Meet Ghislaine: Daddy’s Girl
BY WHITNEY WEBB |
UNLIMITED HANGOUT| DECEMBER 16, 2021
Absent from mainstream discourse on Ghislaine Maxwell’s ongoing trial is any mention of the ties, not only of herself, but her family, to Israeli intelligence. Those ties, forged by Ghislaine’s father Robert Maxwell, are critical to understanding Ghislaine’s history and her role in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual blackmail and trafficking network.
The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, the alleged madam of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual blackmail and sex trafficking network, has attracted considerable mainstream and independent media attention, though not as much as one might expect given the level of media attention that surrounded Epstein’s 2019 arrest and death or given the public interest in the Epstein/Maxwell scandal and its broader implications.
Unsurprisingly, the broader implications of the Epstein/Maxwell scandal have been largely, if not entirely absent, from mainstream media (and some independent media) coverage of Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial as well as absent from the case itself. For example, despite physical evidence of sexual blackmail stored at Epstein’s residences being shown by the prosecution (with the names of those incriminated being notably redacted), the prosecution chose not to mention even the potential role of blackmail in Ghislaine Maxwell’s activities and motives as it related to her involvement in sex trafficking activities alongside Jeffrey Epstein. Not only that, but the names of Ghislaine’s close contacts and even some of her defense witnesses, along with considerable information about her role in Epstein’s network that is very much in the public interest, is due to be filed under seal and forever hidden from the public, either due to “deals” made between the prosecution and the defense in this case or due to rulings from the judge overseeing the case.
Going hand in hand with the blackmail angle of this case is the specter of Ghislaine Maxwell’s family ties to intelligence agencies, as well as the intelligence ties of Jeffrey Epstein himself. Given that blackmail, particularly sexual blackmail, has been used by intelligence agencies – particularly in the US and Israel – since the 1940s and beyond, it is deeply troubling that neither the blackmail or intelligence angle has played any role in the prosecution’s case or in the mainstream media’s coverage of the trial.
To remedy this lack of coverage, Unlimited Hangout is publishing a 2-part investigative report entitled “Meet Ghislaine”, which is adapted from this author’s upcoming book on the subject. This investigation will detail key aspects of Ghislaine Maxwell’s links to intelligence agencies and sexual blackmail activities that are relevant to the case against her and perhaps explain the silence from the prosecution and their interest in sealing potentially incriminating evidence against Ghislaine from public scrutiny. Part 1 of this article will focus on Ghislaine’s father, Robert Maxwell, a “larger than life” figure who straddled the worlds of both business and espionage and whose daughters inherited different aspects of his espionage contacts and activities as well as his influence empire following his 1991 death.
The Making of a Maxwell
To understand Ghilaine Maxwell’s history, one must start with a hard look at the rise of her father, Robert Maxwell. Born in what is now part of Ukraine, “Robert Maxwell” was the last in a series of names he used, with Abraham Hoch, Jan Ludvick, and Leslie Du Marier among his earlier aliases. The name Robert Maxwell emerged at the behest of one of his superiors in the British military. Maxwell had joined the British military during World War II, having left the village of his birth prior to the war, when the Third Reich began its expansion. Maxwell’s parents and his siblings are believed to have died in the Holocaust.
Robert and Betty Maxwell pose at their 1945 wedding; Source
Robert Maxwell was involved with the British intelligence service MI6 during the war and, after the war, was befriended by Count Frederich vanden Huevel, who had worked closely with Allen Dulles during the war. Dulles went on to be the first director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and, during the war, was busy running interference for prominent Nazis and actively undermining FDR’s “total surrender” policy for senior Nazi leadership.
The chaos of postwar Europe allowed Maxwell to plant the seeds for what would become his future media empire. Thanks to his contacts with Allied Forces in postwar Berlin, he was able to acquire the publishing rights for prominent European scientific journals and, in 1948, those interests were folded into the British publishing company Butterworth, which had long-standing ties to British intelligence. In the early 1950s, the company was renamed Pergamon Press, and this company became the cornerstone of Maxwell’s media empire.
Pergamon’s access to prominent academics, scientists, and government not only led to Maxwell acquiring great wealth but also attracted the interest of various intelligence agencies— British, Russian, and Israeli among them—all of which attempted to recruit Maxwell as an asset or as a spy. When MI6 attempted to recruit Maxwell for the service, it concluded, after conducting an extensive background check, that Maxwell was a “Zionist—loyal only to Israel.” His subsequent relationship with MI6 was choppy and largely opportunistic on both sides, with Maxwell later laying some of the blame for his financial troubles on MI6’s alleged attempts to “subvert” him.
Maxwell was not officially recruited to work for Israeli intelligence until 1961, but his critical role in securing weapons and airplane parts for the 1948 war that created the state of Israel suggests a strong relationship with prominent politicians and military figures in the nation from its beginning, as this was certainly the case with other prominent businessmen who had helped arm Zionist paramilitaries before and during 1948. In the early 1960s, Maxwell was formally approached by Israeli intelligence to make use of his access to the variety of prominent businessman and world leaders that he had cultivated while growing his media empire.
A few years after being officially recruited as an asset of Israeli intelligence, Maxwell ran for public office, becoming a member of the British Parliament for the Labour Party in 1964. His bid for re-election failed, which left him out of office by 1970. Around that same time, he also lost control of Pergamon Press, though he reacquired it a few years later.
Having nearly lost everything, Maxwell devoted his time to consolidating control over his ever-growing web of interlocking companies, trusts, and foundations that now encompassed much more than media concerns, while also developing his ties to prominent politicians, businessmen, and their fixers, a group that Maxwell proudly referred to as his “sources.” Among these early “sources” were soon-to-be UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher; Israel’s biggest arms dealer and one of its powerful oligarchs, Saul Eisenberg; financial behemoths such as Edmund Safra; and master manipulators such as Henry Kissinger. Another early “source” was George H. W. Bush, who was then part of the Nixon administration and soon served as CIA director before becoming Reagan’s vice president and then US president himself.
Maxwell’s sources and influence extended well beyond the West, with many of his most prominent contacts found in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union. He had cozy relationships with dictators, intelligence officials, and even organized crime lords such as Semion Mogilevich, sometimes referred to as the “boss of the bosses” of the Russian mafia. It was none other than Robert Maxwell who orchestrated the entry of Mogilevich-connected companies into the United States, a move that was accomplished after Maxwell successfully lobbied the state of Israel to grant Mogilevich and his associates Israeli passports, thereby allowing them easier access to US financial institutions.
