On Wednesday – just hours after the massacre of hundreds of Syrians with chemical weapons – Israeli Minister of Military Affairs Moshe Yaalon claimed he knew who did it: The Syrian government.
Other world leaders, including US President Barack Obama, did not rush to judgment. Instead, they called for a United Nations investigation. Many experts, including the BBC’s Frank Gardner, former UN weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus, and Swedish chemical weapons expert, Ake Sellstrom, ridiculed or cast doubt on the notion that Syrian President Assad would launch a chemical attack at the exact moment weapons inspectors arrived in Syria. The Russian Foreign Ministry came right out and called the chemical attack “a provocation planned in advance.”
But planned by whom?
To answer that question, we must ask: How could Israel immediately know who was behind the Syrian chemical attack?
Israeli leaders have amazing powers of clairvoyance. Whenever a huge, history-steering terror attack happens, the Israelis immediately know who did it. Before the dust settles, they stand up and tell the world exactly what it all means – and provide the script for the way they want the world to react.
Christopher Bollyn reminds us: “Within minutes of the airplane crashes on 9/11, Ehud Barak (the founder and master of the Israeli military’s covert operation force, the Sayeret Matkal) was in the London studio of the BBC World ready to provide a plausible (and political) explanation to the world. Barak, the real mastermind of 9/11, was the first person to call for a ‘War on Terror’ – and US intervention in Afghanistan and the Middle East.”
Like Ehud Barak minutes after 9/11, Moshe Yaalon stood up just hours after the Syrian chemical weapons tragedy and provided an apparently pre-scripted narrative.
Fox News transmitted the Israeli script:
“‘In Syria, the regime has used chemical weapons and it’s not the first time,’ (Minister of Military Affairs) Yaalon told Israeli defense correspondents. ‘It’s a life and death struggle between a regime based on the Alawite minority and a disparate opposition composed of Sunni Muslims, some Muslim Brotherhood members, others linked to al-Qaeda. We don’t see any end to the fighting – even the fall of (President Bashar) al-Assad won’t bring it to a halt, there will a bloody settling of accounts over a long period,’ the minister added. ‘We could see the implosion of Syria with the Alawites controlling the western part – the coastal region and a corridor to Damascus – and the Kurds and Sunnis controlling the east and north.'”
Yaalon’s tirade is not an analysis. It is a program of action. It is what the Israelis want to happen.
First, the Israelis want the world to swallow the unlikely notion that the Syrian government is crazy enough to launch a massive chemical weapons strike at the exact moment weapons inspectors are entering the country. They want the world to believe that the Assad government would risk all of the huge gains it has made in recent months by launching a poison gas attack designed to provoke massive Western intervention against it.
The Israelis want the world to see the conflict as an intractable, endless struggle between Sunni and Alawite Muslims. The Israelis “don’t see any end to the fighting” meaning they do not want the fighting to end – in fact, they will do whatever it takes to keep the fighting going, including launching false-flag attacks like the recent chemical weapons massacre. Israel’s goal, as Yaalon admits, is the destruction of Syria: “We could see the implosion of Syria with the Alawites controlling the western part – the coastal region and a corridor to Damascus – and the Kurds and Sunnis controlling the east and north.”
The destruction of Syria would be the culmination of a decades-long Israeli project: The Oded Yinon plan for the Balkanization of the Middle East. Since at least the 1970s, Israeli strategists have planned to smash neighboring Middle Eastern countries into tiny ethnic and sectarian Bantustans.
The Oded Yinon plan to break up the Middle East became Netanyahu’s 1996 “Clean Break” plan. To achieve the destruction of Israel’s neighbors, Netanyahu’s neocons – led by Richard Perle, the self-styled “Prince of Darkness” – schemed to trick the US into doing Israel’s dirty work. In September 2000, Perle, Wolfowitz, and the other Zionists at Project for a New American Century (PNAC) called for a “new Pearl Harbor.” Their goal: A long-term US war against Israel’s enemies. One year later, on September 11th, 2001, their New Pearl Harbor became a reality.
The Israelis and their American proxies have already smashed Iraq, Libya, and Sudan into pieces. Now they are targeting Syria and Egypt – two countries whose land they plan to steal to create a “Greater Israel” stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates.
Shortly before the false-flag chemical attack against Syria, the Israelis orchestrated a fascist coup d’état in Egypt. General al-Sisi, an Israeli pawn throughout his career, spent the days before and during the coup on the phone with his Israeli handlers.
As in Syria, the Israeli goal in Egypt is to “not see any end to the fighting.” That is why the Israelis have convinced al-Sisi and the Zionist-controlled Egyptian deep state to release criminal ex-dictator, Hosni Mubarak. The move is calculated to outrage the Egyptian masses, and to accelerate the ongoing slaughter of thousands by the al-Sisi regime.
The people of Syria and Egypt must stop falling for Israel’s tricks.
And the world must recognize that all of the biggest and most spectacular “terror attacks” attributed to Israel’s Arab and Muslim enemies – from the Lavon Affair, to the USS Liberty massacre, to the Achille Lauro and Entebbe hijacking incidents, to the bombings of Jewish targets in London and Buenos Aires, to 9/11 and its follow-up operations in Bali, Madrid, London, Mumbai and elsewhere – have been Israeli-sponsored false-flag operations.
Moshe Yaalon’s clumsy attempt to steer the world’s reaction to the Syrian chemical weapons massacre suggests that the attack was yet another Israeli false-flag operation.
In a recent New York Times op-ed, Who Will Stand Up for Responsibility to Protect? (August 1, 2013), Mike Abramowitz makes the case for coercive humanitarian intervention under the mantra Responsibility to Protect, or R2P. Mr. Abramowitz is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum where he currently holds the position of Director for Center for the Prevention of Genocide. He works in promoting R2P with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who as Secretary promoted the un-humanitarian sanctions on Iraq which—according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization—provoked the deaths of 567,000 Iraqi children (Mahajan, 2001).
