Syria's terrorist regime just killed an American citizen — more Christians, Druze are next



Those who warned that the takeover of Damascus by Turkish-backed Islamic terrorists might bode poorly for Christians and other minorities in Syria have unfortunately been vindicated by the massacres, bombings, rapes, and kidnappings executed by Sunni radicals in recent days and months.

According to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, as of Sunday, over 1,200 people had been killed in the brutal clashes that broke out on July 13 between Sunni Muslim Bedouin clans, which were aided at times by government forces, and Druze-linked militias in Syria's southern Druze-majority Suwayda province.

Among those slain in cold blood was Hosam Saraya, an American citizen and Oklahoman who Sens. Markwayne Mullin (R) and James Lankford (R) confirmed was executed alongside several members of his Druze family in Syria. An American relative of the deceased told CNN that Saraya had traveled to Syria to tend to his sick father.

Footage reportedly taken on July 17 shows a group of what appear to be government troops marching eight unarmed men — one of whom was later identified as Saraya by an American relative — to a roundabout, where they lined them up and gunned them down. While slaughtering the captives, the militants shouted, "Allahu Akbar."

One of the female survivors of the massacre said in a message to Saraya's American relative, "Pray for us, they kidnapped the boys, they shot the house, they stole stuff."

An individual claiming to be a relative of Saraya alleged on X that government security forces were responsible for the American citizen's execution and stressed that "what's happening is ethnic cleansing — the systematic killing of minorities, with no real intention for dialogue or protection."

RELATED: New massacre, old problem: How Syria can protect its religious minorities

Photo by BAKR ALKASEM/AFP via Getty Images

Although Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa's forces were supposedly sent to restore order, Reuters indicated they effectively teamed up with the Sunni clans and attacked the Druze community.

It was certainly not the first time that al-Sharaa's men butchered Druze.

The State Department's Rewards for Justice program previously acknowledged that the al-Nusrah Front, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, carried out multiple terrorist attacks throughout Syria under the leadership of al-Sharaa — also known as Muhammad al-Jawlani.

"In April 2015, ANF reportedly kidnapped, and later released, approximately 300 Kurdish civilians from a checkpoint in Syria," reads the bounty page for the Islamic terrorist. "In June 2015, ANF claimed responsibility for the massacre of 20 residents in the Druze village of Qalb Lawzeh in Idlib province, Syria."

The ANF merged with other radical groups to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the terrorist organization that seized the Syrian capital of Damascus in December under al-Sharaa's leadership and toppled the Assad government — a regime change that the Obama CIA and the Pentagon helped with along the way.

In hopes of "fulfilling President Trump's vision of a stable, unified, and peaceful Syria," the U.S. revoked the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation of al-Nusrah Front and HTS on July 8.

'These are historic, longtime rivalries between different groups in the southwest of Syria.'

When pressed for comment about Saraya's slaying, a State Department spokesperson told Blaze News the department was "looking into accounts of the death of an individual reported to have been a U.S. citizen in Syria" and that the "U.S. Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens."

The department later confirmed that an American had indeed been killed in Syria.

The spokesperson refrained from commenting on whether government forces were involved in the slayings, whether the Trump administration was presently considering reapplying sanctions on Syria, and whether it may have been premature to drop the terrorism designation for al-Sharaa and his allies.

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Syrian President Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa. Photo by AREF TAMMAWI/AFP via Getty Images

The situation was complicated further last week by the entry of another warring party.

Apparently without telegraphing its intentions to the U.S. — which has committed to supporting Damascus and a stable Syria — Israel executed a series of strikes last week against Syrian government troops and armor headed to Suwayda.

Axios reported that a day after after U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack asked his Israel counterparts to stand down on July 15, Israel bombed Syria's military headquarters in Damascus, just near the presidential palace.

Following the Israeli strikes — the stated purpose of which was to protect the Druze — and amid continued fighting in Suwayda, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in the Oval Office on July 16 that "these are historic, longtime rivalries between different groups in the southwest of Syria — Bedouins, the Druze community — and it led to an unfortunate situation and a misunderstanding, it looks like, between the Israeli side and the Syrian side."

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated that President Donald Trump "was caught off guard by [Israel's] bombing in Syria and also the bombing of the Catholic church in Gaza."

Barrack, meanwhile, announced on Friday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and al-Sharaa agreed to an American-backed ceasefire.

RELATED: 'Blown to bits': Suicide bomber targets Christian church in jihadist-controlled Syria

Photo by Ali Haj Suleiman/Getty Images

"We call upon Druze, Bedouins, and Sunnis to put down their weapons and together with other minorities build a new and united Syrian identity in peace and prosperity with its neighbors," Barrack said.

When the Syrian government attempted to implement the ceasefire over the weekend, fighting reportedly escalated.

'Khaled Mazhar, the pastor of the Good Shepherd Evangelical Church in Suwayda city, was killed along with his wife, his children, and other relatives.'

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights indicated that "violations include the arrival of reinforcement from military forces affiliated with the Damascus government to the north-western outskirts of Al-Suwaidaa province and along Damascus-Suwaidaa highway."

Dr. Joel Veldkamp, director for public advocacy at Christian Solidarity International, told Blaze News that while the fighting has been momentarily paused in Suwayda, "the conditions for mass killings are all present," adding that "hundreds of thousands of Druzes and Alawites (and Sunni Muslim Bedouins) have been driven from their homes in the last few months and are living in precarity, a known risk factor for genocide."

"The Syrian government is determined to take control of Suwayda governorate by force and seems, at best, unable to do that without sending in jihadist shock troops who will kill people on the basis of their religion," Veldkamp continued. "If talks break down between the government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast, we could see a replay of last week's violence in the northeast Syria as well."

Veldkamp noted that "what we might call slow-motion ethnic/religious cleansing is under way" elsewhere in the country.

"In Homs, Hama, and on the Syrian coast, Alawites and Druzes are abducted on a weekly or even daily basis, and many are looking for a way to flee the country," Veldkamp said. "Many Alawites, before and after the March massacres, have been expelled from their villages by government forces, and their lands have been distributed to Sunni Muslims."

Veldkamp confirmed that Christians in Suwayda were also impacted by the government forces' latest attacks.

"Khaled Mazhar, the pastor of the Good Shepherd Evangelical Church in Suwayda city, was killed along with his wife, his children, and other relatives — 12 people in all," Veldkamp said. "The Greek Orthodox Church put out a statement saying that their church members, like everyone in the province, were suffering from the cutoff of medicine, water, electricity, and food to the province during last week’s attack. Mar Mikhael Church in the village of Al-Soura Al-Kabira was set on fire."

Aid to the Church in Need International reported that 38 homes belonging to Christian families were also torched in Al-Soura. Some of those made homeless by the apparent attacks have taken refuge in the hall of a different church, where they are sitting ducks.

'Al-Sharaa has concentrated power in his own hands, and his forces have now carried out repeated massacres of religious minorities.'

This latest bout of violence comes just weeks after a jihadist opened fire on Syrian Christians gathered for Mass inside the Greek Orthodox Church of the Prophet Elias in Damascus, then detonated an explosive vest, killing at least 25 Christians and wounding 63 others. A government-linked group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Months earlier, the terrorist regime in Damascus dispatched tens of thousands of security forces and auxiliary fighters to the western coastal region largely populated by Alawites, adherents of an offshoot of Shia Islam, and Christians, where they killed hundreds of perceived Assad loyalists.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, security forces also killed at least 973 civilians in 39 massacres and undertook "executions based on regional and sectarian affiliation." Women and children were reportedly among the butchered civilians.

The regime denied that it was directly responsible for the massacres on the west coast, but Christian Solidarity indicated that Damascus had called for volunteers to mobilize while Sunni mosques across the country called for a jihad in the coastal region.

