Made in Israel: Trump White House plagiarized Iran war manifesto from Israel-aligned think tank

Wyatt Reed and Max Blumenthal | The Grayzone

The Trump White House plagiarized its justification for attacking Iran from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the main DC outfit promoting war with Tehran. The think tank was originally founded to "enhance Israel's image," and partners closely with the Israeli government.

The Trump Administration appeared to plagiarize its official justification for its war on Iran, copying almost word-for-word a document originally produced by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a pro-war think tank with close ties to Israeli intelligence which was originally founded to "enhance Israel's image."

The FDD document was authored by Tzvi Kahn, the former assistant director for policy and government affairs at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

A March 2, 2026 statement issued by the White House accusing Tehran of 44 instances of terrorism against American citizens is "virtually identical" to the list published by FDD in June 2025, analyst Stephen McIntyre noted Thursday.

While the White House did make superficial alterations to the text, they largely consisted of appending the label "Iran-backed" to every mention of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. In the few instances where Trump administration officials bothered to make significant changes to the original FDD list, the edits were almost always made in service of "ratcheting up the underlying allegation," McIntyre concluded.

Among the most egregious examples was a 1996 attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which FDD originally said merely that Hezbollah al-Hejaz was "deemed responsible" for. In the White House version, however, the group's responsibility was "asserted as factual," explained McIntyre, noting that serious questions about the incident remain unanswered to this day. "Clinton's Defense Secretary William Perry subsequently wondered (along with many others) whether Khobar Towers should have been attributed to Al Qaeda," he wrote.

A 2009 investigation by journalist Gareth Porter based on interviews with over a dozen former CIA, FBI and Clinton administration officials demonstrated that the FBI's inquiry into the Khobar Towers attack was precooked to blame Iran, when Al Qaeda was mostly like the culprit. Porter found that Shia citizens of Saudi Arabia had been tortured into confessing to the crime by Saudi secret police.

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Washington's embrace of Julani: The final collapse of the 'War on Terror' narrative

Kevork Almassian | Kevork's Newsletter 

The photograph of Abu Mohammad al-Julani walking through the White House — smuggled through a back door like contraband — should have been a geopolitical earthquake. Instead, the neoconservative commentariat, the self-appointed guardians against "Islamist infiltration," fell silent. The same voices that spent two decades terrorizing the American public about al-Qaeda said nothing when Washington received one of its senior alumni as Syria's new "president." Their sudden muteness tells us more than their theatrics ever did.

For us, none of this is surprising. It simply formalizes what we already knew: the so-called "War on Terror" was never about fighting terrorism. It was a geopolitical instrument that could be paused, reversed, or inverted whenever U.S. or Israeli strategic interests required it.

And Julani's rise proves that point better than anything else.

America's Betrayal: Not Only of Syrians, but of Its Own Veterans

I have American friends who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were told they were fighting al-Qaeda, fighting extremism, defending their country. Today, they live with PTSD, chronic wounds, and emotional scars, all while the very people they were told to fight are being escorted into the Oval Office for photo-ops. If I were in their shoes, I would feel deeply betrayed.

Meanwhile, Washington is rewriting history and hoping no one notices. The U.S. government had full knowledge of the jihadist engine that was being built in Syria. In 2012, Jake Sullivan emailed Hillary Clinton acknowledging that "al-Qaeda is on our side in Syria". The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) warned the Obama administration in 2012 that the insurgency's core force was jihadists, Salafis, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet Obama approved "Timber Sycamore," the CIA program that armed and trained these very groups.

Now, over a decade later, we arrive at the inevitable destination: the United States hosting the former emir of Jabhat al-Nusra — the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda — as the U.S.-approved steward of a "new Syria."

It is macabre theater. 

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Staggering Hypocrisy

Craig Murray 

The outgoing Head of MI6 Richard Moore has formally admitted in a public speech in Istanbul that MI6 has been cooperating with HTS in Syria – a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act – for years.

The government is arresting little old ladies for holding signs supporting one proscribed organisation, Palestine Action, while it admits it has been actively supporting another proscribed organisation. HTS was proscribed as a division of Al Qaida, as shown on the government website:

 

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How the West’s War in Libya Has Spurred Terrorism in 14 Countries

Mark Curtis
Middle Eastern Eye

Eight years on from Nato's war in Libya in 2011, as the country enters a new phase in its conflict, I have taken stock of the number of countries to which terrorism has spread as a direct product of that war.
 
