How Israel Silences Palestine in EU Circles
By Issam Aruri | IMEMC | July 18, 2018
The Israeli propaganda machine works internationally to undermine the role of Palestinian NGOs which disclose Israeli violations of international law, and maintain the well-being of Palestinian people.
Imagine the following: a toxic op-ed is published that defames your organisation. You contact the website on which it features and are invited to publish a rebuttal.
The next day, you submit your article. As the editors are about to put it online, they are targeted by a sophisticated disinformation campaign.
More than a dozen people call the editors, seemingly on your behalf, and apply heavy pressure to publish the article. One of the callers even tries to bribe them to get it published.
This confuses and intimidates the editors, who have never experienced anything like it.
They fear that publishing under pressure may damage the independence and reputation of their website, which is a news magazine for the European Parliament.
The editors contact you and you clarify right away that none of these calls originated from your organisation. You urge them to publish your article, as they had promised. But despite your repeated requests, they don’t do so. They don’t even respond anymore to your phone calls and emails.
This is what recently happened to the Palestinian NGO network PNGO, which is an umbrella of 134 civil society organisations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The op-ed in question was mine, which I had submitted to a Brussels-based website called EP Today.
According to its own information, EP Today is “designed only” for policy opinions by members of the European Parliament. On 26 February, however, it published a slanderous op-ed by NGO Monitor that targeted PNGO.
NGO Monitor is an Israeli right-wing organisation that cooperates with the Israeli government in undermining NGOs that criticise Israel’s violations of human rights and international law.
It constantly attacks Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and dozens of other human rights and civil society organisations, including Israeli NGOs. PNGO is high on its target list.
In its article, NGO Monitor provided false and misleading information about PNGO’s mission and conduct.
While PNGO is a catalyst for a vibrant civil society in Palestine, NGO Monitor framed PNGO as a “ring leader” of a “gang” of NGOs that shrink Palestinian civil space.
Can’t be ignored
For a long time, we ignored organisations like NGO Monitor that provide cover for the Israeli occupation. But this time, we decided to submit a rebuttal to this toxic propaganda.
As mentioned above, EP Today violated its promise and didn’t publish our rebuttal. To make things worse, our article was apparently forwarded to NGO Monitor, which allegedly tried to prevent its publication.
An editor we spoke to implied this, with reference to one member of EP Today’s board of directors, who seems to have ties to NGO Monitor. This would constitute grave professional misconduct, calling into question EP Today’s independence and integrity.
In any case, we won’t be silenced. Our rebuttal of NGO Monitor’s propaganda, titled “What Europe can do to defend civil space: a response by the Palestinian NGO Network”, is now available for everyone, after we published it on our website.
Meanwhile, our real concern is not the article.
What troubles and burdens us is the big picture: the all-out attack that the Israeli government and its affiliated organisations such as NGO Monitor have launched against Palestinian human rights defenders.
Shrinking space for civil society is a global phenomenon. However, the threat it poses in Palestine has an extra dimension: Israel’s strangling military occupation, which began more than 51 years ago.
As a result of the occupation, Palestinians live without a sovereign government, without basic protection and in a fragile economy that heavily relies on international aid.
In this context, PNGO’s member organisations play a crucial and indispensable role in providing services and in preserving social cohesion.
Israel’s attack on us aims to neutralise NGOs that expose its violations of international law and to break the backbone of Palestinian society at large. The attack is meant to sustain and entrench the occupation.
Our reality
The reality in which we live is this: We face draconian digital surveillance and interference by Israel, which violates our fundamental privacy and obstructs our work.
I suspect this triggered the disinformation campaign described above (see AP’s article for more: “Covertly, Israel prepares to fight boycott activists online”).
Like NGO Monitor, the Israeli government engages in smear campaigns against Palestinian NGOs.
For example, on 1 July 2017, Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon branded our members Al-Haq and Al-Mezan as “supporters of terror”, based on false allegations that they have ties to Hamas and the PFLP.