The expansion of Maxwell’s prominent contacts paralleled the growth of his media empire. By 1980, he had acquired the British Printing Corporation, which he renamed the Maxwell Communication Corporation. Just a few years later, he bought the Mirror Group, publisher of the British tabloid the Daily Mirror. This was followed by his acquisition of US publishers Prentice Hall and MacMillan and later the New York Daily News. Much of the money Maxwell used to acquire the Mirror Group and several of these other companies came from financial backers of Israeli intelligence. Money “borrowed” from Maxwell-owned media outlets such as the Mirror Group and its pension fund was used to finance Mossad activities in Europe and elsewhere; then, the funds were restored before the absence was noticed by company employees not privy to these operations. Maxwell later derailed this well-oiled system by dipping into these same funds to finance his own ostentatious and salacious habits.
Robert Maxwell poses with the first edition of “The European” newspaper he founded in 1990; Source
During this period, Maxwell’s ties to Israeli intelligence deepened in other ways, particularly during the time when Yitzhak Shamir was prime minister. Shamir, previously a leader of the Zionist terrorist group known as Lehi or the Stern Gang, deeply loathed the United States, a sentiment he confided to Maxwell during one of Maxwell’s visits to Israel. Shamir told Maxwell that he blamed the Americans for the Holocaust because of US failure to support the transfer of European Jews to Palestine prior to the war. Shamir’s views on the US likely informed Israel’s more aggressive espionage targeting the US that emerged during this time and in which Maxwell prominently figured.
Maxwell and the PROMIS Affair
Maxwell’s prominent roles in the PROMIS software scandal and the Iran-Contra affair during the 1980s were facilitated by his purchase of numerous Israeli companies, several of which were either fronts or “providers of services” for Israeli intelligence. The most notable of these was Scitex, where Yitzhak Shamir’s son Nachum was a major executive throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, and Degem, a computer company with a large presence in Central and South America as well as Africa.
Even before Maxwell’s purchase of Degem, it had been used by Mossad as a cover for agents, and particularly assassins, who would use its offices as a cover before conducting kidnappings and murders of individuals linked to groups with ties to or sympathies for Israel’s enemies, particularly the PLO. Some of the most notable events occurred in Africa, where Mossad assassins used Degem as cover to launch killings of members of the African National Congress. In Latin America, Degem was also used as cover for the Mossad to infiltrate terrorist and nacroterrorist organizations such as Peru’s Sendero Luminoso (known in English as the Shining Path) and Colombia’s National Liberation Army or ELN.
After Maxwell’s purchase of Degem, it served as the main vehicle through which Israel conducted what was arguably its most brazen and successful espionage operation of the era—the bugging and then mass marketing of the stolen software program known as PROMIS.
Rafi Eitan, the notorious Israeli spymaster who served as Jonathan Pollard’s handler and who played a key role in the creation of the Talpiot program, was serving as the head of the (now defunct) Israeli intelligence service known as Lekem when he heard of a revolutionary new software program being used by the US Department of Justice. The program was known as the Prosecutors Information Management System, better known by its acronym PROMIS.
Rafi Eitan with Israeli politician Ariel Sharon in 1987; Source
Eitan had learned of PROMIS from Earl Brian, a longtime associate of Ronald Reagan who had previously worked for the CIA. PROMIS is often considered to be the forerunner of the PRISM software used by US and allied spy agencies today and was developed by former NSA official Bill Hamilton. Hamilton had leased the software to the US Department of Justice through his company, Inslaw Inc., in 1982.
Eitan and Brian hatched a plan to install a “trapdoor” into the software and then sell PROMIS throughout the world, providing Israel with invaluable intelligence on the operations of its enemies and allies while also netting Eitan and Brian massive profits. According to the testimony of former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe, Brian provided a copy of PROMIS to Israeli military intelligence, which contacted an Israeli American programmer living in California. That programmer then planted a trapdoor or back door into the software.
Once the back door was installed, Brian attempted to use his company Hadron Inc. to market the bugged PROMIS software around the world. Having been unsuccessful at trying to buy out Inslaw, Brian turned to his close friend Attorney General Ed Meese, whose Justice Department abruptly refused to make payments to Inslaw that were stipulated by contract, essentially using the software for free. Hamilton and Inslaw claimed that this was theft. Some have speculated that Meese’s role in that decision was shaped not only by his friendship with Brian but also by the fact that his wife was a major investor in Brian’s business ventures.
Meese’s actions forced Inslaw into bankruptcy, and Inslaw subsequently sued the Justice Department, with the court finding that the Meese-led department “took, converted, [and] stole” the software through “trickery, fraud and deceit.” Meanwhile, with Inslaw seemingly out of the way, Brian sold the bugged software to Jordan’s intelligence service, which was a major boon for Israel, and to a handful of private companies. Eitan, nevertheless, was unsatisfied with Brian’s progress and quickly turned to the person he thought could most effectively sell PROMIS to governments of interest all over the world—Robert Maxwell.
Salesman and Spy
Through Degem and other fronts, Maxwell marketed PROMIS so successfully that Israeli intelligence soon had access to the innermost workings of innumerable governments, corporations, banks, and intelligence services around the world. Many of Maxwell’s biggest successes came in selling PROMIS to dictators in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Following the sales, and after Maxwell collected a handsome paycheck, PROMIS, with its unparalleled ability to surveil anything from cash flows to human movement, was used by these governments to commit financial crimes with greater finesse and to hunt down and “disappear” dissidents.
In Latin America, Maxwell sold PROMIS to military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina. It was used to facilitate the mass murder that characterized Operation Condor, as the friends and families of dissidents and so-called subversives were easily identified using PROMIS. PROMIS was so effective for this purpose that, just days after Maxwell sold the software to Guatemala, this US-backed dictatorship rounded up twenty thousand “subversives” who were never heard from again. Of course, thanks to the back door in PROMIS, Israeli intelligence knew the identities of Guatemala’s disappeared before the victims’ own families. Both the US and Israel were also intimately involved in the arming and training of many of the Latin American dictatorships that had been sold the bugged PROMIS software. It is worth noting that Israel’s government and military-industrial complex was simultaneously involved in selling arms to many of these same governments.
Though Israeli intelligence immediately found obvious uses for the steady stream of sensitive and classified information, their biggest prize was yet to come. Eitan soon tasked Maxwell with selling PROMIS to top secret US government labs in the Los Alamos complex, including Sandia National Laboratories, which was and is at the core of the US nuclear weapons system. In order to plot how he would accomplish such a feat, Maxwell met with none other than Henry Kissinger, who told him that he needed to enlist the services of Texas senator John Tower, who was then head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Kissinger has never been charged or even challenged for his role in facilitating a foreign-espionage operation targeting highly sensitive US national security information.