The number is at least 14. The legacy of David Cameron's, Nicolas Sarkozy's and Barack Obama's overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been gruesomely felt by Europeans and Africans.

Yet holding these leaders accountable for their decision to go to war is as distant as ever.  

Ungoverned space

The 2011 conflict, in which Nato worked alongside Islamist forces on the ground to remove Gaddafi, produced an ungoverned space in Libya and a country awash with weapons, ideal for terrorist groups to thrive.

But it was Syria that suffered first.

After civil war broke out there in early 2011, at the same time as in Libya, the latter became a facilitation and training hub for around 3,000 fighters on their way to Syria, many of whom joined al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State-affiliated Katibat al-Battar al-Libi (KBL), which was founded by militants from Libya.

In Libya itself, a rebranding of existing al-Qaeda-linked groups in the north-eastern area of Derna produced Islamic State's first official branch in the country in mid-2014, incorporating members of the KBL.

During 2015, IS Libya conducted car bombings and beheadings and established territorial control and governance over parts of Derna and Benghazi in the east and Sabratha in the west. It also became the sole governing body in the north-central city of Sirte, with as many as 5,000 fighters occupying the city.

By late 2016, IS in Libya was forced out of these areas, largely due to US air strikes, but withdrew to the desert areas south of Sirte, continuing low-level attacks.

In the last two years, the group has re-emerged as a formidable insurgent force and is again waging high-profile attacks on state institutions and conducting regular hit-and-run operations in the southwestern desert.

Last September, UN Special Representative to Libya Ghassan Salame told the UN Security Council that the IS "presence and operations in Libya are only spreading".

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Will the US ever be held accountable for its war crimes?

Jean Perier
New Eastern Outlook

For more than a decade, the United States has been steadily increasing the scale of its illegal military operations across the Middle East, resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

Eighteen years ago, the US invaded Afghanistan under the pretext of ousting the Taliban who allegedly granted sanctuary to Al-Qaeda. According to a study released by Brown University, more than 140,000 Afghan militants and civilians have died in the fight.

Since December 2001, the United States has been conducting various operations in Somali, and even today the Pentagon carries out both air strikes and ground operations, accompanied by a constant toll of civilian lives.

Back in 2003, Washington launched Operation Iraq Freedom to strip Saddam Hussein of WMDs he didn't even have and to convert Iraq into a «democracy», plunging this country into a state of perpetual chaos guaranteeing that it will remain a Western bastion in the Arab and Islamic World for years to come.

Eight years ago, the US succeeded in destabilizing Libya, when US warplanes attacked the troops of Libya's most successful ruler to date - Muammar Gaddafi. Back then, Washington took every step to ensure his government would be ousted and and its key leaders murdered. The Libyan conflict has since produced tens of thousands of dead. In 2016, Barack Obama said that Libya was probably the "worst mistake" of his presidency.

The seven years of war in Syria resulted in a death toll of half a million Syrian nationals. Here, American troops are stationed illegally to fight ISIS and "indigenous ground forces." The strange wording that Washington uses in its official rhetoric is no coincidence, since more than on one occasion US armed forces have opened fire on both Syrian government troops and civilians, with no official rationale ever being given to explain this brutality.

In Yemen, the United States has been backing Saudi Arabia's efforts to put an end to the Houthi rebellion for three years. Washington carries on supplying Saudi authorities with high-precision weapons, combat aircraft and intelligence. This war has already triggered the largest humanitarian catastrophe of the 21st century, with 20 million people finding themselves on the brink of starvation. 

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Foreign backed terrorism in Iran: Part one -US/Israeli backed Salafists in Iran

Aram Mirzaei
The Saker blog 

While terrorism is a phenomenon most of us have come in touch with during our lifetime, much of the coverage is shadowed by terrorism in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Iraq, where US backed terrorist groups have wreaked havoc in devastating the wars that have plagued these countries.

Nonetheless, terrorism is widespread across the region, even in Iran. Due to Iran’s relatively strong internal stability, terrorist groups have been unable to catch major headlines in the Islamic Republic as terrorist groups often conduct hit and run attacks or the occasional kidnappings of young drafted border guards and soldiers near the Pakistan/Afghanistan border areas as well as across Iran’s western borders towards Iraq. Some groups are motivated by separatist goals, while others are driven by religious extremism. In this first part I will cover terrorism across Iran’s eastern borders, one that is driven by the Salafist ideology.