Al-Haq and Al-Mezan are internationally renowned human rights organisations.
Most recently, the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs published a slanderous report that contains similar allegations and aggressively accuses the EU of funding Palestinian and European NGOs that sponsor terror and promote Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS – the Palestinian-led global campaign putting pressure on Israel to end its violations of international law).
Indeed, blocking EU funding to Palestinian NGOs is Israel’s declared goal.
In 2015 and 2016, the director and a staff member of Al-Haq received ongoing death threats.
In response to the threats against the staff member, who is based in The Netherlands and Al-Haq’s representative to the International Criminal Court, the Dutch authorities opened a criminal investigation.
While official results are pending, all indications point in Israel’s direction.
PNGO and the Palestinian Human Rights Organisations Council (PHROC) have compiled their concerns about the escalating campaign to silence, delegitimise and defund Palestinian civil society organisations and human rights defenders in a joint position paper, including recommendations to the EU.
For decades, the EU has invested into civil society organisations in Israel and Palestine that promote its core values “on the ground”. The support and protection of human rights defenders is a declared priority of the EU, as also displayed by the guidelines it adopted in 2008 to that end.
On 3 October 2017, in a comprehensive resolution, the European Parliament sounded alarm about the shrinking space for civil society and called “for continued and increased EU support and funding in creating a free and enabling environment for civil society.”
This is the time to act on these commitments.
We rely on the EU to shield us from Israel’s campaign to destroy Palestinian civil society, which has spread to Europe and is reinforced by organisations like NGO Monitor that are designed to shrink our space.
~EU Observer/Days of Palestine
Issam Aruri is the chair of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organisations Network (PNGO), an umbrella of 134 civil society organisations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that promote the rights and well-being of the Palestinian people.
Russia swats away Israeli bluster on Syria
By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | July 25, 2018
The Russian version of the visit by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov to West Jerusalem on July 23 became available, finally, on Wednesday in the nature of a terse TASS report quoting a ‘military-diplomatic’ source in Moscow as saying that the visiting Russian officials “looked into the tasks of completing the anti-terrorist operation in Syria’s South.”
An unnamed Israeli official had earlier floated a story that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did some tough talking with Lavrov and “rebuffed” a Russian offer to create a 100-kilometre buffer zone adjacent to Golan Heights. Netanyahu reportedly insisted that he won’t be satisfied with anything short of Iran ending its presence in Syria conclusively.
The first indication that the talks didn’t go well came when Israel shot down a Syrian jet on July 24 in Quneitra bordering Golan. It was a calculated act of belligerence by Israel. (The Islamic State fighters who are present in the region have since released the photograph of the wreckage and the mutilated body of the Syrian pilot.)
The TASS report today punctures the Israeli version that the two Russian officials were deputed by President Vladimir Putin specially to discuss with Netanyahu the future of Iranian presence in Syria. (It now transpires that the Russian officials were on a tour of Israel, Germany and France.) The Israeli bravado can only be seen as a desperate ploy to cover up its humiliating defeat in Syria with the terrorist groups that were its proxies surrendering lock, stock and barrel in Daraa and Quneitra to the Syrian-Russian forces – especially the hasty exfiltration of the controversial group known as the White Helmets to Jordan via Golan Heights with the logistical help from the Israeli military.
Quite obviously, Moscow does not want to get entangled in the Israel-Iran tensions. This is also the American assessment of the Russian thinking, as articulated by the Director of the National Intelligence Agency Daniel Coats on Thursday:
“We have assessed that it’s unlikely Russia has the will or the capability to fully implement and counter Iranian decisions and influence (in Syria.) Russia would have to make significantly greater commitments [in Syria] from a military standpoint, from an economic standpoint. We don’t assess that they’re keen to do that.”
Nonetheless, the Israeli propaganda has gone overboard in attempting to create a wedge between Russia and Iran. (Read a fine piece, here, by Moon of Alabama on the Israeli disinformation campaign.) This couldn’t have gone down well in Moscow. At any rate, the Russian Foreign Ministry came out on July 24 with some sharp criticism of the move by the Israeli parliament (six days earlier) to adopt a bill known as Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People.
