Israel is Built on Myth Part III: The False Story of "Islamic Terrorism"
Israel is Built on Myth Part III: The False Story of "Islamic Terrorism"
Israel has de-legitimised the Palestinian resistance movement by creating a racist false narrative of the "global Islamic terrorist".
I remember my Uncle Moe once told me that the problems in the Middle East arose from age old conflicts. “They’ve been fighting each other there for thousands of years”, he said.
My Uncle Moe was wrong.
Islamic terrorism is a Zionist invention
For thousands of years, Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in peace in the Holy Land. There were mixed communities in which all people got along. For example, they decided that Friday would be the Muslim day of worship, Saturday was for the Jews, and Sunday for the Christians. This was so that in every hamlet, every village, every town, the communal facilities could be shared between the three “Abrahamic” faiths and any conflicts were minimised through the discrete “holy days” of each faith.
In those places where there was but one meeting house, that structure could serve as a church, a mosque or a synagogue as needed.
This harmonious living arrangement was destroyed, however, when a bunch of European Zionist Jews decided they were going to set up an ethno-nationalist state for Jews in Palestine.
The original “terrorists” were Jewish
The word “terrorism” is a relatively new construct. The Nazis were keen to portray the Resistance fighters in France, Italy and elsewhere as “terrorists”, but otherwise the term was unknown.
Until, of course, the Zionists started their vicious terror campaign against the British in Mandatory Palestine. I have explained this development in my article: ““Rewarding Terrorism” in 1948 — How Zionists Used Terror to Get a State”.
In fact, many historians point to the Zionist terror campaign against the British as the first example of “terrorism” in the Western world, and the first use of the word “terrorist” was coined by the British press to describe the horrific and brutal acts perpetrated by Zionist militias such as the Haganah, Irgun and LEHI/Stern Gang.
As one group of historians put it: the British policy of a single state in Palestine “stimulated the Jewish forces to a massive terrorist campaign against the British resulting in an unprecedented Zionist victory.”
“Every accusation is a confession”
If you have studied the Israeli media and public communications strategy, if you are familiar with the particularly Israeli style of propaganda they call “hasbara”, then you are no doubt familiar with the well-worn phrase that, when it comes to the State of Israel, they always accuse others of doing what they themselves are guilty of.
This is a particularly despicable aspect of Israeli public policy: they know from experience, having committed heinous acts themselves, that certain accusations will serve to demonise their opponents, and so they accuse their enemies of the self same acts that they themselves have committed.
Think about that.
As Adam Kirsch explains in his article, “Israel: The Original Terrorist State”:
“Today, the phrase “Palestinian terrorism” immediately conjures up Arab violence against Jews…Seventy years ago, however, a reader who encountered those words in a headline would have thought of terrorism not against Jews but by them.”
The Jewish terror group Irgun were found to have forced people in the Dair Yassin massacre to put their own babies in ovens. Pregnant Arab women were sliced open and their foetuses removed and killed. Women were gang raped and then murdered. These crimes were committed by the Haganah, the Irgun and the Stern Gang in many Arab villages.
That is why the Israelis accused Hamas of perpetrating such crimes on October 7, 2023— even though there is no evidence to support such claims. Still, for the crucial months following the October 7 attack, Israel was able to fool the world into thinking Hamas committed atrocities, and thus gave themselves license to commit the brutal, inhuman genocide in Gaza.
I wrote an article in May, 2024 entitled: “Can No One Tell Me the Name of an Israeli Woman Who Was Raped by Hamas on 10/7?” That post won me the condemnation of every Zionist apologist on the Internet, it seems. And yet, NO ONE HAS GIVEN ME A NAME.
The Great Lie that is the Israeli state
In my ongoing series of articles about Israel, I have addressed how the entire Jewish State is built on myths, lies, and propaganda, and how Israel is the encapsulation of all the sins of Western colonialism, especially the systemic racism that stands behind every settler colonial enterprise.
In my piece, “Israel was Built on Myth, and Now it’s Busted”, I explained the various propaganda narratives that Westerners have been fed by the Zionist hasbara machine over the past 8 decades, and how these narratives have warped our view of Israel and shaped it into something that is radically different from the reality of the “Zionist entity”.
One major cornerstone of that Israeli narrative is the belief that Israel is an “outpost of civilisation” valiantly defending itself against an onslaught of dirty, barbaric, violent, and savage brown people. This was the original Zionist framing and formulation, namely that Israel would be a bastion of Western/European civilisation in the “primitive” Middle East.
Moreover, the indigenous people of the region were violent savages who “hate us for our freedoms”, as President George W. Bush said.
And when Bush said “us”, he meant the US and Israel.
