Golan by introducing a military siege on their villages and towns, preventing food supplies and cutting off the electricity in an attempt to pressure the citizens and force them to surrender to the Israeli occupation. The strike was a major victory for the Syrians in the Golan since the majority of them in the main villages still reject Israeli citizenship until the present day.
In 2019, Israel tried to inflict its wind turbine project on the people of the Golan Heights to benefit from the area as an electrical power source. The Israeli government even attempted to use financial lures on the people of the Golan to convince them to accept the project, but they fought against it ever since to prevent the normalization with Israel.
Regarding the social relations in the Golan, the occupation force left its mark and caused fractures, since multiple families were torn apart due to the Israeli occupation and the displacement of many Golan citizens into the Syrian border region. Those separated families faced difficulties in communicating before the onset of the social media age and they had to shout across borders using loud speakers to contact each other. Some of these families had to meet in other countries, mostly in Jordan or Egypt. Those were a few examples of the pressure the Golan people had to endure under the Israeli occupation while maintaining their refusal to abandon their Syrian identity.
What happened in Majdal Shams?
On Saturday the 27th of July, a rocket fell on a football field in Majdal Shams, where many children were playing. That resulted in the death of 12 kids and around 30 were injured (according to the reported statistics at the time of writing this article). This was the first attack of this sort on Majdal Shams during the ongoing war. A particularly important remark on the matter is that all those kids were Syrians. A fact that got massively twisted by the German media where innumerable platforms defined them as Israeli citizens, which is an ignorant mistake regarding the history of the region, in case we genuinely assumed that it was only an innocent mistake by all those outlets.
After the attack, the Israeli military claimed that Hezbollah was behind it. On the other hand, Hezbollah denied the Israeli accusations stating that it is possible that the rocket was one of the interception rockets shot by the Iron Dome and landed in Majdal Shams. Since both Israel and Hezbollah are, in this aspect, no reliable sources of information and both have a long history of lying and spreading propaganda it would not be convenient to believe one of their narratives over the other without an independent investigation which will not occur in the near future. The only certainty until now is that besides the locals, only Israeli soldiers and officials were able to examine the area and they cleaned most of the shrapnel while securing the area as locals reported witnessing, which would make a future independent investigation almost impossible.
The Community of Majdal Shams released a statement on the rocket attack and did not allow space for speculations in such critical times. The most important points made in this statement could be summarized as follows with two major points: The first is that Majdal Shams citizens say that targeting civilians cannot be justified in any way, and the second point is that they stand against all those who may try to exploit such tragedy for their own benefits.
Exploiting the Tragedy
Regardless of who launched the Missile, whether it was Hezbollah or the Israeli Iron Dome, the death of the children in Majdal Shams cannot be justified and this is definitely not the place nor the time to launch an investigation on the matter but in those critical times the most important task is, unfortunately, also not the easiest to accomplish. That is especially true for those living in the affected areas and have close relations to the victims, and that is to keep reading beyond the mainstream news and vocabulary, while still being cautious for any side that might sink so low as to exploit the blood of the innocent children to achieve their political goals and medial gains. We bitterly witnessed all of that only hours after the tragic event.
The German media falsely claimed that the victims were “Israeli citizens“ and blindly repeated the Israeli narrative. By doing this, they support the Zionist project of annexing Majdal Shams to deprive the Golan of its Syrian population, and identity, violating international law and resolutions regarding the matter which reassure, year after year, the Syrian right on the Golan Heights.
Israeli rightwing politicians like Smotrich, Gallant and Netanyahu did not hesitate to exploit the blood of the children, to sell and present this tragic event in a way to achieve public relations and media gains to promote Israel as a democracy for all its citizens without a scent of discrimination. To avoid repetition, we can only hint at the fact that Israel launched the rocket alarm sirens for the people of the Golan only a few seconds before the explosion occurred. This is not enough for anybody to move to safety, and, afterwards, the Israeli military announced that the Iron Dome was not able to defend Majdal Shams against the rocket because of the „complex terrain“ of the area.