Abramowitz writes in reaction to the Obama Administration’s appointment of Samantha Power to the U.S. ambassadorship and her confirmation hearing by the Senate on August 1. In the article, Abramowitz quotes Power as saying when asked about R2P that “there is no one size fits all solution, no algorithm, nor should there be. If confirmed to this position, I will act in the interests of the American people and in accordance with our values”. He understands Power’s ambiguity and the politics behind it, but suggests that since every country in the world has agreed to the principles of R2P, it is “our” job to hold them up to that promise; by “our” I assume he means the American people. Abramowitz forgets that Samantha Power is a liberal interventionist who, along with former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, was instrumental in pushing the U.S. to intervene in Libya, resulting in the overthrow of the government, killing many people in the process, including the assassination of the country’s leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi (Cooper & Myers, 2011).
R2P is the “newest” and “coolest” addition to international relations. This is not a new concept, however, but a rebranding of an old concept named humanitarian intervention, kin to an even older concept in international affairs referred to as Jus ad bellum. Yet, the way in which R2P is being interpreted and applied by Western powers implies that there is an overt attempt by Western powers to overrule state sovereignty as understood in international affairs since the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. Furthermore, it undermines the Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928, which practically outlawed war, and it ignores the U.N. Charter’s insistence that only the United Nations can sanction war, via Security Council resolution. Libya was the first test for R2P. It has left an unsavory legacy in the eyes of many U.N. member states, however. Many wanted to believe that the new doctrine was indeed genuine and not just another fancy term to justify military intervention.
When the U.N. authorized R2P to protect the people of Benghazi against a hypothetical bloodbath, it sanctioned intervention because Gaddafi’s forces were quickly regaining territory lost to the armed insurgents and marching fast to the rebel held coastal city (Rieff, 2011). Sanguinary statements made by Gaddafi about going from house to house showing no mercy to the Benghazi rebels made the case too easy for the U.N. to approve intervention and NATO to execute.
The U.N. authorization for intervention was only to protect the people of Benghazi and to coerce the government to cease fire and sit with the rebels for negotiations, which the African Union was already negotiating, to the annoyance of the West. The authorization was not to overthrow the regime, recognize a de facto government and facilitate the assassination of the Libyan head of state (Dewaal, 2012). That was a Western initiative. Today, the people in Libya are worse off than they were before the uprising, and what’s worse, the destabilizing situation in Libya is no longer an urgent matter to the intervening powers the way it was when Gaddafi was in power (Smirnov, 2013).
Abramowitz mentions the civil war in Syria as justification for R2P, but fails to point to Bahrain (a U.S. client) and the government’s brutal crackdown on protestors. He also mentions the 1999 Kosovo War—implying that humanitarian intervention helped stop genocide, but fails to acknowledge that most of the ethnic cleansing took place during the 78-day NATO bombing (Chomsky, 2001); that most of the cleansing was done by the Kosovo Liberation Army, the group that NATO was backing; and that shortly after the war ended reports revealed that the war’s death toll was largely exaggerated (Marden, 1999). He fails to bring up how humanitarian intervention didn’t get to the people of East Timor, who in 1999 were invaded and slaughtered by the Western-friendly Indonesian military, along with their paramilitary proxies at a rate higher than the killings that took place in Kosovo (Powell, 2006). Apparently, the friendly nation of Indonesia was not a state targeted by the West; it seems that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was.
The stated purpose of the R2P doctrine is to “adequately respond to the most heinous crimes known to humankind” (International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect, n.d. ) such as the mass murder of civilians, gross human rights violations, war crimes, genocide and ethnic cleansing.Proponents of R2P see the doctrine as altruistic—a tool to commit all states to the effort of stopping atrocities, war crimes, and human rights violations. Detractors see it as opportunistic, inconsistent and hypocritical—an excuse for the West to project power in order to pursue its political interest. It is not that critics of R2P do not think that stopping war crimes and genocide is undesirable, it’s just that in practice R2P is applied arbitrarily on a weaker state by the powerful who are then never held accountable for their own crimes during the intervention. These same critics often claim that those in government who are most gung-ho about R2P and humanitarian intervention, often forget history and do not consider past policies imposed by their own countries and their undesirable effects leading to the present situation (Fenton, 2009).
One of the stated principles of R2P is to find the root cause of a conflict and engage in conflict resolution to resolve it and avoid further conflict. R2P as it is applied has been an entirely Western enterprise, a tool to project power and advance goals and policies, only to forget their own political meddling and its aftermath. In the interest of accuracy, the Responsibility to Protect should be renamed the Right to Intervene. There are many people who are genuine humanitarians in the West, and who truly want to see an end to armed conflict and atrocities. Unfortunately, none of them make policies.
Jovanni Reyes is a member of Iraq Veterans Against War, holds a Master’s in International Relations, and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Instructional Technology.
International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect. (n.d. ). An Introduction to the Responsibility to Protect. Retrieved from International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect: http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/index.php/about-rtop
Defending themselves by all means available is the Kurdish Popular Defense Units’ (YPG) last resort in Syria, the group’s spokesperson Redor Khalil told RT.
Amid Western inaction and Russian condemnation of massacres against the Kurds, Redor Khalil said that evidence is readily available to support the injustice perpetrated against the Kurdish people by militants sponsored from abroad – if anybody were to listen.
RT:Tell us about the Popular Defense Units. Is it your objective to protect the Kurds, or to protect all the residents of this territory?
Redor Khalil: The Popular Defense Units were established to protect all the people – Kurds as well as Arabs. We formed the units in 2011 when the war began. You should know that Syria, including Western Kurdistan, has a mixed population of Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Turkmens, Circassians and so on. Our units were intended to protect all these areas and their residents.
