Hundreds of Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, protested last night in front of the Russian and US embassies in Tel Aviv to express solidarity with Syria, and call for political leaders to do more to end the bloody civil war in Israel’s northern neighbor, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced more than 11 million people, bringing about the severest humanitarian crisis since world war two. Waving anti-war placards, the demonstrators stood in a human chain between the two embassies as they called for an end to the nearly six-year war.
“We are here tonight as Jews, Israelis, Arabs, Muslims and Americans. I am American Jewish Israeli, we are against the war in Syria which we think it has been going on for far too long. It is on our borders it is just hundreds of kilometers away and we want it to stop and we want to apply pressure to the governments that can do something about it including ours,” said Sarah Liben, Anti-war protester. / “I have been frustrated for such a long time trying to wonder what I can do, and I know that even being here right now this is not enough. But this is the very minimum thing that I can do, is come here and show solidarity with a lot of different people who are here today to try to end the genocide that is going on right now in Syria,” said Karmeil Frudkov, Anti-war protester.
The protest came after several buses en-route to evacuate ill and wounded people from besieged Syrian government villages in the Idlib province, which is primarily controlled by rebels and Jihadists, were attacked and burned. The Syrian military of Bashar Assad and its allies are demanding that the civilians in the two villages, Al-Foua and Kefraya, be allowed to leave in exchange for allowing the evacuation of rebels and civilians from east Aleppo. The Jihadists and rebels, however, rejected the demand by Damascus, attacking the buses and Red Crescent ambulances that reached the entrance of the villages.
Buses carrying some 500 rebels and their families from East Aleppo, arrived in Idlib province. The convoy of buses was cleared to drive to the rebel-held district, even after the attack by rebels against the evacuation convoy in Idlib province thwarted an attempt by the government to evacuate its people from the two villages under siege in the rebel-held district.