The western media is key to Syria deceptions

by Jonathan Cook

The media are not a watchdog on power but the public relations arm of giant corporations pursuing their narrow interests in the Middle East

By any reckoning, the claim made this week by al-Qaeda-linked fighters that they were targeted with chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Idlib province — their final holdout in Syria — should have been treated by the western media with a high degree of scepticism.

That the US and other western governments enthusiastically picked up those claims should not have made them any more credible.

Scepticism was all the more warranted from the media given that no physical evidence has yet been produced to corroborate the jihadists’ claims. And the media should have been warier still given that the Syrian government was already poised to defeat these al-Qaeda groups without resort to chemical weapons — and without provoking the predictable ire (yet again) of the west.

But most of all scepticism was required because these latest claims arrive just as we have learnt that the last supposed major chemical attack — which took place in April 2018 and was, as ever, blamed by all western sources on Syria’s president, Bashar Assad — was very possibly staged, a false-flag operation by those very al-Qaeda groups now claiming the Syrian government has attacked them once again.

Addicted to incompetence

Most astounding in this week’s coverage of the claims made by al-Qaeda groups is the fact that the western media continues to refuse to learn any lessons, develop any critical distance from the sources it relies on, even as those sources are shown to have repeatedly deceived it.

This was true after the failure to find WMD in Iraq, and it has been confirmed after the the international community’s monitoring body on chemical weapons, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), was exposed this month as deeply dishonest.

It is bad enough that our governments and our expert institutions deceive and lie to us. But it is even worse that we have a corporate media addicted — at the most charitable interpretation — to its own incompetence. The evidence demonstrating that grows stronger by the day.

Unprovoked attack

In March the OPCW produced a report into a chemical weapons attack the Syrian government allegedly carried out in Douma in April last year. Several dozen civilians, many of them children, died apparently as a result of that attack.

The OPCW report concluded that there were “reasonable grounds” for believing a toxic form of chlorine had been used as a chemical weapon in Douma, and that the most likely method of delivery were two cylinders dropped from the air.

This as good as confirmed claims made by al-Qaeda groups, backed by western states, that the cylinders had been dropped by the Syrian military. Using dry technical language, the OPCW joined the US and Europe in pointing the finger squarely at Assad.

It was vitally important that the OPCW reached that conclusion — and not only because the west has an overarching ambition for regime change in Syria.

In response to the alleged Douma attack a year ago, the US fired a volley of Cruise missiles at Syrian army and government positions before there had been any investigation into who was responsible.

Those missiles were already a war crime — an unprovoked attack on another sovereign country. But without the OPCW’s implicit blessing, the US would have been deprived of even its flimsy, humanitarian pretext for launching the missiles.

Leaked document

Undoubtedly the OPCW was under huge political pressure to arrive at the “right” conclusion. But as a scientific body carrying out a forensic investigation surely it would not have dared to doctor the data.

Nonetheless, it seems that may well be precisely what it did. This month the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media — a group of academics who have grown increasingly sceptical of the western narratives told about Syria — published an internal, leaked OPCW document.

A few fays later the OPCW reluctantly confirmed that the document was genuine, and that it would identify and deal with those responsible for the leak.

The document was an assessment overseen by Ian Henderson, a senior OPCW expert, of the engineering data gathered by the OPCW’s fact-finding mission that attended the scene of the Douma attack. Its findings fly in the face of the OPCW’s published report.

Erased from the record

The leaked document is deeply troubling for two reasons.

First, the assessment, based on the available technical data, contradicts the conclusion of the final OPCW report that the two chemical cylinders were dropped from the air and crashed through building roofs. It argues instead that the cylinders were more likely placed at the locations they were found.

If that is right, the most probable explanation is that the cylinders were put there by al-Qaeda groups — presumably in a last desperate effort to persuade the west to intervene and to prevent the jihadists being driven out of Douma.

But even more shocking is the fact that the expert assessment based on the data collected by the OPCW team is entirely unaddressed in the OPCW’s final report.

It is not that the final report discounts or rebuts the findings of its own experts. It simply ignores those findings; it pretends they don’t exist. The report blacks them out, erases them from the official record. In short, it perpetrates a massive deception.

