Welcome to the Middle East Documentation Project

Like in (some) other project websites, let us begin (again) with something that everyone knows ..or maybe not everyone as current generations did not grow up in an era when there was no video but celluloid. And even then, when there were videos (VHS and Betamax), there was no YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, TikTok, or Instagram. The first Internet video hosting site was ShareYourWorld.com, founded in 1997.

There are many definitions of history. However, the most simple way to explain it is to use the pictured images.

A celluloid film consists of a series of frames. Each frame is part of a scene, which, in turn, may be part of a series of scenes. They all together form what is called a sequence. So, a movie is built up by a series of sequences.

If you watch the whole film, you will see a chronology of frames, scenes, and sequences.

In today's video technology, you don't need to stretch the movie. It's already done while you load it in a video editor.

Visualizing history is similar to this, meaning that you can imagine history as a complete movie unless you cut it into pieces to remove frames, scenes, or even a whole sequence that you don't want people to watch.

Like every movie, any event must have a beginning, as nothing happens in a vacuum. There is always a main cause or root, which always lies in the very past.

And so it is about many issues in the Middle East.

The Middle East Documentation concerns all countries in the region but currently contains videos, photos, documents, news reports, and maps about:

• Arab Spring in the countries Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Yemen.

• Egypt: The coup by el-Sisi and the Raba'a massacre in Cairo, and the Giulio Regeni case.

• Iran: the Persian Spring protest, better known as the 'Where is my vote' protest;  the Dey protests, the protest after Mahsa Amini's death.

• Iraq: the two US wars, insurgency, Iran's influence.

• Israelis:
  • Before October 7, 2023:
    • Using Lebanon as a shield for attacks in Syria from Lebanese airspace.
    • Attacks on Lebanon
    • Assassinations in Lebanon and Iran
    • Attacks on Iranian presence in Syria
  • Since October 7, 2023:
    • Invasion and war, ceasefire violations in Lebanon.
    • Invasion and conquest of parts of Syria.
    • Attacks on all military facilities in Syria to prevent the new government from forming a national army.
  • Politics of nuclear weapons monopolism (e.g. Menachem Begin doctrine, meddling in JCPOA talks)
  • Spreading division among Arab leaders (e.g., the Abraham Accord, intended to revive the Abraham Accord by Netanyahu)

• Lebanon: Beirut explosion and the political aftermath; failed governance, social-economical issues.

• Libya: The first civil war followed the Arab Spring in the country. The second civil war has not been documented.

• Qatar: The economic blockade by Saudi Arabia, masterminded by UAE ambassador to the US, Youssef al-Otaiba, over Doha's regional political stance. 

• Syria: Civil war (2012-2017 documented) following the social uprising and armed conflict (both documented) in 2011, Russia's contribution (2015-2017 documented), Turkish invasion (2016-2017 documented), Israeli attacks (2013-2022 documented), the fall of the Assad regime (December 2024 documented), the transition period (monitoring only), and Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023 (still documenting), and seizure and illegal annexation of parts of the country (still documenting).

• Turkey: Erdogan's political career (2007 to present), the presidential palace row, the mutiny (coup claim), Kurds in Turkey.

• Yemen: Civil war and the participation by Britain (arms supplies), Saudi Arabia, and the UAE; Houthis concerning Gaza.

The entire archive contains more than 19.000 files and is, therefore, too large. Upgrading the ISP package used is not the solution, as the archive continues to grow.

GLOSM is a self-funded project. Technically, it is more than keeping a (huge) website online.

In addition to standard costs like your domain and package, the larger the website, the more web space you need, and the higher the monthly fee.

There are also extra monthly costs, such as keeping the website secure and protected. Hardware doesn't last a lifetime, and you occasionally have to update, repair, or replace parts.

The documentation runs locally for the reasons above.

We look deeper than what is to see, as nothing happens without a past. Let us take a look at this example.

The Assad family regime fell in December 2024 after half a century of terror. The regime’s fall was completed within a few weeks after Hayat Tahir al-Sham launched an offensive from Idlib province against forces loyal to the regime on November 28, 2024..

The question arose: How were the jihadists able to end that regime so quickly? We will leave the answer aside for now, as we are not military analysts, although we have been following and documenting the offensive.

One thing stood out.

There was much speculation on social media that the Israelis had a hand in this. A video seen on X-platform shows Israeli artillery on the Golan Heights firing shells towards Syria during the offensive. The video could be an indication that the Israelis supported the jihadists. This could bring back memories of wounded ISIL fighters in Israeli hospitals.

However, the Israelis have a long history with the country of Syria. We found a large number of social media users who do not know that there was never a peace agreement signed between the Israelis and Syria. Both sides have been at war since 1967.

What we have all seen happening in Syria since December 2023 is nothing more than the Israelis taking advantage of the fact that there was never a peace agreement signed. The Israelis have been doing this since the 1980s, when they bombed two alleged nuclear complexes twice. One of those complexes turned out to be a communal textile weaving mill.

It is striking that the Israelis also do not have a peace agreement with their northern neighbor, Lebanon.

You have to go back to the Biblical period, when Lebanon and Syria were still part of Mesopotamia.

The route that the Hebrew tribe followed, led by Abraham, started in Ur in modern-day Iraq to the northern part of modern-day Syria to enter the southern part of modern-day Lebanon, and from there, south to Canaan.

The episode described took place when Judaism did not even exist. It had yet to come into being, but after Abraham arrived in Canaan to join himself and his tribesmen with other tribes and then collectively accept ONE god through a covenant. Judaism sprouted from tribal beliefs, which have elements in Babylonian Talmudism.

The Israeli idea of ​​'Greater Israel, which reemerged in October 2023, is based on Abraham's journey. It is a religionized motive that partly explains why Israelis refuse to leave Syria. It is nothing more than a similarity to the idea of ​​the ISIL caliphate.

A second motive for the Israelis to refuse to leave Syria – they even show a tendency to expand the occupied southern Syrian territory towards the Euphrates River – was the Iranian presence. This presence was attacked hundreds of times by the Israelis because there is no peace agreement with Syria. Yet, the origins are different.

On July 12, 1955, the Israelis signed the Atoms for Peace Agreement introduced by President Dwight D Eisenhower. The Israelis signed with the promise not to use a nuclear reactor for any purpose other than research.

The nuclear problem began when, in 1956, the first Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who was obsessed with obtaining nuclear weapons, stated,

"What Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Teller, the three of them are Jews, made for the United States, could also be done by scientists in Israel, for their own people."

The technology and know-how that the United States provided at that time were copied by the Israelis to build a second, but secret, reactor.  The problem they encountered was a lack of expertise in how to build a nuclear reactor and how to get nuclear material for the secret reactor. The latter was not a big problem. The Israeli agent in the US, Zalman Mordechai Shapiro, had just started stealing high-enriched uranium from the NUMEC facility in Apollo, Pensylvania.

In that same year, the Suez Canal Crisis broke out after the British-French controlled canal was nationalized by the then Egyptian President Gamal Adbel Nassr. The two countries wanted to regain possession of the canal and therefore asked the Israelis for help. In return, France would help the Israelis with the construction of Dimona. This lasted until the French discovered that they were involved in the construction of a reactor for the production of nuclear weapons.

Iran signed the AFP-treaty two years later and made no promises but kept to the treaty.

The Israelis managed to produce their first nuclear bomb in 1966-67. The declassification of sensitive government documents, that we know as the NUMEC Files, show that at least by 1975, the U.S. government was convinced the Israelis had nuclear weapons.

It is the Israelis' first nuclear bomb that prompted the international community to come up with a treaty, which we now know as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran signed that treaty in 1968, but the Israelis refused despite international pressure.

In 1978, the Iranian Revolution broke out. Khomeini returned from exile in France and banned the US-sponsored nuclear energy program. He considered the program un-Islamic but changed his mind under pressure from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards amid the Iran-Iraq war that lasted eight years.

The Israelis were already the first and (still) the only nuclear power in the Middle East despite their promise not to be the first to introduce the militarization of nuclear technology.

In 2007, Menachem Begin stated, "Be sure that no enemy has a reactor." It is hasbara. In plain words: to ensure being the only nuclear power in the region.

If we put "enemy" in today's context, the term belongs to the Israeli politics of conflation. It refers to any country in the region, even beyond, that is not siding with the Israelis. It is not without reason that they have inter-continental ballistic missiles in their arsenal.

We have all been able to follow how thoroughly the Israelis have been wreaking havoc in Gaza. We have all been able to see this since December 2024 in Syria, where they are busy destroying all Syrian military storage facilities and warning the new rulers in Syria not to set up a national army.

According to reports on social media, the Israelis are said to have disabled the entire air defense system, although no definitive proof has been provided. There are clear indications that the Syrian radar system was, at the very least, inadequate.

Three motives may explain why the Israelis do not want an army in Syria.

1. To prevent attacks from Syria, even though there have never been attacks from this country. Yet the Israelis are out to occupy almost all of South Syria and have already indicated that they will never leave those areas, which is nothing more than annexation.

2. The intended expansion of those so-called security zones shows itself to be an attempt for further expansion in the direction of the Euphrates River. It suggests that the Israelis want to create a wide corridor.

3. The Israelis want at least a shorter route for attacks on Iran. They must now take a detour through Saudi Arabian airspace, making the country a target for Iranian retaliation.

So, the Israeli stance on Syria is no longer because of Iran or Hezbollah. It is because of their messianic desire for a Greater Israel.

The Israelis already created Hezbollah when they occupied Southern Lebanon in 1981. The Israelis created Hamas when they occupied Gaza from 1956 to 2005. And now, the Israelis have created the existence of the Islamic Resistance Front in Syria that will fight the partitioning of the south by the.Israelis.

GLOSM stands for Global Studies Monitoring and operates in the field of human research. It monitors, collects, and documents developments forthcoming from effects as a result of interference in the continuation of life and the existence of people.

GLOSM runs several projects.