As stated earlier, the most important part in such a tragic event is sadly also the hardest to achieve, but due to the long history of the Golan Heights citizens in resisting the Israeli occupation, they were very aware of the possibility of a plot. Even at the highest of their shock and sorrow, they refused to host the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or any of the right-wing politicians like Smotrich. They also refused to accept any condolences from them and shouted words like „murderer“ and „war criminal” or told them to leave the village, immediately after arriving. The people of Majdal Shams did not expel those responsible for the killing of almost 40,000 people in Gaza only for the sake of humanity, but they were also aware of the occupation’s intentions to exploit the entire situation and sell it in the media in a way that could aid Israel to deny that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has established that Israel is guilty of apartheid. This act of resistance was a moment that highlights political awareness and historical knowledge even during the toughest times.
Another intention for the Israeli government is to exploit this tragedy by using it as a justification for the expansion of the war and for the violence to reach Lebanon in its capital Beirut, which constitutes an escalation of violence unseen on the Lebanese front. This move represents crossing a redline which would probably lead to a more violent response than usual, would only cause more blood, death and sorrow on both sides and would only be a victory for those who would benefit from extending this deadly war in order to avoid possible trials like the Israeli Prime Minister or other blood-thirsty right-wing radicals like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir who repeatedly and openly have been calling for a genocide against the Palestinian people.
This Israeli strategy of exploiting catastrophes whenever and wherever they occur and in utter disregard for who the victims of those catastrophes are is obvious to anyone who has the will to read beyond the news provided by the mainstream media. It has only been a few years since the people of the Golan were called „Syrian agents“ – only because they refused the wind turbines project and resisted the Israeli plans to normalize the annexation of the Golan Heights. Now, however, the Israeli government wants to express condolences and respect for those same people exploiting the blood of their dead children to achieve political gains and expand the war.
As previously mentioned, the Israeli prime minister awaits a trial after the end of the ongoing genocide, which might have severe effects on his political career, i.e. ending it. There are, however, other ideological and racist reasons why the Israeli government is showing no interest in a permanent ceasefire. It is becoming more obvious that even Israeli hostages are becoming rather a burden for Netanyahu since he and his government are shutting any possible door for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, which would lead to a safe return of the hostages.
On the 31st of July, Ismail Haniyeh, chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau and chief negotiator, was assassinated. With this targeted killing, the Israeli government demonstrated how unserious it is about the ceasefire and hostage deal negotiations. Assassinating the opposite side’s chief negotiator highly questions the seriousness of the intentions behind these negotiations. One can only empathize with the families of the hostages who, while protesting for their friends and families, keep witnessing their governments’ indifference towards negotiating to free their loved ones. Their government is solely increasing the pain, the violence, and the suffering, attempting to slaughter and displace as many Palestinians as possible and committing dreadful crimes to save their own political future.
Conclusion
This analysis was an attempt to shape motivation for the reader to always question the supposed facts presented by the various media outlets, including, of course, this one, and to research independently. Finding the whole truth might be unachievable, nevertheless, it should be the goal we aim for. The Western media managed to form a reputation for itself of being unquestionable by the average reader, and it is only the infamous prominent dictators of the world who are delivering false information having policies that rely on propaganda and lying to the public. Unfortunately, this reputation is untrue. Although the Western media is rather developed and has fewer restrictions regarding freedom of speech than media outlets in countries ruled by dictatorships, it has more influence on international politics and plays a bigger role in forming and shaping international public opinion. It is, thus, more dangerous than the national fake news in less developed countries and having the „unquestionable“ reputation of the majority of people makes their lies and propaganda more dangerous than that of other media platforms. Our duty is to stay aware of the lies circulating daily by the Western propaganda machines: It is not easy but crucial. To end with a quote by newly freed Julian Assange: “If wars can be started by lies, they can be stopped by truth.”
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