Mainstream Western journalists are just as guilty as the henchmen who did this. #GazaHolocaust pic.twitter.com/W0WlFl4ADK
— Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) March 11, 2024
Merch 10, 2024, RT.com
*(blog title updated from original published; blog version slightly longer)
-Eva Karene Bartlett
Following the February 29 Israeli slaughter of at least 115 starving Palestinians lined up for food aid, there was little or no outrage by the same Western media which would have howled if the perpetrator were Russia or Syria.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, early morning on Thursday, February 29, Israeli forces opened fire on unarmed Palestinians waiting just southwest of Gaza City for desperately needed food aid. As a result, at least 115 civilians were killed and over 750 wounded.
Popular US commenter Judge Andrew Napolitano said in a recent interview with award-winning analyst Professor Jeffery Sachs, “Innocent Gaza civilians were lined up to receive flour and water from an aid truck, and more than 100 were slaughtered, mowed down, by Israeli troops. This has got to be one of the most reprehensible and public slaughterings that they’ve engaged in.”
The official Israeli version of events, unsurprisingly, puts the blame on the Palestinians themselves. The deaths and injuries were supposedly caused by a stampede, and the Israeli soldiers only fired when they felt they were endangered by the crowd. The BBC even cited one army lieutenant as saying that troops had “cautiously [tried] to disperse the mob with a few warning shots.” Mark Regev, a special adviser to the Israeli prime minister, went as far as to tell CNN that Israeli troops had not been involved directly in any way and that the gunfire had come from “Palestinian armed groups.”
Testimonies from survivors and doctors tell a different story, though, saying the majority of those treated after the incident had been shot by Israeli forces. Legacy media reports, however, use characteristically neutral wording when evidence starts to stack up against Israel. “112 dead in chaotic scenes as Israeli troops open fire near aid trucks, say Gaza officials,” a Guardian headline reads. Palestinians always seem to just “die,” not get killed, and Israeli troops seem to have just “opened fire” nearby. The skewed wording conventions persist even despite the attribution to Palestinian officials present in that same headline – officials like the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, which was quite clear in accusing Israel of perpetrating a ”massacre” as part of a “genocidal war.”
“Chaos” and “die” in the headline. Israel’s denial (lies) in the sub-heading. A lesson in how to both report on and deny a cold-blooded massacre simultaneously: https://t.co/rzWeLX0Mrt
— Louis Allday (@Louis_Allday) March 1, 2024
The article does eventually cite the acting Director of al-Awda hospital as saying most of the 161 casualties treated appeared to have been shot. The confusing headline was likely intentional, counting on most people not bothering to read the article in full.
In a report published on March 3, Euro-Med stated members of its field team were present at the time of the incident and “documented Israeli tanks firing heavily towards Palestinian civilians while trying to receive humanitarian aid.” The report goes on to cite Dr Jadallah Al-Shafi’i, head of nursing at Shifa, Gaza’s main hospital, saying, “paramedics and rescue workers were among the victims,” and that at Shifa “they observed dozens of dead and injured, hit by Israeli gunfire.”
The report also cites Dr Amjad Aliwa, an emergency specialist at Shifa who was also on site when Israel opened fire. According to Aliwa, the Israeli fire began, “as soon as the trucks arrived on Thursday at 4 am”
But the February 29 massacre, tragic as it is, is only a part of the current stage of Israel’s war on Gaza: the deliberate starvation of Palestinians. And like the massacre itself, the whole issue is being subjected to the hands-off wording treatment by establishment media.
Fadi Al-Zalat, a six-year-old Palestinian child, is currently battling malnutrition and dehydration at Kamal Adwan Hospital, a consequence of the Israeli blockade in northern Gaza. pic.twitter.com/PGL0psGDsi
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) March 11, 2024
On February 29, the New York Times published an article whose headline, “Starvation Is Stalking Gaza’s Children,” suggests starvation is a mysterious malicious force with a will of its own, skirting the mention of the Israeli siege as its obvious cause.
Again, as with the Guardian article, a few paragraphs in, the NYT piece does state that the “hunger is a man-made catastrophe,” describing how Israeli forces prevent food delivery and how Israeli bombardments make aid distribution dangerous.
It mentions the hunger, “is caused but also partly hidden by a pitiless war that has obliterated hospitals, flooded morgues and damaged communication networks, leaving us to cobble together what’s happening from scraps of information.”
The pitiless Israeli war on Gaza has been documented live since October 7. Cobbling scraps of information is not necessary; Israel’s destruction of Gaza has been done with the whole world watching.
As Professor Sachs stated, ”…Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza. Starved! I’m not using an exaggeration, I’m talking literally starving a population. Israel is a criminal, is in non-stop, war crime, status now. I believe in genocidal status.”
Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that the February 29 massacre was not the first such incident, and likely not the last. A thread on Twitter/X outlines this, noting, ”Before yesterday’s “Flour Massacre”, the IDF has been shooting indiscriminately for WEEKS at starved Gazans awaiting aid trucks at the exact same spot, virtually every single day!”
Before yesterday's "Flour Massacre", the IDF has been shooting indiscriminately for WEEKS at starved Gazans awaiting aid trucks at the exact same spot, virtually every single day!
A 🧵of some of these incidents:
Feb 28: IDF soldiers take potshots at famished desperate Gazans pic.twitter.com/8dOztIzvdk
— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) March 1, 2024
The thread (warning: graphic images!), compiled by Gazan analyst and Euro-Med chief of communications Muhammad Shehada, gives examples of Israeli soldiers firing on Palestinians every single day in the week prior to February 29.