Maxell, using Mossad-derived money, paid Tower $200,000 for his services, which included opening doors — not just to the Los Alamos complex but also to the Reagan White House. PROMIS was then sold to the laboratories through a US-based company that Maxwell had purchased in 1981 and transformed into a front for Mossad. That company, called Information on Demand, was headed by Maxwell’s daughter Christine Maxwell beginning in 1985 until Robert’s death in 1991, during which period she helped sell the bugged PROMIS software to several Fortune 500 companies. Isabel Maxwell, sister to Ghislaine and Christine, would also work at the company before its closure in 1991.
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Christine Maxwell teamed up with CIA official Alan Wade to market homeland-security software known as Chiliad to the US national security state, while Isabel would work closely at the intersection between Israeli intelligence and its private technology sector around that same period. Ghislaine, along with her two intelligence and technology-connected sisters, would hold a significant stake in a technology company that appears to be the actual origin of the Bill Gates-Jeffrey Epstein relationship, as explained in this Unlimited Hangout investigative report from May.
A few years after its acquisition by the Maxwells, Information on Demand was investigated by the FBI for its intelligence links beginning in 1983. However, that investigation was repeatedly shut down by higher-ups in the Meese-led Department of Justice, which, as previously mentioned, had been complicit in the whole sordid PROMIS affair. The investigation was shut down for good in 1985. The cover-up, oddly enough, continues today, with the FBI still refusing to release documents pertaining to Robert Maxwell and his role in the PROMIS scandal.
At the time, the halting of the FBI investigation green-lighted Information on Demand’s sale of PROMIS to Sandia National Laboratories, which provided Israeli intelligence with direct access to the core of the US nuclear weapons programs and nuclear weapons technology. This was a boon for Israel’s still-undeclared trove of nuclear missiles and warheads and helped ensure that Israel would remain the only nuclear power in the Middle East. Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, seen in the light of the PROMIS scandal and the Pollard spy affair, shows that it was largely accomplished through trickery, deception and espionage rather than Israeli technical or scientific prowess.
This same year, 1985, is also when the CIA finally caught up with their Israeli equivalent and created its own back door into PROMIS, which it sold mostly to allied intelligence services in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. It wasn’t nearly as successful as Maxwell, who sold an estimated $500 million in bugged PROMIS programs for Israel. The CIA, on the other hand, only sold around $90 million.
Heiress to an Espionage Empire
After Maxwell’s wild success in selling PROMIS on behalf of Israeli intelligence, he was recruited for another Israeli intelligence-driven operation—the Iran-Contra deal. It was through his Iran-Contra dealings that Robert Maxwell reportedly met Jeffery Epstein, whom he brought into the fold of Israeli intelligence that same year with the personal approval of the “higher ups” of Israeli military intelligence. The head of Israeli military intelligence at this time was Ehud Barak, who later come under fire for his well-documented and close ties to Epstein. The year 1985 was also the year when, conveniently enough, Epstein met Ohio billionaire Leslie Wexner and became intimately involved with his finances and affairs after Wexner’s previous fixer, Arthur Shapiro, was shot in the face in broad daylight before he was set to testify to the IRS on matters related to Wexner’s finances. Wexner would go on to co-found the Mega Group in 1991, several prominent members of which have close ties to Israeli political and intelligence figures and/or US-based organized crime networks like the National Crime Syndicate.
Epstein’s entry into this world was facilitated through his romantic ties to Ghislaine Maxwell, which had allegedly preceded Robert Maxwell’s successful efforts to bring him into the fold of Israeli military intelligence. Epstein was only one of several boyfriends Ghislaine is said to have had in the 1980s, but Epstein was certainly the most similar in terms of both behavior and “talents” to her father.
Ghislaine Maxwell and her mother Betty pose next to a framed picture of Robert Maxwell in Jerusalem, November 1991; Source
Ghislaine’s other boyfriends during and prior to this period certainly deserve mention. One of the more interesting was an Italian aristocrat named Count Gianfranco Cicogna, whose grandfather was Mussolini’s finance minister and the last doge of Venice. Cicogna also had ties to both covert and overt power structures in Italy, particularly to the Vatican, the CIA’s presence in Italy, and to the Italian side of the National Crime Syndicate. The other half of that syndicate, of course, was the Jewish American mob with its ties to the Mega Group, itself deeply connected to the Epstein scandal and whose members were frequent business partners of Robert Maxwell. It’s worth noting that Gianfranco Cicogna met a grisly end in 2012 when the plane he was flying exploded in a giant fireball during an air show, a morbid spectacle that can surprisingly still be viewed on YouTube.
Ghislaine and Robert Maxwell also had odd ties to the Harvey Proctor scandal in the United Kingdom, whereby a tabloid of Robert Maxwell’s—with Maxwell’s full approval—ran a story claiming that efforts were being made to blackmail Robert Maxwell with information regarding Ghislaine’s alleged relationship with the future Duke of Rutland. Maxwell clearly wanted the information linking Ghislaine to the duke put out into the public sphere, but the story is odd for a few reasons. The motive of the blackmailer was ostensibly to prevent Maxwell-owned papers from covering the Harvey Proctor scandal. But the son of the duke who was allegedly involved with Ghislaine was also a close friend and later the employer of Harvey Proctor.
The appearance of Harvey Proctor, a Conservative member of Parliament, in this tabloid spectacle is interesting for a few reasons. In 1987, Proctor pleaded guilty to sexual indecency with two young men who were sixteen and nineteen at the time, and several witnesses interviewed in that investigation described him as having a sexual interest in “young boys.” Later, a controversial court case saw Proctor accused of having been involved with well-connected British pedophile and procurer of children Jimmy Savile; he was alleged to have been part a child sex abuse ring that was said to include former UK prime minister Ted Heath. Savile’s close relationship with Prince Charles of the British Royal family is well known and, as will be mentioned shortly, Ghislaine is alleged to have been cozy with the Royals before Prince Andrew’s frequent public appearances with Ghislaine and Epstein, beginning around the year 2000.
Of course, the Maxwell-owned papers, in covering the alleged efforts to blackmail Robert Maxwell, did not mention the “young boys” angle at all, instead focusing on claims that distracted from the then-credible accusations of pedophilia by claiming that Proctor was merely into “spanking” and was “whacky”, among other things. It is hard to know exactly what was going on in this particular incident, but the whole bizarre affair paints an interesting picture of Ghislaine’s social circle at the time.
In this same 1985 period, Ghislaine also became involved with “philanthropy” tied to her father’s business empire by hosting a “Disney day out for kids” and benefit dinner on behalf of the Mirror Group for the Save the Children NGO. Part of the event took place at the home of the Marquess and Lady of Bath, a gala that was attended by members of the British Royal family. It’s worth noting that the Marquess of Bath at the time was an odd person, having accumulated the largest collection of paintings made by Adolf Hitler and having said that Hitler had done “great things for his country.” The same evening that the Ghislaine-hosted bash concluded, the Marquess of Bath’s son was found hanging from a bedspread tied to an oak beam at the Bath Arms in what was labeled a suicide.
The attendance of Royals at this Ghislaine-hosted gala was not some lucky break for Ghislaine or her “philanthropic” efforts, as Ghislaine had already been close to the royals for years, with subsequent employees and victims of Ghislaine having personally seen pictures of her “growing up” with the royals, a relationship allegedly facilitated by the Maxwell family’s ties to the Rothschild banking family. Ghislaine was heard on more than one occasion as describing the wealthy and influential Rothschilds as her family’s “greatest protectors,” and they were also among Robert Maxwell’s most important bankers, who helped him finance the construction of his vast media empire and web of companies and untraceable trusts.
It was also during this period that Ghislaine learned some unusual skills, including how to pilot airplanes, helicopters, and submarines, and became fluent in several languages.
Then, abruptly in 1991, Ghislaine and her entire remaining family saw their fortunes shift dramatically—at least in public—with the death of Robert Maxwell, a death that most of the Maxwell family and most of his biographers regard as a murder, an act allegedly performed by the very intelligence agency that employed him.
According to journalist John Jackson, who was present when Ghislaine and her mother Betty boarded her father’s yacht shortly after his death, it was Ghislaine who “coolly walked into her late father’s office and shredded all incriminating documents on board.” Ghislaine denies the incident, though Jackson has never retracted the claim, which was reported in a 2007 article published in the Daily Mail. If Jackson is to believed, it was Ghislaine – out of all of Robert Maxwell’s children – who was most intimately aware of the incriminating secrets of her father’s financial empire and espionage activities.
As Part 2 of this series will show, the evidence points to this being the case, particularly with Ghislaine’s entry into New York’s elite social circles having been planned by her father before his 1991 death. Of course, those social connections in New York, as well as those in Europe and elsewhere, would prove instrumental in the operation and protection of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual trafficking and blackmail network. Ghislaine’s slippery behavior in the years that followed, including activities both related and unrelated to the sex trafficking of minors, show that Ghislaine inherited much more than her personality from her father as she, along with several of her siblings, played a key role in keeping alive various aspects of her father’s legacy, including his espionage activities.
Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for Mint Press News. She currently writes for The Last American Vagabond.
RUSSIA AND ISRAEL – A DOUBLE-STANDARD IN INTERNATIONAL CONDEMNATION
By GAVIN O’REILLY | Blacklisted News | December 15, 2021
Over the past month, in a break from its usual focus on COVID-19, the Western mainstream media has dedicated a sizeable amount of coverage to unverified claims by unnamed US intelligence officials that the Russian Federation is planning an imminent military invasion of its western neighbour Ukraine – under the rule of the successive US-EU friendly governments of Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky since 2014, when the CIA-orchestrated Euromaidan colour revolution toppled the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych, following his November 2013 decision to suspend an EU trade deal in favour of pursuing closer ties with Moscow.
The coverage, which comes at a time of increased tensions in Eastern Europe amidst a build-up of refugees on the Belarus-Poland border being labelled as an attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko to destabilise the European Union, has resulted in widespread condemnation of Moscow by the Western media and political establishment, culminating in the G7 issuing a statement on Saturday threatening massive sanctions should Russia make any incursion into Ukraine – Russia having been a former member of the then-G8 until the successful reunification of the historically Russian peninsula of Crimea with the rest of the country in 2014, the pretext for which being the dangerously high anti-Russian sentiment of the newly-formed Western-backed Poroshenko government, resulted in Moscow’s suspension from the forum, with a later decision being made by the Kremlin in 2017 to formally leave the group altogether.
This widespread condemnation of Russia by the Western establishment however, for claims that Moscow itself has denied, is in stark contrast to the silence of mainstream media pundits and politicians in response to Israel’s open threats to carry out a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities amidst the current Vienna talks regarding the Iran nuclear deal, with Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz announcing less than 24 hours prior to the G7’s Russia statement that he had consulted with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding such a move – one that in a similar vein to any possible Russian incursion into Ukraine, would immediately result in a devastating regional conflict, a conflict that could easily spiral into a full-blown war between East and West.
To understand this wildly-differing approach to both Moscow and Tel Aviv by the Western political and media establishment, one must look at the wider geopolitical relationship between the US-NATO hegemony and both Russia and Israel.
Formed in 1948, in line with the 1917 UK-authored Balfour Declaration, which called for the establishment of a Zionist State in the Middle East, Israel has always received military, financial and political support from the United States and its allies – culminating in a US-led coalition invading Iraq on behalf of Israel in 2003, which in turn would lead to Washington and its allies launching a regime-change operation against neighbouring Syria in 2011, with Damascus, like Baghdad, also being a long-time opponent of the Zionist State.
Russia on the other hand, and in particular since the election of Vladimir Putin as President in 2000, has been diametrically opposed to this US-NATO foreign policy carried out in line with Israeli interests – with a Russian military intervention on behalf of the Syrian government in 2015 perhaps playing the most decisive role in ensuring the Presidency of Bashar al-Assad has remained in place despite the decade-long attempt to remove his leadership via a US and Israeli-backed colour revolution.
The aforementioned 2014 reunification of Russia and Crimea also put a halt to the Neocon aim of establishing a US Naval base in the key strategic Crimean port of Sevastopol – a plan that would have surely come to fruition had Crimea remained under the pro-Western rule of the current Kiev administration.
Hence, it is in this successful countering of US-NATO imperialism that Russia finds itself demonised by the West and the target of a current smear campaign accusing Moscow of planning to start a global conflict via a military intervention in Ukraine – in stark contrast to the media silence and tacit political support offered to US-ally Israel in response to its open intentions of carrying out the very same action in Iran.
Israeli official calls for demolition of Palestine homes in Area C
MEMO | December 14, 2021
The Chairman of Israel’s Yesha Council, David Elhayani, yesterday called for the demolition of 95,000 Palestinian homes built in recent years in the so-called ‘Area C’ of the occupied West Bank.
“We need to stop thinking about what the Palestinians are doing and start thinking about what we have to do. Israel knows how to deal with illegal construction, as it did after approving the Kaminitz Law,” Elhayani was quoted by Channel 7 as saying.
The Kaminitz Law, an amendment to the Planning and Building Law of 1965, stipulates increasing Palestinian home demolitions and further criminalisation of what Israel calls “unauthorised housing and construction” in the occupied West Bank.
“The heads of settlement councils are abandoned in the campaign against Palestinian construction, and we do not have the legal tools to deal with the seizure that takes place against us,” the settlements official added.
Area C, which makes up about 60 per cent of the occupied Palestinian territory, is under both Israel’s military and administrative control as per the Oslo Accords. It is also the site of the majority of the more than 200 illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, where more than 400,000 settlers live.
PA condemns Israeli killing of a Palestinian man
WAFA | December 13, 2021
RAMALLAH – Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh and the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates today condemned the Israeli killing late last night of Jamil Kayyal, 31, in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
“The crime of executing the young man, Kayyal, in Nablus is appalling and reflects the doctrine of murder that articulates the ideology and behavior of the leaders of the military establishment of the (Israeli) occupying state,” said Shtayyeh in a statement, calling on international human rights organizations to condemn the killing, “which is one more of many crimes of the occupation against our people.”
The Foreign Ministry said “this crime is one episode in the series of field executions carried out by the occupying forces in accordance with the instructions and directives of the political and military levels in the occupation state, which allow and facilitate the shooting by soldiers and others members of the occupation of the Palestinian and treat him as a practice target that can allow killing him without conscience, morals or law.”
It added, “These crimes also reflect the racist culture of the occupation that dominates the decision-making centers of the occupying state.”
While holding Israel fully responsible for this crime, the Foreign Ministry called on the International Criminal Court to speed up its war crime investigation of Israel to force it to immediately stop its crimes and start investigating the violation of its forces and colonial settlers.
Kayyal was killed late last night during an Israeli army incursion into Nablus to arrest a local activist. Two others were injured when run over by an army vehicle.
The city of Nablus today observed a general strike against the killing of Kayyal, who was later buried in a mass funeral in his hometown.
Eight Palestinian students from Al-Najah University seized by Israeli occupation forces
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | December 12, 2021
On Thursday, 9 December, Israeli occupation forces seized eight Palestinian students at An-Najah National University after raiding their homes in pre-dawn invasions. Following the arrests, occupation forces then sent threatening text messages to fellow students at the university, warning them that they too would be arrested if they participated in the activities of the Islamic Bloc or other student blocs at the university.
The students seized by the Israeli occupation forces were: Hamza Tabanja, Hassan Tuffaha, Omar Shaksheer, Ayoub Dwaikat, Ibrahim Dwaikat, Ibrahim Abed, Anas Shtayyeh and Ibrahim Shalhoub. Several of the detained students had previously been jailed by the Israeli occupation and accused of participating in the activities of the Islamic Bloc.
Hundreds of Palestinian students are routinely detained by the Israeli occupation, especially those who are part of student organizations involved with campus political life. At Bir Zeit University alone, approximately 74 students were detained by occupation soldiers during the 2019-2020 academic year. They are among nearly 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners jailed by Israel. The work of student organizing, from holding book fairs to organizing events and participating in student elections, is criminalized by the Israeli occupation. Still more students are detained for joining demonstrations or posting on their social media profiles.
Palestinian students have been seized by Israeli occupation forces and abducted for their participation in the student movement in their homes, at their workplaces and on their campuses.
Once arrested, Palestinian students are routinely subjected to torture under interrogation — subjected to stress positions and stretched out over chairs, suspended from walls and forced to stand on tiptoe, deprived of sleep, cuffed and pressured on injured limbs, and beaten.
One of the most common charges is “membership in a prohibited organization,” typically referring to the student blocs. These represent the full spectrum of Palestinian politics. They organize lectures, book fairs, rallies and other campus events and participate in student elections. The charge sheets often refer to these standard activities of campus life, which are widely interpreted as a barometer for broader Palestinian political opinion.
These are not isolated cases, but a direct and collective violation of Palestinian students’ right to education, as affirmed in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The targeted repression of students is just one facet of Israel’s crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people. … Full article
Details of massacres against Palestinians revealed in classified Israeli documents
![An elderly Palestinian and a child during the Nakba [Hanini/Wikipedia]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2018-10-6_nakbaOldman_girl_nakba.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1)
An elderly Palestinian and a child can be seen during the Nakba in 1948 [Hanini/Wikipedia]
MEMO | December 10, 2021
Israeli government discussions on the massacres perpetrated by Israeli soldiers in 1948 were declassified for the first time this week in an investigative report published by Haaretz and the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research.
Entitled, Classified Docs Reveal Massacres of Palestinians in ’48 – and What Israeli Leaders Knew, the report exposes two large-scale operations launched by the army in October 1948, one based in the south, known as Operation Yoav, which opened a road to the Negev; and another in the north, Operation Hiram.
As part of the latter, within 30 hours Israeli soldiers attacked dozens of Palestinian villages, forcefully expelling tens of thousands of Palestinian residents, while thousands of others fled.
Nearly 120,000 Palestinians, including the elderly, women and children resided in the area, however, following Israel’s massacre only 30,000 Palestinians were left.
“Within less than three days, the IDF [army] had conquered the Galilee and also extended its reach into villages in southern Lebanon. The overwhelming majority of them took no part in the fighting,” reported Haaretz.
The investigation also revealed accounts regarding previously unknown massacres that took place in the villages of Al-Reineh, just north of Nazareth, Meron and in Al-Burj.
Before the brutal attacks against Palestinians during Operation Hiram, the village of Al-Burj, presently known as Modi’in Illit, a large ultra-Orthodox settlement in the occupied West Bank, was raided in July 1948.
According to a document found in the Yad Yaari Archive, four elderly men remained in the village after its capture. “Hajj Ibrahim, who helped out in the military kitchen, a sick elderly woman and another elderly man and elderly woman.”
Eight days after the village was raided by Israeli occupation forces, Ibrahim was sent on an errand to pick vegetables by an Israeli soldier, in order to keep him away from the atrocity the soldiers were ready to commit.
“The three others were taken to an isolated house. Afterward an anti-tank shell was fired. When the shell missed the target, six hand grenades were thrown into the house. They killed an elderly man and woman, and the elderly woman was put to death with a firearm,” according to the document.
“Afterward they torched the house and burned the three bodies. When Hajj Ibrahim returned with his guard, he was told that the three others had been sent to the hospital in Ramallah. Apparently he didn’t believe the story, and a few hours later he too was put to death, with four bullets,” added the document.
The declassified State Archives also consist of several pages of minutes from those years, including the testimony of Shmuel Mikunis, a member of the Provisional State Council (predecessor to the Knesset) from the Communist Party, who reported on the atrocities perpetrated in the Meron region.
Mikunis requested clarification from former Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion about acts that had been carried out by members of the Jewish terrorist group, Irgun.
According to the declassified documents, “A. They annihilated with a machine gun 35 Arabs who had surrendered to that company with a white flag in their hands. B. They took as captives peaceful residents, among them women and children, ordered them to dig a pit, pushed them into it with long French bayonets and shot the unfortunates until they were all murdered. There was even a woman with an infant in her arms. C. Arab children of about 13-14 who were playing with grenades were all shot. D. A girl of about 19-20 was raped by men from Altalena [an Irgun unit]; afterward she was stabbed with a bayonet and a wooden stick was thrust into her body.”
The declassified documents, investigated in Haartez’s report also includes details on the Hula massacre in Lebanon and the depopulated Palestinian village of Deir Yassin. Though the report is lengthy, the paper highlights that many more details remain unknown; “This is not surprising, considering how much material remains locked away in the archives,” it explained.
Watchdog urged to investigate Jewish charity over ‘political’ activities
MEMO | December 8, 2021
Pro-Palestine campaigners have called on the charities regulator, the Charity Commission, to launch an urgent investigation into the activities of a pro-Zionist lobby group after it falsely accused anti-Israel demonstrators of extremism, racism, and intimidation at a recent protest rally.
The Community Security Trust attempted to turn what was a peaceful anti-Israel protest against the presence of Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, at a university event last month into a panic about anti-Semitism.
The CST is a registered charity that ostensibly exists to “provide safety, security, and advice to the Jewish community in the UK”. However, rather than serving this purpose it routinely engages in political activities designed to protect the state of Israel from criticism and censure.
The latest evidence of this came at a debate hosted by the London School of Economics Debating Society on Tuesday 9 November 2021. This was a peaceful protest that attracted scores of students and others from all backgrounds, with many wishing to express their opposition to racist Israeli policies that have seen Palestinians dispossessed and oppressed for over 70 years.
Although the event passed off peacefully without any arrests the CST has since made unsubstantiated allegations about supposed anti-Semitism amongst the protestors and about the threat these types of protests pose to Jewish students, deliberately conflating anti-Israel activity with anti-Semitism. The CST has increasingly relied on this false equivalence to demonise anti-Israel campaigners, attempting to damage their credibility using the charge of racism.
The letter reminds the Charity Commission of its differential treatment of Jewish and Muslim charities. In recent years the watchdog has been at pains to remind Muslim charities to steer clear of taking positions on the Palestine issue, but it appears to have given the CST a free pass to support Israel, using underhand methods if desired.
The signatories call on the Charity Commission to launch an investigation into the CST which they say has breached the code on charities engaging in political activity, spreading racial hatred, and the requirement to remain impartial. The full letter can be read here.
IHRC Chair Massoud Shadjareh said: “It would seem that in the eyes of CST there is no good pro-Palestinian and everybody who opposes Israel’s subjugation of Palestinians is fair game for demonisation. This latest episode highlights once again how CST primarily behaves as an apologist for apartheid and a brutal illegal occupation.”
Palestine Action Activists Found NOT GUILTY After Defacing Israeli Arms Company In UK
Palestine Action | December 6, 2021
Three Palestine Action activists, dubbed the ‘Elbit Three’, have today been found not guilty of criminal damage charges in a trial taking place at Newcastle-under-Lyme Magistrates Court. The trial, which commenced on Friday 3rd December, saw Elbit Systems and the Crown Prosecution Service attempt to criminalise individuals who took a stand against the manufacture of drones and drone parts. The products manufactured at the site of the protest, the UAV Engines factory in Shenstone, Staffordshire, are key components for a range of Elbit’s combat drones, used extensively by Israel for bombardments of Gazan civilians.
Elbit Systems are Israel’s largest private arms company, supplying 85% of Israel’s drone fleet. Their Hermes drones, manufactured with UK-made components, are regularly deployed in bombardments of Gaza, with Elbit also supplying a range of surveillance equipment, armaments, and specialist military technologies for the Israeli military and police. Palestine Action have undertaken a campaign of sustained direct action against Elbit Systems – across their 10 sites in the UK – with this action in Shenstone having occured in January 2021, six months since Palestine Action launched. Despite many dozens of actions taken, and over £15,000,000 in damages caused (according to police), this is the first time that activists had faced trial, with all previous charges having been dropped in the run-up to trial dates.
The presiding judge, Judge Waites, stated that the Crown had failed to prove that convicting the defendents would be proportionate with their freedom to protest. He stated further points which included: Palestine is an important issue, the arms trade is an important issue, the defendants believed in what they were doing, and the location was specifically chosen. These are the points that Palestine Action has long stated: through targetted and deliberate direct action, individuals can make a measured impact on the lives of civilians in Palestine by disrupting and undermining Israel’s arms trade.
This verdict represents a serious defeat for Elbit Systems, who have long maintained that their business is lawful and that they are therefore to be protected from such actions. This belief has been shared by the British state: the police have offered a round-the-clock rapid response and extensive protection to Elbit’s death factories, and the CPS have attempted to prosecute those who take a stand against Elbit’s business of bloodshed.
The defence, represented by Palestinian barrister Mira Hammad and Richard Brigden of Garden Court North (instructed by Kelly’s solicitors), presented their case that the action taken was to prevent a greater crime. An activist involved in the trial elaborated, stating that the action was taken to shut down the factory for one day in an attempt to stem the flow of drones and stop the bombings. They stated that Elbit provide 85% of Israel’s drones, with Elbit describing themselves as the ‘backbone’ of the Israeli airforce, adding that there is extensive documentation of the drones being used for attacks on the civil population of Gaza. They stated that this is not only during intensive military excursions, but also for extrajudicial killings and indescriminate bombings – with Elbit drones being linked directly to the killing of four children playing on a beach in Gaza in 2014.
Another activist, Sarah, later stated that:
“Throwing this paint may not protect Gaza. What protects Gaza is stopping the bombing. Elbit produce weapons, tanks and drones used to commit crimes against humanity, and this is what is unlawful. Export licenses should not be granted while Elbit continue to violate human rights. In the face of these crimes, you have to do something. If you do nothing, then Elbit continues to make its smart weaponry which enables Israel to kill efficiently. Elbit has no business being allowed to be in the UK. It has no values that are shared with humanity”. Following this, a standing ovation was given from the public gallery.