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US President Donald Trump meets with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa (L) along with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (R) on May 14, 2025. Photo by Bandar Al-Jaloud/Saudi Royal Court/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images

Veldkamp suggeted that it was premature to drop the terrorism designation for al-Sharaa and his allies, noting that "the terrorism designation was well-earned and was an important piece of leverage that the U.S. could have, and should have, used to demand protection for religious minorities in Syria and an inclusive government."

"Instead, al-Sharaa has concentrated power in his own hands, and his forces have now carried out repeated massacres of religious minorities," Veldkamp added.

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Charlie Kirk exposes the moral rot at Cambridge in a devastating exchange



Charlie Kirk has done something few public figures attempt: For the past decade, he has toured American university campuses and taken unscripted questions from students. In the process, he has exposed the intellectual rot at the heart of the modern academy. Most students come prepared not with arguments but with slogans — recycled from gender studies lectures and Ibram X. Kendi reading groups. What’s missing is actual critical thinking, the very trait these institutions pretend to cultivate.

Kirk recently brought his project to the United Kingdom, with similarly revealing results. At the storied Cambridge Union on May 19, he debated students and fielded questions from the audience. The encounter didn’t showcase the vitality of one of Christendom’s oldest universities. It exposed its decline. What stood out wasn’t the strength of Cambridge’s intellectual tradition but its weakness — the spectacle of a self-assured student, brimming with elite self-regard, being outmatched by an American who never earned a degree.

Kirk delivered the mortal blow: A child has more wisdom than a Cambridge student.

Once upon a time, the Cambridge student who wanted to “challenge the system” or “speak truth to power” might have supported William Tyndale in translating the Bible into English — an act that cost him his life. Or perhaps he would have taken pride in the legacy of John Eliot, a fellow Cambridge alumnus who crossed the Atlantic, entered the wilderness, and ministered to the Algonquin. Eliot invented a written form of their language, translated the Bible into it, and sent a copy back to Cambridge — confident the university would take pride in such a feat. His was the first Bible printed in the American colonies.

Those days are gone.

No God, no goodness

In the recent debate, former Cambridge Union President Sammy McDonald didn’t use his platform to pursue truth. He used it to mock the Christian faith. While Kirk’s Christianity is no secret, McDonald’s contempt was likely aimed at specific claims Kirk made during the event — that life begins at conception and that monogamous, heterosexual marriage benefits society. In today’s academic climate, such positions qualify as heresy. The punishment is no longer martyrdom (not yet) but smug derision.

In that context, Kirk performed a public service for Cambridge and the world. McDonald stands as a warning of what students too often become when shaped by today’s academic regime: clever but foolish, hostile to God, Christ, and Christianity, and armed with a brittle moral confidence unsupported by any coherent view of good and evil.

One of the most painful moments of the debate came when McDonald revealed he didn’t know what “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing” meant. His tactic was simple and dishonest: accuse Charlie Kirk of endorsing atrocities without a shred of evidence, then use the rest of his time to condemn those atrocities as evil. It’s a lazy maneuver — a rhetorical sleight of hand — and emblematic of the intellectual decay at the Cambridge Union.

Worse, McDonald offered no coherent explanation for why anything is evil. His only moral compass seemed to be a vague intuition that suffering is bad. But where did that intuition come from? He professed concern for innocent children killed in Gaza, yet never acknowledged the mass slaughter of unborn children in his own country. That’s not moral reasoning. That’s hypocrisy. And one wonders why a Cambridge education failed to help him see it.

The problem of abundance

Kirk, by contrast, praised Great Britain for its civilizational legacy and urged students to reclaim it. When asked why wealthy societies tend to abandon monogamous marriage, Kirk’s answer cut to the heart of the issue: Once a society stops needing to delay gratification — once comfort becomes the norm and abundance replaces sacrifice — moral decay follows. Without a transcendent order grounded in the creator, collapse becomes not just possible but likely. Even before collapse, citizens lose their footing. Anxiety and misery take hold.

It was an odd question, really, since the dominant theme among leftist students is that wealth corrupts and the rich are inherently evil. And yet they seem eager to imitate the decadence of affluent societies rather than return to the moral clarity of more modest times.