The final post in the thread, referencing February 18, shows a Palestinian man splayed on the ground, “shot in the head by the IDF at the Rasheed street as he came looking for food.”
You can bet that, were these Syrian or Russian soldiers firing on starving civilians, the outrage would be front page, 24/7, for weeks. Scratch that, they wouldn’t even have to do it – just a hint of an accusation would have been enough to get the presses going.
Starvation in Syria was a media trope
The NYT article mentioned above notes that “Reports of death by starvation are difficult to verify from a distance.” But ‘verifying from a distance’ is precisely what the NYT and other Western media did repeatedly in Syria over the years.
In areas occupied by (then) al-Nusra, Jaysh al-Islam, and the other extremist terrorist gangs which the West and corporate media dubbed “rebels,” food aid was always taken by the respective terrorists and withheld from the civilian population, causing starvation in some districts. Madaya, to the west of Damascus, eastern Aleppo, and later eastern Ghouta were districts most loudly campaigned over in legacy media, providing covering fire for the broader US-led campaign to overthrow the Syria government.
Palestinians are starving to death, preventable starvation orchestrated by the genocidal Israeli regime & enabled by the majority of Western states.
Western media was outraged over starvation in Madaya, which media blamed on the Syrian government…https://t.co/K0VNG40xUP https://t.co/epKQhfi667
— Eva Karene Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) January 26, 2024
Backing the claims that the government was starving civilians were mostly “unnamed activists” or activists whose allegiance to Nusra, or even ISIS, was very overt.
As I would see and hear whenever one of these regions was liberated, ample food and medicine had been sent in, but civilians never saw it. Time and again, in eastern Aleppo, Madaya, al-Waer, eastern Ghouta, to name key areas, civilians complained that terrorist factions hoarded food and medicine, and if they sold it to the population, it was at extortionist prices people couldn’t afford.
In the old city of Homs in 2014, back then dubbed by legacy media as the “capital of the revolution,” starved residents I met told me the West’s precious “rebels” had stolen every morsel of food from them, stealing anything of value as well.
Yet, media headlines about these regions screamed about starvation, outright blaming the Syrian government, and were accompanied by disturbing images of emaciated civilians (some of which were not even from Syria) meant to evoke strong emotions among readers and viewers. The same media largely opts not to show you gaunt, starving, Palestinians in Gaza.
(it wasn't the government which caused the starvation, the govt sent aid into Madaya, it was the West's terrorists within Madaya who hoarded food).
Media were SO outraged..& used photos from places outside of Syria to claim it was in Madaya.https://t.co/GMnh6pDjB0
— Eva Karene Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) January 26, 2024
Tellingly, Syrian towns surrounded by terrorist forces, besieged, bombed, sniped and starved, got virtually no media coverage. It didn’t fit NATO’s narrative of “rebels”\=good, Assad=bad.
But in Gaza the world watches in real time as Palestinians die from the ongoing, preventable, starvation.
Open the borders
Some days ago, the CEO of Medical aid for Palestinians, Melanie Ward, in an interview with CNN, named Israel as the cause of starvation in Gaza.
“It’s very simple: it’s because the Israeli military won’t let it in. We could end this starvation tomorrow very simply if they would just let us have access to people there. But it’s not being allowed. This is what they said [on October 9], ‘Nothing will go in’,” Ward said.
"This is the fastest decline in a population's nutrition status ever recorded. That means children are being starved at the fastest rate the world has ever seen."@melanie_ward speaks with @IsaCNN about the catastrophic levels of hunger that Israel's blockade is causing in Gaza pic.twitter.com/FthwccFEBG
— Medical Aid for Palestinians (@MedicalAidPal) February 29, 2024
She described the starvation as “the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded. What that means is that children are being starved at the fastest rate the world has ever seen. And we could finish it tomorrow, we could save them all. But we’re not being able to.”
This is echoed by UNICEF. The press-release for its February 2024 report notes that 15.6 % (one in six children) under two years of age are “acutely malnourished” in Gaza’s north. “Of these, almost 3% suffer from severe wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition, which puts young children at highest risk of medical complications and death unless they receive urgent treatment,” UNICEF notes.
Even worse, “since the data were collected in January, the situation is likely to be even graver today,” UNICEF warns, likewise noting the rapid increase of malnutrition is “dangerous and entirely preventable.”
Professor Sachs made an important point: “This will stop when the United States stops providing the munitions to Israel. It will not stop by any self control in Israel, there is none…They believe in ethnic cleansing or worse. And it is the United States which is the sole support…that is not stopping this slaughter.”
Air-dropping paltry amounts of food aid into Gaza is not the answer. It both legitimizes Israel’s deliberate starvation of Gaza and also makes those Palestinians who run toward the aid sitting ducks for the Israeli army to maim or kill. The only solution is to immediately open the borders and allow in the hundreds of aid trucks parked in Egypt. And end the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
The Gaza Ministry of Health reports that the death toll of the Israeli aggression has reached 31,045, with 72,654 injuries since October 7 last year. pic.twitter.com/JXDIDEtha5
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) March 10, 2024
Photos from site of Ukraine’s March 14 missile attack on Donetsk. Photo: Eva Bartlett, March 24, 2022.