Is Israel a ‘Sick Society’?
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 6, 2021
For whatever reason, some mistakenly perceive the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, as liberal, progressive, and even ‘pro-Palestinian’. Of course, none of this is true. This misconstrued depiction of an essentially Zionist and anti-Palestinian newspaper tells of a much bigger story of how confusing Israeli politics is, and how equally confused many of us are in understanding the Israeli political discourse.
On 28 November, newly-elected Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, stormed the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Palestinian city of Al-Khalil (Hebron) with hundreds of soldiers and many illegal Jewish settlers, including the who’s who of Israel’s extremists.
The scene was reminiscent of a similar occurrence where late Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, had stormed, along with thousands of soldiers and police officers, the Haram Sharif Compound in occupied East Jerusalem in September 2000. It was this particular event that unleashed the second Palestinian uprising, Intifada (2000-05), which led to the killing of thousands.
Herzog’s gesture of solidarity with the Kiryat Arba settlers was identical to Sharon’s earlier gesture, also made to win the approval of Israel’s burgeoning and influential right-wing extremists.
Only a few months ago, Haaretz had described Herzog as a “centrist, soft-spoken, ‘no drama'” person who had, at times, “felt out of place on Israel’s stormy and fractured political battlefield”. According to Haaretz, Herzog “may be exactly what Israel needs.”
But is this really the case? Marvel at some of the statements made by Herzog as he visited a site where twenty-nine Palestinians were massacred by a Kiryat Arba extremist, Baruch Goldstein, and where many more were shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the aftermath of the tragic event. Not only did many Israelis celebrate the memory of Goldstein with a shrine befitting of heroes and saints, but many of Herzog’s companions during the provocative ‘visit’ are ardent followers of the Israeli Jewish terrorist.
“We have to continue dreaming of peace,” Herzog declared while marking the first night of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah inside the Ibrahimi Mosque compound, which was previously emptied of its Muslim worshippers. Proudly, he “condemn(ed) any form of hatred or violence”. Meanwhile, hundreds of Israeli soldiers were terrorising 35,000 inhabitants of the old city of Al-Khalil. These Palestinians, who suffer daily violence at the hands of nearly 800 armed Jewish settlers in Kiryat Arba, along with an equal number of Israeli soldiers, were all locked in. Their shops were closed, their life was put on hold, their walls covered with racist graffiti.
“If he had walked around the corner,” the Israeli news website 972Mag reported referring to the Israeli president, “Herzog might have seen the graffiti on the walls reading ‘gas the Arabs.’
Chances are Herzog already understands – in fact, supports – such racism; after all, he was joined by the likes of Eliyahu Libman, who heads Kiryat Arba regional council, and Hillel Horowitz, the leader of the Jewish settlers of Al-Khalil. It is these two men who preach extremism and violence against the Palestinians as a matter of course. Aside from hosting the Goldstein grave and shrine, the settlement has a park that carries the name of Meir Kahane, the spiritual leader of Israel’s most violent extremists.
In an emotional speech given by Horowitz in the company of Herzog, the settler leader announced that the Israeli president’s violent storming of the Ibrahimi Mosque “reminds us that we did not take the land of foreigners.” He followed with “Your visit here strengthens our mission.”
From Horowitz, Libman, and their ilk’s point of view, their ‘mission’ has been a great success. They have managed to steer Israeli politics almost entirely towards the right. Even the “centrist, soft-spoken” president is now fully embracing their sinister mission.
But will Haaretz acknowledge this reality? That the ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ editorial line they have allegedly championed for many years has completely failed, and purposely so, to depict the truth about Israel?
Compare Haaretz‘s positive portrayal of Herzog with their coverage of the former right-wing Israeli President, Reuven Litvin. The latter, on various occasions, and rightly so, was criticised for his pro-Likud political line and for his divisive role that contributed to an already fragmented Israeli political scene. But when Rivlin, in October 2014, had declared that “Israeli society is sick, and it is our duty to treat this disease,” a Haaretz columnist lashed out suggesting that “Rivlin’s comments are positively bursting with Jew-hatred”.
“First he called Jewish society ‘sick’ – dredging up anti-Semitic tropes about Jews as carriers of cultural and ideological disease. Then he asked whether Jews are ‘decent human beings’: Questioning their humanity itself,” the article argued.
Of course, the sickness of “violence, hostility, bullying, (and) racism”, that Rivlin had then pointed out, is very much real. Other symptoms of this horrible disease also include military occupation, apartheid, and genocidal violence like that frequently meted out against the besieged Gaza Strip.
While this Israeli ‘disease’ is becoming common knowledge globally, with such organisations as Human Rights Watch and many others describing it in the most honest and blunt terms, the vast majority of Israeli society, including their representatives and their ‘soft-spoken’ president, remain blind to it, shielded from the truth by their own hubris, infatuated with their military power and intoxicated by the humiliation and violence to which Palestinians are subjected to, in Al-Khalil, in Gaza, in Jerusalem, and throughout occupied Palestine.
There are no indications that Israeli society, government, and media – ‘liberal’ or right-wing – will, on their own, develop the necessary antibodies that will cure the disease of racism, military occupation, and apartheid. Yes, it will ultimately be the Palestinian resistance that will make the decisive difference of holding Israel accountable. But that can only happen when the international community takes a courageous stance in advocating Palestinian rights and unconditionally supporting the Palestinian quest for freedom.
Whether right-wing, left-wing, or centre, Israel is committed to its military superiority, its racism, and to the military occupation more than ever before. The sooner we accept this fact, and quit subscribing to the illusion that change in Israel will happen from within, the sooner the Palestinian people will finally achieve the justice they need and deserve.
The Kurdish project in Syria would be a new Israel in the Middle East
By Eva Bartlett | RT | December 2, 2021
Syrians accuse the Western-backed Kurdish enclave in the country of using ethnic cleansing and child soldiers against them to form a new anti-Arab state. The parallels with Israel’s creation in the 1940s are striking.
Kurdish forces in Syria have been lauded by many in the West as being fighters for freedom and an autonomous society. But, unless you’ve been following independent researchers and the Syrian media, you might be unaware of the crimes the US-backed group have been committing over a number of years.
On November 25, the Daily Sabah (a website not sympathetic to the Syrian government) reported on one of their most sickening practices. It revealed, “YPG/PKK terrorists detained three more 15-year-old girls – Hediyye Abdurrahim Anter, Evin Jalal Halil and Ayana Idris Ibrahim – in Amuda in Hassakeh province on Nov. 21 to forcibly recruit them as ‘child fighters.’ The terror group detained two children, aged 13 and 16, in early August. And two children aged 16 and 13 were kidnapped Aug. 23.”