Experts ignored

All of this would be headline news if we had a responsible media that cared about the truth and about keeping its readers informed.

We now know both that the US attacked Syria on entirely bogus grounds, and that the OPCW — one of the international community’s most respected and authoritative bodies — has been caught redhanded in an outrageous deception with grave geopolitical implications. (In fact, it is not the first time the OPCW has been caught doing this, as I have previously explained here.)

The fact that the OPCW ignored its own expert and its own team’s technical findings when they proved politically indigestible casts a dark shadow over allthe OPCW’s work in Syria, and beyond. If it was prepared to perpetrate a deception on this occasion, why should we assume it did not do so on other occasions when it proved politically expedient?

Active combatants

The OPCW’s reports into other possible chemical attacks — assisting western efforts to implicate Assad — are now equally tainted. That is especially so given that in those other cases the OPCW violated its own procedures by drawing prejudicial conclusions without its experts being on the ground, at the site of the alleged attacks. Instead it received samples and photos via al-Qaeda groups, who could easily have tampered with the evidence.

And yet there has been not a peep from the corporate media about this exposure of the OPCW’s dishonesty, apart from commentary pieces from the only two maverick mainstream journalists in the UK — Peter Hitchens, a conservative but independent-minded columnist for the Mail on Sunday, and veteran war correspondent Robert Fisk, of the little-read Independent newspaper (more on his special involvement in Douma in a moment).

Just as the OPCW blanked the findings of its technical experts to avoid political discomfort, the media have chosen to stay silent on this new, politically sensitive information.

They have preferred to prop up the discredited narrative that our governments have been acting to protect the human rights of ordinary Syrians rather than the reality that they have been active combatants in the war, helping to destabilise a country in ways that have caused huge suffering and death in Syria.

Systematic failure

This isn’t a one-off failure. It’s part of a series of failures by the corporate media in its coverage of Douma.

They ignored very obvious grounds for caution at the time of the alleged attack. Award-winning reporter Robert Fisk was among the first journalists to enter Douma shortly after those events. He and a few independent reporters communicated eye-witness testimony that flatly contradicted the joint narrative promoted by al-Qaeda groups and western governments that Assad had bombed Douma with chemical weapons.

The corporate media also mocked a subsequent press conference at which many of the supposed victims of that alleged chemical attack made appearances to show that they were unharmed and spoke of how they had been coerced into play-acting their roles.

And now the western media has compounded that failure — revealing its systematic nature — by ignoring the leaked OPCW document too.

But it gets worse, far worse.

Al-Qaeda propaganda

This week the same al-Qaeda groups that were present in Douma — and may have staged that lethal attack — claimed that the Syrian government had again launched chemical weapons against them, this time on their final holdout in Idlib.

A responsible media, a media interested in the facts, in evidence, in truth-telling, in holding the powerful to account, would be dutybound to frame this latest, unsubstantiated claim in the context of the new doubts raised about the OPCW report into last year’s chemical attack blamed on Assad.

Given that the technical data suggest that al-Qaeda groups, and the White Helmets who work closely with them, were responsible for staging the attack — even possibly of murdering civilians to make the attack look more persuasive — the corporate media had a professional and moral obligation to raise the matter of the leaked document.

It is vital context as anyone tries to weigh up whether the latest al-Qaeda claims are likely to be true. To deprive readers of this information, this essential context would be to take a side, to propagandise on behalf not only of western governments but of al-Qaeda too.

And that is exactly what the corporate media have just done. All of them.

Media worthy of Stalin

It is clear how grave their dereliction of the most basic journalistic duty is if we consider the Guardian’s uncritical coverage of jihadist claims about the latest alleged chemical attack.

Like most other media, the Guardian article included two strange allusions — one by France, the other by the US — to the deception perpetrated by the OPCW in its recent Douma report. The Guardian reported these allusions even though it has never before uttered a word anywhere in its pages about that deception.

In other words, the corporate media are so committed to propagandising on behalf of the western powers that they have reported the denials of official wrongdoing even though they have never reported the actual wrongdoing. It is hard to imagine the Soviet media under Stalin behaving in such a craven and dishonest fashion.