RT:But some are saying that your attacks on enemy positions in Arabic villages are impeding the relations between Kurds and Arabs. Armed clashes in these areas result in losses on both sides.
RK: We don’t believe that our actions will result in social disintegration. Kurds and Arabs have been living side-by-side in these territories for centuries, and they will keep it this way in the future.
We’ve said time and again that we strongly disapprove of ethnic, religious and sectarian wars. However, there are certain powers which have been trying to stir up confusion and to make it look like a fight between Kurds and Arabs for the sake of their own interests.
As you travel through these areas you may ask the local members of minorities and religious groups whether there is a sectarian war taking place here. I can assure you that it’s not the case.
Our traditions, moral values and principles prevent us from starting a war between different religious or ethnic groups. Neither Kurds nor Arabs want this war to happen. But some forces are working on instigating a conflict between us as a part of their plan.
RT:We’ve been around Qamishli, where the clashes take place. The YPG members told us that Jabhat Al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are much better armed. With this in mind, can the YPG really ensure people’s security and extend it to other regions? And what is your opinion on some foreign states supplying weapons to these terrorist groups?
RK: The YPG units are made up of the local population. Our main strategy is defense, not offense. If there are no attacks on our territory, no threats to our towns and cities, we do not take any offensive action. We don’t attack anyone or provoke confrontation. But since our territories are under attack, we have to defend ourselves with all the means available. Our enemy gets support from the outside; they have heavy armaments and plenty of ammunition. I can state openly that the YPG units do not get any support from foreign countries. We employ a defensive strategy in all our operations, using only our own weapons and ammunition.
RT:Recently it was rumored that Kurdish political forces want to create a government of the so-called Western Kurdistan. It’s well-known that there are external Kurdish elements that support the idea. How would you comment on these rumors?
RK: Some parties and movements declare this project their main political objective. On behalf of the YPG members and based on the information we have, I can say that they don’t intend to set up a government for Western Kurdistan. This is just talk meant to drive a wedge between different ethnic groups living in the region. Syria is going through a very difficult and dangerous time right now. There are some places in Syria over which the current regime will never be able to regain control. People living there are in dire need of governing authorities, which the Free Syrian Army has already created in Idlib and Ar-Raqqah. There’s nothing surprising about that, and it’s the same thing the Kurdish people want – self-government over the areas where the Kurds live is an inherent part of our political project. Some political movements claim that it springs from our desire to separate from Syria and create our own state and government. They aim to sow seeds of discord among various ethnic and religious groups living in this area and exacerbate the already complicated state of affairs. They are just pursuing their own selfish goals.
RT:Some opposition groups say that the YPG leaders coordinate their operations with the Syrian government and its army forces. What kind of relations do you maintain with the Syrian government?
RK: We have vehemently denied these allegations before, and we will keep doing so. We don’t maintain any relations with the government. The Popular Protection Units have no connection to the regime. You have seen for yourselves that the government officials stay inside the city. The rest of the territory is under our control. Basically, the YPG is in charge there and responsible for ensuring security.
RT:Speaking of Jabhat al-Nusra’s massacre in Afrin and Qamishli, the Russian Foreign Ministry and several human rights organizations condemned it, but the US State Department said that they have no hard evidence of genocidal intent against the Kurdish people. How would you explain this US stance?
RK: I think that if the US truly wanted to get to the bottom of this, it would be very easy – it’s crystal clear what exactly is happening. The massacre of Kurdish civilians in places like Tal Hasil and Tal Aran is a dark but undeniable fact. There are eyewitnesses of these events, and we at the YPG, as well as several Kurdish civilians, have documentary proof of it. We are ready to give this proof to international organizations and mass media to show them the truth of this horrible war the radical Islamists are fighting on our soil. I think the main reason for this massacre is that the YPG defeated the militants at Ras al-Ayn where they were based, maintaining control over a border checkpoint. After they suffered defeat at Rumeylan the radical groups attacked civilians who are not involved in military action.
It is perhaps one of those rare times that Israel openly clarifies its position regarding the Syrian crisis, and from the mouths of high-ranking officials: the Resistance cannot be allowed to win.
Tel Aviv is increasingly worried about the developments taking place in Syria. They want the West to be more involved, particularly as Washington seems less certain about how far it should go in supporting the opposition there.
This prompted Israel’s minister of war Moshe Yaalon to make his concerns known to his visitor from Washington, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, for all the media to hear: “The axis of evil, which extends from Tehran to Damascus and Beirut, cannot be allowed to win in the ongoing war in Syria.”
After explaining that the most important thing happening in the region is the change sweeping through many Arab countries, he asked Dempsey to consider Iran’s role and the threat it poses to Israel’s security.
“The lack of stability in the region,” Yaalon insisted, “is due to many reasons, at the top of which is the Iranian regime and its involvement in all the crises taking place in the Middle East.”
According to Israel Defense magazine, the minister said that he believed the Syrian crisis would continue for a long time and would not end even if Bashar al-Assad falls, noting that “there are bloody accounts to be settled between the Alawis and Sunnis, in addition to other minorities engaged in the fighting.”
Yaalon repeated statements he had made after the Syrian opposition’s defeat in Qusayr, that Syria is going through a period in which the state is breaking up, suggesting that the Assad regime, contrary to what recent developments suggest, is weakening.
“I don’t see a change [in the regime’s favor],” the minister maintained, “because in Syria there are many places where the opposition is hitting the regime hard, as in Aleppo and the Latakia area, in addition to the Golan. This suggests that the opposition controls more territory than before.”
In the same vein, a high-ranking Israeli official criticized the US administration’s policy, and the weakness it has shown in handling a number of files in the region. On the occasion of Dempsey’s visit to Israel, the official told Yedioth Ahronot that Washington’s hesitation “will only increase Russia’s influence in the area.”