The piece went on to note that this practice of abducting children and forcing them to fight has been documented by the United Nations, with one report stating that the YPG/PKK used more than 400 children between July 2018 and June 2020.
Yet, the world has been led to believe that the self-declared autonomous region – known as Rojava and comprising areas of Hassakeh, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and Aleppo governorates – is a haven for liberals and feminists, with freedom-loving Kurdish fighters based there fighting ISIS and liberating Syria.
Indeed, the YPG Rojava page claims: “The YPG was set up to protect the legacy and values of the people of Rojava and is founded on the principles of the paradigm of a democratic society, ecology and woman’s liberation. Without preferring or discriminating any religion, language, nation, gender or political parties, the YPG is protecting the country against all attacks from outside. The YPG is the Democratic Nation’s defense force and is not related to any political party.”
It reads like a feelgood fairytale, but is not based in reality.
The utopian image of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which includes the YPG and PKK, is betrayed by the kidnappings, which sadly are not a new development. Search for QSD – their Arabic acronym – on Syrian media and you’ll see regular updates on Kurdish forces kidnapping civilians and journalists.
This image is further betrayed by their ethnic cleansing of indigenous Syrians from the northeastern Syrian regions Kurdish forces occupy and collaboration with illegally occupying US forces.
But this won’t be highlighted in corporate media. Instead, you will still find odes romanticizing Kurdish fighters, with one such recent story deceptively saying that the areas controlled by Kurdish forces have a “predominantly Kurdish population” – a claim not backed up by the truth.
As author Stephen Gowans detailed in a 2017 article, Kurds in Syria comprise, “only a small percentage of the Syrian population… Estimates of the proportion of the total Kurd population living in Syria vary from two to seven percent based on population figures presented in the CIA World Factbook.”
And yet, Assyrians, Arameans, and other Syrians who have lived there for generations should accept being ruled, or expelled, by Kurds?
Gowans went on to note, “Kurdish fighters have used the campaign against ISIS as an opportunity to extend Kurdistan into traditionally Arab territories in which Kurds have never been in the majority.”
In 2018, Syrian journalist Sarah Abed wrote of the SDF’s kidnapping and ethnic cleansing, noting not only the abductions of men, but, again, children. She recorded how Eddie Gaboro Hanna, the founder of Patriarchal Relief Care Australia, a group providing assistance to Christian families impacted by wars in Syria and Iraq, had explained, “They are taking young Christian boys by force to sign them up for the Kurdish military and send them to the front line.”
And he added, “Christians are treated as second-class citizens [here] in their own land. Just like how ISIS has the Islamic tax they have their own Kurdish one. They’ve replaced ISIS.”
Although the BBC’s coverage of the Kurds’ activities in Syria is predictably pro-SDF, in 2015, even it reported on their ethnic cleansing and displacing of indigenous Syrians. Citing an Amnesty International report, it noted the YPG were accused of “razing entire villages after capturing them from Islamic State (IS),” in Hassakeh and Raqqa provinces.
The Kurds’ history in Syria
In January 2019, I spoke with geopolitical analyst and Sputnik contributor Laith Marouf about the Kurds in Syria. A descendant of eastern Syria’s Deir ez-Zor governorate, part of which is now occupied by Kurds, Marouf had a lot to say about the history of the Kurds in Syria and this 21st century land-usurpation project.
He told me, “There was a wave of Kurdish refugees coming down to Syria (from Turkey) in the 1940s, and the second wave of them in the 1960s when the PKK started the armed rebellion against the Turkish government in what was Arab lands.”
“They were given citizenship by the Syrian government. They were armed and given protection by the Syrian state to fight for their liberation in the Kurdistan mountains in Turkey, and the Syrian government housed the leadership of all the Kurdish resistance up until the early 90s.”
Marouf noted that Syria’s support for the Kurds saw Turkey threatening to invade in the 1990s and building numerous dams on the Euphrates, cutting the water flow. Yet, Syria refused to hand over PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. Marouf emphasized: “Syria almost went to war with Turkey, and the Syrian people (in the northeast) went thirsty and the agricultural fields—the breadbasket of Syria—almost collapsed those couple of years, to protect Kurdish rights.”
“And then what happens now is some crazies are saying there’s something called Rojava and that they can secede and colonize and settle and steal parts of Syrian lands.”
He, too, spoke of the years of kidnappings and disappearances of those critical of Kurdish rule. “Even Kurdish Syrians that are critical of what the YPG is doing, even remotely critical professors in the universities in Hassakeh and Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, were disappeared. And these were just critical Kurds.
“So you could imagine what happened to the Assyrian and the Arab leaders in the area, thinkers, tribal leaders, ex-military – huge amounts of disappearances and forced displacements.”
And as Abed’s article highlighted, formerly Assyrian villages in Hassakeh and Raqqa have been fully taken over by Kurdish forces. “They’re moving in the Kurdish militias and their family members into those villages and creating new ethnically pure towns and villages that are Kurdish. And this is expanding to the holdings of the Syrian churches and their Armenian churches, they confiscated all their land.”
So much, then, for the Rojava “legacy and values” that included “without preferring or discriminating any religion, language, nation, gender or political parties.”
Marouf also said, “They have enforced an educational curriculum on all the schools—including schools that are run by ethnic and/or religious groups – so all those that are run by the churches are being told that they have to teach a certain curriculum that specifically promotes and propagates falsehoods about the Kurdish control of the area.”
“When the Assyrians refused, because these are their own private schools that are controlled by the church, the YPG went ahead and shut down all the schools, with armed men making sure the kids cannot go to school.”
The ethnic cleansing and forced expulsion of indigenous people sounds horribly familiar, as Marouf pointed out. “So, the reality is that we have an ethno-nationalist settler colonial state being enforced by the empire, called Rojava – and it’s being sold the exact way that Israel was being sold in the 1940s. It’s like cut and paste propaganda saying that we’re creating a utopia of secular and socialist government in the ‘sea of barbaric Arabs.’”
Over the years, I’ve had Rojava supporters criticize me for respecting Syria’s sovereignty and speaking critically about the West’s attempt to overthrow the Syrian government. Instead, according to them, I should have been supporting this false utopia which has killed and displaced many. To them, I say you have been deluded, as much of the Western left has on Syria.
And you can rest assured that had it been Syria committing these crimes, the media would be reporting loudly and regularly. But because they are being carried out by puppets of the West, all is quiet on that front.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
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