Iran has been familiar with terrorism for many decades through the Saddam Hussein-backed “People’s Mujahideen”, a strange group of “Marxist-Islamists” who waged war on their own country in an attempt to grab power, shortly after the Islamic Revolution. During Saddam’s 8 year war on Iran they were backed and armed by Iraqi security forces, often resorting to terrorist attacks, killing many innocent people in the process. While this group was effectively defeated, it has nonetheless survived as it was sheltered by the Saddam regime and recently have found refuge in Albania. I will come back to this group later.

Since the 9/11 attacks when Al-Qaeda became a household name, Takfiri groups have become increasingly widespread in the Middle East and central Asia. Many Takfiri groups have found their haven in neighbouring Pakistan which they use as a home base to launch cross border attacks on Afghanistan and Iran. Pakistan’s government and security apparatus are known to support Takfiri groups across the region, at the behest of WaTakshington, a fact that former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf admitted to.

Pakistan is home to multiple Saudi funded so called Madrasas, terrorist recruitment centres focused on brainwashing young men into joining militant groups with similar ideologies such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. For decades, since the days of the Soviet-Afghan war, Islamabad has used terrorism as a tool for its foreign policy towards its neighbours. But it is important to understand that Islamabad and Pakistan’s security services are working for Washington’s interests, because had they had their own interests at heart, they wouldn’t allow the Waziristan province to turn into a terrorist controlled region in the country, endangering the lives of Pakistanis across the country. These Takfiri groups have committed heinous crimes against Pakistanis as well, such as the notorious Peshawar school shootings of 2014 where 132 schoolchildren were murdered.

Since 2003, Iran has been plagued by Takfiri terrorism that has penetrated through Iran’s south-eastern borders into the Sistan and Baluchistan province. One of the more active groups in the region was the Jundallah terrorist group, made up of the predominantly Sunni Muslim Baluchis (a people living in southeastern Iran and southwestern Pakistan). Jundallah claimed to be fighting for Baluchi rights in Iran while also espousing the formation of a Sunni Baluchi state. From their bases in Pakistan, over the course of 8 years, Jundallah conducted multiple terrorist attacks in Iran, such as the 2007 Zahedan bombings where 18 members of the IRGC were killed. 

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Israel's Top Commander Finally Spills Secrets Of "Invisible War" In Syria

Zero Hedge

For years Israel denied allegations that it had a role in funding and weaponizing the anti-Assad insurgency in Syria, and more often military officials responded "no comment" even when confronted with overwhelming evidence of Israeli weapons documented in al-Qaeda linked insurgents' hands, but this all changed in a new British Sunday Times interview with outgoing Israeli army commander Gadi Eisenkot, who has finally confirmed the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) supplied weapons to rebels across the border "for self-defense," and further perhaps more stunningly, has admitted to long waging an "invisible war in Syria" that involved "thousands of attacks".

The interview constitutes the first time that any current top Israeli military or government official has fully acknowledged sending anything beyond "humanitarian supplies," such as medical aid to Syrian militants seeking to topple the Assad government; and yet it still appears the country's military chief is slow playing the confirmation, only acknowledging the IDF provided "light weapons" — even after years of reporting has definitively uncovered an expansive Israeli program to arm dozens of insurgent groups and pay their salaries, includingknown affiliates of al-Qaeda in Syria.

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The Syria Deception: Al-Qaeda Goes to Hollywood

Grayzone Project

A film by Dan Cohen; music by Jackson Blumenthal: https://soundcloud.com/jacksonblument... 

This exclusive Grayzone investigative mini-doc by Dan Cohen exposes the cynical deceptions and faux humanitarianism behind the campaign to sell the dirty war on Syria. It will demonstrate the lengths that the US and its allies have gone to develop new ploys to tug at Western heartstrings and convince even liberal minded skeptics of war that a US intervention was necessary -- even if it meant empowering Al Qaeda's largest franchise since 9/11 and its theocratic allies among the insurgency. Big lies and little children have formed the heart of what is perhaps the most expensive, sophisticated, and shameless propaganda blitz ever conducted. Welcome to the Syria Deception.