“Israel is very worried about America’s position regarding the region,” the same source added. “The Russians are taking advantage of America’s weakness, and they are waging their battles like a superpower, therefore proving to the countries of the region and President Assad that they can be relied on, while the Americans abandon their allies and partners.”
Of more concern to the source is that the US’ weak stand extend to its confrontation with Iran, asking Washington not to fall into the trap of the country’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, and “to squeeze Iran until it surrenders.”
The source explained that Israelis are generally comfortable with what is going on around them, despite the upheaval taking place in Egypt: “We can work with the Egyptians, Jordanians and other countries, for we have common interests with many parties in the region, and Israel is the one holding up the tent these days.”
The Syrian government has accepted the ‘essential modalities’ under which the UN was ready to investigate whether chemical weapons had been used in the country, the body has announced, signalling that experts will shortly be traveling to Syria.
“The departure of the team is now imminent,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement. “As agreed with the Government of Syria, the team will remain in the country to conduct its activities, including on-site visits, for a period of up to 14 days, extendable upon mutual consent.”
The Secretary-General has expressed his appreciation to the Syrian government for accepting “the modalities essential for cooperation to ensure the proper, safe and efficient conduct of the Mission.”
The statement also reminded that the use of chemical weapons “by any side under any circumstances” would constitute an “outrageous crime.”
Two weeks ago the United Nations said that an agreement had been reached with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government as to the three locations that UN inspectors would be investigating, led by Swedish scientist, Ake Sellstrom.
One site to be visited by the UN team is Khan al-Assal in Aleppo, where the country’s government says rebels used chemical weapons in March. The two additional locations have yet to be confirmed.
Both Syria’s government and rebel forces have long been accusing each other of using chemical weapons, and both have denied it.
Russia welcomed the move, saying on its Twitter feed that “Damascus is ready to bring clarity into the situation”, and expressing hope that the move will “provide a springboard for a political solution of the ongoing crisis”.
Last month Russia submitted “a full set of documents” to the UN and its analysis of samples taken west of Aleppo. Russia’s findings indicated that it was rebels behind the Khan al-Assal incident, in which more than 30 people died.
The United States cast doubt on the Russian findings saying its own intelligence services believed Syrian government forces had used chemical weapons. However, Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the UN commission’s inquiry into rights violations in Syria, said the evidence provided by the US did not meet standards as his commission was “very worried about the chain of custody of the substances.”
Back in March Damascus requested UN investigators to visit Khan al-Assal. The UN formed a mission then, but was reluctant to send it, demanding “unconditional and unfettered” access across the country, according to Ban’s spokesman Martin Nesirky.
Syria’s Foreign Ministry rejected the UN’s effort to broaden the probe claiming that it was “at odds with the Syrian request” and that its “possible hidden intentions” could violate Syrian sovereignty.
In total, the UN received some 13 reports of alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria and the UN inspectors will be investigating the “allegations” of chemical weapons use, rather than determining who was responsible for the attacks.
Without America’s support, Israel in all likelihood would not by now exist and, without the neoconservatives, there would in all likelihood be no American support for Israel.
The interests of Israel have always been neoconservatism’s primary concern and it has been American neoconservatives that have lobbied the hardest to ensure American support for Israel. They have done this by integrating themselves into all levels of American society where they can be of influence including in government, public service, academia, political and social commentary, journalism, and think-tank organisations. Most but not all neoconservatives are, not unsurprisingly, Jewish and most of those that are Jewish hold dual citizenship with Israel despite many of them having no connection to Israel other than actually being Jewish. (All Jews throughout the Diaspora have ‘right of return’ to Israel even if they or generations of their ancestors have no connection to Israel – unlike Palestinians, who were forced from their lands in order to make way for Jews migrating to Israel after WW2, who have no right of return.)
While neoconservative ideology predominately revolves around the interests of Israel, there are other interwoven ideas that neoconservatives have developed that have been designed to secure support from conservative Americans. One of the ideas taken up by neocons has been the notion of ‘America Exceptionalism’ which, in it’s neoconservative incarnation, promotes American nationalism and the American system of democracy and capitalism and holds these values up as being values that all the world, particularly the Middle East, should aspire to.
While neoconservatism for many remains a somewhat vague ideological concept, there are certain characteristics that are common to all neoconservatives and at the top of the list of those characteristics are: an unswerving loyalty to expansionist Zionism and the concept of a Greater Israel in which Arabs have no place. For some neoconservatives this is quite explicit but for most neoconservatives, particularly in the commentariat, the notion of a Greater Israel is presented only vaguely and usually only by inference. Neoconservatives prominent in government will, as a matter of policy, deny that Israel has any expansionist dreams. One, however, only needs to look at the quickly diminishing map of areas of the West Bank that are available to Palestinians and the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the already annexed Golan Heights to see the reality of Zionist dreams.
Israel’s modus operandi for realising its expansionist dreams is simple: Provoke Palestinians and Arabs in a myriad of small ways that don’t make headlines and then, when the Palestinians or Arabs retaliate, ensure that the retaliation makes the headlines around the world and pretend to be the victim thus justifying a militarily response which may include occupation and then retreat when things quieten down again giving the impression that occupation is only for ‘security purposes’, not territorial gain. This strategy of three steps forward and two steps back is played out over a long time until eventually there is a big enough war to justify permanent occupation, as in the West Bank, and eventual annexation, as in the Golan Heights.
After their success in the Golan Heights but failures in south Lebanon in the 1980s and again in 2006, the Zionists changed tack. They realise now that only a massive threat to their security can justify occupation. For the Israelis, the bigger the threat the better from now on – and there can be no bigger threat than an enemy nation threatening to ‘wipe you off the map with their nuclear weapons’. And Israel has no better ally than the neocons to perpetuate the myth of Iran ‘wiping Israel off the map with nuclear weapons’ thus providing the ultimate threat by which Israel, forever the victim, can react.