The corporate media have given France and the US a platform to reject accusations against the OPCW that the media themselves have never publicly raised.

Doubts about OPCW

The following is a brief statement (unintelligible without the forgoing context) from France, reportedby the Guardian in relation to the latest claim that Assad’s forces used chemical weapons this week: “We have full confidence in the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”

But no one, except bloggers and academics ignored by the media and state authorities, has ever raised doubts about the OPCW. Why would the Guardian think these French comments worthy of reporting unless there were reasons to doubt the OPCW? And if there are such reasons for doubt, why has the Guardian not thought to make them public, to report them to its readers?

The US state department similarly came to the aid of the OPCW. In the same Guardian report, a US official was quoted saying that the OPCW was facing “a continuing disinformation campaign” from Syria and Russia, and that the campaign was designed “to create the false narrative that others [rather than Assad] are to blame for chemical weapons attacks”.

So Washington too was rejecting accusations against the OPCW that have never been reported by the state-corporate media.

Interestingly, in the case of US officials, they claim that Syria and Russia are behind the “disinformation campaign” against the OPCW, even though the OPCW has admitted that the leaked document discrediting its work is genuine and written by one of its experts.

The OPCW is discredited, of course, only because it sought to conceal evidence contained in the leaked document that might have exonerated Assad of last year’s chemical attack. It is hard to see how Syria or Russia can be blamed for this.

Colluding in deception

But more astounding still, while US and French officials have at least acknowledged that there are doubts about the OPCW’s role in Syria, even if they unjustifiably reject such doubts, the corporate media have simply ignored those doubts as though they don’t exist.

The continuing media blackout on the leaked OPCW document cannot be viewed as accidental. It has been systematic across the media.

That blackout has remained resolutely in place even after the OPCW admitted the leaked document discrediting it was genuine and even after western countries began alluding to the leaked document themselves.

The corporate media is actively colluding both in the original deception perpetrated by al-Qaeda groups and the western powers, and in the subsequent dishonesty of the OPCW. They have worked together to deceive western publics.

The question is, why are the media so obviously incompetent? Why are they so eager to keep themselves and their readers in the dark? Why are they so willing to advance credulous narratives on behalf of western governments that have been repeatedly shown to have lied to them?

Iran the real target

The reason is that the corporate media are not what they claim. They are not a watchdog on power, or a fourth estate.

The media are actually the public relations wing of a handful of giant corporations — and states — that are pursuing two key goals in the Middle East.

First, they want to control its oil. Helping al-Qaeda in Syria — including in its propaganda war — against the Assad government serves a broader western agenda. The US and NATO bloc are ultimately gunning for the leadership of Iran, the one major oil producer in the region not under the US imperial thumb.

Powerful Shia groups in the region — Assad in Syria, Hizbullah in Lebanon, and Iraqi leaders elevated by our invasion of that country in 2003 — are allies or potential allies of Iran. If they are in play, the US empire’s room for manoeuvre in taking on Iran is limited. Remove these smaller players and Iran stands isolated and vulnerable.

That is why Russia stepped in several years ago to save Assad, in a bid to stop the dominoes falling and the US engineering a third world war centred on the Middle East.

Second, with the Middle East awash with oil money, western corporations have a chance to sell more of the lucrative weapons that get used in overt and covert wars like the one raging in Syria for the past eight years.

What better profit-generator for these corporations than wasteful and pointless wars against manufactured bogeymen like Assad?

Like a death cult

From the outside, this looks and sounds like a conspiracy. But actually it is something worse — and far more difficult to overcome.

The corporations that run our media and our governments have simply conflated in their own minds — and ours — the idea that their narrow corporate interests are synonymous with “western interests”.

The false narratives they generate are there to serve a system of power, as I have explained in previous blogs. That system’s worldview and values are enforced by a charmed circle that includes politicians, military generals, scientists, journalists and others operating as if brainwashed by some kind of death cult. They see the world through a single prism: the system’s need to hold on to power. Everything else — truth, evidence, justice, human rights, love, compassion — must take a back seat.

It is this same system that paradoxically is determined to preserve itself even if it means destroying the planet, ravaging our economies, and starting and maintaining endlessly destructive wars. It is system that will drag us all into the abyss, unless we stop it.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books).