The operation by the Syrian forces (backed by Russian allies) to liberate Quneitra succeeded beyond expectations once Washington signaled that the extremist groups entrenched in the southern provinces bordering Jordan and Israel should not expect any American intervention to bail them out.
Damascus is now turning its attention to the liberation of the northwestern province of Idlib. It will be a major confrontation due to the presence of a large number of foreign terrorists in Northwestern Syria. The Iranian media reported that a Russian flag ship Ro-Ro Sparta was spotted crossing the Bosporus en route to Syria’s Tartus, carrying military cargo mostly ammunition, shells and missiles and that the reinforcements are meant for the Syrian Army’s “upcoming assault” on Idlib province.
Freedom Flotilla Boat to Gaza, Al-Awda, hijacked by Israeli occupation forces
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – July 29, 2018
The motor vessel Al Awda (The Return), traveling in international waters towards Palestinian waters, 49 nautical miles from the port in Gaza City, has been contacted by the Israeli Occupation Forces navy and warned. The Israeli navy claims our ship is breaking international law and threatens that they will use “any measures necessary” to stop us. In fact, the only “necessary measures” would be to end the blockade of Gaza and restore freedom of movement for all Palestinians. At last news from on board, Al Awda maintains her course towards Gaza, where the crew and participants hope to arrive this evening around 21:00 local time.
A number of warships have appeared, so an attack, boarding and capture appear to be imminent, and we anticipate that all communications with the vessel will be lost shortly.
Al Awda is sailing under a Norwegian flag, carrying 22 people and a cargo of medical supplies, including #Gauze4Gaza. Passengers and crew on board are from 16 nations, including human rights supporters, journalists and crew, along with €13,000 worth of urgently needed medical supplies. The boat itself, a former fishing vessel from Norway, is a gift to Palestinian fishers in Gaza.
Four boats left Scandinavia in mid-May and have since stopped in 28 ports building support for a ‘Just Future for Palestine’, that demands Israel end its ongoing breaches of international law and the twelve-year blockade of Gaza, thereby enabling the only closed port in the Mediterranean to open and for people to have their right to freedom of movement.
Al Awda is being followed by the Swedish-flagged yacht, Freedom, which is also carrying medical supplies along with people from a number of nations. We anticipate that it will reach a similar area where the IOF attacked Al Awda within the next two days. Two smaller sailing boats that traveled from Scandinavia and sailed through the canal system in Netherlands, Belgium and France visiting inland ports, participated in the mission until Palermo.
“The Freedom Flotilla Coalition calls on the Norwegian Government, the national governments of those aboard Al Awda and the Freedom, other national governments, and relevant international organizations to act immediately” said Torstein Dahle of Ship to Gaza Norway, part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. “The international community must assume its responsibilities and demand that Israeli authorities ensure the safety of those on board, the speedy delivery of our gifts to the Palestinian people in Gaza, an end to the illegal blockade of Gaza, and to stop impeding our legal right of innocent passage to Gaza to deliver our gift of much-needed medical supplies”.
More information about the ‘Right to a Just Future for Palestine’ flotilla and the FFC:
Web: https://jfp.freedomflotilla.org/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreedomFlotillaCoalition Twitter: @gazafflotilla
For US citizens, please call the US Department of State and demand that the State of Israel be held accountable for piracy–and demand that the medical supplies for Gaza on Al Awda be sent from Ashdod harbor to Gaza as provided by international law.