-by Eva K Bartlett, April 5, 2022
Following is a lengthy overview of my recent re-visit to the Donbass, on a two day media delegation, with a brief critique of some of the media’s slanted reporting. It is also a follow up from my 2019 visit to hard hit areas of the Donetsk People’s Republic. It is now 8 years of Ukraine’s war on the people of the Donetsk & Lugansk Republics.
Point of impact of March 14 Ukrainian missile attack on Donetsk. Photo: Eva Bartlett, March 24, 2022.
In the last week of March, I stood on a central Donetsk main street next to two of the impact points of a Ukrainian missile attack that had killed 21 civilians and injured nearly 40 more on March 14. The Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) maintains that their military intercepted Ukraine’s Tochka-U ballistic missile, and that not all of the cluster munitions inside had exploded in the city streets, thereby lessening the already terrible bloodshed it caused. Indeed, if all of the munitions had exploded, it would have been a bloodbath more horrific than the 21 killed.
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Read the whole article)
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I could add paragraphs of examples of how Western media did this in Syria, but for the sake of brevity will state simply that this is one of many deceitful and deliberate propaganda tactics used to both downplay the hell civilians are suffering under Ukraine’s bombing, and instead to pretend Ukraine is the victim. How the journalists that propagate such lies live with themselves, I’ll never understand.
Finally, a word to some in independent media who feel the need to denigrate Russia’s denazification operation in Ukraine by snidely putting “special operation” in quotation marks, or others who took to social media to tell the world they don’t like war, and denounced Russia for its military operation (to stop a war): The people of the Donbass don’t like war, they didn’t ask for Ukraine to unleash hell upon them. Such posturing disrespects the at least 14,000 killed by Ukraine’s war.
As journalist Roman Kosarev, who has covered the war eightyears, said: “Russia isn’t starting a war, Russia is ending one.“
The US is waging multiple fronts of war against Syria, including brutal sanctions, while claiming concern over the well-being of Syrian civilians – the vast majority of whom are suffering as a direct result of US policies.
On June 17, the US implemented the Caesar Act, America’s latest round of draconian sanctions against the Syrian people, to “protect” them, America claims. This, after years of bombing civilians and providing support to anti-government militants, leading to the proliferation of terrorists who kidnap, imprison, torture, maim, and murder the same Syrian civilians.
Just weeks after these barbaric sanctions were enforced, cue American crocodile tears about Syrian suffering, and claims that Moscow and Damascus are allegedly preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid. More hot air from American hypocritical talking heads who don’t actually care about Syrians’ well-being.
America trigger-happily sanctions many nations or entities that dare to stand up to its hegemonic dictates. The word “sanctions” sounds too soft – the reality is an all-out economic war against the people in targeted nations.
Sanctions have, as I wrote last December, impacted Syria’s ability to import medicines or the raw materials needed to manufacture them, medical equipment, and machines and materials needed to manufacture prosthetic limbs, among other things.
Syria reports that the latest sanctions are already preventing civilians from acquiring “imported drugs, especially antibiotics, as some companies have withdrawn their licenses granted to drug factories,” due to the sanctions.
In Damascus, pharmacies I’ve stopped into, when I ask what some of the most sought-after medications are, hypertension medications are at the top.
But sanctions have yet another brutal effect: they wreak havoc on the economy.
The destruction of Syria’s economy is something US envoy for Syria, James Jeffrey, boasted about, reportedly saying that the sanctions “contributed to the collapse of the value of the Syrian pound.”
The website Sanctions Kill notes:
“Currencies are devalued and inflated when sanctions are levied. Countries are pressured to stop doing business with targeted countries. Sanctions violate international law, the UN charter, Geneva and Nuremberg conventions because they target civilians by economic strangulation, creating famines, life-threatening shortages, and economic chaos.”
So youhave Western hypocritical talking heads pretending they want to get aid to Syrian civilians while literally cutting them off from medicine and the ability to purchase food.
Resource theft and arson
But these crimes against humanity don’t suffice for America. The US occupation troops and their Kurdish proxy forces (the SDF) are plundering Syria’s oil resources to the tune of $30 million a month as of last October, according to Russian military estimates.
In early July, SANA reported another convoy leaving Syria to Iraq, loaded with oil thieved from areas under US occupation.
Terrorists and US proxy groups are also thieving Syria’s cotton, olives, wheat, and flour.
Further, Syria accuses the US of deliberately setting fire to crops using Apache-dropped thermal balloons.
Civilians from affected areas near Turkish occupation posts likewise blame Turkish forces for setting fires and firing live ammunition upon those who attempt to extinguish the fires, farmers literally watching their livelihoods go up in flames. The Hasakah Agriculture Directorate director likewise blames Turkey for arson of the crops.
Turkish occupation forces are also accused of cutting water supplies at Alouk water pump station, depriving one million people in the Hasakah region of drinking and agricultural water, with no condemnation from the Securit Council.
The poverty and suffering Syrians are enduring these days is unbearable, with prices of basic goods doubled and tripled from just a few months ago, turning what were affordable items into luxuries, particularly for the 7.9 million food-insecure Syrians.
But alarmist Western media and representatives omit the context: the nearly 10 years of war on Syria; the deliberate targeting by terrorists and by US and Turkish occupation forces, and Israel, of Syria’s infrastructure; the looting of oil, wheat and cotton, even allegedly stealing parts of an Idlib power plant for scraps sale in Turkey.
