The Islamic Human Rights Commission affirms the fundamental right of both the Syrian and Palestinian people to resist oppression and tyranny and live a dignified existence.

Justice and moral consistency demand that we cannot trade one people’s rights away to secure another’s.  Yet once more we are being asked to choose between the two by an imperialist/Zionist hegemon that seeks to expand its nefarious influence in Muslim lands.

Just as the US and its allies sought to destabilise Syria and destroy the integrity the state in 2011 by hijacking the uprising there, the same forces are using the opportunities presented by the genocide in Gaza to do so again.

It is no coincidence that regime change has happened in Damascus while Gaza and its people are being pounded into oblivion in a genocide in which Syria serves as an important conduit for weapons to the resistance groups fighting Israel.

The US-Zionist aim is to sever that supply line, switch fronts away from Israel and keep Muslims fighting each other to weaken resistance to the Zionist project.

No one should be under any illusion that good ever comes out of regime change that arrives on the back of US-funded troop carriers. We need only look at the recent examples of Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and Libya to see that this kind of “revolution” brings neither liberation nor peace and security.

We hope and pray that the latest upheavals do not fall prey to Western/Zionist designs and lead to the genuine empowerment of the Syrian people.