Call/email/tweet for release of US participant Joe Meadors
Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State
Tel: +1 202 647 4000 (ask for Israel & Palestine desk, and American Citizen Services, and/or Operations Center
Email: pompeom@state.gov
Website: http://state.gov
Twitter: @SecPompeo
Also call:
US Embassy in Israel
U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
14 David Flusser
Jerusalem 9378322, Israel
Phone: 02-630-4000 (ask for Ambassador, American Citizen Services and/or Duty Officer)
@usembassyjlm
Branch Office Tel Aviv
71 HaYarkon Street
Tel Aviv 6343229, Israel
Phone: 03-519-7575 (ask for Ambassador, American Citizen Services and/or Duty Officer)
Warm welcome greets Ahed and Nariman Tamimi upon their release from Israeli prison
Ahed and Nariman upon their release
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – July 29, 2018
Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi, 17, and her mother, Nariman Tamimi, were released from Israeli occupation prisons in the morning of Sunday, 29 July 2018 after serving eight-month prison sentences. Ahed and her mother were arrested on 19 December 2017 after a video of Ahed confronting occupation soldiers on the family’s land in the village of Nabi Saleh, including slapping one soldier, went viral on social media. Ahed and her family are leaders in the anti-colonial indigenous land defense movement in Nabi Saleh, where the village’s land and even springs are targeted for confiscation and theft by the neighboring illegal, Jewish-only settlement of Halamish.
A crowd of friends and family awaited the Tamimis’ release as the Israeli occupation repeatedly changed the designated location, from the Jabara checkpoint to Rantees to Jabara again, leaving them to travel the one-hour distance between the locations repeatedly. Ahed and Nariman were greeted with joy upon their actual release; they will hold a press conference at 4:00 pm in their village of Nabi Saleh.
One day before Ahed’s release, Israeli occupation forces arrested three artists involved in the painting of a massive mural on the Apartheid Wall saluting the teen’s struggle and celebrating her liberation.
Two of the detained artists are Italian and one Palestinian, including the lead artist, Jorit Agoch (Agostina Chirwin) a street artist from Naples known around the world for his massive, realistic murals.
An occupation spokesperson accused them of having “damaged and defaced the defense barrier in the Bethlehem area.” The Wall is well-known as a location for a number of famous graffiti murals saluting the Palestinian struggle. The mayor of Naples, Luigi de Magistris, called for the artists’ immediate release, saying that this was a matter of freedom that concerned everyone.
As the Tamimi family and Palestinians celebrate Ahed’s release, their joy is, of course, not complete – among the over 6,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails is Ahed’s 21-year-old brother, Wa’ed, seized in May by the Israeli occupation and accused of “participation in popular terror activities” such as organizing demonstrations. A number of Ahed’s cousins, including Mohammed and Osama Tamimi, are also behind bars, targeted for their involvement in the defense of Palestinian land from confiscation, theft and colonization. The village of Nabi Saleh itself was closed by occupation forces last Thursday, preventing inhabitants from entering or leaving.
***
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes, congratulates and welcomes Ahed and Nariman Tamimi upon their release. They are not only symbols of protest, but leaders in an anti-colonial, indigenous movement to defend their land from occupation, colonization and confiscation. Ahed’s case drew the attention and support of thousands – indeed millions – of people around the world, with protests in global cities and over 1.5 million people signing a petition demanding her freedom. That support had an important role to play in the freedom of Ahed and Nariman today. It also reminds us how critical it is to escalate our organizing for the freedom of all Palestinian political prisoners.
There are over 6,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including over 450 jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention. There are over 350 Palestinian children in Israeli jails and 60 Palestinian women and girls. They are leaders, teachers, organizers, workers, farmers, students and beloved family members, and they represent the true leadership of the Palestinian people targeted by the Israeli occupation for isolation. Of course, there are also prisoners of the Palestinian struggle in imperialist jails around the world – from the Holy Land Five in the United States to Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed for 34 years in French prisons. Their freedom is critical to achieving the goal for which they struggle and sacrifice – freedom for the land and people of Palestine.
Free all Palestinian prisoners! Free Palestine!
Israeli Army Self-Investigates: No Violations During Gaza Border Protests
If Americans Knew | July 27, 2018
Surprise! Self-scrutiny by Israel’s “world’s most moral army” reveals: Gazan demonstrators were shot as a result of ‘operational mishaps’ and not intentionally targeted.