Likewise, Aleppo’s heavy industry was thieved during the years when terrorists occupied the industrial zones of the city. Heavy machinery was reportedly trucked in broad daylight to Turkey.
With all of these factors, of course there is poverty and a chaotic economy.
A safe resolution rejected
Recently, the UNSC passed a resolution to maintain one humanitarian border crossing from Turkey into Syria, the Bab al-Hawa crossing.
Prior to that, Russia had proposed a resolution enabling the safe delivery of humanitarian aid from within Syria.
On July 11, Russia’s Permanent Mission to the UN issued a statement again noting the need to phase out cross-border deliveries, as the Syrian government has regained much of the territories previously occupied by terrorist factions, and deliveries must be made from within Syria.
The UNSC resolution that passed, however, continues the delivery of aid via Turkey, delivering to the hands of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups occupying Idlib. It is with these people the US aid ends up when delivered, from Turkey, not from Syrian territory.
Given that the US has supplied weapons to anti-government extremists in Syria before, it is not illogical to believe they hoped to funnel still more weapons in under the pretext of “aid” deliveries.
Russia’s statement also noted the lack of UN presence in the Idlib de-escalation zone, saying: “It’s not a secret that the terrorist groups, listed as such by the UN Security Council, control certain areas of the de-escalation zone and use the UN humanitarian aid as a tool to exert pressure on [the civilian] population and openly make profit from such deliveries.”
This is what Russia and China opposed, not the delivery of aid.
Those are details which US Ambassador Kelly Craft slyly omitted when she spoke of callousness and dishonesty being an established pattern. Her verbal guns were aimed at Syria and Russia, but her choice of words perfectly describes US policy towards Syrians.
One only needs to look at US policy towards displaced Syrians in Rukban Camp to see that the US has actively worked to prevent aid deliveries there and prevent Syrians from being evacuated from there. Or the lack of US outcry at Turkey’s prevention of humanitarian convoys from reaching Idlib areas, which while scheduled for last April still hasn’t been successful.
On the other hand, on July 4 the WHO acknowledged the Syrian-Russian delivery of 85 tons of medicines and medical supplies from Damascus to Al Hasakah. On July 9, the Russian Reconciliation Center noted that 500 food packages (2,424 tons) were delivered to Idlib province and Deir-ez-Zor province.
I wonder how many tons of actual aid the US would send…
In case it isn’t yet clear, America is weaponizing and politicizing aid, as it tried to do in Venezuela last year. American representatives posture and bellow, and Russia and Syria quietly go about actually delivering aid to needy Syrians.
The Russian post-resolution statement also critically noted the brutal impact of sanctions on Syria, which, as detrimental to Syrians’ wellbeing as they are, somehow don’t merit the feigned concern of representatives like Craft.
The statement said:
“These coercive measures seriously undermine not only the socio-economic situation in Syria, but also impede activities of many humanitarian NGOs that are ready to help the population in territories controlled by Syrian official authorities.”
If America truly wanted to alleviate the suffering of Syrians, all sanctions against the country and people would be immediately lifted.
Eva Bartlett traveled to Crimea to see firsthand out how Crimeans have fared since 2014 when their country reunited with Russia, and what the referendum was really like.
October 9, 2019, Mint Press News
SIMFEROPOL, CRIMEA — In early August I traveled to Russia for the first time, partly out of interest in seeing some of the vast country with a tourist’s eyes, partly to do some journalism in the region. It also transpired that while in Moscow I was able to interview Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman of the Foreign Ministry.
High on my travel list, however, was to visit Crimea and Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) — the former a part of Russia, the latter an autonomous republic in the east of Ukraine, neither accurately depicted in Western reporting. Or at least that was my sense looking at independent journalists’ reports and those in Russian media.
Both regions are native Russian-speaking areas; both opted out of Ukraine in 2014. In the case of Crimea, joining Russia (or actually rejoining, as most I spoke to in Crimea phrased it) was something people overwhelmingly supported. In the case of the Donbass region, the turmoil of Ukraine’s Maidan coup in 2014 set things in motion for the people in the region to declare independence and form the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
In March 2014, Crimeans held a referendum during which 96 percent of voters chose to join Russia. This has been heavily disputed in Western media, with claims that Crimeans were forced to hold the referendum and claims of Russian troops on the streets “occupying” the peninsula.
Because Western media insisted the referendum was a sham held under duress, and because they bandy about the term “pro-Russian separatists” for the people of the DPR, I decided to go and speak to people in these areas to hear what they actually want and feel.
...
AD-DUMAYR, SYRIA — A little over a year ago — just after the Syrian army and its allies liberated the towns and villages around eastern Ghouta from the myriad armed jihadist groups that had waged a brutal campaign of torture and executions in the area — I interviewed a number the civilians that had endured life under jihadist rule in Douma, Kafr Batna and the Horjilleh Center for Displaced People just south of Damascus.
A common theme emerged from the testimonies of those civilians: starvation as a result of jihadist control over aid and food supplies, and the public execution of civilians.
Their testimonies echoed those of civilians in other areas of Syria formerly occupied by armed anti-government groups, from Madaya and al-Waer to eastern Aleppo and elsewhere.
Despite those testimonies and the reality on the ground, Western politicians and media alike have placed the blame for the starvation and suffering of Syrian civilians squarely on the shoulders of Russia and Syria, ignoring the culpability of terrorist groups.
