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Following are excerpts from an interview with Dr. Taleb Ibrahim, a Syrian dentist and political analyst, which aired on Al-Dunya TV on June 5, 2011:
Dr. Taleb Ibrahim: We demand that the president use an iron fist. We say to him: In addition to the armed forces, you have another army – we are all prepared to fight to the end. This is not just the army's battle – the army is a part of the people. The Syrian army is the only army in the world which has no foreigners among its ranks. Every officer, soldier, and volunteer in the Arab Syrian army must be the son of an Arab mother and an Arab father. Military law requires that even his wife be Arab.
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We must strike them with an iron fist, using all means and all weapons available. The existence of the Syrian state and people is the most important and pure thing at this point in history. We are a people that has embraced the greatest of civilizations, a people that has embodied national unity as never before in history. Do they want to deal a blow to this unity? We will never allow this.
We, the people, are prepared to die, and to fight to the end. We are the martyrs. I, my sons, my fellow professors, and all the viewers are ready to be stabbed by the traitors' knives, to be slaughtered, but we will not allow Syria to be divided, or see Syrians killing one another.
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This is the mother of all battles in the history of Syria. This is the most difficult wave of war in the history of Syria and the Arab nation. If the fortress of Syria falls today, the Arab nation, Arab nationality, Islam, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque will exist no more. Along will come the Jews and their allies to the Haram Mosque in Mecca, and will hang their flags there. This is written in our scriptures and our religious heritage. As long as we live on the face of this Earth, we will not permit this.
We will fight to the end. Whoever doubts our resolve and willpower should put us to the test in the battlefield. We want to die so that our homeland may live, so that the anemones may blossom in Syria, so that the birds may warble in Syria, so that our damsels my stroll freely at night in Syria, so that our children may sing and play – for all this we are prepared to fight to the end.
This life is nothing but an illusion, a myth, a passage [to the world to come]. In a nutshell, we want to be slaughtered, we want to die on the altar of Syria.
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Syria has been an empire for 9,000 years. Today, a Syrian empire is being built that will rule for another 10,000 years. Oh Syrians, have no fear. The homeland is fine, and so are the leadership and the army.
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What is going on now is a war by proxy between Syria and Israel, on Syrian land, carried out by these traitors, those apostates, who spread false rumors. Killing these people is a religious duty and an obligation. Fighting them takes precedence over fighting the Israeli enemy. The enemy from within, which carries out foreign agendas and takes its orders from abroad, is much more dangerous than the external enemy. In order to prevail over the external enemy, we must pulverize these people. We are not asking [the president] to give them amnesty, or anything.
Only a policy of an iron fist will work with these people. They must be pulverized. Syrian land must be cleansed of any trace of them, so that we can build a more beautiful Syria and a better tomorrow, so that we will be able to take the path of reform, of democracy, and of freedom.
What kind of freedom do Sheik Al-Ar'our and Sheik Al-Qaradhawi want? What kind of freedom do these sons of bitches and petrol [in the Gulf] want? To this day, those people live in the era of slavery. They keep slave girls in their palaces. They are the world's greatest money launderers and traffickers in white slavery. What kind of freedom do these people want? We do not want this freedom. What kind of freedom does the US want? The freedom of Guantanamo?
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The Syrians will fight on their land, just as they fought in the Baghdad Airport, in Falluja and in Tel Afar.
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