Israel continues to be blissfully unaware of its own violent misdeeds, as Ha’aretz reports:
An internal Israeli army investigation into the deaths of 153 Palestinians during protests along the Gaza-Israel border is expected to find that none of the incidents involved violations of open-fire orders and therefore there are no grounds for referring any of the cases to the Military Police for further investigation. Demonstrators killed by army fire were not intentionally targeted, but died as a result of “operational mishaps,” according to the team of investigators, headed by Israel Defense Forces Brig. Gen. Moti Baruch.
This is reminiscent of Operation Cast Lead, in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.
The Goldstone Report, commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council and headed by the well-known Jewish, Zionist judge from South Africa Richard Goldstone, found evidence of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity. These included the blockade of Gaza, targeting of civilians, use of white phosphorus, and more. Israel insisted that the report was anti-Semitic and denounced it.
Israel conducted its own internal investigation, which showed that “the world’s most moral army” had indeed lived up to its name: 1 soldier was convicted of stealing a credit card, 2 were charged with using a child as a human shield, and 1 was convicted of illegal use of a weapon.
Ha’aretz continues:
The team found that in each incident weapons fire was carried out in accordance with open-fire orders and none of the Israeli army sharpshooters had deliberately targeted uninvolved Palestinian bystanders. The panel noted several reasons for what they termed “operational mishaps” that resulted in the deaths of innocent people, including cases in which bullets had hit border fence installations or the ground, cases in which demonstrators intruded into the line of fire after troops had opened fire and incidents in which bullets ricocheted, subsequently hitting Palestinians. In the course of the investigation, the Israeli army raised the height of some of its sniper positions to minimize the risk of hitting Palestinians unintentionally.
This explanation does not square with many of the videos and eyewitness descriptions of shootings, including direct hits of people running away from the border or praying, people helping the injured, medics in clearly marked vests and with their hands up, and people standing near the protest, as well as at least one video shot by a sniper.
The bigger picture, however, is the fact that Israel is defending against unarmed demonstrators, using snipers, to stop a protest against a blockade that is illegal and immoral.
Supporters of human rights need to speak up against, not only Israeli violence at the border and the blockade, but also Israel’s ludicrous pronouncement of its own innocence.
Israeli cartoonist dismissed after Netanyahu’s swine illustration
Ma’an – July 26, 2018
BETHLEHEM – The Jerusalem Report, a biweekly magazine published by The Jerusalem Post, dismissed a freelance cartoonist for an illustration depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Likud lawmakers as swine characters.
The Union of Journalists in Israel confirmed on Wednesday that Avi Katz, the criticized cartoonist, was dismissed after the cartoon ran in the magazine’s edition this past week.
Katz is an American immigrant to Israel and has been contributing various political illustrations to the magazine since 1990.
The cartoon by Katz portrayed a photo of the grim-faced Netanyahu and members of the Likud, a right-wing political party, taking a selfie at the Israeli Knesset following the approval of the controversial Nationality Law.
The Nationality Law enshrines the status of the State of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and declares that the right to exercise national self-determination in Israel is exclusive to Jews.
The approved law was even labeled as “racist and discriminatory” by many critics from around the world.
The cartoon was meant to criticize the Israeli Knesset’s approval of the law.
Katz’s cartoon portraying Netanyahu and the lawmakers as swine characters was inspired by George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and was captioned with a famous Orwell line “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.”
George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” published in 1945, is an allegory which reflects events leading up to the 1917 Russian Revolution and then on into the era of the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin’s subsequent rise to power.
Animal Farm depicts the events as a form of revolt by farm animals against their human owner and its aftermath. Orwell emphasizes human characteristics through the behaviors of the swine, who only seek more power, pointing out that humans can be corrupt as everything else in this world.
After Katz’s dismissal, the Israeli Animix festival launched a fundraising page in support of the cartoonist and had raised over $10,000 to employ him until being able to find an employment.