Faked concern: Haley & corporate media bleating about Idlib civilians, ignore terrorists’ presence

Eva Bartlett
In Gaza 

October 8, 2018, RT.com 

*Blog post longer than original 

Nikki Haley, the hypocritical US Ambassador to the UN, mistakenly thinks she can dictate – from New York City, far from the terrorists which her country supports – that the Syrian army cannot fight and eradicate al-Qaeda in Idlib.

Her, and other American figures' words, come with faked concern over the lives of Syrian civilians.

This is particularly ironic given that the US-led coalition, illegally in Syria, destroyed the Syrian city of Raqqa and killed untold numbers of civilians along the way, in their fake fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) – a pretext which has only time and again strengthened IS in Syria. Raqqa remains uninhabitable, and even today corpses are still being unearthed.

Haley and the Western corporate media have been bleating in chorus about Idlib and the civilians there, deliberately ignoring the presence of Al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists occupying the governorate and surrounding areas in Aleppo and Hama governorates.

They ignore, too, the reality of life in areas which were once occupied by these terrorists: the torture, imprisonment, maiming, assassination, and starvation endured by the civilian population at the hands of these extremists and paid mercenaries. 

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The Battle in the South of Syria Is Coming to an End: Israel Bowed To Russia’s Will

American Herald Tribune

After only two weeks since the beginning of the military operation, jihadists and militants in most of eastern rural Daraa in south Syria have either surrendered or were overwhelmed, the over 70 villages they occupied were liberated by the Syrian Army. Meanwhile, Israel has reduced its requests or conditions pronounced in the last two weeks: from launching threats against the approach of the Syrian Army towards the South, to menaces if Damascus pushes forces beyond the 1974 demarcation line and the disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel. This clearly means all players (the US, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia) have dropped the jihadists and militants they were training and are turning their back on them: they are now on their own.

For over seven years, Israel has invested intelligence, finance, military and medical supplies in these jihadists and their allies. On many occasions, Israel has said it prefers the “Islamic State” to Iranian forces on the borders. Many times, Israel showed images of jihadists – including those fighting under the flag of al-Qaeda – in Israeli hospitals, recovering from wounds inflicted during their clashes with the forces of Damascus. Today, it is clear that Israel’s intentions have been defeated when it can announce that for the Syrian army to cross the 1974 disengagement line it means crossing red lines. Israel is crying in the wilderness because the Syrian army has the intention and means to defeat all jihadists and militants who received supplies from foreign countries. It has never crossed Syria’s mind to start a new war with Israel before the Syrian territory (in the north) is liberated. 

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Welcome to Hadar: A Village Under Siege by al-Qaeda and Israeli Forces Alike

Eva Bartlett
In Gaza

The village of Hadar, in Southern Syria, is buttressed on one side by Israeli watchtowers and walls – and endures deadly attacks from jihadist Syrian rebels from the other three. 

HADAR, SYRIA — Situated in the northern part of Quneitra governorate, with the towering Jabal al-Sheikh (Mt. Hermon) overlooking it and the region, Hadar is in both a beautiful area of Syria and a dangerous one.

The roughly 10,000 defiant villagers of Hadar are isolated and under constant threat of attack. Until December 2017, Hadar was surrounded on three sides by terrorists and was attacked many times.

Positioned in a valley, with the al-Qaeda alliance until December 2017 occupying Beit Jinn and other villages to the east, Hadar also borders the ceasefire line of the occupied Syrian Golan, an area teeming with still more al-Qaeda terrorists. From their positions inside the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) zone of the occupied Syrian Golan, terrorists in Jubata al-Khashab (roughly 6 kilometers directly south of Hadar), Turunjah (roughly 5 kilometers south of Hadar), and Ufaniyah (further south than Jubata al-Khashab), have fired mortars, missiles, and other explosives on Hadar, something acknowledged even by the UN Secretary-General.

In his December 6, 2017 report, the Secretary-General noted that terrorist groups fighting in the UNDOF area of operation include “the listed terrorist group Jabhat Fath al-Sham (formerly the Nusra Front) and Jaysh Khalid Ibn al-Walid, which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).”

The same report noted the attacks from the three villages towards Hadar were preceded by a “vehicle-borne improvised explosive device,” which killed nine people. In Hadar, I would learn that the car bomb didn’t just target “a pro-Syrian forces checkpoint in Hadar,” as per the UN report, but was headed towards the heart of the village when shot at by Hadar defenders. The vehicle exploded less than 100 meters from a school, at 9 a.m., according to Hadar resident Mahmoud Taweel. Had the village not been on alert, and families staying at home, the number killed would have surely been higher and included many children. 