McDonald’s moral confidence boils down to a single assertion: Suffering is bad. He has hollowed out anything transcendent. When Kirk affirmed that there are good guys and there are bad guys, McDonald scoffed, accusing him of holding childish morality.

Then, Kirk delivered the mortal blow: A child has more wisdom than a Cambridge student. And that’s what Kirk puts on display time and again: University students do not know what is clear.

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Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

When Kirk spoke of truth, beauty, and goodness, the students stared blankly, as if they had heard ancient words but had forgotten what they meant. To borrow from Johnny Cash, “They say they want the kingdom, but they don’t want God in it.” Like Richard Dawkins, such students want the benefits of Christian culture but without Christ.

That tells us nearly everything. Students like McDonald study among the crumbling stones of a university built on Christian foundations — a place that once trained minds in piety, theology and the Great Commission. The Physics Department at Cambridge still bears the words of Psalm 111:2 above its door: “The works of the Lord are great; sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.” But reverence has given way to signaling, posturing, and progressive clichés. Today’s mission is not to spread the gospel but to promote the sexual politics of Alfred Kinsey — and to call that “progress.”

In his final moments, McDonald grasped for a rhetorical flourish and accused Kirk of having betrayed America — a country McDonald, bizarrely, claimed to admire. After the applause, Kirk delivered the final blow: “The difference is, when we get our way, we’ll still have a country. You’ll be living in a third-world hellhole.”

It was a moment of historical symmetry: the smug redcoat realizing, too late, that the ragtag colonials had just won.

A call to return

If “loving America” means gutting its Christian foundation and moral clarity, young Mr. McDonald can keep his affection to himself. No means no.

Cambridge should reclaim its former glory. As Kirk rightly observed, the United Kingdom has become a husk of what it once was. This was once the land of Bible translators, of scholars who believed every reader deserved Scripture in their own language — and the education to understand it and live by it. On that foundation, England abolished slavery and carried Christian morality across the globe in pursuit of the Great Commission.

Short of revival, Kirk has performed a necessary service. Just as he has done for American families, he has now done for English ones: exposed the ignorance of the modern university. He’s held up a mirror so that every parent might ask, honestly and urgently, whether a diploma is worth the price of their child’s soul.

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Mel Gibson condemns media silence over 'ethnic cleansing' of Armenian Christians amid dissolution of the Republic of Artsakh



"Passion of the Christ" director Mel Gibson has made an impassioned appeal on behalf of the ethnically Armenian Christians fleeing the breakaway Republic of Artsakh after being routed in recent days by Azerbaijani troops.

"History tragically repeats itself as we witness a modern-day genocide unfolding, yet the media's silence on this issue is deafening," said Gibson. "The Armenian people who have endured centuries of persecution due to their faith find themselves once again subjected to a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing."

What's the background?

The Republic of Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, is a region in the Caucasus Mountains that lies within Azerbaijan's borders. While internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan — whose close ally Turkey, formerly the Ottoman Empire, killed 1.5 million Armenians in what is regarded to be the first genocide of the 20th century — the region's largely Armenian population does not recognize Azerbaijan's territorial claims.

The region became autonomous in 1923 while Armenia, whose population is over 93% Christian, and Azerbaijan, whose population is 97.3% Muslim, were still both members of the former Soviet Union, reported CNN.

Over the past 30 years, two wars have been fought over the area.

The first of those wars kicked off amid the breakdown of the USSR, when in 1988, Artsakh officials passed a resolution to join Armenia. Roughly 30,000 people died in the ensuing conflict.

The second war, which took place in 2020, saw Turkey help crush the Armenian separatists in 44 days. Reuters indicated that at least 6,500 were killed in the fighting.

In the years since, 2,000 Russian peacekeepers have attempted to keep the peace and prevent Azerbaijan from making further incursions.

Deteriorating relations between Armenia, the world's oldest official Christian country, and Russia, its protector over three decades, appear to have provided Azerbaijani nationalists with a window of opportunity.