Manufacturing “Islamic Extremism”

by Ghali Hassan 

“Hate is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die”. Saint. Augustine

The so-called “Islamic extremism” has become synonymous with the Western definition of “terrorism” to conceal the West’s ongoing war on Islam and Muslims. It is invented and sensationalised by anti-Muslim Anglo-Zionist mass media and the Anglo-Zionist political establishments. Its intention is to demonise Muslims and conflate Muslim identity with a propensity for violence in order to manipulate the public and justify brutal repression of Muslims.

A recent study by the University of Alabama in the U.S., found that “terrorist attacks” committed by people described and identified according to their faith as “Muslim extremists” receive 357% more U.S. press coverage than those committed by non-Muslims (Jews and Christians). The study adds that, terrorist attacks committed by non-Muslims received an average of 15 headlines, while those committed by people with Muslim names and Islamic backgrounds received 105 headlines. The study findings were based on all attacks on the U.S. soil between 2006 and 2015. White and right-wing committed nearly twice as many terrorist attacks as those depicted as Muslim extremists” between 2008 and 2016 [see 1 and 2]. In fact, Muslims have committed less acts of terrorism than non-Muslims who committed more than 90% of all acts of terrorism. In addition, Jews have committed more acts of terrorism in the U.S. than Muslims, according to FBI study. Furthermore, a study released by Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, shows that, “the terrorist threat posed by ‘radicalized’ Muslim-Americans has been exaggerated.” Despite all of this, a new study from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, or ISPU, asserts that perpetrators of violent crimes are sentenced more harshly when they are perceived to be Muslim. The report also asserts that major American media outlets focus a disproportionate amount of attention on Muslims accused of plotting violence. The trends in the U.S. are not much different in Australia.

Australia is ruled by what is called “Liberal-National Coalition”, a wealthy pro-Israel and anti-Muslim Neofascists clique. From the bigoted John Howard and Tony “Dumb-Dumb” Abbott to the current (selected) Prime Minister Scott Morrison or “Scomo” and the Liberal’s anti-Muslim attack dog Peter Dutton, they destroyed Australia and turned it into a cesspool of poisoning Islamophobia, breeding ground for Neofascists, ignorance, injustice and rampant political corruption. Indeed, poisoning Islamophobia, corrupt political class, ignorance, growing Neofascism, surveillance cameras, and concentration camps for Muslim refugees have become an integral part of the Australian culture and political landscape. The Liberal-National clique have always used anti-Muslim racist rhetoric of “us versus them” to win elections and enrich themselves and their friends at the expense of ordinary Australians.

The Muslim community is a relatively small minority in Australia, making up roughly 2.6% of the total Australian population, where around 93% of the Muslim population is clustered in urban areas, where racism and the poison Islamophobia are both, deeply rooted and institutionalised, and where Islam and Muslims are systematically discriminated against and demonised in the Zionist mass media [3]. Like in many countries with Muslim minorities, the Australian government anti-Muslim “policies are designed to control the Muslim community, to ‘domesticate’ Islam, have put pressure on Muslims not simply to integrate into a ‘multicultural’ society but to assimilate by abandoning elements of their Muslim belief and culture in order to enjoy full participation in their newly [adopted] country”, according to a study by the University of Exeter in Britain [4]. In other words, to be accepted in Australia, Muslims must convert to a new form of “Islam” created for them by Australian authorities.