In reality, terrorist groups operating within areas of Syria that they occupy have had full control over food and aid, and ample documentation shows that they have hoarded food and medicines for themselves. Even under better circumstances, terrorist groups charged hungry civilians grotesquely inflated prices for basic foods, sometimes demanding up to 8,000 Syrian pounds (US $16) for a kilogram of salt, and 3,000 pounds (US $6) for a bag of bread.
Given the Western press’ obsessive coverage of the starvation and lack of medical care endured by Syrian civilians, its silence has been deafening in the case of Rukban — a desolate refugee camp in Syria’s southeast where conditions are appalling to such an extent that civilians have been dying as a result. Coverage has been scant of the successful evacuations of nearly 15,000 of the 40,000 to 60,000 now-former residents of Rukban (numbers vary according to source) to safe havens where they are provided food, shelter and medical care.
Silence about the civilian evacuations from Rukban is likely a result of the fact that those doing the rescuing are the governments of Syria and Russia — and the fact that they have been doing so in the face of increasing levels of opposition from the U.S. government.
A harsh, abusive environment
Rukban lies on Syria’s desolate desert border with Jordan, surrounded by a 55-km deconfliction zone, unilaterally established and enforced by the United States, and little else aside from the American base at al-Tanf, only 25 km away — a base whose presence is illegal under international law.
Credit | War on the Rocks
It is, by all reports, an unbearably harsh environment year-round and residents of the camp have endured abuse by terrorist groups and merchants within the camp, deprived of the very basics of life for many years now.
In February, the UNHCR reported that young girls and women in Rukban have been forced into marriage, some more than once. Their briefing noted:
Many women are terrified to leave their mud homes or tents and to be outside, as there are serious risks of sexual abuse and harassment. Our staff met mothers who keep their daughters indoors, as they are too afraid to let them go to improvised schools.”
The Jordanian government, home to 664,330 registered Syrian refugees, has adamantly refused any responsibility in providing humanitarian assistance to Rukban, arguing that it is a Syrian issue and that keeping its border with Syria closed is a matter of Jordan’s security — this after a number of terrorist attacks on the border near Rukban, some of which were attributed to ISIS and one that killed six Jordanian soldiers.
According to U.S. think-tank The Century Foundation, armed groups in Rukban have up to 4,000 men in their ranks and include:
Maghawir al-Thawra, the Free Tribes Army, the remnants of a formerly Pentagon-backed group called the Qaryatein Martyr Battalions and three factions formerly linked to the CIA’s covert war in Syria: the Army of the Eastern Lions, the Martyr Ahmed al-Abdo Forces, and the Shaam Liberation Army.”
Those armed groups, according to Russia, include several hundred ISIS and al-Qaeda recruits. Even the Atlantic Council — a NATO- and U.S. State Department-funded think-tank consistent in its anti-Syrian government stance — reported in November 2017 that the Jordanian government acknowledged an ISIS presence in Rukban.
The Century Foundation also notes the presence of ISIS in Rukban and concedes that the U.S. military “controls the area but won’t guarantee the safety of aid workers seeking access to the camp.”
Syria and Russia have sought out diplomatic means to resolve the issue of Rukban, arguing repeatedly at the United Nations Security Council for the need to dismantle the camp and return refugees to areas once plagued by terrorism but that have now been secured.
As I wrote recently:
The U.S. stymied aid to Rukban, and was then only willing to provide security for aid convoys to a point 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) away from the camp, according to the UN’s own Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock. So, by U.S. administration logic, convoys should have dropped their Rukban-specific aid in areas controlled by terrorist groups and just hoped for the best.”
The U.S., for its part, has both refused the evacuation of refugees from the camp and obstructed aid deliveries on at least two occasions. In February, Russia and Syria opened two humanitarian corridors to Rukban and began delivering much-needed aid to its residents.
Syria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Bashar al-Ja’afari, noted in May 2019 that Syria agreed to facilitate the first aid convoy to Rukban earlier this year, but the convoy was ultimately delayed by the United States for 40 days. A second convoy was then delayed for four months. Al-Ja’afari also noted that the U.S., as an occupying power in Syria, is obliged under the Geneva Conventions to provide food, medicine and humanitarian assistance to those under its occupation.
Then, in early March, the Russian Center for Reconciliation reported that U.S. authorities had refused entry to a convoy of buses intending to enter the deconfliction zone to evacuate refugees from Rukban.
According to a March 2019 article from Public Radio International:
[W]hen Syrian and Iranian forces have entered the 34-mile perimeter around the base, American warplanes have responded with strikes — effectively putting Rukban and its residents under American protection from Assad’s forces.”
Despite the abundance of obstacles they faced, Syria and Russia were ultimately able to evacuate over 14,000 of the camp’s residents to safety. In a joint statement on June 19, representatives of the two countries noted that some of the camp’s residents were forced to pay “militants” between $400 to $1000 in order to leave Rukban.
...
Amazing Syrian singer sings Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Last video from a night spent sitting with Syrian youths who choose to spend their nights singing in a park.
Since Juan Guaido declared himself Venezuela’s interim president, rhetoric emanating from Washington has grown increasingly familiar. It echoes the bombastic & hollow humanitarian-crisis type of war propaganda which has been used repeatedly in resource-rich nations, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria. And now we’re seeing it in Venezuela.
The regime-change recipe is straightforward: demonize the leadership and those who defend the country; support an opposition that is inevitably violent and whitewash their crimes; sanction the country & attack the infrastructure to create unbearable conditions; create fake news about humanitarian issues; possibly wage false flag incidents to incriminate the government; control the narrative; and insist that intervention is necessary for the well-being of the people.
