{"id":49092,"date":"2014-10-27T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T12:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=49092"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:29:37","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:37","slug":"anti-assad-warmongers-drag-in-the-holocaust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/10\/anti-assad-warmongers-drag-in-the-holocaust\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Assad Warmongers Drag in the Holocaust"},"content":{"rendered":"

October 25, 2014 – <\/em>\u201cThe irony is that the Nazi holocaust has now become the main ideological weapon for launching wars of aggression,\u201d Norman Finkelstein tells<\/a> Yoav Shamir in \u201cDefamation,\u201d the Israeli filmmaker\u2019s award-winning 2009 documentary on how perceptions of anti-Semitism affect Israeli and U.S. politics. \u201cEvery time you want to launch a war of aggression, drag in the Nazi holocaust.\u201d If you\u2019re looking for evidence in support of Finkelstein\u2019s thesis today, you need look no further than the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum\u2019s exhibit<\/a> of images of emaciated and mutilated bodies from contemporary Syria.<\/p>\n

The small exhibit, entitled \u201cGenocide: The Threat Continues,\u201d features a dozen images said to be from an archive of 55,000 pictures allegedly smuggled out of the country by \u201cCaesar,\u201d a mysterious source who claims to have defected from his job as a Syrian military photographer after having been ordered to take photos of more than 10,000 corpses. Emphasizing the threat of an impending genocide, the reportedly<\/a> conscience-stricken defector warns that a similar fate awaits the 150,000 people he says remain incarcerated by President Bashar Assad\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re powerful images, and viewers are immediately reminded of the Holocaust,\u201d Cameron Hudson, the director of the museum\u2019s Center for the Prevention of Genocide, was cited as saying in an Oct. 15 Associated Press report<\/a>. Hudson, whose intriguing career<\/a> in genocide prevention includes a stint as intelligence analyst in the CIA\u2019s Africa Directorate, added, \u201cThey show a side of the Syrian regime that hasn\u2019t really been really seen. You might have heard about it, read about it, but when you\u2019re confronted with these images, they\u2019re impossible to ignore.\u201d<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s promotion of these impossible-to-ignore, Holocaust-recalling images dates from a few months earlier, however. In his July visit to Washington that included a series of meetings with U.S. government and congressional officials, Caesar\u2019s first stop<\/a> was at the Holocaust Museum.<\/p>\n

On July 28, Michael Chertoff, a member of the museum\u2019s governing board of trustees<\/a>, presented the purported defector to a small group of reporters and researchers. According to the Washington Post\u2019s Greg Miller<\/a>, this event was the first time that Caesar had appeared publicly to answer questions about the photos deemed by some human rights organizations<\/a> as evidence of war crimes committed by Assad.<\/p>\n

Chertoff, a co-author of the USA PATRIOT Act, hasn\u2019t hesitated to invoke the Nazis either in support of the neoconservative-conceived \u201cglobal war on terror.\u201d In an April 22, 2007 Washington Post op-ed<\/a> entitled \u201cMake No Mistake: This Is War,\u201d the then secretary of the Department of Homeland Security wrote, \u201cAl-Qaeda and its ilk have a world vision that is comparable to that of historical totalitarian ideologues but adapted to the 21st-century global network.\u201d<\/p>\n

Commenting on the former DHS secretary\u2019s close ties to Israel, Jonathan Cook notes in his book \u201cIsrael and the Clash of Civilizations<\/a>\u201d that Chertoff\u2019s mother was an air hostess for El Al in the 1950s. \u201cThere are reports that she was involved in Operation Magic Carpet, which brought Jews to Israel from Yemen,\u201d writes the Nazareth-based British journalist. \u201cIt therefore seems possible that Livia Eisen was an Israeli national, and one with possible links to the Mossad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the other members of the Holocaust Memorial Council noted for their staunch support of Israel and American interventionism are the pardoned Iran-Contra neocon intriguer Elliott Abrams and Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.<\/p>\n

Writing in Foreign Policy\u2019s The Cable on April 23, 2012, Josh Rogin drew attention to Wiesel\u2019s pointed introduction of President Barack Obama at a ceremony in the Holocaust Museum. Comparing the Syrian president and then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the perpetrators of the Nazi holocaust, Wiesel implicitly criticized<\/a> Obama\u2019s supposedly obtuse inaction, \u201cSo in this place we may ask: Have we learned anything from it? If so, how is it that Assad is still in power?\u201d<\/p>\n