The Muslim community was on notice again, when on the 09th November 2018, a lone psychopath Somali-born man (Shire Ali) went on a random violent knife attacks in Melbourne’s busiest streets (Bourke Street), killing one innocent man (the Pellegrini’s Café owner, Mr. Sisto Malaspina) and injuring two others before being killed by Australian Police.  After the Police revealed the perpetrator’s name and background, his random act of violence was classified as an act of “terrorism”.  It is his name and background that made him a “Muslims terrorist”, in a deeply-racist, Islamophobic and ignorant Anglo-Saxon society.  His motives were unknown and had nothing to do with Islam. It is fair to say that, he was a drug user and had nothing to do with Islam or Muslims. He was neither religiously or politically motivated to commit crimes. Shire Ali was well-known to Police and intelligence authorities (Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation, ASIO) and was cleared of posing any “threat to national security”. Though his passport was cancelled in 2015 by ASIO, who feared the Somali-born suspect would go to Syria to fight with the “Islamic State” (IS, formerly Daesh, ISIS/ISIL) or al-Qaeda terrorists, but no evidence provided. The Police also alleged that he was a loner and has no link to terrorist groups. “I think it is fair to say he [Shire Ali] was inspired. He was radicalized. We’re not saying there was direct contact [with terrorists]. We’re saying it was more from an inspiration perspective” and there was no direct contact with terrorist groups, Australian Federal Police Acting Deputy Commissioner Ian McCartney told reporters in Melbourne.

It was the oafish (unelected) Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison who made the most outrageous and racially-motivated allegations against the Australian Muslim community. He took the lead in spreading fear, and anti-Muslim hatred by accusing the Muslim community of “terrorism”. In a desperate attempt to salvage his corrupt minority government, Mr. Morrison used the tragedy and its victim to extract political mileage and justify the Liberal-National failures in economy and social policies. Indeed, scapegoating of Muslims and using racist fearmongering that targets Muslims especially during election campaigns have become an attractive rhetoric in Australian racist politics. Indeed, threat of terrorism has dominated headlines and spurred debate in the lead-up to every state and federal election. Instead of scapegoating Muslims, Mr. Morrison should use his “leadership” to promote diversity and social cohesion, not division. Despite the draconian and repressive laws targeting Muslim Australians, the vast majority of Muslims are law abiding citizens not involved crimes. If a small minority of Muslim Australians were involved in violence, “it it is the hostility and dehumanisation white Australia has meted out to generations of [Muslim] immigrants that pushes some of them to ‘seek worth elsewhere. Whether it is expressed in street violence or in foreign fighters, these people are inherently just seeking what society was unwilling to provide them: their humanity, their worth being recognised’”, writes Australia columnist Ruby Hamad.

Furthermore, Mr. Morrison called on Australian Muslims to take “special responsibility” – i.e., collective culpability – to fight “Islamic extremism”, arguing that the perpetrator is a Muslim, and he is a “radicalised terrorist”. When a Muslim alleged to have committed a criminal act, the whole Muslim community is collectively blamed. Of course, Muslims reject act of violence and the killing of innocent people is forbidden in Islam. “They [the Muslims] can’t look the other way”, said an aggressive Mr. Morrison. Muslims of course, are feed up with these generalise condemnations, collective responsibility and guilt “Asking Muslims to assume pastoral responsibility over a mythical homogenous ‘community’ not only relies on a racist framing of every Muslim as a potential terrorist, but it locates the ‘problem’ in Islam and ‘culture’, not politics. The script we are given for talking about the war on terror is censored and redacted,” writes Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah. Consequently, the violent act of one psychopath (alleged or otherwise) does not criminalise or blamed on the entire diverse community of Muslims. Are all Catholic people guilty of paedophilia, or just some priests?

Now, let’s compare the attack of 09 November 2018 by the Somali-Australian with that of the Greek-Australian James George Gargasoulas (also known as “Dimitrious”), which took place in the same Bourke Street in Melbourne on 20 January 2017. Gargasoulas killed 6 innocent people, including 2 children and injured 27 others in a trail of death, terror and destruction. Yet the knife attacks by the Somali-born have been clearly labelled as “terrorism”, whereas the attack by the Greek-Australian is considered a “massacre”, “rampage”, and “tragedy”. Gargasoulas has been charged with six counts of murder, but not any terror-related offences. Indeed, once Gargasoulas was identified as Greek-Australian, he was described “mentally unstable” – a legitimate ground denied to Muslims –, and the Police cleared him of terrorism immediately. “This individual is not related to any terrorism activity,” Victoria’s Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said.  Gargasoulas is the “Bourke Street driver”, not the terrorist. He is called a “monster”, a codeword for something large and good, but never a terrorist. In his recent trial, Gargasoulas has told a Melbourne Supreme Court jury that, he had a premonition “given by God” of running people over. He was never called a terrorist, but an Australian with “mental health issues” that are denied to the Somali-born Australian. In fact, the media sympathise with Gargasoulas and portrayed him as a good guy believing in “the second coming of Christ”, as he told the jury. Muslims are supposed to be discreet when it comes to their Islamic faith and discussing Islam in an Australian court has dire consequences.