In Libya,black Africans are being sold as slaves in a country devastated by Western fake humanitarianism and bombings.
Venezuela has for years been defiantly resisting the economic and propaganda wars, led by the US and Canada, as well as coup d’état and assassination attempts, only to see the anti-Venezuela rhetoric once again ramped up in recent months.
In spite of the wreckage trail that America’s regime change efforts have left over the decades throughout Latin America and the world, when comparing tactics against these countries and now again against Venezuela, some people surprisingly insist that this time it is different.
Venezuela isn’t Syria, they say. This time, they argue, it really is about a ‘corrupt regime,’ and ‘human rights’ — or in the case of Venezuela, a ‘humanitarian crisis’… as if the US has ever had the best interests of any people, including their own, at heart.
They ignore the West’s murderous sanctions against Venezuela and the propping up of the violent ‘opposition’ — an opposition that has burned civilians alive — as well as the millions of dollars spent supporting it.
Then there’s the more recent violent actions against Venezuela, like the February 23 attempt to ram aid trucks into Venezuela, and the April 30 US-backed coup attempt by Guaido and Leopoldo Lopez (a violent right-wing opposition leader) — an attempt clearly rejected by masses of Venezuelans.
Colectivos, the new ‘Shabiha’
Prior to 2011, the Western corporate media actually had many positive things to say about Syria’s leadership, praising President Assad as an open-minded reformer. When the regime-change operation kicked off, Assad and allies were number one enemies. In both Venezuela and Syria, presidents Maduro and Assad were legitimately elected and retain wide support among the population.
Yet, the Western corporate media and the politicians they echo routinely deem both countries to be “dictatorships” and the elected presidents illegitimate — while backing unpopular and undemocratic puppets they seek to put in place.
But demonizing the government isn’t enough; supporters of the government likewise are targeted, or simply disappeared. In Syria, supporters are called shabiha, inferring they — yes, millions of them! — are paid thugs of the government, and thus negating their voices.
It is an utterly disingenuous tactic used to silence the voices of the masses — along the lines of Western corporate media calling those of us who actually question, let alone go to the places in question, ‘conspiracy theorists.’
Venezuela’s shabiha are the colectivos, and are likewise depicted as government-backed thugs, and designated by the US’ actual thugs as ‘terrorists.’
These collectives are organized, grassroots groups of people who come together as educators, feminists, pensioners, farmers, environmentalists, to provide healthcare in their communities, among other things, or in defense of their nation.
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Last night (April 25th) I gave a talk on some of what I had seen in Venezuela, March-April, sharing photos and clips–with an emphasis of allowing people to hear voices our media generally silences or pretends don’t exist.
In Q & A, the issue of discrimination and racism in Venezuela was raised. This eloquent Venezuelan musician replied to the question so articulately, and disturbingly, that I asked him to re-address it on camera after the event.
In February 2019, I joined a very informative panel of journalists and activists speaking on a variety of current and important issues, including control of media and their role in war propagandizing–along with NGOs, Syria, the White Helmets, and much more. I traveled after that panel and have been busy working on a number of things since, so didn’t have the chance to share this till now.
Here is my segment during which I present examples of Syrian voices ignored by media and some of media’s blatant lies, contrasting what I saw and heard on the ground on 11 trips to Syria.
Please also see these incredible presentations:
- Patrick Henningsen, War – the ultimate goal of all propaganda
- Vanessa Beeley, The tale of the White Helmets in the Western media,on the ground in Syria and beyond
Related links (chronological order of mention):
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Men from Madaya speak on terrorists hoarding food, starving civilians
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Douma Medical Student Testimony Contradicts Mainstream and White Helmets Chemical Accusations
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A look at a part of the labyrinth of tunnels built by the terrorists formerly occupying Douma
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Omran Daqneesh lies & exploitation
Omran Daqneesh
Omran Daqneesh Father on boy’s mild injuries
Omran Daqneesh -
Daraa hospital and school damage & terrorist snipers proximity, May 2018
Daaraa hospital
Daaraa hospital -
Zahraa, Homs:Where is the West’s compassion \& condemnation following terror attacks in Middle East?
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Shadi Shehda on his murdered children, mother, and wife, killed by terrorists in Idlib
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Life in Old Aleppo, around the historic Citadel
Old Aleppo shop owner: Just leave us in peace and we will re-build
Fares Shehabi on improved life in Aleppo since liberation
Fares Shehabi: Aleppo Factory Defying al Qaeda An Example of Rising Up Undefeated
Old Aleppo: November 2016 Terrorist Snipers Vs Today’s Peace
Signs of Reconstruction Among the Destruction in Old Aleppo
Good (far better than Wikipedia, of Philip Cross mal-edits) entry on me here. I’ll add a few corrections/clarifications, in [brackets].
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“Eva Bartlett (born 14 June 1977) is an independent Canadian-American writer, journalist and human rights activist from Ontario who covers the Middle East region, particularly Palestine and Syria. She has a weblog called InGaza and has made numerous visits to Syria and Palestine since 2008, including to the Gaza Strip
[ADDITION: I lived a cumulative 3 years in Gaza, from Nov 2008 to March 2013, and 8 months in the west bank as an activist with the ISM. More on that here: https://ingaza.wordpress.com/about-me/].