That is because we are constantly reminded that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East” and is defended by “the world’s most moral army”.
Well, the ongoing genocide in Gaza has proven both those aphorisms completely wrong, but still Israel enjoys unqualified support from all sectors of American political and religious society. The reason for that support is, mostly a common racist worldview.
When I wrote “Israel, America and the “Unbreakable Bond” that Threatens the World”, I examined what “values” the Israelis actually share with the United States, specifically:
Of the four major points of cooperation, the last, “Islamophobia as Official Policy”, is most important, as it addresses a KEY COMPONENT of the Israel-US relationship, namely a racist world view that sees all Muslims as the common enemy.
The creation of Islamic Terrorism
John Moore wrote an excellent analysis for the PBS “Frontline” documentary series, entitled “The Evolution of Islamic Terrorism: An Overview”.
His opening line in that article was:
“In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., the threat of militant Islamic terrorism — rooted in the Middle East and South Asia — has taken center stage.”
Islamic terrorism, then, is a relatively new phenomenon, and it is clearly and deliberately centred on, and driven by, the conflict between the Zionist Israeli state and the various pro-Palestinian groups that are fighting for the “liberation of Palestine” and/or the destruction of the so-called “Zionist entity”.
This truth, however, is not one that Israel wants people to realise.
Islamic terrorism is mostly anti-Zionism
In Moore’s overview of Islamic Terrorism, he lists the following Islamic terror groups:
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC)
Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) a.k.a. Fatah — Revolutionary Council
Notice that these groups are all oriented around the Palestinian struggle for liberation and an end to the illegal occupation by Israel.
Even Hezbollah in Lebanon is a military organisation specifically developed in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. While Isarael tries incessantly to portray Hezbollah as an “Iran backed Islamic terrorist group”, Hezbollah is in reality a nationalist defense force organised to resist Israeli occupation.
Israel still illegally occupies large swathes of Southern Lebanon as well as Syria’s Golan Heights. In addition, Israel still launches incursions into Lebanon to periodically wreak havoc.
But lately they have been running into more resistance than they counted on.
In 2006, for example, Israel once again invaded Lebanon, but was soundly defeated by Hezbollah in a “straight up” direct military engagement.
The demonisation of Iran
Israel constantly claims that Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansar Allah (Houthis) and other anti-Zionist resistance organisations are all “Iran-backed” terrorist groups, and that Iran is thus “the greatest threat to the world”.
At the 2018 Munich Security Council, Benjamin Netanyahu compared Iran to Nazi Germany, and accused Iran of openly threatening to “annihilate Israel with its six million Jews”.
“Iran seeks to dominate our region, the Middle East, and seeks to dominate the world through aggression and terror,” Netanyahu said.
This is another false narrative.
The “Axis of Resistance” — what Israel fears most
Iran, like the Houthis, the Syrians, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other anti-Zionist militias, is organised to resist Israeli occupation and expansion. To accomplish this goal, they have formed an alliance called the “Axis of Resistance”.
But you will almost NEVER hear an Israeli politician talk about the “Axis of Resistance” because that would raise the awkward question: “what are they resisting?” — thus opening the debate about Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.
The Axis of Resistance is comprised of discrete and independent groups and organisations, some more religious than nationalist, all with their own agency and resources. Yes, the groups help each other, but the relationships are based on equality, and Iran is not the “backer” of these movements the way, for example, the United States is the backer of Israel.
These groups all have one thing in common, however, they support Palestine liberation and they oppose the Zionist project and the illegal Israeli occupation.
The “Israel-specific” nature of these groups and their mission does not fit in with Israel’s propaganda narrative. For the Zionists, the various Muslim resistance movements could not be seen as simply “freedom fighters “ struggling to resist the illegal Israeli invasions of Lebanon, or the occupation and the brutal subjugation, persecution and outright murder of Palestinian Arabs under the Apartheid government.
After all, you cannot be an “Apartheid state” and still be a “democracy”, right?
You cannot mass murder women, children and other civilians and still be the world’s “most moral army”, can you?
And so the liberation struggles of Hamas and the other pro-Palestinian, anti-occupation and anti-Israeli groups were recast through Israeli propaganda as generic “Islamic Terrorism” — and thus a general threat not just to Israel, but to the “collective West”, including most specifically the US and UK.
Israel’s propaganda message: “Our problem is your problem”
I have written extensively about the warped and perverted “relationship” between Israel and the United States.
In my article, “Please Stop Saying Israel Is an “Ally” of the United States — It Is Not.” I explain how — far from being a strategic asset to the US, Israel is actually a strategic liability in many ways.