CNN noted that in December 2022, Azerbaijan-backed militants blockaded the Lachin corridor, the only road connecting the enclave to Armenia, preventing food, fuel, and medicine from getting in.

This and other provocative measures brought tensions to a boiling point this year.

Azerbaijan's blitzkrieg

Claiming that a mine had killed two Azerbaijani soldiers without specifying precisely where, the Muslim nation launched a blitzkrieg on Artsakh on Sept. 19.

Hikmet Hajiyev, a foreign adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, told Reuters last week that the Turkey-backed nation wanted to reestablish its full sovereignty and that negotiation would be contingent on total surrender.

Whereas Azerbaijan's military is 64,000 strong, with access to 300,000 reserves, the Armenian force in Artsakh was no greater than 5,000 souls.

Two hundred ethnic Armenians and 192 Azerbaijani soldiers reportedly died before Russia ultimately brokered a ceasefire, requiring the ethnic Armenians to disband their armed forces.

The Associated Press indicated that the Artsakh government indicated Thursday it would dissolve itself and abandon its decades-long fight for independence.

"The Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) ceases its existence" as of Jan. 1, 2024, according to a decree from Artsakh President Samvel Shakhramanyan.

Exodus

Shakhramanyan noted that per the terms of a Sept. 20 agreement, Azerbaijan would permit the "free, voluntary and unhindered movement" of ethnic Armenians back to Armenia.

Ethnic Armenians began their exodus Sunday, some 50 miles from the city of Stepanakert, Artsakh, to Armenia.

— (@)

As of Thursday, over 78,300 people had fled to Armenia, accounting for over 65% of Arsakh's population. KABC-TV indicated Friday that an Armenian border town had witnessed the influx of closer to 100,000 migrants.

The journey was punctuated for some by blood and fire.

During the evacuation, a fuel storage facility near Stepanakert exploded, wounding 200 people and killing over 68 civilians.

Rev. David, an Armenian priest who had ventured to Kornidzor to administer spiritual support to those now fleeing, told Reuters, "This is one of the darkest pages of Armenian history. The whole of Armenian history is full of hardships[. ...] The blow we are receiving now is one of the heaviest."

The priest indicated the last time Azerbaijani forces invaded, they desecrated and/or destroyed hundreds of Armenian holy sites.

"The monasteries are under threat of destruction," said Rev. David. "We had cases of this in the 44-day war."

Azerbaijan has reportedly indicated that ethnic Armenians who remain in the area will be able to practice their faith; however, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan noted that "in the coming days, there will be no Armenians left in Nagorno-Karabakh," reported the Associated Press.

"This is a direct act of an ethnic cleansing and depriving people of their motherland, exactly what we've [been] telling the international community about," said Pashinyan.

Azerbaijani officials rejected Pashinyan's suggestion, claiming that "the current departure of Armenians from Azerbaijan's Karabakh region is their personal and individual decision and has nothing to do with forced relocation."

Christian Solidarity International, a group critical of anti-Christian aggression committed by Azerbaijan, Sudan, and Egypt, claimed on X that "people are leaving not because they want to, but because #Azerbaijan is refusing to let them return to their homes or to move past the siege lines, and refusing to guarantee their security. These are de facto deportations."

Gibson's plea

"In the grip of Azerbaijan and Turkey, countless Armenians are enduring unspeakable horrors: loss of life, forced displacement, starvation, and isolation from essential supplies," said Gibson. "These are the same Armenians whose roots run deep in a land they've called home for generations."

The actor and director called upon the international community to "take swift action, extend a helping hand to the Armenian population, offer them the protection they desperately need, and create a humanitarian corridor for their safe passage."

Gibson concluded by imploring Armenians not to lose heart, stressing, "God is with you."

Mel Gibson condemns Azerbaijan's genocide of #Artsakh Christian Armenians, calling out media silence and demanding swift international action to protect and save Armenians\n\nTo the Armenian people who still suffer, I say: "Don't lose heart, God is with you"\n\n#120000Reasons
— ANCA (@ANCA) 1695858627

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