by Frank Julian Gelli*

‘The tyrant has gone. We are free!’ So shouted not Syrians but Americans from the Southern States. At the news that President John Kennedy had been assassinated. They hated his impending anti-segregation laws, accusing him of promoting ‘miscegenation’ or destruction of the white race.

As to the organ of the Chinese Communist Party, it printed a picture of the dead President, lying face down on the ground, with the words: ‘Kennedy bites the dust.’ ‘A very evil man’, it added. Opinions as to who counts as a tyrant may differ. See?

The media are replete with images of jubilant Syrians, jumping up and down and exulting at the overthrow of dictator Bashar al-Assad. Pity they do not allude to Syrians who aren’t celebrating. Christians – 300.000 of them – are not. Because Assad, a secularist, safeguarded them from fanatic Jihadi violence. Likewise, Alawite Muslims – Assad’s own tribe – won’t rejoice. Nor will Druses. Or Ismailis. All such ethnic and religious minorities might well have considered Assad a tyrant but one who protected them. Now their protector has gone and they crouch in fear. (I am glad that US Vice-President elect J.D. Vance has voiced his concern about the future of Syrian Christians.)

Indisputably, tyrants are bad. Saudi Prince Muhammad Bin Salman is also a tyrant – no one elected him – and opponents of his regimes are routinely imprisoned, tortured and beheaded. (Journalist Adnan Khashoggi was chopped up in so many parts that his remains were never found.) Yet MBS is a darling of the West. Why? Saudi oil speaks volumes...If Syria was like that, guess America would have sprung to his defence.

Isra-hell PM Bibi Netanyahu cannot be a tyrant. He, like Adolf Hitler, was elected. That has not prevented him being a genocidal monster in Gaza. And daily hammering Arabs in the West Bank. He craves to resurrect the biblical Hebrew enclaves of Judea and Samaria, openly exhorting his barbarous soldiery to treat Palestinians like King Saul did with Amalekite tribe – slaughtering all men, women, children, even animals. Now Netanyahu boasts of his part in deposing Assad by weakening Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran alike. Very instructive.

Turkey’s President Erdogan is a card. Supposedly a moderate Islamist, (despite being seen wearing drag in Istanbul gay night clubs in his youth) he has played a big role in the Syrian regime’s collapse. Because many of the anti-Assad fighters have been trained, armed and propelled by him. Wily Erdogan uses them to fight the Kurdish minority in Syria. Kurdish separatists are his nightmare – they could well implode the Turkish state one day. This bogus gay ‘Sultan’ pretends to emulate the Ottoman Empire but doesn’t do a sausage to stop the Zionist butchery in Gaza. Instead, he doesn’t fight but colludes with chief genocidal murderer Bibi. A remarkable Muslim leader, eh?

What about the jolly Hayat al-Tahrir al-Shams, the main Islamist outfit in Syria? Its boss, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, is a refugee from the esteemed al-Qaeda movement. The London Times calls him ‘a pragmatist’. (Bertrand Russell rightly dismissed pragmatism as a truth-undermining theory.) Presumably because the chap, unlike his former ISIS mate, Caliph al-Baghdadi, doesn’t wear a turban or brandishes a submachine gun. Yet can the leopard change its spots? Al-Jolani is good at PR but in actual fact he wears the familiar, ugly face of Islamist intolerance and violence.

As the ‘liberators’ entered Damascus I found myself thinking of the Apostle Paul. Still a Pharisee, a rabid enemy of the Cross, near Damascus the risen Lord appeared to him, the Book of Acts relates. ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ a supernatural voice said. Blinded, the Apostle rose and was taken to Damascus where, after fasting and prayers, his eyes were opened. He was baptised and professed faith in Christ. The fiery, violent persecutor was turned into a preacher of love and peace. Wonderful miracle! The best way to beat tyrants for good, folks.

*Author, Priest at Church in London