By attacking Iran, Israel hopes that the resulting turmoil created in a quickly escalating war that will drag in the US will provide enough cover for Israel to deal with all of its enemies including Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon and any resistance in the West Bank. Israel will use such circumstances to massively occupy all of these places on a more permanent basis using the war to deport Palestinians out of the Gaza into the Sinai peninsula and possibly out of the West Bank into Jordan. Meanwhile, the Israelis will leave it to the Americans to effect ‘regime change’ in Iran and Syria. Egypt will be both threatened if it tries to intervene and rewarded financially by the US if it co-operates. Judging by the latest events in the Sinai peninsula, it seems the current Egyptian government that overthrew the elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has opted to co-operate with Israel.
It is the neoconservatives who are driving the wars in the Middle East – and, while Americans are expected to pay for it, it is all only in Israel’s interests. And, in the end, it will be the people of the Middle East that suffer – Jews and Arabs alike – regardless of who wins or loses.
The United States is engineering the ongoing civil wars across the Middle East to assist the Israeli regime in implementing its scenario of the Greater Israel stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, a political analyst says.
“Why does the US feel the need to destroy Middle Eastern countries? Ironically, it isn’t even about US interests. It’s about Israel’s ‘Oded Yinon plan’ to annihilate Israel’s neighbors and seize all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates for Greater Israel,” Kevin Barrett wrote in a article for the Press TV website.
He laid the blame on Washington for the ongoing conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Egypt.
“Instead of simply murdering anti-government activists to prop up an American-owned puppet dictator, the US now sponsors death squads on both sides of the political-religious divide. The purpose: Create a civil war to weaken the targeted nation,” he pointed out.”
Regarding the appointment of Robert Ford, who is known to be the organizer of death squads in Iraq and Syria, as the next US ambassador to Egypt, Barrett said: “Ford’s appointment sends a clear message: US policymakers want to destroy Egypt in the same way they have destroyed Iraq and Syria – by using death squads and false-flag terror to incite civil war.”
Barrett noted that between 2004 and 2006, Ford was a key figure in creating US-sponsored al-Qaeda death squad units to “brutally and indiscriminately” attack Shia victims “in the hope that it would alienate the larger Sunni community and lead to sectarian civil war.”
“In 2011, Ford was made Ambassador to Syria – and suddenly a wave of violence created the same kind of civil war that still rages in Iraq,” the article read.
Barrett said Ford’s death squads in Syria comprise well-trained professional killers who disguise themselves as the Syrian army soldiers and fire from rooftop at people demonstrating against the policies of President Bashar al-Assad.
Other death squad members were stationed at different rooftops and fired at the Syrian security forces, creating the impression that they were anti-government demonstrators, the analyst wrote.
Barrett predicted that Ford will pursue a similar scenario in Egypt. “They will then encourage the Egyptian junta to arrest, torture, and murder even more peaceful protestors than it already has.”
Egypt has plunged into unrelenting unrest since July 3, when the country’s powerful army removed former president Mohamed Morsi from office and declared chief Justice of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, as the interim president.
Morsi supporters led by Muslim Brotherhood have condemned the move as “a military coup” and vowed to continue their street rallies against the interim government.
Barret argued that the only way to avert this “impending genocide” is that “all Middle Eastern people, regardless of religion or nationality, must unite and resist the Zionist-sponsored destruction of their lands.”
General Martin Dempsey will meet with a number of senior IDF leaders to review ‘mutual security challenges’
The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff arrived in Israel on Monday where he will be a guest of his Israeli counterpart, Israel Defence Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz. During his stay, General Martin Dempsey will meet with a number of senior IDF leaders to discuss means of cooperation between Israel and the US, and to review “mutual security challenges”. Dempsey will also meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon.
According to an article in Yedioth Ahronoth written by Nahum Barnea, the Israelis will use the opportunity to present to the US their vision of a solution for the dilemma that America is facing regarding the crisis in Syria. They will also address the debate between those who call for supporting the Assad regime to prevent the rise of extremist Islamists, like Al Qaeda and Jabhat Al Nusra, and those who believe in the need to topple Assad’s regime first, through reinforcing the Free Syrian Army.
Barnea said that Israel’s plan depends on two distinct phases. The first includes providing more assistance to the Free Syrian Army, especially weapons and equipment, along with a no-fly zone. Israel believes that the US is capable of imposing a no-fly zone on the Syrian Air Force at little cost.
The second phase would be implemented after Assad’s ouster. Israel wants the Americans to support Syria’s secularists in expelling jihadi movements out of the country. Although this is a theoretical solution with no guarantees, Barnea believes that Israel is convinced that it is possible.
Turkey has closed its cultural centers and commercial office in Beirut after the kidnap of two Turkish Airlines pilots, Ankara’s ambassador to Lebanon told AFP on Monday.
The two pilots were kidnapped on Friday by a group demanding the release of nine Lebanese pilgrims kidnapped in Syria in May 2012, but reportedly moved to Turkey, a major backer of the kidnapers.
“As a safety measure, the Turkish cultural centre and commercial office in Beirut have suspended their activities,” ambassador Inan Ozyildiz said.
Responsibility for Abduction of Lebanese Pilgrims Denied
Turkish Ambassador to Lebanon Inan Ozyildiz wondered how his country could be responsible for the abduction of the Lebanese pilgrims in Syria, saying that Turkey does not even have an embassy or consulate in the neighboring country, As-Safir newspaper reported on Tuesday.
He told the daily: “Our negotiations to release all the pilgrims failed because of the complexity of the case.” “What will Turkey gain in delaying their release? What is it seeking to achieve if its interests are being harmed?” he asked. “How could Turkey have kidnapped the pilgrims? Does it have control over Syrian territories?” he wondered.
