‘We respect Israel and Trump,’ says Syrian rebel commander

Abu Obdo, a commander of the Free Syrian Army’s forces in Aleppo, says rebels and Israel are fighting a ‘common enemy.’ 

By World Israel News Staff

Anti-Assad rebels who captured the northern city of Aleppo a week ago sympathize with Israel and the United States, a rebel leader said Wednesday, emphasizing that despite historic Syrian tensions with the Jewish state, Israel and the rebels “are fighting against a common enemy.”

In an interview with i24NEWS, Abu Abdo – the nom guerrilla of one of the Free Syrian Army’s commanders in Aleppo – highlighted the common ground between the United States and Israel on one hand, and the rebel forces attempting to depose Syrian President Bashar Assad and to terminate foreign influence over Syria.

Former early in the Syrian Civil War in 2011, the Free Syrian Army (also known as the Syrian National Army) was established by a group of Syrian army defectors opposed to Assad’s handling of the nascent uprising.

Along with other anti-regime forces, the rebels have fought since 2011 against the Syrian military, and allied Iranian-backed militias and even the Russian military, which has intervened repeatedly to bolster Assad’s government.

The Syrian National Army/Free Syrian Army’s inclusion of a variety of anti-Assad elements – including Sunni Muslim fundamentalists – has sparked concern in the West and Israel that recent victories by rebel forces in northern Syria could lead to the takeover of the hitherto secular Ba’athist Syrian government by radical Islamists.

However, Abu Abdo downplayed those concerns, saying that the SNA/FSA’s members are “neither extremists or terrorists.”

Rather, the group is a constellation of Syrians united by the desire to terminate Iranian influence, via the Assad regime, over their country.

Iran and its proxies, said Abu Abdo are “dreaming of returning to the glory days of the historical Persian Empire, but it won’t happen if we all face them.”

“I insist and tell all people in the region that we are activists for peace,” he continued. “We are not murderous, warlike, and destructive activists. We defend ourselves from injustice and want to build our future Syrian state.”

The SNA/FSA is, despite some clear differences, a natural ally of both Israel and the U.S., Abu Abdo continued.

“We look at Israel and the US, with the arrival of President Donald Trump, and we have a lot of respect and sympathy for them, for their actions against Iran – the country that leads terrorism in the region and all over the world.”