‘Evacuation of White Helmets Shows That It is Western Product’ – Military Expert
Sputnik – July 26, 2018
Hundreds of members of the so-called Syrian Civil Defense, the White Helmets, have been evacuated from southwestern Syria to Jordan, via the occupied Golan Heights by the Israelis. Sputnik discussed this operation with military experts Amin Hteit and Vladimir Fitin.
During the Syrian conflict, the activists of the White Helmets have been involved in “the most odious provocations” and their evacuation reveals their true nature and hypocrisy, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday.
A military expert, former Lebanese Army general Amin Hteit in an interview with Sputnik confirmed the Russian foreign ministry’s statements, saying that, “the evacuation of this group clearly shows that this is a Western product in the full sense of the word.”
According to Hteit, the White Helmets carried out the task of creating a given information background to justify any “aggression” by the United States, France and Britain against Syria.“What we are seeing now is how the creator has rescued its creation,” Hteit said.
“I say so, because there is some evidence for this. First of all, the group was created by the United Kingdom with US support; secondly, their training took place in the military camps of Israel, and then they were sent into Syria; thirdly, their alleged documentary reports were filmed at the behest of British and American intelligence. They were supporting the ongoing operations against Syria via their information campaign,” the retired general told Sputnik.
In an interview with Sputnik, an expert from the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, Vladimir Fitin, said that the videos made by the White Helmets were created on the orders and with the money of the British and US intelligence services.
“Now they are being urgently taken out of Syria so that they do not fall into the hands of the rapidly advancing Syrian army,” Fitin said.He went on by saying that while only a part of the members of the White Helmets were removed, the rest continue to work in the terrorist-controlled territories.
“It is quite possible that they will release some provocative new video,” the expert said.
Earlier it was reported that the Israeli forces have evacuated several hundred White Helmets and their family members from southern Syria to Jordan at the request of several Western countries. The transfer has been labeled a “criminal operation” by Damascus, which believes the NGO’s members have cooperated with terrorists and plotted several false flag attacks.
Tel Aviv commented on the information regarding the militants’ extraction from Syria and their alleged work with Israeli intelligence agencies, saying that it is a humanitarian operation.
The White Helmets claim to be acting as a volunteer rescue group, but has been repeatedly accused of working with jihadists, such as al-Nusra Front and staging fake videos that they later use to accuse Damascus of being responsible for attacks against civilians.
The group was founded in Turkey by former MI5 officer James Le Mesurier and funded by several western countries. Despite their claims of helping citizens, the Russian Defense Ministry has uncovered evidence and found witnesses suggesting that one of their latest reports of an alleged chemical attack in Douma was a fake.
Female Palestinian writer deprived of sleep in Israeli interrogation
Ma’an – July 25, 2018
A lawyer of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said that prisoner, Lama Khater, 42, is being subjected to harsh and intensive interrogation at the Ashkelon Israeli prison, on Wednesday.
Lawyer Firas al-Sabbah, who visited Khater in prison, said that Israeli forces detained and removed Khater from her home in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron on predawn Tuesday to the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, where she was held until 7 a.m.
Khater was then transferred to the Ashkelon prison.
Khater told her lawyer that she was handcuffed to a chair throughout the entire interrogation; she also pointed out that interrogators deprived her of sleep and continued to curse and shout at her.
Lawyer al-Sabbah confirmed that a court hearing will be held this Thursday, 26th of July, 2018.
Khater is a Palestinian female writer and a mother of five children, who was detained for unknown reasons from her home during predawn raids carried out by the Israeli forces.
According to prisoners rights group Addameer, there are 5,900 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli prisons, 60 of whom are female prisoners.
Russia: Israel’s ‘nation state law’ fuels tension in the region
MEMO | July 25, 2018
The Russian foreign ministry said a recent law passed by Israel which declares the country a state for all Jews “complicates the peace process” and “increases regional tension”.