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Pentagon report predicted West’s support for Islamist rebels would create ISIS

Nafeez Ahmed
Insurge Intelligence

Anti-ISIS coalition knowingly sponsored violent extremists to ‘isolate’ Assad, rollback ‘Shia expansion’.

 

 This story is published by INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a new crowd-funded investigative journalism project. 

Support us to break the stories that no one else will — become a patron of independent, investigative journalism for the global commons.

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A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.

The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, and that these “supporting powers” desired the emergence of a “Salafist Principality” in Syria to “isolate the Syrian regime.”

According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the ‘Islamic State’ as a direct consequence of this strategy, and warned that it could destabilize Iraq. Despite anticipating that Western, Gulf state and Turkish support for the “Syrian opposition” — which included al-Qaeda in Iraq — could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the document provides no indication of any decision to reverse the policy of support to the Syrian rebels. On the contrary, the emergence of an al-Qaeda affiliated “Salafist Principality” as a result is described as a strategic opportunity to isolate Assad.

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Hypocrisy

 

The revelations contradict the official line of Western governments on their policies in Syria, and raise disturbing questions about secret Western support for violent extremists abroad, while using the burgeoning threat of terror to justify excessive mass surveillance and crackdowns on civil liberties at home.

Among the batch of documents obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, released earlier this week, is a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document then classified as “secret,” dated 12th August 2012.

The DIA provides military intelligence in support of planners, policymakers and operations for the US Department of Defense and intelligence community.

So far, media reporting has focused on the evidence that the Obama administration knew of arms supplies from a Libyan terrorist stronghold to rebels in Syria.

Some outlets have reported the US intelligence community’s internal prediction of the rise of ISIS. Yet none have accurately acknowledged the disturbing details exposing how the West knowingly fostered a sectarian, al-Qaeda-driven rebellion in Syria.

Charles Shoebridge, a former British Army and Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism intelligence officer, said:

“Given the political leanings of the organisation that obtained these documents, it’s unsurprising that the main emphasis given to them thus far has been an attempt to embarrass Hilary Clinton regarding what was known about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in 2012. However, the documents also contain far less publicized revelations that raise vitally important questions of the West’s governments and media in their support of Syria’s rebellion.”

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Video: Carla Ortiz Debunks the Alleged “Humanitarian Mandate” of the “White Helmets” in Syria. They Work Hand in Glove with Al Qaeda

Global Research 

Bolivian actress Carla Ortiz debunks the humanitarian nature of White Helmets in Syria.

The non-profit organization is lauded by the corporate media for their unwavering efforts and determination to help Syrian civilians amid the ongoing crisis.

But there is more than meets the eye.

Watch Carla Ortiz’s interview with Jimmy Dore below.

Caught in a lie, US & allies bomb Syria the night before international inspectors arrive

Eva Bartlett
In Gaza

The US, Britain and France trampled international law to launch missiles against Syria, claiming to have “evidence” of the government’s use of chemical weapons. That evidence is based on terrorist lies.

After a week of outrageous tweets and proclamations by POTUS Trump, which included continued accusations that Syria’s president ordered a chemical weapons attack on civilians in Douma, east of Damascus, with Trump using grotesque and juvenile terminology, such as “animal Assad,” the very evening before chemical weapons inspectors of the OPCW were to visit Douma, America and allies launched illegal bombings against Syria. The illegal bombings included 103 missiles, 71 of which Russia states were intercepted.

For the past week, we were told that the US had ‘evidence’ and the UK had ‘evidence’ that Syria had used chemicals. The ‘evidence’ largely relied on video clips and photos shared on social media, provided by the Western-funded White Helmets (that ‘rescuer’ group that somehow only operates in Al-Qaeda and co-terrorist occupied areas and participates in torture and executions), as well as by Yaser al-Doumani, a man whose allegiance to Jaysh al-Islam is clear from his own Facebook posts, for example of former Jaysh al-Islam leader, Zahran Alloush.

This, we were told, was ‘evidence.’ This and the words of the highly partial, USAID-funded, US State Department allied Syrian American Medical Society, which, like Al-Qaeda’s rescuers, only supports doctors in terrorist-occupied areas.