“It cannot be responsible for the abductions that have been taking place and it only intervened in the case from a humanitarian approach and in return it was met with a second abduction of Turkish nationals in Lebanon in less than a year,” said Ozyildiz.
Commenting on the kidnapping of two Turkish pilots in Lebanon on Friday, the ambassador said: “The case is in the hands of Lebanon’s security and political authorities.” He added that he is in contact with all security officials, including General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim, to follow up on the case.
Ozyildiz said however that Turkey’s decision to advise its citizens against traveling to Lebanon is only a preliminary measure and further ones will be taken if any new development takes place in the case of the two pilots.
A Turkish pilot and co-pilot were kidnapped on Friday. Six gunmen intercepted a van carrying the Turkish Airlines employees from Rafik Hariri International Airport to a hotel in the Ain Mreisseh seafront at dawn Friday, kidnapping the two pilots – Murat Akpinar and Murat Agca – but leaving the four other crew members behind.
Mohammad Saleh, a relative of the pilgrims held in Aazaz, was arrested on Sunday in connection to the kidnapping.
Saleh is a Witness not Participant
A widely-informed security source told As Safir: “He revealed the names of the individuals linked to the abduction.” He also said that the pilots were kidnapped in a hope to exchange them with the nine pilgrims.
Saleh’s relatives denied to As Safir however that their son was linked to the case, saying that he only received messages of congratulations on his telephone when news of the abduction broke out.
Meanwhile, caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel told As Safir that Saleh is considered as a witness in the kidnapping and not a participant. His release from custody is in the hands of the General Prosecution, he added.
FM: Turkey Can Help Free Pilgrims
Caretaker Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour said that Turkey was able to play a major role in helping free nine Lebanese hostages held by Syrian rebels since last year.
“Lebanese people ask: Is it possible that after over a year, Turkey, with all its influence, cannot make fruitful efforts? … We deal with Turkey as a friendly state, we urge it to make efforts [to resolve the case], and we believe it can reach a positive outcome,” Mansour told The Daily Star in an interview at the Foreign Ministry in Beirut.
“I once told a Turkish security official in a meeting that no one believes Turkey can do nothing when it controls the situation in northern [Syria] and supports the opposition,” he said.
“He answered [by] saying: ‘The kidnappers are not under the control of the Syrian opposition.’ But this is an unconvincing answer,” Mansour added.
Saudi Arabia, a major supporter of opposition forces in Syria, has increased crackdown on its own dissenters, with 30,000 activists reportedly in jail. In an exclusive interview to RT a Saudi prince defector explained what the monarchy fears most.
“Saudi Arabia has stepped up arrests and trials of peaceful dissidents, and responded with force to demonstrations by citizens,” Human Rights Watch begins the country’s profile on its website.
Political parties are banned in Saudi Arabia and human rights groups willing to function legally have to go no further than investigating things like corruption or inadequate services. Campaigning for political freedoms is outlawed.
One of such groups, which failed to get its license from the government, the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), was cited by AFP as saying the kingdom was holding around 30,000 political prisoners.
Saudi Prince Khaled Bin Farhan Al-Saud, who spoke to RT from Dusseldorf, Germany, confirmed reports of increased prosecution of anti-government activists and said that it’s exactly what forced him to defect from his family. He accused the monarchy of corruption and silencing all voices of dissent and explained how the Saudi mechanism for suppression functioned.
“There is no independent judiciary, as both police and the prosecutor’s office are accountable to the Interior Ministry. This ministry’s officials investigate ‘crimes’ (they call them crimes), related to freedom of speech. So they fabricate evidence, don’t allow people to have attorneys”, the prince told RT Arabic. “Even if a court rules to release such a ‘criminal’, the Ministry of Interior keeps him in prison, even though there is a court order to release him. There have even been killings! Killings! And as for the external opposition, Saudi intelligence forces find these people abroad! There is no safety inside or outside the country.”
The strong wave of oppression is in response to the anti-government forces having grown ever more active. A new opposition group called Saudi Million and claiming independence from any political party was founded in late July. The Saudi youths which mostly constitute the movement say they demand the release of political prisoners and vow to hold regular demonstrations, announcing their dates and locations via Facebook and electronic newspapers.
Human rights violations are driving people on to the streets despite the fear of arrest, according to activist Hala Al-Dosari, who spoke to RT from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
“We have issues related to political and civil rights, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. These are the main issues that cause a lot of people to be at risk for just voicing out their opinions or trying to form associations, demonstrate or protest, which is banned by the government.”
The loudest voice of the Saudi opposition at the moment is a person called ‘Saudi Assange’. His Twitter name is @Mujtahidd, he keeps his identity and whereabouts secret and is prolific in online criticism of the ruling family, which has gained him over a million followers.
“The regime can destroy your credibility easily and deter people from dealing with you if your identity is public,” Mujtahid wrote to RT’s Lindsay France in an email.
The Twitter activist’s anonymity is understandable. The most recent example of what can happen to activists is the case of Raif Badawi, the founder of the Free Saudi Liberals website, who was found guilty of insulting Islam through his online forum and sentenced the activist to 600 lashes and seven years in prison.
In June, seven people were sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for ‘inciting protests’ via Facebook. The indicted denied charges and said they were tortured into confession.
“The government is obviously scared of the Arab revolutions. And they’ve responded as they usually do: by resorting to oppression, violence, arbitrary law, and arrest,” Prince Khaled says, adding that so far the tougher the measures the government took to suppress the dissent, the louder that dissent’s voice was.
“The opposition used to demand wider people’s representation in governing bodies, more rights and freedoms. But the authorities reacted with violence and persecution, instead of a dialogue. So the opposition raised the bar. It demanded constitutional monarchy, similar to what they have in the UK, for example. And the Saudi regime responded with more violence. So now the bar is even higher. Now the opposition wants this regime gone.”
