When is a terrorist group not a
terrorist group? Apparently the answer is that it ceases to be terrorist when
it terrorizes someone who is an enemy of the United States. The most prominent
recent example is the Mujaheddin e Khalq (MEK), a murderous Iranian Marxist
cult which assassinated five Americans in the 1970s as part of its campaign
against the Shah’s government. It was removed from the State Department
terrorist list in 2012 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after it had
promised not to kill any more Americans but really because it had bought the
support of prominent politicians to include Elaine Chao, Rudy Giuliani, Newt
Gingrich, and John Bolton. It also had the behind the scenes endorsement of
both the Israeli Mossad and CIA, both of whom have been using it in their
operations to kill Iranians and damage the country’s infrastructure. Someone
high up in the federal government, perhaps Hillary or even President Obama
himself, must have decided that terrorists who kill only Iranians deserve a get
out of jail free card from the State Department.
There are other examples of
cynical doublespeak from the Syrian conflict, including labeling rebels against
the Damascus government “freedom fighters” when in reality they were as often
as not allied with the al-Qaeda affiliated group Al-Nusra or even with ISIS.
Frequently they received training and weapons from Washington only to turn
around and either join Al-Nusra and ISIS as volunteers or surrender their
weapons to them.
But perhaps there is no bigger
fraud making the rounds than the so-called White Helmets. The recent media
coverage derives from the documentary The White Helmets, which was produced by the
group itself and tells a very convincing tale promoted as “the
story of real-life heroes and impossible hope.” It is a very impressive piece
of propaganda, so much so that it has won numerous awards including the Oscar
for Best Documentary Short last year and the White Helmets themselves were
nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. More to the point, however, is the
undeniable fact that the documentary has helped shape the public understanding
of what is going on in Syria, describing the government in Damascus in purely
negative terms.
The fawning Hollywood and
Congressional depictions of the group go something like this: “the White
Helmets are an ‘heroic’ impartial non-government humanitarian volunteer group
that engages in ‘first response’ emergency rescue and medical treatment for all
those who have been impacted by the fighting in Syria. The Syrian government
hates the group because it assists victims of the fighting who are either
rebels or living in rebel held areas. Recently, with the Syrian Army closing in
on the last White Helmet affiliates still operating in the country, the Israeli
government, assisted by the United States, staged an emergency humanitarian evacuation
of the group’s members and their families to Israel and then on to Jordan.”
Virtually all the mainstream
media coverage of the White Helmets is bogus, but by far the most ridiculous
account of the Exodus from Syria came from the BBC. For those who are not
familiar with it, the BBC, which once upon a time had a reputation for
journalistic integrity, has become one of the worst pro-government propaganda
shills of all time. Reading its articles is even worse that having a similar go
at The
Washington Post, which is the prime newspaper exemplar of fake news and phony
journalism pretending to be a respectable news source in the United States.
Let’s face it, Donald Trump has a point. Nearly all of the mainstream media
lies persistently these days but some sources are worse than others. People
complain about Fox, and rightly so, but CNN is the absolute pits when it comes
to slanting its coverage, as is MSNBC.
BBC’s article is
entitled Syria
conflict: White Helmets evacuated by Israel. It makes the following
statements, many coming directly from Israeli official sources, regarding the
White Helmets, its activities and the group’s relationship to some governments,
to include Britain:
·
“The IDF said they had ‘completed a humanitarian effort to
rescue members of a Syrian civil organization and their families’, saying there
was an ‘immediate threat to their lives.’ The transfer of the displaced Syrians
through Israel was an exceptional humanitarian gesture.”
·
“Although Israel is not directly involved in the Syria conflict,
the two countries have been in a state of war for decades. Despite the
intervention, the IDF said that ‘Israel continues to maintain a
non-intervention policy regarding the Syrian conflict.’”
·
“A statement from Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and
International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt said: ‘White Helmets have
been the target of attacks and, due to their high profile, we judged that, in
these particular circumstances, the volunteers required immediate protection.
We pay tribute to the brave and selfless work that White Helmet volunteers have
done to save Syrians on all sides of the conflict.’”
·
“Their official name is the Syrian Civil Defense and it began in
early 2013 as an organization of volunteers from all walks of life, including
electricians and builders. Its main task soon became to rescue civilians in war
zones in the immediate aftermath of air strikes, and it says its volunteers
have saved the lives of more than 100,000 people during the civil war.”
