Israel’s Defense Minister, Israel Katz, has become the first high-ranking official worldwide to respond to reports of massacres against the Alawite civilian population in Syria’s Latakia province. On Friday, Katz posted a statement on the platform X (formerly Twitter), saying:
“‘Al-Jaulani has changed his attire for a suit and shown a moderate face. Now, he has removed the mask and shown his true face: a jihadist terrorist from the Al-Qaida school, committing heinous acts against the Alawite civilian population.'”
A screenshot of Israel Katz’s tweet (March 8) shows that the tweet was no longer accessible by the following Sunday, but multiple media outlets had reported on it earlier, including the Times of Israel.
Katz’s comment was in response to alarming reports of armed forces of the current regime in Damascus committing massacres against the Alawite minority in Latakia province, Syria. Social media platforms have circulating videos that appear to show dead civilians, primarily men in civilian clothing, according to RT DE’s report.
Media close to the Islamist regime, which overthrew President Bashar al-Assad in December and seized power in the country, claim that the victims are “Assad’s henchmen” and that the “Syrian security forces” are fighting the “second day in a row to quell a rising uprising of fighters from Assad’s Alawite sect.”
The so-called “Syrian Human Rights Observatory” in London, a propaganda medium of the Syrian anti-Assad opposition, reported on Saturday morning that more than 185 people were killed in the coastal region of western Syria, heavily populated by Alawite minority members, over a two-day period. Almost 100 people were executed. Experts in the region had long feared that the numerous religious and ethnic minority groups in the country, including Christians, Alawites and Kurds, would be in imminent danger after the fall of the secular, religiously tolerant regime of Bashar al-Assad and the rise of radical Islamists in Syria. Germany, particularly the outgoing Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, supports the jihadis.
Israel Katz is a member of the Likud Party of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Since 2003, he has alternately held different ministerial positions. Most recently, he took over as Defense Minister in November 2024.