Russian foreign ministry official, Artyom Kozhin, said unilateral steps do not serve peace, raise tension and greatly hamper efforts to launch the peace process.
“A just and guaranteed settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict must be based on the principles of international law, relevant Security Council resolutions and the UN General Assembly, which provide to settle all final issues through negotiations,” he added.
Last Thursday, the Israeli Knesset passed the “nation state bill” into law which limits self-determination right to Jews only.
Read:
Israel is challenging the world – I am an Apartheid state, what are you going to do about it?
Western States Salvage Terror Assets in Syria
By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 24.07.2018
Western states made a dramatic intervention in the Syrian war earlier this week to extricate hundreds of terrorist militants. The militants are to be fast-tracked for resettlement in Europe and Canada.
But in saving their terror assets, Western governments are risking future public safety as well as sowing seeds for increasing multicultural strife.
In a stunning revelation of the foreign links to the extremists in Syria, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his military forces to evacuate up to 800 militants belonging to the so-called White Helmets. They are the propaganda merchants for Nusra Front and other al-Qaeda-linked terror organizations.
Netanyahu announced that the blatant intervention to rescue the jihadists in southwest Syria was made at the personal request of US President Donald Trump and the Canadian premier Justin Trudeau, “among others”.
Separately, there were reports of four senior jihadist commanders being given safe passage by Israeli forces out of Syria as the Syrian army closed in on the last-remaining militant strongholds around the southwest city of Daraa and Quneitra province.
Nor was it coincidental that the evacuation operations were accompanied by Israeli air strikes on Syrian government facilities in Hama province.
Damascus condemned the extraction of hundreds of jihadists by Israel and its Western allies as a “criminal operation” and further proof of the foreign sponsoring that has fomented the nearly eight-year war.
Of course, Netanyahu, Western governments and news media sought to portray the evacuation of the “White Helmets” as a “humanitarian gesture”. This was at the same time that Israeli warplanes and snipers were stepping up the killing of medics and civilians in Gaza.
Britain’s newly appointed foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt described the Israeli “rescue” of “White Helmets” as “fantastic news”, saying that the militants were the “bravest of the brave”.
We won’t delay too much here on this fraud. The so-called first responders of the “White Helmets” are a CIA, MI6-backed propaganda outfit working hand-in-hand with the terrorist militia. Their fake videos of chemical weapons attacks and air strikes have been a key propaganda device aided and abetted by the Western news media to demonize the Syrian armed forces and its Russian ally.
The fictitious propaganda stunt alleging a chemical weapon attack in Douma on April 7 this year resulted in a barrage of air strikes by the US, Britain and France.
Created in 2013 by a British MI6 agent and former British army officer James Le Mesurier, the so-called White Helmets have been funded with hundreds of millions of dollars by the governments of the US, Britain and other NATO states.
There is abundant video evidence showing members of this fake rescue group participating in gruesome executions by the al Qaeda-aligned militants with whom they associate. One such video shows an execution of a Syrian army soldier in Daraa, the city from where the latest evacuation of jihadists by Israel took place. Daraa is also, by the way, mendaciously referred to in the Western media as the “cradle of the revolution” or the “birthplace of the uprising” against President Assad’s government back in March 2011. The only thing that Daraa was a birthplace of was the US-led foreign covert war for regime change in Syria.
Now here’s a curious thing about the latest salvaging of terror assets in Syria. The United States and Israel are not taking any of the 800 militants for resettlement. Independent investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley, who has done much to expose the real macabre nature of the White Helmets and their terror links, says that both the US and Israeli no doubt realize that by taking in such “war refugees” they are inviting terrorists into their own societies.
Which makes you wonder why Britain, Germany and Canada are stepping up to the plate to offer the 800 White Helmets a home?
The case of Germany is particularly odd. Interior minister Horst Seehofer has personally authorized the resettlement of White Helmets spirited out of Syria by Israel. This is the same Seehofer who has mounted such a strong challenge to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “open door” policy towards immigrants.
