TEL AVIV – “Foolish” Western leaders are responsible for the terror attack in Nice that claimed 84 lives on July 14, Syria’s government press contended in a series of articles.
In an editorial published in the country’s Teshreen newspaper in the days following the attack, the author asserts that President Bashar al-Assad has long been warning the West of “the danger of supporting terror and using it to achieve political goals. He warned that the repercussions of this could boomerang against the West.”
The article, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), says Assad warned Western leaders: “Do not toy with terror, because it will strike your own countries.”
The West, the article claims, is delusional and “completely unaware of the magnitude of the danger posed by this terror that is now coming back to harm it.”
Oh foolish Westerners… take heed of advice and warnings… otherwise you will become [like] a cancerous cell that must be ripped out and wiped off the map. If you do not wake up and understand the meaning of fighting terror in Syria and cooperating with the government of Syria – the country you have chosen as an arena for your struggles – your ambitions will boomerang against you [and you will discover] scorpions in your pockets.
Europeans are “paying in blood” because of the hypocrisy and misguided policies of their leaders vis-à-vis Syria. The editorial calls on the European public to stand up to their leaders and proclaim that “it is impossible to support terror in one place and fight it in another. All terror is one, and it knows no boundaries.”
Tahsin Halabi, a columnist in the Syrian pro-Assad daily Al-Watan, declared that Western leaders are responsible for both the Nice attack and other terror attacks in the Middle East because of their refusal to support the Syrian regime and its fight against the Islamic State.
The West, according to Halabi, is also culpable for arming rebel groups and spreading the lie that the revolution launched in Syria in the beginning of 2011 was “heroic” and the Syrian government and military were guilty of “killing civilians and protesters.”
Dib Ali Hassan, a columnist for the government daily Al-Thawra, claimed that attacks against the West are due to the latter’s alliance with terror-supporting states like Saudi Arabia.
The Nice attack, wrote Hassan, “did not take place in a vacuum and will certainly not be the last in the West.”
Attacks of this nature will only grow in number “as long as the West is preoccupied with doing business with the Aal Sa’ud [royal] family and its wealth and with the kingdoms of sand [i.e., the Gulf states], and as long as neither the West nor the U.S. lifts a finger to remove the primary root of terror and the soil that produced the Islamic State and Jabhat Al-Nusra, as well as the rotten, intolerant Salafist ideology.”
Political pen-pushers and votes for meaningless legislation will not prevent future terror attacks, contends Hassan. Only military action, of the type being undertaken by the Syrian army, will succeed in destroying the “Wahhabi roots” of terror.
“Threats and warnings by [French President Francois] Hollande will not suffice as long as he lies in the lap of the funders of terror and engages in arms deals with them,” Hassan wrote.