It is instructive to define what is called terrorism. Like most other countries, Australia does have its definition of terrorism in domestic law. In Australia, a “terrorist act” is defined as an action or threat that:

1. a) is intended to advance a political, religious or ideological cause; and
2. b) is intended to coerce or influence a government by intimidation, or intimidate a section of the public; and
3. c) causes one in a list of specified harms, including death, serious injury, or serious property damage.

The first requirement – the intention to advance a political, religious or ideological cause –, the “motive” requirement, is specifically designed for Muslims. This is key to distinguish religiously-motivated attacks (apply only to Muslims) from other attacks perpetrated by non-Muslims, like that committed by Gargasoulas in Bourke Street. According to Western political establishment and the Zionist mass media, any act of violence committed by someone with Islamic background is religiously-motivated (committed in “the name of Islam”). That is why Western mass media and politicians blamed IS/ISIS for almost every “act of terrorism” allegedly committed by people with Islamic background with the attention to associate violence with Islam. Even the fabricated description of terrorists as “Jihadis” – doesn’t exist in Arabic – by the Anglo-Zionist media, politicians and pundits is misleading and aimed at associating Islam and Muslims with violence. jihād, [جهاد] has no violent connotations and it literally means to strive for better goal in life. One must be completely illiterate to call Western-backed terrorists “Jihadis”. They are not. The so-called “IS/ISIS claimed responsibility” has become a household cliché. The Australian Police and ASIO rely on the above definition in their targeting of Muslims. Australian men from Muslim background are constantly spied-on, arrested in pre-dawn raids, imprisoned (on trumped-up charges), on bails, have had their passports cancelled, and on watchlist because Australian Police and ASIO allege they were “plotting an Islamic State-inspired terror attack”. In addition to systemic racism and discrimination, the Australian Muslim community is under siege and lives in fear. In a recent rant in Federal parliament, an uneducated Senator for Queensland (the fascist One Nation Party), Fraser Anning, has called in parliament for a “final solution” to Muslim migrants and the return of Australia to the old fascist White Australia Policy. Fortunately, there are no “gas chambers” in Australia, but “the plight of Muslims is beginning to mirror that of targeted ethnic minority groups on the eve of the war in the former Yugoslavia, or Jews in the dying days of the Weimar Republic”, writes American columnist Chris Hedges.

The recent arrest of Mr. Kamer Nizamdeen, a PhD student at UNSW in Sydney is a case in point. Mr. Nizamdeen was arrested by Australian Federal Police and NSW Police and accused (and charged) of “plotting Islamic State-inspired acts of terrorism”. It was only after friends and family members raised the alarm, the charges against him were dropped, and Mr. Nizamdeen returned to his home in Sri Lanka. He was framed by a paid Police informant. From the safety of his home in Sri Lanka, he said: “The AFP, NSW Police and the [Australian] authorities are responsible for abominable conduct and irreparable damage, which cannot be quantified in any manner whatsoever. It took six days for my lawyers to contact me. I had no access to lawyers or my family [in] this time, in solitary confinement in Supermax prison. I had no contact with the outside world for six days which is a violation of basic and fundamental human rights.” Mr. Nizamdeen treatment is what every Muslim in Australia is expecting.

As always, we are told, IS/ISIS terrorists had “claimed responsibility” for the latest attack in Melbourne, contradicting Deputy Commissioner McCartney earlier assertions. If that was the case, then the perpetrator had nothing to do with Islam and Muslims, because IS/ISIS terrorists and their affiliates (like al-Nusra Front) are Western-sponsored international terrorists.