There was a time, at the beginning of the Arab Spring movement in the region in 2011, when the government tried to appease opposition activists by a $60 billion handout program by King Abdullah, according to Pepe Escobar, a correspondent for the Asia Times. He calls that move an attempt to “bribe” the population. However there was also a stick with this carrot.
“The stick is against the Shiite minority – roughly 10 percent of Saudi Arabia – who live in the Eastern province where most of the oil is, by the way. They don’t want to bring down the House of Saud essentially. They want more participation, judiciary not answering to religious powers and basically more democratic freedoms. This is not going to happen in Saudi Arabia. Period. Nor in the other Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC] petro-monarchies”.
Escobar points out the hypocrisy of the Saudi Arabian rulers, who feel free to advise other regional powers on how to move towards democracy, despite their poor human rights record.
“They say to the Americans that they are intervening in Syria for a more democratic post-Assad Syria and inside Saudi Arabia it’s the Sunni-Shiite divide. They go against 10 percent of their own population.”
‘Buying favors from West’
Saudi Arabia’s crackdown on opposition has been strongly condemned by human rights organizations, but not by Western governments, which usually claim sensitivity to such issues.
“The White House certainly does maintain a long-standing alliance with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, cemented by common political, economic and military interests in the Middle East,” said Prince Khaled.
Germany came under fierce criticism last week over its arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, which have almost tripled in just two years, from 570 million euro in 2011 to almost one-and-a-half billion in 2012.
And Angela Merkel’s government has approved weapons exports of more than 800 million euro in the first half of this year – suggesting the level will continue to grow.
“With arms they [Gulf States] are also buying favors from the West. They are insuring the maintenance of their legitimacy on spending massive amounts of money that are pouring into Western economies,” Dr. Ahmed Badawi, co-executive director of Transform, which studies conflicts and political developments, told RT.
In 2012, Amnesty International claimed that German-made small firearms, ammunition and military vehicles were commonly used by Middle Eastern and North African regimes to suppress peaceful demonstrations.
“Small arms are becoming real weapons of mass destruction in the world now. There is absolutely no way to guarantee that the weapons that are being sold legally to countries like Saudi Arabia, even Egypt, do not fall into the hands of terrorists. The two important examples are German assault rifles found in the regions in Mexico and also in Libya. And there’s absolutely no way of knowing how these weapons ended up there,” Badawi said.
Syria has agreed to let three sites undergo investigation by a team of UN chemical weapons experts to assess whether the accusations that the country employed the devices during the country’s two year civil war carried any weight.
“The Mission will travel to Syria as soon as possible to contemporaneously investigate three of the reported incidents, including Khan al-Asal,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s press office told Reuters in a statement.
Syria contends that rebels were responsible for some chemical weapons usage in the region while the rebels accuse the government of playing a role. Earlier this month, Russia submitted to the UN its analysis of samples taken in Aleppo, where chemical weapons had allegedly been used in March.
Russia’s findings indicated that it was rebels – not the Syrian army – behind the Khan al-Assal incident, in which more than 30 people died.
“We submitted a full set of documents [to the UN]. That’s over 80 pages, including photographs and precise geographic coordinates [of places where samples were taken], procedures and results,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pointed out.
The United States cast doubt on the Russian analysis.
There was a time during the 30-month covert dirty war on Syria when the Western governments and mainstream media would make a clamor over reported massacres.
Now, despicably, these governments and media just ignore such atrocities.
Why? Because it is increasingly clear that the groups committing these crimes against thousands of Syrian civilians are the foreign-backed mercenaries, whom the Western media and their governments have tried to lionize as “rebels” fighting for “democratic freedom”.
That charade is rapidly disintegrating, exposing not just criminal Western governments sponsoring the violence against civilians, but an entire media industry that is also guilty of war crimes through its willful complicity.
This is not mere hyperbole. To disseminate false information and lies about conflict – under the guise of independent news – is to be complicit in covering up war crimes. You can hardly get more serious misconduct than to tell lies about crimes against humanity.
These toxic lies and propaganda are now being exposed as the Western-backed plot to subvert the sovereign state of Syria unravels; this unraveling is accentuated by the West’s death squads becoming even more unhinged as they stare at looming defeat at the hands of the Syrian army.
The latest massacre occurred in the town of Khan al-Assal in the northern province of Aleppo. Some 150 people, mostly civilians, were reportedly slaughtered in cold blood. Many of the victims were shot in the head execution-style. The groups claiming responsibility are the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front and Ansar al Khalifa.
Reliable sources say that the killers tried to cover up their barbaric crimes by mutilating the corpses and burning the remains. Only days before this orgy of murder, the same groups are believed to have massacred at least seven civilians in the town of Maqbara in the province of Hasakah.
Elsewhere, as the Syrian national army makes searing advances against the militants, it is apparent from the identities of the dead that the majority of these fighters are foreigners, from Saudi Arabia, Libya, Jordan, Turkey, as well as from the US and Europe, including Britain, France and Germany.
Just last week, it was reported that Saudi Arabia bought $50 million-worth of heavy arms from Israel to supply this foreign network in its endeavor to terrorize the people of Syria into submission.
Already, the US, Britain and France have stumped up over $200 million which they claim is provided to “the Syrian opposition” in the form of “non-lethal aid”.
This is just cynical semantics to cover up the fact that the Western governments and their regional Turk, Arab and Israeli proxies are sponsoring genocide in Syria.
Over the weekend as the mass murders in Khan al-Assal and Maqbara emerged there was a telling silence in the Western media. A cursory glance at outlets such as New York Times, Washington Post, Voice of America, the Guardian, BBC, France 24, Deutsche Welle, Reuters, among others, showed no or negligible reports on the atrocities.