Moreover, the entire “Israel is our strongest ally” meme is the exact opposite of the truth, as evidenced by Israel’s having knowingly attacked the USS Liberty, conducted many spying campaigns on the US, and refused to share the source codes for its Iron Dome with the US Army — to name just a few examples.
Nonetheless, Israelis persist in leveraging the famously dogmatic “unshakeable bond” that every American leader claims exists between the two states.
Since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, that “bond” now extends to facing a “common threat” of Islamic Terrorism.
9/11 and the “dancing Israelis”
On the morning of September 11, 2001, in Union City, New Jersey, a group of young Israeli men were seen dancing on top of a van, high-fiving each other and generally celebrating as the Twin Towers burned.
As I have described in previous articles, the men were arrested and at least 2 of them were determined to be Mossad agents.
ABC News reported that the apparent leader of the group, Sivan Kurzberg, told the arresting officers:
“We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.”
The CIA created Al Qaeda
As John Moore wrote, the emergence of Islamic Terrorism as a “global threat” really happened “In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks”.
But if we look at the alleged perpetrators of those attacks, Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, we see the not-so-hidden hand of the CIA.
Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was “unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies.”
Mr. Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of “the database” in Arabic, was originally the computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.
“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this.”
In order to bind the US to Israel in a racist campaign aimed at Muslims and Arabs, Israel and the CIA needed to create Al Qaeda as a “global Islamic terrorist group”, and not a regional group opposed only to Israel. Such a group was what George W. Bush was only too happy to attack in his infamous “war on terror”.
ISIS is an ally of Israel and the US
As the proponents of an “Islamic State”, one would think that ISIS would be mortal enemies with Israel, the “Jewish State”. One would expect ISIS leaders to spout inflammatory rhetoric against the “Zionist entity” amid a chorus of “Death to Israel” chants.
But this is not the case.
In fact, the only time ISIS leaders have ever issued a public pronouncement about Israel it was TO APOLOGISE to Israel for having “accidentally” attacked some IDF soldiers in the Golan Heights region of Syria.
Israel enjoys a friendly relationship with ISIS, and the IDF have even set up field hospitals in the Golan Heights to treat ISIS fighters wounded in their battle against Bashar Al Assad’s Syrian Army. They patch up the ISIS fighters and then send them back into combat in Syria.
The US CIA also has a professional and friendly relationship with ISIS. Indeed, the CIA uses ISIS for many covert operations, including terrorist attacks against Russian and Chinese targets. The US armed and funded ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliated groups in their war against the Assad regime.
Recently, ISIS-K carried out “terrorist” attacks against a concert hall in Moscow in March, and another attack in June against Orthodox churches and priests in Russia’s Dagestan Republic. They continue to harass and attack Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects in Afghanistan and throughout Central Asia.
ISIS is indeed a global organisation, and it operates globally at the behest of the CIA and Israel.
But this is not what the Palestinian groups are.
Why we mustn’t “condemn Hamas”
The laconic phrase, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” seems like a simplistic aphorism, but it is an incredibly apt and accurate description of the situation between Hamas and Israel.
Most people probably don’t even realise that Hamas is an acronym in Arabic for “Islamic Resistance Movement”. In fact, all the factions within Palestine are formed for one goal in mind: Palestinian liberation, with one enemy in mind: the Zionist entity called the State of Israel.
To portray them as “global Islamic terrorists” at war with Western civilisation because “they hate our freedoms” is to obfuscate the fact that they are resistance groups who, under the Geneva Conventions, have a legitimate right to resist their occupation “by any means available”.
When I wrote my article, “Why I Refuse to Condemn Hamas”, I based my argument on the fact that Hamas are a legitimate resistance organisation who have an armed wing called the Al Qassam Brigades. In this way, Hamas are similar to Sinn Fein in Ireland, who had their own armed wing called the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
When the IRA were operating, no one thought they posed a global threat; everyone knew their enemy was the British Crown. We must have the same clear understanding when it comes to Hamas. They are the ones who, like Sinn Fein, will have to be the negotiating partners if there is ever to be peace in Palestine.
To dismiss them as “Islamic terrorists” is to deny the Palestinians’ legal and legitimate struggle for liberation.
#End
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Extraordinary article! By its clarity, comprehensiveness, objectivity and didactic quality. Essential for understanding the Palestinian drama,and the blindness of Western opinion which fundamentally, unhonestly adheres to the myths and lies that are the founding pillars of the Zionist entity.
Thank you, well said.
The demonisation of ordinary people just for being arab or persian has been intense this last 30 years.
Along with the refusal to ever speak of culture or history or achievements or education in those worlds.
And the constant pretence that how the western world treats women is less sexist, rather than what it is - differently sexist, but equally sexist, the common denominator being men.