The Propaganda War Against Syria
A guide to debunking the lies
Contents:
1 -Introduction. 2 -The propaganda of past wars. 3 -Modern Syria: Chemical weapons and Panorama. 4 -The Aleppo “final messages”. 5 -Bana Alabed the 7 year old twitter giant. 6 -White Helmets. 7- Allegations of Russia bombing hospitals. 8 -Conclusion
This article has a video counterpart also titled “The Propaganda War Against Syria” which can be found below the article introduction.
1 — Introduction
Widespread disinformation designed to support military intervention (a fancy way of saying invasion) has been a factor in all of history’s wars. Luckily with the advent of the internet it is increasingly hard to get away with flat out lying to the public without being called out. As this article is being written there are thousands of self made journalists and news outlets dedicated to bringing war reporting from battlefield front-lines, many of which are operated by people working in their spare time and paying for travel and equipment from their own money. Two brilliant examples of such people are Russell Bentley and Patrick Lancaster who both report on the front lines of the current Ukrainian war. Two famous journalists currently reporting in Syria are Eva Barlett and Vanessa Beeley. Before this article goes onto Syria we first need to examine some examples of war propaganda from history in order to understand how similar the Syrian war really is to past wars.
With this said let’s begin.
2 — The propaganda of past wars:
Before this article goes onto Syria we first need to examine some examples of war propaganda from history in order to understand how similar the Syrian war really is to past wars. One of the most infamous cases of war propaganda in recent history was the Nayirah Testimony. In 1990 the United States invaded Iraq in a war now known as the Gulf War, not to be confused with the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003 which was known as the Iraq War. The Gulf War started after Iraq invaded one of its neighboring countries which was an ally of the United States called Kuwait. Before the United States invaded Iraq as a response there was a media campaign in to convince the American public to support a war against Iraq. A part of this campaign was the Nayirah testimony which was a claim by a 15 year old Kuwaiti girl called Nayirah. She claims that her and her friends witnessed Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of their incubators to kill them and that Iraqi soldiers were making jokes about the then United States president George H. W. Bush. After the United States invaded Iraq it was revealed that Nayirah had falsified the atrocities and that there was no evidence for the atrocities she claimed to have witnessed. It was also exposed that Nayirah was the daughter of a Kuwaiti ambassador, she was related to the Kuwaiti royal family and had also been coached by a the public relations company Hill & Knowlton. After she was exposed Amnesty International retracted their support their support for Nayirah’s testimony and she disappeared from public life, however the damage had already been done and the Gulf War had already started. As a consequence of this propaganda tens of thousands of lives perished.
3 — Modern Syria: Chemical weapons and Panorama
A case very similar to the Nayirah Testimony happened in Britain in August 2013. The BBC ran a report following a Dr Rola Halla treating civilians injured in Syria at the Atareb hospital in Syria with a Panorama film crew. Dr Rola Halla claims that she witnessed victims who had been attacked by “some sort of napalm”. Just one month later the BBC ran the exact same report but had digitally edited the audio from “napalm” to “chemical weapon”. As she says this Dr Rola Halla is surrounded by people screaming and crying in the most overly dramatic way possible. It was also discovered that her Dr Rola Halla’s father is a man called Mousa al-Kurdi who was a major figure in a pro-rebel organisation called the Syrian National Council
The BBC responded with an article in the Entertainment & Arts section of the BBC website acknowledging a case against Russia Today for exposing what the BBC had done. This article published by the BBC avoids mentioning whether what Russia Today said was true or not and is cleverly worded in a way in which the subject of whether RT’s accusations were true is avoided. You can find this article by clicking here. The Russia Today report can be seen below or by clicking here. This incident was not the first time the BBC has been in hot water over its Syrian reporting. In 2012 the BBC used a picture of corpses from Iraq and falsely claimed that this picture was from Syria. The source of the photograph was cited as “PHOTO FROM: ACTIVIST”.
