TERROR AND PROPAGANDA: THE LETHAL WEAPONS OF IMPERIALISM
What follows is my English translation of an article by Jacopo Brogi, published on ComeDonChisciotte.org on 31st May 2024. (All formatting original).
Khisas, Upper Galilee, 18th December 1947: “The Jewish soldiers attacked the village and in the middle of the night began to blow up houses at random, while the residents slept. Fifteen people were killed in the attack, including five children.” It was the Israeli historian Ilan Pappè who narrated the genesis of the State of Israel (1948), as the last act of the "Ethnic cleansing of Palestine" (this is the name of one of his most renowned books, published in 2006): around 250,000 people expelled from their lands.
“I am in favour of forced transfer: I don't see anything immoral in it.” Thus the founding father, later prime minister, David Ben Gurion to the Executive of the Jewish Agency in June 1938.
A huge, decades-long tragedy ideally links the deaths of Khisas with those of the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood of Rafah on 26th May. Again at night. Missiles against tents, missiles against refugees, in the "safe area". At least 45 dead: many were burned alive. With American weapons too.
For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu it was a "tragic mistake". It was also the case for the events in Khisas: Ben Gurion "issued a theatrical public apology, stating that the action had not been authorized, but a few months later, in April, included it in a list of successful operations."
And in 2024 the war continues, despite Rafah. According to Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel's national security advisor, "the fighting in Gaza will continue for another 7 months."
It is the fight against terrorism, which today is called Hamas, but yesterday it was the "infiltrators" - that is, those Palestinians who were not supposed to join the Arab Liberation Army in any way, under penalty of death. Hagana paramilitary units entered villages to search for them: “any resistance to these incursions usually ended with Jewish soldiers shooting at random and killing many people.”
The dominant West is like this: it uses war and terror, it uses propaganda, in every way.
Today you are a terrorist, but if it were convenient, tomorrow you could be a friend.
One of the many school cases, perhaps the most sensational, is that of the MEK, the Iranian Mujahideen-e Khalq, which the United States removed from the black list of terrorist organizations in 2012, after the UK (2008) and the EU (2009).
An investigation by The Guardian proved how and why. And he wrote it clearly: “the campaign to bury the bloody history of the MEK, made up of attacks and assassinations that killed American businessmen, Iranian politicians and thousands of civilians, and to paint it as a faithful ally of the United States against Tehran's Islamic government has seen large sums of money funnelled to three main targets: members of Congress, Washington lobbyists, and influential former officials.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton removed the MEK from the blacklist after sending a confidential opinion to Congress at the beginning of that very hot September, and that of 2022 will be much more so. Exactly ten years later, Clinton was one of the main sponsors of Women, Life, Freedom, an organization awarded by the EU, a year later, with the Sakharov prize for freedom of thought and client of "Eyes on Iran", the campaign that from the USA to the entire West , aimed high. The death of the young Masha Amini, which Tehran considered natural, was used to destabilize the entire country with very violent protests, clashes and an attempt at regime change, which spectacularly failed.
Could the MEK have been missing? The organization has always been present during all the crucial phases of contemporary Iran. Immediately after Khomeini's revolution it took sides against her own country, enlisted by Saddam's Iraq in that "imposed war", as the Iranians call it, which resulted in a million deaths. MEK killed at least 17,000 people, also engaging in a strategy of tension against the State that is very reminiscent of what Italy experienced during the Cold War. Large and small attacks against an Iran that had begun its adventure of being misaligned from the East and the West.
Even a President, a Prime Minister and the Chief of the Judiciary fell martyrs to the Mujahideen-e Khalq. Tehran's reaction was harsh, as a country under attack. And the long wave of 2022 was ridden by the MEK, today a "politically correct movement" promoting the human rights so dear to the West.
ISPI (Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale [Institute for International Political Studies]) is one of the most renowned Italian think tanks, always pro-Atlantic. In 2018 it analysed the MEK in depth, even going so far as to criticize the American administration (Trump was there):
“Since the 1980s, the Mojahedin have had to take a vow of eternal celibacy, those who are married must divorce, those who are not must swear never to do so, nor can they have children”. And he continued: "Over the years, the MEK have increasingly taken on the characteristics of a sect centred on the personality cult of the leader Rajavi and strongly centred on female empowerment: girls are taught that joining the Mojaheddin is "a journey towards self-empowerment and the illumination of martyrdom inspired by the light and wisdom of Maryam and Masoud Rajavi.”
In 2005, still blacklisted: “they would have received training from the American Joint Special Operation Command (JSOC) in the Nevada desert, an environment similar in terms of landscape to north-western Iran. The training would have been completed before Obama's inauguration, and would have consisted mainly of communication techniques, cryptography, assault techniques and guerrilla warfare. Also in 2012, NBC reported the testimonies of two Obama administration officials according to whom the murders of the five Iranian nuclear scientists in 2007 were committed by the MEK in collaboration with the Mossad, with the support of US intelligence".