The IS/ISIS terrorists are a double-edged sword that serves two purposes. Firstly, IS/ISIS is created as a useful tool― (1) to justify U.S.-led war of terror in the Middle East; and (2) as a proxy army and an instrument to create chaos and fuel sectarian wars between the region’s ethno-religious groups. The mantra of “fighting terrorism” (in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, etc.) is in reality fighting alongside the terrorists against independent nations who refused to submit to Anglo-Zionist diktats. For example, in Iraq, IS/ISIS grew under the watchful and complaisant eyes of the U.S. occupation of the country. From the outset, the U.S. armed and financed IS/ISIS/al-Qaeda to this day nonstop, as Brandon Tuberville shows.  Then when needed, the terrorists were allowed by the U.S. army to march – in Toyota Hilux trucks, paid for by the U.S. – into Iraq from Syria and occupied a large part of the country, including the City of Mosul in 2014. The U.S. regime played its car well in Iraq by― (1) using the terrorists to terrorise the Iraqi civilians, and intimidate the weak Iraqi government; and (2) having the terrorists as a pretext to justify the wanton destruction of Mosul and the permanent U.S. colonial occupation of Iraq for which the U.S. House of Representatives has just approved a bill titled the: “Preventing Destabilization of Iraq Act” (HR 4591). So, U.S. reign of terror against the Iraqi people continues over three decades since it begun. As President Trump clearly stated, the primary goal is to support and advance Israel’s fascist expansion and dispossession of the Palestinian people. It is estimated that more than 40,000 Iraqi civilians were killed by the indiscriminate bombing of the “U.S.-led Coalition”. The overwhelming majority of the victims were women and children. IS terrorists (approximately 9,000) were given safe passage (by the U.S.-led Coalition) to Eastern Syria to continue their barbaric terror war there and to be used as a pretext to destroy another Muslim-Majority Arab nation.

The wanton destruction of the city of Raqqa in Syria was modelled on Mosul. A report by Amnesty International (‘War of Annihilation’) said, there is strong evidence that the U.S.-led Coalition indiscriminate air and artillery attacks on population centres violated international law and have committed heinous and unconscionable war crimes. Like Mosul, Raqqa was deliberately obliterated and thousands of innocent civilians were killed and injured. According to Syrian medical sources, many mass-graves have been found after the occupation of Raqqa by the U.S. forces, noting that 4,000 corpses of civilians, including nearly 2,500 children, women and the elderly, have been unearthed from the mass-graves. Australia is complacent because Australia is part of this U.S.-led criminal enterprise. When Australian SAS returned home recently, they were welcomed as “heroes” who were “protecting” Australia killing defenceless women and children Israeli-style.

Secondly, IS/ISIS provides a pretext for Western governments and mass media to incite fear among Western population and stir up anti-Muslim racial hatred to justify Western governments’ repression of and attacks against Muslims and refugees. It is ironic that the Australian government claims and pretends to be “fighting the terrorists”, while it is complicit in U.S.-imposed barbarous sanctions that aimed at starving the lives of the Syrian people, not the terrorists. In fact, every nation that is opposing U.S. policies and fighting against U.S.-sponsored terrorism is under barbarous sanctions.

Australia is part of the U.S.-led Coalition, which includes extremist regimes like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirate (UAE), Israel, Turkey, Qatar, and Jordan. These U.S.-led vassal states are in league with the U.S. proxy international terrorists  (a.k.a. “moderate rebels”) not only in Syria to overthrow the Syrian Government of President Bashar al-Assad, but also in Iraq and in Yemen. The clichés of “humanitarian intervention” in “civilian war” are the pretexts to justify foreign military invasion and occupation. The U.S.-led regimes and their Arab stooges in the Gulf are backing several groups of international terrorists, including IS/ISIS, al-Qaeda and al-Nusra Front, recruited from over 80 countries to do what has become a normalised Anglo-Zionist crime of “regime change” in Syria. The terrorists are well armed, well financed and heavily promoted by Western media and “humanitarian” NGOs. Overwhelming evidence shows that on behalf of Israel the U.S. and its vassal-state allies, including Britain, France, Israel, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan have been recruiting, arming, financing and defending the terrorists against the legitimate Syrian Government. We all know, unless you have been living on the Moon for the seventy years, that the U.S. and Israel are the world’s leading sponsors of international terrorism, followed by their closest “allies”, namely Britain, France, and Saudi Arabia. Of course, Australia couldn’t be prouder than standing shoulder to shoulder with the world’s leading sponsors of terrorism.