Since 2014, Bartlett has also written about the Gaza Strip.
[Since 2008]
Early life and education
Bartlett has dual nationality, being born in Michigan but raised in Canada
[Dawson Creek, Winnipeg, Fergus].
Between 1991 and 1996 Bartlett studied a the Centre Wellington District High School in Fergus, Ontario and was awarded an Honours grade 13 (OAC), Ontario Scholar
[I was also a bench warmer on the basketball team :p Good shot, lousy at dribbling].
Between 1997 and 2002 she attended Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, Canada earning a 1st Class Honours with Distinction with Honours in Music and a Minor in French.
[Classical piano, Rachmaninov, Brahms, Beethoven and Bach among my favourites].
Last week I wrote about what civilians from Ghouta told me regarding unverified claims of the Syrian Army attacking them with chemicals, but they also talked about crimes committed by terrorists and the White Helmets’ role.
Although benignly dubbed“rebels” by corporate media, the Salafist terrorist group Jaysh al-Islam are not fighting for freedom or human rights in Syria, nor are the other terrorist groups who formerly ruled in eastern Ghouta.
[READ MORE: Syrian civilians from ground zero expose chemical hoax]
It was Jaysh al-Islam which imprisoned Syrian civilians in cages, using them as human shields against potential bombing, and Jaysh al-Islam was among the terrorist groups firing missiles and mortars onto civilians in Damascus, killing over 10,000.
They, Faylaq al-Rahman, and the other terrorist factions occupying the region reigned with terror, beheading men and women and starving the people.
When I visited eastern Ghouta and the Horjilleh center for displaced people just south of Damascus—people mostly from Ghouta now—I asked about their lives under the rule of Jaysh al-Islam and others, including why they had been starving in the first place. The reply was, as I and others heard in eastern Aleppo, Madaya, and al-Waer, the terrorists stole aid and controlled all food, only selling food at extortionist prices which ordinary people could not afford.
Sabah al-Mushref spoke of the callousness of terrorists in Hammouriyeh and Zamalka towards children and how her own children used to scavenge from the garbage of terrorist leaders who had ample food.
“I was living in Zamalka, my children were almost dead of hunger, my daughter’s skin had turned yellow, she was malnourished,” Sabah told me. “I took her to the medical point, they said there was no medicine. I said, ‘my daughter is dying, what should I do?!’ They told me the medical point was only for Douma citizens. I went to the representative of Zamalka, I begged him, ‘Please give me anything for my children, they are starving, they haven’t eaten anything for two days.’ He said, ‘What is here is only for Zamalka citizens, you are from Marj al-Sultan, go to your representative. There is no aid for you here.’”
When I spoke with Sabah, she was with three other people from eastern Ghouta areas. Their testimonies spilled out, each one worse as they spoke out loud of the horrors they had lived through.
‘They know that we know they are liars, they keep lying’: West’s war propaganda on Ghouta crescendos
In our March 11 interview, war correspondent Elijah Magnier highlighted corporate media’s role in prolonging the terrorists’ occupation of Ghouta:
“The heads of the tribes in Ghouta are saying, ‘The only reason why these jihadists are holding on to Ghouta, not willing to leave, and keeping the civilians as a shield is because of the mainstream media. Because the mainstream media is supporting them, the international community is supporting them – they’re supporting the jihadists. Why they should leave?”
Journalist Jeremy Salt, on March 15, wrote a scathing article addressing the media propaganda:
“The sanctified logo of the New York Times, ‘All the news that’s fit to print,’ needs to be replaced with something more contemporary, more attuned to the fake ‘news’ cycle in which we are all trapped, perhaps ‘All the sh*t that’s fit to print.’”
“The problem is not the media’s lack of capacity to get through to the truth but rather its disinterest in the truth, in favor of government policies based on lies and deception.“
And in a recent interview, former British ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford said:
“Western mainstream media have their narrative and they don’t want to see it disturbed. Any evidence that goes against their preferred narrative – namely that ‘Assad is a butcher, massacring his people’ – anything that disturbs that narrative is simply ignored or mocked. But the truth is beginning to come out… All these crocodile tears being cried by the likes of Ambassador Nikki Haley in New York are disgraceful, trading on sentiment when behind it is just cynical great power maneuvering.”
For example, on the issue of staged media, as I wrote in June 2017 (emphasis added):
“In December 2016, filmmakers in Egypt were arrested in the process of staging an Aleppo video with two children: the girl was meant to look injured, and the boy was to vilify both Russia and Syria.”
My article detailed the misuse of a Lebanese music video scene to claim it was Aleppo; and BBC’s endorsement of the November 2014 ‘Syrian hero boy’ clip as definitely being in Syria, “probably on the regime frontlines,” although it was filmed in Malta by Norwegian filmmakers.”
In June 2017, I also wrote about one famous boy, the “boy in the ambulance”, exploited including by Channel 4 News and the Guardian. When this June I went to Aleppo and met the boy and his father, the latter confirmed that the story pushed in corporate media was false, and that media had exploited his son. As it turns out, Mohammad Daqneesh supports the Syrian army, and was disgusted by the exploitation of his son, by media and the terrorists themselves.
Further, there is the White Helmets video in which “rescuers” seem to be fake-rescuing children, employing practices which would kill them, as outlined by Professor Marcello Ferrada de Noli, head of Swedish Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR). His March 2017 article noted the opinions of Swedish medical doctors, specialists, who asserted that:
“the life-saving procedures seen in the film are incorrect – in fact life-threatening – or seemingly fake, including simulated resuscitation techniques being used on already lifeless children.”