4— The Aleppo “final messages”
In late 2016 the Syrian government attempted and succeeded in retaking the Syrian rebel held city of Aleppo. The city was held by a Syrian rebel group called al-Nusra which broke away from al-Qaeda in 2016. This rebel group has previously worked with alongside ISIS and has recently been renamed “Jabhat Fateh al-Sham”. The details of these Islamic rebel groups are very complicated since they often make and break ties and agreements while constantly changing the names of their organisations. This al-Qaeda founded organisation was defeated by the Syrian and Russian militaries and the city was liberated with a rebel defeat a few months ago.
Before the city had been liberated there were “last videos” by rebel supporters inside the city saying goodbye to the world and mourning the defeat of the rebels. In an act of extreme irresponsibility CNN (one of the USA’s biggest news corporations in the USA) gave these religious zealots a voice on prime time news in the USA. The most famous of these last messages came from a man called Bilal Abdul Kareem who after appearing on CNN was seen taking videos of himself with Syrian rebel suicide bombers while praising them and uploading the footage onto his twitter account for everyone to see. You can see his video by clicking here. Another of the most famous last messages came from a woman called Lina Shamy who was allowed to appear on Al Jazeera which is one of the largest Arabic news corporations in the world. On Shamy’s facebook profile she uploaded a cover photo commemorating Islamic extremist Zahran Alloush who belonged to an organisation similar to ISIS called Jaysh al-Islam.
The fact that such open supporters of religious terrorism were painted as independent heroes on prime time news spaces on some of the world’s largest news networks should alarm everybody. This mirrors how the media in the USA and UK praised the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan when they fought against the Soviets and painted over their religious zealotry by labeling them as freedom fighters. The United States takes the phrase “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” to an extreme.
5— Bana Alabed the 7 year old twitter giant
The Bana Alabed twitter account is an account claiming to be run by a 7 year old girl with help from her mother. This twitter account currently has over 368K followers and always makes posts supporting the Syrian rebels despite claiming to be run by a 7 year old, a child too young to have any understanding of war and politics. The description of this twitter account says:
“ I am 7 years old peace preacher. Account managed by mom. Tweets signed with Fatemah were from my mom but now has her own account here @fatemahalabed”
The fact that this profile tweets in perfect English should be highly suspect. Bana Alabed is 7 years old and grew up during a war which is almost 5 years old. Schools would have closed down and she would not have known how to write Arabic let alone learn how understand English and speak two languages at such a young age with no formal education. The profile gained so much attention that Bana Alabed and her mother were invited to meet Erdogan the current president of Turkey and has even appeared on CNN, the same channel caught inviting Islamic extremists to speak and repainting them as freedom fighters. In an interview on Turkish television it was revealed that Bana Alabed was only rehearsing English phrases coached by her mother. When asked by a Turkish television presenter on the English language Turkish channel TRT about her favourite food to which Bana replied “Save … save the children of Syria” before her mother interrupted her. The majority of the interview is Bana’s mother butting in and interrupting Bana Alabed. The full video can be seen below this paragraph and has been time stamped so it will start at the part mentioned above.
6— The White Helmets
Before examining the White Helmets organisation I would first like to write that I am certain that many of the people who aid and work for this organisation are doing it because they genuinely want to help people. However the leadership and spokespersons of this organisation are beyond a doubt shady. From their funding coming from countries which have spent decades bombing the middle east to their strong support for al-Qaeda linked rebels, they have no shortage of scandals.
The White Helmets were founded by ex-officer of the British Army and consultant of the UK Foreign Office James Le Mesurier in 2013 and the current leader of the White Helmets is a man called Raed Saleh. Despite the White Helmets being founded by an official of the UK government and being funded by the USA, the leader of the White Helmets Raed Saleh was refused entry into the USA because of terrorism fears. To put this simply the United States is funding with millions of dollars an organisation they themselves also claim is run by a man involved in terrorism and are too afraid to let him into the USA.