To disguise and “humanise” ester-sponsored terrorism, the terrorists’ propaganda organ, the so-called “White Helmets” is created and financed by the Anglo-Zionist regimes. With full access to Western mass media and the entertainment industry, the White Helmets are nothing more and nothing less than IS, ISIS/ al-Qaeda terrorists in white helmets. Disguised as “humanitarian volunteers”, the White Helmets is a British-U.S. propaganda organ, which has received a glowing publicity in the West, even nominated for the Noble Prize. They are financed by the Zionist George Soros, Avaaz NGO and USAID. The White Helmets is a clearly an Anglo-Zionist Public Relations project established to help the terrorists in Syria regain credibility and “humanitarian” images in Western public opinion. In other words, it main task is to prepare Western public for war on Syria. Their disinformation tactics are designed to promote Western military invasion of Syria, modelled on the criminal invasion and wanton destruction of Libya. An article by Rick Sterling sheds light on the true purpose of the White Helmets. With the imminent defeat of the terrorists by the Syrian Army, and their allies (Russia and Iran), members of the White Helmets and their families have been evacuated by the Israeli army to be relocated to Western countries, including, Britain, Canada, Germany and the U.S.

The U.S.-led Coalition air force – better known as the al-Qaeda air force –, including the Australian and the Israeli air forces have been proving the terrorists with aircover and to help with their criminal assault on Syrian towns and villages. Indeed, Australia brags about its “role” in U.S.-led criminal air attacks on Syrian soldiers in Deir ez-Zor on 19 September 2016 (Australian ABC). At least 62 brave soldiers (SAA) were killed and more than 100 injured defending their country against Western-sponsored international terrorists. The U.S.-led Coalition continues to bomb and kill Syrian civilians indiscriminately in a campaign of ongoing terror. On Friday 23 November 2018, the Syrian Arab News Agency(SANA) reported that 11 civilians, including women and children, were killed in a U.S.-led airstrike in the village of al-Shaafa in eastern Deir ez-Zor. The Syrian Government has repeatedly and rightly accused the U.S.-led Coalition of using white phosphorus and cluster bombsin Syria and Iraq, causing heavy civilian casualties in built-up areas. Furthermore, the Israeli regime in particular has openly defended the terrorists – on behalf of the U.S.-led Coalition – provided them with medical supplies, arms and aircover, until Russia decided to act on its long-postponed decision to deliver the S-300 ABM missiles to Syria to act as a deterrent anti-aircraft system.

Finally, counting on Australians’ ignorance and lack of knowledge of Islam, Home Affairs Minister, the anti-Muslim Peter Dutton, has pressed for the speedy passage of laws to give Police more powers to bust encrypted communications, to identify, monitor (spy on), and arrest Australians (Muslims in particular). The aim is to create a “large-scale information secret service” all under the guise of “countering terrorism.” Mr. Dutton has called on Muslim Australians to act as Police informants against fellow Muslims. In addition, Australian Police and ASIO have requested more cash and more resources to monitor and police Muslim Australians.

It was possible that the perpetrator (Shire Ali) of the knife attacks in Melbourne had been recruited by enemies of Islam in Australia to commit act of violence and blackened the name of Islam and the Muslim community. There have been many violent attacks by Western criminals (in Europe, the U.S.) that were blamed on Muslims without any evidence. False flag terrorism has been a staple diet of many regimes around the world, and designed to stir-up anti-Muslim hatred, enact draconian laws and justify illegal aggression against Muslim-majority nations. It is obvious that Muslims are not the beneficiaries of the violence, but Western politicians, the anti-Muslim pro-Israel Zionist establishment and Israel are the major beneficiaries.

There is no hard evidence to support Western narrative that what have been labelled as acts of “terrorism” are associated with Muslims and Islam. On the contrary, there is overwhelming evidence that “Islamic extremism” is a manufactured anti-Muslim narrative. At a time when the anti-Muslim Anglo-Zionists are trying to manipulate the public that Islam, not them, is the greatest threat to world’s peace and humanity, it is good to show them that not everybody is drinking their poison.

Ghali Hassan is an independent political analyst living in Australia.