67
votes
Accepted
Is this "ancient Hebrew leather manuscript" seized by police in Turkey authentic?
No.
That is anything but what is claimed it is.
This is a rather large scale scam now often titled "Turkish Golden Leather Brownies" or some variation thereof. And completely fake.
The word ...
- 44k
37
votes
Accepted
Were the Paris attackers youths from Syria?
No-one connected to the attacks has yet turned out to be from Syria - they were almost all (around 12 so far) EU citizens from France and/or Belgium. There appears to have been at least one Algerian ...
- 8,931
19
votes
Did Canadian children sing the Islamic song "Tala'al badru" to welcome Syrian refugees?
Are these Canadian children? Yes. Was it part of welcoming Syrian refugees? Sort of.
According to Buzzfeed the performance took place at the École secondaire publique De La Salle in Ottawa as part ...
- 3,491
10
votes
Was it harder for Syrian Christians to immigrate to the US than Muslims?
The Washington Post fact checked this claim and scored in 2 (of 4) Pinocchios.
While it's true that the number of Syrian Christian refugees admitted to the US is disproportionately lower, it's not ...
- 7,126
7
votes
Accepted
Are there up to 100,000 people in Eastern Aleppo as of December 2016?
The sources quoted in the question suggest that there are 100,000 civilians total in East Aleppo. By this is apparently meant the entire area that was held by rebels between 2013 and 2016.
By 13 ...
- 44.9k
7
votes
Accepted
Did Russia warn the people of besieged East Aleppo that "If you do not leave these areas urgently, you will be annihilated"?
The Syrian and Russian air force dropped the following leaflet shown below which according to BBC reporter James Longman states:
Read & repeat. If you don't leave, you'll be bombed. Save ...
- 15.7k
7
votes
Accepted
Did Muhammed al-Arifi issue a fatwa permitting rape of Syrian women?
It's fake.
Electronicintifada.net reports:
The claim about the “fatwa” was made on Lebanon’s Al-Jadeed channel
(New TV) at least as early as December 29. Al-Jadeed does not provide
any ...
- 15.7k
6
votes
Accepted
Did Yasir al-Ajlawni declare that it is lawful to rape any "non-Sunni Syrian woman"?
First, "Yasir al-Ajlawni" certainly did not say that.
There is someone else called Yasin al-Ajlawni who isn't resident in Damascus who said something sort of similar and he claims his words are ...
- 9,466
5
votes
Accepted
Did Turkey neutralize thousands of Syrian Army soldiers?
It's hard to confirm all of that but, the Guardian reported at least regarding two of the downed jets:
The Syrian military had not previously lost more than one jet fighter on a single day ...
- 59.6k
4
votes
Were some Russians killed in a fight with American forces in Syria in February 2018?
This answer was written before the question underwent some drastic changes, and the title changed to essentially ask whether Russians were among those terrorists who were eliminated in the Battle of ...
- 2,329
4
votes
Was there a chemical attack in Syria in April 2018 and was Bashar al-Assad responsible for it?
It's referring to the Douma attack on April 7. Most likely chemical weapons were involved. According to the WHO:
According to reports from Health Cluster partners, during the shelling of Douma on ...
- 59.6k
4
votes
Did Syrian army Pantsir systems destroy 23 Tomahawks (using just 25 missiles) in an attack on Damascus?
I completely rewrote my initial answer to give a more in depth assessment of the claim. The previous one can be found here
I will try to address the specific claim but also two probably more relevant ...
- 380
4
votes
Accepted
Did the United States provide weapons to YPG members in 2015?
The Bloomberg article was 15 October 2015.
Yes, the US armed Kurds in the air drop mentioned in the article, but it was false that "the White House announced the U.S. had dropped 50 tons of ...
- 105k
3
votes
Did Russia warn the people of besieged East Aleppo that "If you do not leave these areas urgently, you will be annihilated"?
Krishnan Guru-Murthy's report on Channel 4 News (UK) on 3 November 2016 seems fairly convincing.
He shows footage of the leaflets being dropped (4:12):
Before the bombs came war-time confetti, in ...
- 13.5k
2
votes
Is this "ancient Hebrew leather manuscript" seized by police in Turkey authentic?
Probably Not
Ancient text and manuscripts were almost exclusively made from either Vellum or Parchment or Papyrus. It is only during the late 14th century that the paper that replaced these things got ...
- 1,084
2
votes
Did Turkey neutralize thousands of Syrian Army soldiers?
There is little to go on aside from Turkey's official numbers. What little I'm finding from other sources does not prove much.
Al-Monitor reported on March 1:
Turkey said it had destroyed several ...
- 7,352
2
votes
Did Syria use chemical weapons (in the recent April 2017 ordeal with 30+ civilian casualties)?
We don't know. Could be as presented by the US- the Syrian regime dropped Sarin on civilians. Could be as presented by the Russians- warehoused Sarin. Could be a 'false flag' operation by unknowns.
...
- 457
2
votes
Did global warming exacerbate the Syrian conflict?
After many edits for clarification, the title in the question can be answered succinctly:
Did global warming exacerbate the Syrian conflict?
Almost certainly
Syrian demographics took a sharp turn ...
- 494
2
votes
Were chemical weapons used in the civil war in Syria by the Assad regime before 2014?
Maybe.
There is a suspicion that Turkey was behind it, in an effort to trick the US into destroying Assad's forces.
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker magazine reported on it.
This ...
- 1,059
1
vote
Are there up to 100,000 people in Eastern Aleppo as of December 2016?
According to official estimates by International Committee of the Red Cross, 88773 people were evacuated from East Aleppo of which 35000 went to rebel held areas and the rest to Government controlled ...
- 15.7k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible