
The picturesque town of Majdal Shams — just a 40-minute drive from Damascus — featured in Israeli director Eran Riklis’s award-winning film The Syrian Bride.
The town is in the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan Heights, a region that has experienced terrible violence and upheaval for decades. Those who didn’t flee Majdal Shams are mostly Arab Druze who chose to maintain Syrian nationality.
A review of The Syrian Bride in the Los Angeles Times concluded that the film gives “hope that the strength of humanity in general and women in particular will end up making a difference”.
However, since The Syrian Bride was first released, hope would be in short supply among the residents of Majdal Shams.
In May 2011, the town witnessed shocking violence after Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinian protesters, killing four of them.
In August 2014, “Islamist opposition fighters in Syria” that included insurgents from the Al-Qaeda affiliated group Jabhat al-Nusra took control of a crossing point into Syria not far from Majdal Shams.
Then in 2015, an activist from Majdal Shams – who had been a political prisoner for 27 years – was arrested after he drew attention on social media to the support Israel was providing Jabhat al-Nusra. The following year, a former head of Israel’s Mossad acknowledged that Israel had indeed assisted the Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group.
(Ironically, a staunch supporter of the Netanyahu government, Peter Dutton, was responsible for the Australian government declaring Jabhat al-Nusra a terrorist organisation.)
However, it was a recent event that brought international attention to Majdal Shams; its ramifications and wider context give cause to despair for humanity.
On 27 July, 12 children playing on a sports ground in Majdal Shams were killed by a missile. In response, Israeli Defence Forces spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari declared Hezbollah had killed “Israeli children” in “the northern Israeli town”.
This statement is very deceptive. Majdal Shams is not an Israeli town; Israeli children were not killed.
In 1981, when Israel annexed Syria’s Golan Heights, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously for Resolution 497, which stated that “the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect”.
Israel tried to force Israeli citizenship on the people of Majdal Shams, whereupon the Arab Druze population staged a 19-week general strike in protest, and won.
This UNSC resolution, recognised as international law, was respected by the United States until recently. Under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in 2019 US President Donald Trump recognised Israel’s annexation of the occupied Golan Heights.
Australia hasn’t yet followed the US in disregarding the UNSC resolution. Yet Foreign Minister Senator Penny Wong displayed her ignorance when she described Majdal Shams as a ‘northern Israeli town’ in a tweet on 28 July. She had to be corrected.
Like Israel and the US, Australia’s foreign minister blamed Hezbollah for the missile strike.
Hezbollah has certainly hit targets in the occupied Golan Heights.
A few weeks before the missile strike in Majdal Shams, Hezbollah reportedly hit an Israeli military intelligence base in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of a Hezbollah member in Lebanon.
Then on 21 August, Hezbollah claimed responsibility for strikes on other Israeli sites in the occupied Golan the Lebanese group considers legitimate military targets. These strikes are usually said to be in retaliation for Israeli actions in Lebanon.
As for the deadly missile that hit the town of Majdal Shams on 27 July, Hezbollah denied responsibility. Certainly, an Arab Druze town whose residents are mostly Syrian nationals who oppose Israeli rule in the Golan Heights, the West Bank and Gaza would not be a Hezbollah target.
But this is war, and the truth is not easy to ascertain.
After Israeli news and Sky News Arabia claimed that the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon “found Hezbollah to be responsible for launching the rocket”, the UNIFIL made clear it had not attributed blame to any side.
An Al-Arabi TV correspondent who reported from Majdal Shams said eyewitnesses claimed an Israeli Iron Dome interceptor missile had hit the sports field.
This is plausible because an article in The Times of Israel reported on an ‘errant’ Israeli missile that hit an Israeli rehabilitation centre on 10 August just four kilometres from the Lebanese border.
As for the missile that struck Majdal Shams, we may never know the truth, but prominent Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt didn’t mince words in his response to the deaths of the town’s children, warning that by blaming Hezbollah, Israel was intent on inciting “strife” and working to “fragment the region”.
His words were prescient. Three days after the missile struck the soccer ground, Israel assassinated a top Hezbollah leader, Fuad Shukr, in a Beirut suburb, blaming him for the missile that hit Majdal Shams.
Shukr’s assassination came almost a week after Netanyahu addressed the US Congress and talked up a major war between “barbarism” and “civilisation”. It could almost have been a scene out of Shakespeare, but Netanyahu isn’t a character in a play: he is a powerful politician whose political survival depends on war. So he plays fast and loose with the truth.
For example, “babies” weren’t “burnt alive” on 7 October, as he claimed.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper publishes online a list of people killed in Israel since 7 October. That list confirms reports that two babies were killed on 7 October: Mila Cohen and Naama Abu Rashad, the newborn baby of a Bedouin mother who was on her way to hospital to give birth when she was shot. Mila, who is recorded to have been killed in Kibbutz Be’eri, may have conceivably been a victim of Israeli tank fire, as other hostages were in at least one house in Be’eri.
(The Haaretz list of victims includes the children killed in Majdal Shams, as if they were Israeli citizens.)
An ally of Netanyahu’s is Israeli Fiinance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who doesn’t hide his extremist views. Even Wong condemned Smotrich when he expressed support for starving two million people in Gaza.
More recently, Smotrich has been blamed for the expulsion of Christian Palestinians from their ancestral homes in the West Bank town of Beit Jala, near Bethlehem.
It should be no surprise then that when Smotrich tried to attend the funeral of the Arab Druze children in Majdal Shams, locals protested vehemently.
One hopes that the story of Majdal Shams and its courageous people could prompt Australia’s policy makers to stand up for international law and take a principled stand against lies that exacerbate hatreds and fuel war talk.
Disregarding the suffering of millions of people branded as “barbarians” by Netanyahu and his extremist supporters in Israel could poison Australia’s body politic.