On April 12, even US Secretary of Defense James Mattis told the House Armed Services Committee that the US government does not have any evidence that sarin or chlorine was used, that he was still looking for evidence.

Syria, finding the claims to be lies and the sources tainted, requested that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) immediately come to Syria to investigate the claims. Accordingly, the OPCW agreed to send a team—the visas for which Syria granted immediately—which arrived in Damascus on April 14.

President Trump, instead of waiting for an investigation to confirm his ‘evidence,’ chose the very night before this investigative team would arrive in Syria to inspect the allegations, to bomb Syria. The timing of the attacks is more than just a little timely. And the bombings were illegal.

General Mattis tried to dance around the legality, stating, “the president has the authority under Article II of the Constitution to use military force overseas to defend important United States national interests.”

But he is wrong, this does not permit the US to illegally bomb a sovereign nation, and he knows it. So does Russia. In a statement on April 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the attacks as illegal, noting:

“Without the sanction of the Security Council of the United Nations, in violation of the UN Charter, norms and principles of international law, an act of aggression against a sovereign state that is at the forefront of the fight against terrorism has been committed.”

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How the Syrian American Medical Society Is Selling Regime Change and Driving the U.S. to War

truthdig.com

Reports on unproven allegations of a chemical attack in Douma, the Syria city formerly occupied by the Army of Islam insurgent group, invariably rely on a key source: The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS). Together with the White Helmets, SAMS has been cited by the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and virtually every Western media organization reporting on the incident. In Douma, SAMS staff have claimed that they treated more than 500 people for symptoms “indicative of exposure to a chemical agent.”

The group also played a central role in shaping the narrative of a sarin attack in Al Qaeda-controlled Khan Sheikhoun in April, 2017, providing biomedical samples to the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which violated its stated protocol by accepting evidence without a verifiable chain of custody. That incident prompted the launching of 57 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base by the American military. Almost exactly a year later, a strikingly similar event is said to have tripped the “red line” again, and is likely to trigger a more robust assault by the US and its allies.

SAMS claims to be a “non-political, non-profit medical organization,” and is cited as a credible authority by media reporting on the incident in Douma. Scant published material is available on the organization’s origins as an exile arm of the Islamist-oriented Syrian opposition, its involvement in sophisticated influence operations from the Turkish-Syrian border, or its close relationship to neoconservative elements in Washington and Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.

SAMS is not merely a group of Syrian doctors tending to the wounded in war torn areas, nor can it be considered an objective source on chemical attacks and other atrocities. The organization is a USAID-funded lobbying powerhouse that functions with a single-minded determination to stimulate a US-led war of regime change that will place Syrian Islamists in power in Damascus.

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The facts behind the ‘staged’ video of kids’ chemical weapons drill in Syria

RT 

A video described as showing Syrian children being trained to fake the symptoms of a chemical weapons attack has been widely shared online with fake and menacing misinformation. 

RT Digital investigated the origins of the video and found that it doesn’t depict children being coerced and prepared for future propaganda videos, as falsely suggested by users on Twitter.

The video is more than four years old and the actions carried out by the children in the video are part of a play by a group called the Nesma Organization based in eastern Ghouta.

[...]

The original copy of the video was uploaded to YouTube on September 19, 2013. The Nesma Organization advertised the play on its Facebook account on September 18 and 19, 2013 – the exact timeframe the original video was uploaded to the YouTube channel whose name roughly translates into English as Rural Damascus Media.

Other videos from the Rural Damascus Media have also been shared by the Nesma Organisation’s Facebook page.

Rural Damascus Media’s description of the video reads: “The aim of the play was to teach children the horrors of being under attack by chemical weapons and to show the world its neglect and failure to take action on a man who would use such weapons against his own citizens.”

Rural Damascus Media’s YouTube channel also contains videos of rallies where FSA (Free Syrian Army) and Al-Qaeda flags were waved.

The Nesma Organisation also has a Facebook history of sharing content from the Syrian Revolution Coordinators Union. The Nesma Organisation is the Arabic translation, but the group also calls itself Aura Volunteers.