What we are witnessing is a suicidal ignorance by Western governments to take in these cadres of White Helmets. Perhaps Seehofer and other government ministers like Britain’s Jeremy Hunt are simply woefully misinformed. But surely the state security agencies of their respective countries know all too well the criminal, psychotic nature of the people whom they are allowing into their societies.
Such a callous disregard for public safety is not unprecedented. In his well-researched book, My Fight For Syrian Freedom, Irish peace activist Dr Declan Hayes details numerous cases of how jihadist assets were knowingly cultivated by British and French state security services for the purpose of waging the covert war for regime change in Syria and Libya. These assets have been allowed to return to Britain and France under the cover of being “refugees”, with the security services turning a blind eye to their true identity.
The nefarious relationship has resulted in these terror assets committing atrocities in Europe. For example, as Hayes points out, the Manchester concert bomb attack that killed 22 people in May last year was carried out by operatives belonging to a Libyan jihad cell that MI5 and MI6 had previously overseen for their objective of prosecuting the regime-change war in Libya against Muammar Gaddafi.
Similar murky connections between jihadists “blooded in Syria” and state secret services have been uncovered in terror attacks in France and Belgium. It is not clear if these terror assets go rogue or whether they are being used by British, French and other military intelligence as a deliberate provocation in order to promote tighter national security laws and greater surveillance powers over their citizens.
Declan Hayes reckons that the problem of Western-sponsored terrorists returning to Britain and other European countries under the cover of claiming to be “war refugees” is much greater than Western governments or their media are admitting.
Hayes says that in his experience of visiting Syria many times during the war, most families loyal to the government were adamantly defiant about staying in the country and defending their communities. He reckons that there is a legitimate concern that many of the refugees fleeing from formerly militant-held cities like Aleppo and Daraa are jihadists and their families.
This view supports the right of some European governments to be wary about taking in large numbers of refugees from Syria and other war-torn countries. There is a case for rigorous vetting, but such a case is often emotionally blackmailed by naive media commentary as being “heartless” or “racist”.
There is no doubt that Western government agencies have fomented terrorist groups in Syria and elsewhere to do their dirty work for destabilizing target governments.
Now that the war in Syria is all but over with the Syrian army, backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, rooting out the last jihadist remnants, we are seeing Western states taking in their terror assets. Maybe as a desperate intervention to stop them from revealing the dirty secrets of Western government collusion.
The repatriation of the White Helmets terrorist propagandists to the UK, Germany and Canada is a classic illustration.
Western authorities are playing with fire. Not only are they running the risk of public safety from future terrorist incidents. They are also stoking the flames of xenophobia, racism and culture wars against many innocent refugees who have been given shelter in Western countries.
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Revealed: The Israeli Spies Writing America’s News
By Alan MacLeod | MintPress News | October 16, 2024
One year after Oct. 7 attacks, Netanyahu is on a winning streak.” So reads the title of a recent Axios article describing the Israeli prime minister riding on an unbeatable wave of triumphs. These stunning military “successes,” its author Barak Ravid notes, include the bombing of Yemen, the assassinations of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and the pager attack against Lebanon.
The same author recently went viral for an article that claimed that Israeli attacks against Hezbollah are “not intended to lead to war but are an attempt to reach ‘de-escalation through escalation.’” Users on social media mocked Ravid for this bizarre, Orwellian reasoning. But what almost everybody missed is that Barak Ravid is an Israeli spy – or at least he was until recently. Ravid is a former analyst with Israeli spying agency Unit 8200, and as recently as last year, was still a reservist with the Israeli Defense Forces group.
Unit 8200 is Israel’s largest and perhaps most controversial spying organization. It has been responsible for many high-profile espionage and terror operations, including the recent pager attack that injured thousands of Lebanese civilians. As this investigation will reveal, Ravid is far from the only Israeli ex-spook working at top U.S. media outlets, working hard to manufacture Western support for his country’s actions. … continue
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