The reputation of the White Helmets was damaged after the White Helmets released a staged video showing actors dressed as White Helmets with another actor with blood and dust makeup. This video was published on the 18th of November by the YouTube channel of the RFSMediaOffice (Revolutionary Forces of Syria Media Office)which is a pro-rebel media organization which supports various groups fighting against the Syrian government. The video was supposedly published under the understanding that this was a recreation of a social media trend called the “Mannequin Challenge” and that the video was published under the understanding that it was staged. Nevertheless the video damaged the reputation of the White Helmets.
White Helmet spokespersons are less than reputable people when it comes to the Syrian government. In late 2016 a White Helmet spokesperson in Aleppo stood over the bodies of dead civilians and claimed that they had been killed by bombs by the Russians/Syrians. Despite his claim the civilian corpses were clean with no dust, all their limbs were intact, and there were no marks in the ground near them indicating an airstrike or artillery. Evidence showed that these civilians were all shot dead and they were carrying large bags indicating they were attempting to leave rebel held territory when they were shot. Most likely they were killed by the al-Qaeda linked rebels that controlled the area when they tried to flee to the Syrian government side.
7 — Allegations of Russia bombing hospitals
During 2016 it was declared by numerous news outlets and activists that Russia/Syria had bombed the “last hospital”. Military analyst network SouthFront added together all of these reports of last hospitals being bombed and found that news websites and activists had declared that the “last hospital” had been destroyed 20 separate times in the later half of 2016. You can see SouthFront’s video report below.
Another claim of Russia bombing hospitals in Syria from the United States ‘State Department’ which is the wing of the USA government that deals with foreign matters. It’s function is very similar to the Foreign Office in the UK. Spokesperson for the States Department John Kirby accused Russia of bombing 5 hospitals and a medical clinic in Syria. When journalists asked John Kirby where the hospitals were and when the bombing happened, he refused to tell any of the journalists interviewing him the name and locations of these hospitals and instead he told journalists that this information is coming from aid organisations and relief agencies on the ground in Syria but refuses to disclose the names of these aid organisations and relief agencies.He then tells one of the Russian journalists to “question your own defence minister” while shaking his head condescendingly at the journalists in the room. All of this was filmed on video by the Russian channel RT and uploaded to youtube where you can view it in a link next to this article or by clicking here.
8 — Conclusion
The old method of colonialism that the British Empire used does not work anymore. During the beginning of the twentieth century there was a vast wave of anti-colonial revolutions, the most important of which was the October Revolution in Russia which put the Bolshevik party into power. This party then built a world superpower called the Soviet Union which spent decades training, arming, and supporting anti-colonial revolutionaries all over Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. The Soviet Union also provided an ideology called Marxism-Leninism which rejected racism as a tool by the wealthy upper classes to divide and rule working class people. By the time the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 it was nearly impossible to keep colonies like empires used to and the racial justification for empires had been thoroughly discredited and rejected by the waves of newly independent states shrugging off colonialism. It is no coincidence that the world is flooded with AK-47s and other Soviet weapons given to bands of anti-colonial rebels by the Soviet Union. In the modern world the racial justification for empires does not work anymore and thanks to modern biology and sociology we know that human beings of all races are nearly identical with very little exceptions that aren’t either insignificant or caused by culture. The racial justification for colonialism was smashed when the Nazis were defeated at Stalingrad by the Russians and their communist leadership, the very people the Nazis claimed were racially inferior yet still rose up to smash fascism.
Because theold racial justification for war does not work in the 21st century the only way that super powers can go to war with the backing of the public is to call it a humanitarian intervention and use atrocities (either real or imagined) to justify war. This is why whenever the USA or UK wants to go to war we immediately see an orchestrated media campaign against said country with accusations bombarded left and right which by the time they are debunked the war has already began. In order to see past war propaganda people need to become capable of looking at war objectively without being ruled by emotion and to look at the disastrous results of past countries invaded by the USA and UK such as Libya, Malaysia, Korea, Kenya, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Afghanistan.
As the reporter and hip-hop artist Marcel Cartier put it in his song ‘Hands Off Syria’, “People die in war an unfortunate fact, but it’s not a one sided string of attacks”.
Note: This article is under constant editing and improving as the war continues and new information is released