As Rogin, a reliable media conduit<\/a> for anti-Assad interventionism, pointedly observed, the speech was reminiscent of another one Wiesel gave at the opening of the museum in 1993, when he urged then President Bill Clinton to take military action in Bosnia: \u201cSimilarly, that speech came at a time when the Clinton administration was resisting getting entangled in a foreign civil war but was under growing pressure to intervene.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lobby\u2019s Syrian Interpreter<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a revealing interview<\/a> published on Aug. 11, 2013 by the Turkish newspaper Today\u2019s Zaman, Caesar\u2019s interpreter\u2014who presided<\/a> over a question-and-answer session at the museum\u2014echoed Wiesel\u2019s criticism of President Obama\u2019s resistance to doing the bidding of the neocons and \u201cliberal interventionists\u201d seeking greater American intervention in Syria.<\/p>\n

Asked by the G\u00fclen movement-aligned daily if America had forgotten the Syrian war, Mouaz Moustafa replied, \u201cIt is the president who is against action in Syria not the whole of the U.S. government. President Barack Obama has been very insular and cautious about Syria. The president does not seem to understand how important Syria is to U.S. national security [….] The president does not feel the need to explain to the American people or the world that the risks with any of the bad options that we have are far outweighed by the risks of inaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is hardly a coincidence that Moustafa\u2019s rhetoric bears a striking resemblance to that of Israel\u2019s friends like Wiesel. Although one of best known pro-Israel<\/a>\u00a0media-promoted<\/a> faces of the Syrian opposition in Washington has understandably sought to obscure his ties to Tel Aviv, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force has undeniable links to one of its American lobby\u2019s leading think tanks.<\/p>\n

After it emerged<\/a> that Moustafa\u2019s non-profit had coordinated Senator John McCain\u2019s May 2013 trip to meet with the so-called \u201cmoderate\u201d Syrian rebels, an examination of the SETF executive director\u2019s background revealed<\/a> that he was one of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy\u2019s \u201cexperts\u201d; a contributor to WINEP\u2019s Fikra Forum<\/a>, \u201can online community that aims to generate ideas to support Arab democrats in their struggle with authoritarians and extremists\u201d; and had addressed the AIPAC-created think tank\u2019s annual Soref symposium entitled \u201cInside Syria: The Battle Against Assad\u2019s Regime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even more damningly, it was discovered that one of SETF\u2019s web addresses was \u201csyriantaskforce.torahacademybr.org.\u201d The \u201ctorahacademybr.org<\/a>\u201d url belongs to the Torah Academy of Boca Raton<\/a>, Florida, whose key values notably include promoting \u201ca love for and commitment to Eretz Yisroel.\u201d<\/p>\n

When confronted with these embarrassing revelations, Moustafa responded<\/a> via Twitter, \u201ccall me terrorist\/Qaeda\/nazi as others have but not Zionist Im [sic] denied ever entering palestine but it lives in me..\u201d Dismissing the Syrian opposition group\u2019s intriguing connection to a pro-Israel yeshiva in Florida, @SoccerMouaz<\/a> claimed<\/a> that the \u201curl registration was due to dumb error by web designer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Israel lobby-backed Moustafa also interpreted for Caesar, who was wearing dark glasses<\/a> and a blue rain jacket with the hood pulled over his head, when he testified<\/a> before a closed-door session of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs this July. At least some of its members<\/a> would no doubt have recognized the ubiquitous interpreter<\/a>, however.<\/p>\n

As Foreign Policy\u2019s The Cable reported<\/a> on June 6, 2013, two leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Reps. Ed Royce (R-CA) and Eliot Engel (D-NY), dispatched aides to Turkey to meet leading members of the Syrian Free Army between May 27 and June 3. As The Cable had \u201clearned,\u201d the meeting had been coordinated by Moustafa\u2019s Syrian Emergency Task Force.<\/p>\n

(This September, staff from SETF and the House Foreign Affairs Committee reportedly<\/a> facilitated a meeting in Turkey that led to more than 20 Syrian rebel commanders signing \u201ca historic agreement\u201d\u00a0to unite in the quixotic fight against both ISIS and Assad.)<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the FP article noted that \u201c[t]he two lawmakers don\u2019t exactly see eye-to-eye on the question of whether the United States should intervene more aggressively in the protracted civil war,\u201d with Engel having \u201ccarved out one of the most hawkish positions in Congress on Syria, being the first to introduce legislation authorizing lethal assistance for the rebels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, as Rep. Engel pointed out in his opening remarks<\/a> at the Syria briefing, he has \u201cbeen personally focused on Syria for a long time.\u201d In 2003, he passed the Syria Accountability Act, which imposed sanctions on the government of Hafez Assad.<\/p>\n