A notable exception was the London-based Financial Times, which headlined: “Syria opposition condemns rebel attack”. The FT tried to obfuscate the mass murder of civilians by claiming that “extremist rebels” had executed captured Syrian army soldiers and by giving prominence to condemnation of the “abuses” by the exile non-entity group, the Syrian National Coalition.
Similar Western silence followed another massacre last month in the village of Hatlah in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour. In mid-June, more than 60 mainly Shia inhabitants were slaughtered again by Western-backed foreign militants. Most of the victims were women and children. Syrian government appeals for international condemnation at the United Nations were ignored.
Contrast this void in Western government and media reaction to earlier massacres. In May and June 2012, the Western media went viral with reports of mass killings in the villages of Houla and Qubair where some 108 and 78 inhabitants were murdered, many of them with throats slit. Immediately, the Western media then claimed or implied that the perpetrators were Syrian state forces and roundly condemned President Bashar al-Assad.
Back then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Assad of “ruling by murder and fear” and led the chorus of Western governments calling for Assad to step down.
It later transpired that the Houla and Qubair massacres were the work of the Western-backed foreign militants. But Western media did not follow-up with corrective reporting. This is the conduct of a propaganda ministry, not independent journalism.
The same propaganda formula of sensationalist headlines and innuendo, with minimal evidence, was repeated in subsequent massacres, such as in Tremseh in July 2012, or the bomb attack on Aleppo University in January this year in which more than 80 were killed. Also in that same month, more than 100 bodies were fished out of the Queiq River in the Bustan al-Qasr district of Aleppo – all of those victims with gunshot wounds to the head. Never mind that the district was under the control of foreign militants, the Western media continued their campaign of innuendo that it was the Syrian state forces that carried out the executions.
The Syrian government has consistently alleged that all these mass killings are the work of Western-backed militants. This sickening terrorist methodology concatenates with the Takfiri mentality of killing everyone who is deemed to be an infidel – Sunni, Shia, Alawite, Christian, non-believer alike, who does not subscribe to their fundamentalist twisted theology.
It is entirely in keeping that Western governments and Wahhabi Arab despots sponsor such groups given the long history of collusion between these protagonists, going back to the creation of al-Qaeda by Western military intelligence in Afghanistan during the 1980s to fight the then Soviet-backed government in Kabul.
The indiscriminate murder of civilians in wholesale massacres by Western-backed death squads operating in Syria to overthrow the Assad government is also consistent with the countless no-warning car bombs that have ripped through markets, streets, hospitals and schools all across Syria. Days before the latest slaughter in Khan al-Assal, a car bomb killed at least 10 in the Jaramana district of the capital, Damascus.
A few months earlier, another deadly bomb attack also targeted Jaramana, killing more than 30. The district is a mixed community of Muslim, Christian and Druze, which is largely supportive of the Assad government. As with the many other massacres in Syria, the aim is to terrorize the civilian population, to sow sectarianism and to coerce
the populace to relinquish support for the government.
As the foreign criminal conspiracy to force regime change in Syria flounders – with the turning point being the Syrian army victory in Qusayr early last month – the Western-sponsored terrorists are resorting to more and more desperate methods. This depravity was manifested yet again in the slaughter of civilians in Khan al-Assal and Maqbara. Tragically and despicably, we can expect more such atrocities in the coming weeks and months as the Western criminal conspiracy suffers more defeats.
But what is truly remarkable is how the Western governments and their propaganda machine, known euphemistically as the mainstream news media, are ignoring these latest massacres. That is because their vile game is up. They can no longer dissimulate on the reality of who is carrying out these massacres and how it is all part of a criminal genocidal campaign directed from Washington, London and Paris. That is why they are feigning to ignore such atrocities. To look into them honestly would uncover the ugly face of Western imperialism and the unconscionable role played all along by so-called Western news media.
Meanwhile, proper journalistic services like Press TV that are reporting the reality of what the Western governments are really doing in Syria via their death squads are being banned from satellite networks controlled by Western authorities.
Indeed, a very real extension of this censorship is how Press TV correspondent Maya Nasser was murdered last September by Western-backed death squads in Damascus for the very reason that he was helping to uncover the truth about what is being inflicted on Syria. Assassination is just an extreme act of censorship, as the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once noted.
Western government and media silence over the latest massacres in Syria is not just a matter of indifference or sloppy journalism. It is indicative of their complicity in the covert genocidal war on Syria.
The ruthless businessman who financed coups in Central America and shaped Israeli statehood
José Niño Unfiltered | May 7, 2026
Leftist commentators consistently push a shallow and economically reductive narrative that frames American foreign policy as the sole domain of greedy White capitalists while choosing to ignore the obvious Jewish power structure directing these events. When the veneer of this supposed corporate imperialism is stripped away, it becomes clear that the United States has often served as a vehicle for the specific goals of organized Jewry. The life of Samuel Zemurray stands as prime evidence of this hidden mechanism.
Few figures in American business history wielded power as ruthlessly or as secretly as Zemurray. Born Schmiel Zmurri on January 18, 1877, to a poor Jewish family in Imperial Russia, this teenage immigrant would rise from peddling rotting bananas off railroad cars in Alabama to become the controlling force behind the United Fruit Company, the most powerful agricultural corporation on earth. Along the way he overthrew governments, bribed presidents, hired mercenaries, and played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in the creation of the State of Israel. … continue
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Leftist commentators consistently push a shallow and economically reductive narrative that frames American foreign policy as the sole domain of greedy White capitalists while choosing to ignore the obvious Jewish power structure directing these events. When the veneer of this supposed corporate imperialism is stripped away, it becomes clear that the United States has often served as a vehicle for the specific goals of organized Jewry. The life of Samuel Zemurray stands as prime evidence of this hidden mechanism.
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