He cites a specialist in paediatrics: “After examination of the video material, I found that the measures inflicted upon those children, some of them lifeless, are bizarre, non-medical, non-lifesaving, and even counterproductive in terms of life-saving purposes of children”.
And a Swedish medical doctor and general practitioner: “If not already dead, this injection would have killed the child!” His follow-up report noted: “The new findings…demonstrate that the main highlighted ‘life-saving‘ procedure on the infant shown in the second video of the sequence was faked. Namely, no substance (e.g. adrenaline) was injected into the child while the ‘medic’ or doctor introduced the syringe-needle in a simulated intracardiac-injection manoeuvre…”
Recall the incubator babies story sobbed by the fake-nurse daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US (endorsed and propagated by Amnesty International), which preceded and had a role in swaying public opinion prior to the 1991 US/UK war on Iraq. Regarding the White Helmets video in question, de Noli noted it was, “shown at the UN Security Council April 16, 2015. After that meeting, US Ambassador Samantha Powers declared, ‘I saw no one in the room without tears. If there was a dry eye in the room, I didn’t see it’."
Ensuing, just four days after, on April 20, 2015, CNN broadcasted a news-program reproducing segments taken from exactly the same videos and propagated for the No-Fly Zone on behalf of “the Syrian doctors” campaigning.
This horrifying syringe-children example, and the above-listed incidents of faked footage and exploitation of children in war propaganda, are more than enough reason to warrant serious investigations into other videos produced by the White Helmets (and those of like western-funded “opposition media” in Syria, including formerly the Aleppo Media Centre [AMC]).
In a hotel in Aleppo in July 2016, I shared an elevator with Channel 4 reporter Krishnan Guru Murthy, without knowing who he was. I would later become very familiar with Channel 4 and Guru Murthy's relentless anti-Syria propaganda and romanticization of the terrorist factions in Syria, white-washing their crimes, relying on Al-Qaeda and other very partial sources.
Guru Murthy produced a report embedded with the Nour al-Din al-Zinki faction, who he deemed "moderates," although some months prior they had savagely beheaded Abdullah Issa, a Palestinian boy. Not initially a problem for Channel 4, they did later remove the incriminating video.
Not featured on Channel 4 or other corporate media reports were the nearly 11,000 civilians killed by the bombing and sniping of "rebels."
I wrote about these attacks, and the over 4,000 Aleppo doctors disappeared by the media, along with hospitals and schools attacked by "moderates." Corporate media was busy claiming "last doctors" in Aleppo.
When Krishan Guru Murthy, in July 2017, returned to Aleppo and interviewed MP Fares Shehabi, Guru Murthy refused to "get into history" over his lies, much less to acknowledge that the "moderates" he propagated about were Al-Nusra.
In April 2016, the Guardian reported that a Syrian or Russian airstrike "completely destroyed" the Quds hospital in Sukkari, Aleppo. The Guardian later claimed civilians were being treated in the same hospital after a chlorine gas attack, not researching that the sole chlorine gas factory in Syria had been taken over by Al-Nusra in 2012.
The original lie about Al-Quds' destruction came from Médecins Sans Frontières, which claimed Quds had been "destroyed," reduced "to rubble." Since the Guardian was complicit in reproducing the lie, why didn't the Guardian at least go to see the Quds hospital after Aleppo was secured? I did.
My colleague Adam Garrie has written a vivid description of the footage showing the destruction of the Syrian city of Raqqa, once capital of ISIS’s self-proclaimed ‘Caliphate’ and now reduced to an almost total ruin. As Adam Garrie rightly says, Raqqa has not been liberated so much as totally destroyed.
This gives rise to many bitter thoughts.
Firstly, it is only last year that Western governments and the Western media were furiously denouncing the Russians for their supposed indiscriminate bombing of the Syrian city of Aleppo, of which a section was at that time occupied by Jihadi fighters aligned with Al-Qaeda.
As I remember all too clearly, the Russians and the Syrian military were regularly accused of committing war crimes in Aleppo, with particular stress given to the supposedly deliberate killing of civilians in Aleppo and the bombing of hospitals the matter.
The question of Aleppo regularly came up in the UN Security Council, leading to angry exchanges and abuse of the Russians there, with the situation becoming so charged that President Putin even felt obliged to put off a visit to France when he was told that French President Hollande would refuse to speak to him.
Meanwhile those Western journalists such as Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett who actually travelled to Aleppo and reported that the situation there was completely different from the way it was being described were subjected to relentless abuse (which still continues) by the Western media, even as the lurid and on occasion fantastic claims of Russian and Syrian government atrocities which poured out of the Jihadi controlled enclave were given instant credence.
The reality is that Aleppo after the fighting ended there in December emerged intact, and is now once more a populous and industrious city, with the great majority of its buildings still standing, most of its people still there (in fact they remained there throughout the four years of the Jihadi siege) and many of its people who fled coming home.
Though the task of reconstruction is enormous, there is at least a city still left to rebuild, as even the BBC is reporting.
The contrast with Raqqa could not be starker. Not only is Raqqa all but completely destroyed (the UN says 80% of its buildings have been destroyed, with other eyewitness reports saying there is hardly a building left standing) but it has all happened in total silence, with no words of condemnation from Western governments or the Western media whilst it was happening or since then..