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The Truth About Syria: A Summary of the Syria Crisis and How We Got to the Latest False Flag Chemical Attack

Blackstone Intelligence Network

Interview on war on Syria (with many relevant links)

Eva Bartlett -In Gaza
 

Important Related Reading/Links (in order of mention):

 

-Stephen Gowans: “The (Largely Unrecognized) US Occupation of Syria“, Mar 11, 2018

-Elijah Magnier: “Three leaders in Ankara: the Syrian war is over but the US remains dangerous“, Apr 5, 2018

-Qatar’s former PM admits arming terrorists

-Bab al-Hadid, Aleppo resident (VIDEO): “Wherever the army is, there is safety. Wherever the ‘rebels’ are…they’re called ‘rebels’ but they’re all terrorists.”

-‘They know that we know they are liars, they keep lying’: West’s war propaganda on Ghouta crescendos, 21 Mar, 2018, RT.com

-My Oct 2015 article: “Deconstructing the NATO Narrative on Syria“. Excerpt:

“…it is known that from the beginning, in Dara’a  and throughout Syria, armed protesters were firing upon, and butchering, security forces and civilians. Tim Anderson’s “Syria: how the violence began, in Daraa” pointed out that police were killed by snipers in the March 17/18 protests; the Syrian army was only brought to Dara’a following the murder of the policemen. Additionally, a storage of protesters’ weapons was found in Dara’a’s al-Omari mosque.

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Israeli Terrorism Against Palestinians Will Never End if Western Hypocrisy in Middle East Continues

Eva Bartlett
RT

The US is fine with "rebels" like Al-Qaeda "protesting" in Syria, but when genuinely unarmed Palestinians protest the occupiers who violently expelled them from their homes and land, they are "inciting violence."
During peaceful protests on March 30 in eastern Gaza, an unarmed Palestinian man walked on farmland towards the fence built by his occupiers. Within minutes, he was shot by one of the 100 Israeli special forces snipers deployed along the fence precisely to quash dissent-by any means necessary-under the old pretext of "self-defense."

On the same day, a Palestinian woman, armed solely with a flag, walked towards the fence which has imprisoned her for so many years. She, too, was targeted by one of the snipers.
Among the 17 killed that day was a 16-year-old girl and a 27-year-old farmer, the latter killed by Israeli tank fire.

Even the BBC, which is not generally known to report fairly on Palestine, noted: "The first to die was Omar Samour, 27 - a Palestinian farmer killed in Israeli shelling as he worked his land near Khan Younis early on Friday, before the protests began."
Yet, according to Israel, this farmer was a "terrorist infiltrator," the lexicon which Israel uses to whitewash its extrajudicial assassinations.

Sputnik reports that the Israeli Army spokesperson proudly tweeted they knew "where every bullet landed," but later deleted the tweet, likely because it was clear these bullets landed in the bodies of unarmed protesters.

In my three years living in Gaza, I frequently accompanied such demonstrations, and also did so in countless demonstrations when I stayed as an activist for eight months in the West Bank. Having experienced these first hand, I'm acutely aware that Israel has zero moral authority on conduct.
In the tens of demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza which I accompanied, "violence" always began with the Israelis shooting live ammunition, lead bullets covered with a thin rubber layer, and suffocating tear gas at unarmed Palestinians. That Palestinian youths chose to respond with slingshot-spun rocks is entirely within their rights. But in my experiences, it was always Israel which began, shooting to maim and kill, kidnapping and imprisoning unarmed protesters.

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New Study Provides Yet More Proof Of Saudi State Sponsorship Of ISIS

Zero Hedge

During the same week Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) admitted to the The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg that Saudi nationals have funded terror groups, a prominent Georgetown University counterterrorism expert and field researcher has published his findings based on extensive interviews with former ISIS members which identifies Saudi Arabia as a key source of the now defunct Islamic State's prior rapid growth. 

The findings were summarized in the Government and Technology Services Coalition's Homeland Security Today online journal, and authored by Georgetown University professor Ahmet Yayla, who during the past four years has interviewed over 40 ISIS defectors in Turkey while conducting on the ground research along Syria's border.

Yayla's findings entitled, To Truly Fight Terror, Counter Salafist Jihadist Ideology First, confirm that:

“The majority of the ISIS shaykhs (imams and teachers) who were preaching in ISIS-controlled territories and schools were from Saudi Arabia.”

Though documentation on Saudi Arabia's role in financing global jihad has been abundant over the past years of war in Syria and Iraq, Professor Yayla's field research provides yet further empirical confirmation and proof of Saudi Arabia's role in fueling both ISIS and al-Qaeda terrorism.

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