In a reference to his introduction of the Free Syria Act in March 2013, which authorized the president to provide lethal assistance to those Engel euphemistically described as \u201ccarefully vetted members of the moderate Syrian opposition,\u201d the reflexively pro-Israel<\/a> Democratic congressman from New York said, \u201cIf we had taken that approach a year and a half ago, we may have been able to stem the growth of ISIS and weaken the regime of Bashar Assad. But we didn\u2019t, unfortunately, so we\u2019ll never really know what would have happened if we had acted then.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Israeli-Qatari Nexus<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Caesar and his Washington-based Palestinian-Syrian interpreter clearly have the enthusiastic support of Israel\u2019s friends in America, the photos presented as evidence of an alleged Syrian \u201cholocaust\u201d by Assad\u2019s forces received their initial boost from one of Tel Aviv\u2019s closest, albeit covert<\/a>, Arab allies in their mutual war against the Syrian government.<\/p>\n

As part of a review of the photos commissioned by the government of Qatar, David Crane, a former war-crimes prosecutor for Sierra Leone, reportedly spent hours interviewing Caesar. An Oct. 13 Yahoo News report<\/a> by Michael Isikoff\u2014one of the photos\u2019 most tireless promoters<\/a> whose subsequently retracted,\u00a0provocative<\/a> 2005 Newsweek story of an American soldier flushing a Koran down the toilet triggered a wave of anti-American protests by outraged Muslims\u2014quotes Crane as saying that they document \u201can industrial killing machine not seen since the Holocaust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like the director of the Holocaust Museum\u2019s Center for the Prevention of Genocide, Crane<\/a> has also worked for the U.S. government in the intelligence field. His former posts include Director of the Office of Intelligence Review, assistant general counsel of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Waldemar A. Solf Professor of International Law at the U.S. Army Judge Advocate Generals School.<\/p>\n

Having ostensibly left the intelligence world behind him for Syracuse University\u2019s College of Law, Crane founded<\/a> and directs the Syrian Accountability Project (SAP), which describes itself as \u201ca cooperative effort between activists, non-governmental organizations, students, and other interested parties to document war crimes and crimes against humanity in the context of the Syrian Crisis.\u201d According to its website<\/a>, SAP has \u201cworked closely with the Syrian National Coalition\u201d which is listed as one of its clients.<\/p>\n

Founded in Doha, Qatar in November 2012, the Syrian National Coalition represents the Free Syrian Army, which has reportedly<\/a> collaborated with the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham in massacres of Syrian civilians such as the one this March in the village of Kassab<\/a>, an ancestral home of Syria\u2019s minority ethnic Armenians, on the Turkish border.<\/p>\n

Professor Crane is also vice-president of I Am Syria<\/a>, whose mission statement describes it as \u201ca non-profit media based campaign that seeks to educate the world of the Syrian Conflict.\u201d I Am Syria\u2019s president, Ammar Abdulhamid<\/a>, has been a fellow at two of the most prominent Washington-based pro-Israel think tanks, the Saban<\/a> Center for Middle East Policy\u2014which oversees the Qatar-based Brookings Doha Center\u2014and the neocon Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; while one of its education directors, Andrew Beitar, is a regional education coordinator for the Holocaust Museum.<\/p>\n

As the case of the mysterious Caesar and his trove of torture photos<\/a> clearly shows, those who want to launch a war of aggression on Syria\u2014as they have succeeded in doing in Iraq and Libya\u2014have at every opportunity sought, as Finkelstein put it, to drag in the Nazi holocaust. As more and more people become wise to this ruse, they should keep in mind the two words espoused<\/a> by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: \u201cNever Again.\u201d<\/p>\n

___________________________<\/p>\n

Maidhc \u00d3 Cathail is a widely published writer<\/a> and political analyst. He is also the creator and editor of The Passionate Attachment<\/a> blog, which focuses primarily on the US-Israeli relationship.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 thepassionateattachment.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe irony is that the Nazi holocaust has now become the main ideological weapon for launching wars of aggression,\u201d Norman Finkelstein tells in \u201cDefamation,\u201d the award-winning 2009 documentary on how perceptions of anti-Semitism affect Israeli and U.S. politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}