The BBC story could have been
written by the White Helmets themselves or by their press department. Or
alternatively by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. First of all, the Israelis do
not do humanitarian gestures. They helped bail out the White Helmets at the
request of the U.S. because capture by the Syrians would have produced
embarrassing revelations about how the group was funded and what its
affiliation with terrorists was all about. And Israel’s denial of involvement
in Syria is nonsense, unless one considers demonstrated collaboration with the
terrorist groups punctuated by nearly weekly bombing and missile attacks to be
non-involvement.
The British too are into the
deception up to their eyeballs. The comment by Hunt and Mordaunt is complete
fabrication regarding what the White Helmets represent. The same goes for the
BBC account of how the group developed, which comes directly from the White
Helmet’s own propaganda division as amplified by Hollywood and the U.S. and
U.K. governments.
Just as important as what is
said about the White Helmets’ activities is the exclusion of a great deal of
credible negative reporting on the group. The carefully edited scenes of
heroism under fire that have been filmed and released worldwide conceal the
White Helmets’ relationship with the al-Qaeda affiliated group Jabhat al-Nusra
and its participation in the torture and execution of “rebel” opponents. Indeed,
the White Helmets only operate in rebel held territory, which enables them to
shape the narrative both regarding who they are and what is occurring on the
ground.
Exploiting their access to the
western media, the White Helmets thereby de factobecame a major source of “eyewitness” news
regarding what was going on in those many parts of Syria where European and
American journalists were quite rightly afraid to go. It was all part of a
broader largely successful “rebel”
effort to manufacture fake news that depicts the Damascus
government as engaging in war crimes directed against civilians, an effort that
led to several attacks on government forces and facilities by the U.S.
military.
The White Helmets travel to
bombing sites with their film crews trailing behind them. Once at the sites,
with no independent observers, they are able to arrange or even stage what is
filmed to conform to their selected narrative which consistently promotes tales
of government atrocities against civilians to encourage outside military
intervention in Syria and bring about regime change in Damascus. The White
Helmets were, for example, the propagators of the totally false but
propagandistically effective claims regarding the government use of so-called
“barrel bombs” against civilians.
Peter Ford, British Ambassador
in Damascus from 2003-2006, recently described the group in an audio interview saying,
“The White Helmets are jihadi auxiliaries. They are not, as claimed by
themselves and by their supporters… simple rescuers. They are not volunteers.
They are paid professionals of disinformation.” He noted particularly the large
size of the organization’s “press department”, saying, “This gives us an idea
what the priority is for this very dubious organization… All their activities
are directed at mobilizing Western opinion behind the jihadis with whom they
associate. They co-locate their centers with the Al-Qaeda organization known as
Al-Nusra and with other militant groups such as Jaish al-Islam. They have in
the past been shown associating with and waving the flags of ISIS.”
The group is currently largely funded by
a number of non-government organizations (NGOs) as well as governments,
including the United States, Britain and some European Union member states. The
U.S. has directly provided $23 million through the USAID (US Agency for
International Development) as of 2016 and almost certainly considerably more
indirectly. Max Blumenthal has explored in some detail the
various funding resources and relationships that the organization draws on,
mostly in Europe and the United States.
Perhaps the most serious charge
against the White Helmets consists of the evidence that they actively participated in
the atrocities, to include torture and murder, carried out by
their al-Nusra hosts. There have been numerous photos of
the White Helmets operating directly with armed terrorists and also celebrating
over the bodies of execution victims and murdered Iraqi soldiers. The group’s
jihadi associates regard the White Helmets as fellow “mujahideen” and “soldiers
of the revolution.”
So Israel’s celebrated rescue
of the White Helmets was little more than a theatrical performance intended to
perpetuate the myth that the al-Assad government was thwarted in an attempt to
capture and possibly kill an honorable non-partisan group engaged in
humanitarian relief for those caught up in a bloody conflict seeking to oust a
ruthless dictator. The reality is quite different. The White Helmets were and
are part and parcel of the attempt to overthrow a legitimate government and
install a regime friendly to western, American and Israeli interests. For
Israel in particular the ongoing chaos in Syria was and is part of its plan for
dividing all of its neighbors into warring ethnicities and sects, making them
less viable as threats to the Jewish state.
The 800 White Helmets rescued
reportedly will be resettled in the U.S., Britain and Germany. One hopes those
coming to America can end up in Los Angeles, where they would presumably mingle
with Hollywood big shots and the usual snowflakes while working on their next
documentary. As some of them are most certainly radical Jihadists, it will be interesting
to observe exactly how that will play out.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is
Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax
deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S.
foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address
is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.