The purposes? “Their intention, after the overthrow of the Iranian regime, is the creation of an interim government headed by Maryam Rajavi – already nominated as the future president of Iran – followed by free elections. Beyond the rhetoric, however, the modus operandi remains profoundly authoritarian: in addition to forced celibacy, the members of the group have no access to newspapers, radio or television, no one can criticize Rajavi. Members are periodically subjected to self-criticism sessions in which they are filmed while admitting to having behaved contrary to the group's laws."
Then the final thrust, as if the Americans were new to this type of operation:
“Ultimately, the mistake of interfering in the internal affairs of a country with the aim of changing its ideological orientation, willfully ignoring the fact that the groups relied on to do so are not at all considered legitimate by the population of that country, and that any change should derive precisely from an internal political process, not from imposition or destabilization coming from outside”.
The 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom season has long resonated in the major media and has had an important echo around the world. And the MEK - for Tehran it is a terrorist organization - which today is based in Albania, with its accredited network between Europe and the United States - has played a central role in this type of propaganda, going so far as to promote an open letter to which a group of 109 former world leaders joined to “urge support for the ongoing uprising in Iran”.
Signatories include 50 former Presidents, 48 former Prime Ministers, one former Chancellor and nine other former Heads of State from around the world, including former UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon, former US Vice President Mike Pence, the former Presidents of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker and Romano Prodi, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Liz Truss.
“The group also urged the international community to recognize the four decades of campaign of the democratic coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI – also known as MEK, ed.), rallying support for the Ten Point Plan proposed by the President of NCRI Maryam Rajavi.”
Yet, in June 2023, the State Department underlined that Washington does not consider the MEK "a valid democratic opposition movement representative of the Iranian people." On the other hand, the Neocons have never made a secret of their desire for Iran, in the true sense of the word. Mike Pence, John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Pompeo were all part of Donald Trump's entourage, who – let's not forget – gave the green light to the killing of General Qasem Soleimani on 3rd January 2020.
In the last 44 years, 39 general elections have been held in Iran, the MEK has never tried to participate in them, evidently its leaders know that they have no support within the country. In addition to the war on behalf of third parties, the attacks and the propaganda, they have shown that they support the very severe economic sanctions against the Iranian people that the West is gradually imposing.
It is the same West that today calls the late Iranian president Raisi "Butcher of Tehran": source Wikipedia, via NBC News, via Human Right Watch, via MEK. About propaganda and its assembly line.
Raisi, in reality, was renowned in his homeland for having been one of the personalities who within the judicial system, in which he worked and which then led him to be president of the Supreme Court until 2021, had sought justice against the violent acts of the group MEK terrorist, especially in the eighties.
Today the MEK even aims to enter the German political system, the locomotive of the EU, through intense lobbying activity, well documented recently by the Iranian journalist Alireza Niknam.
Askanews 05-30-2024 – 17.50
Colleagues and friends transport the bodies of two Palestinian ambulance drivers killed in an attack that hit their vehicles in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah to the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. Paramedics Haitham Tubasi and Suhail Hassouna were in an ambulance bearing the organization's markings and were attacked by the IDF, Gaza's Hamas-led Health Ministry said, saying the two were on their way to recover bodies and wounded from the area.
The war continues, as does the ethnic cleansing of Palestine,
It's the terrorists' fault, of course. But which ones?
These operations can be carried out in the following way: by destroying the villages (setting them on fire, blowing them up and undermining the rubble) and especially those populated centers that are difficult to control continuously; or through round-up and control operations, with the following guidelines: surround the villages and carry out raids inside. In case of resistance, the armed forces must be eliminated and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.
Dalet Plan, 10th March 1948
Sources:
Pappé, Ilan, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oneworld (2006). Edizione Italiana Fazi Editore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebrahim_Raisi
https://iran1988.org/open-letter-by-former-world-leaders-to-the-leaders-of-canada-the-eu-uk-and-us/
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202306202329
https://iran1988.org/global-statement-denouncing-ebrahim-raisis-planned-appearance-at-un-geneva/
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/08/iran-1988-mass-executions-evident-crimes-against-humanity
Iran: chi sono i Mojaheddin-e Khalq, i radicali sostenuti dai falchi USA
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/21/iran-mek-group-removed-us-terrorism-list
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-19767043
https://iran1988.org/signatories-of-former-world-leaders-2023-open-letter-on-iran/
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/08/irans-1988-mass-executions#four
https://comedonchisciotte.org/germania-la-cdu-si-ritrova-alleata-dei-terroristi-del-mek/
https://en.irna.ir/news/85474949/500-medical-staff-killed-since-October-7-Gaza-Health-Ministry