White Helmets & whitewashing of an appalling agenda (2)

Canada’s self-styled ‘humanitarian’ Irwin Cotler who campaigns for regime change or intervention in other countries almost always marches in lock-step with neoconservative US foreign policy. His claim to “humanitarianism” is but a thin veneer of hypocrisy to conceal his establishment policies — policies that almost always serve the interests of the Zionist regime.

Stay with us for the second and concluding part of Vanessa Beely’s report on western propaganda to distort the realities in Syria that was published by MintPress, titled: “White Helmets & Whitewashing of an Appalling Agenda”.

The Cotler family connections to extreme right-wing elements of the Israeli ruling elite could not be stronger or better defined. To launch the Telem Party campaign, Gantz released a video celebrating his role in the massacre of 2,200 Palestinians during the 2014 “mowing the lawn” bombing campaign in Gaza. For Gantz, “parts of Gaza [being] sent back to the Stone Age” was a victory for “peace” in the region. A “peace” that only Israel would benefit from. In his article, Engler points out that Gantz faces a war-crimes case in the Netherlands for his participation in the 2014 campaign that claimed the lives of civilians in Gaza and reduced much of the besieged enclave to rubble, destroying infrastructure and ensuring living conditions were reduced to sub-third-world status.

In his staunch defense of Israel, Cotler has described illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank as “disputed territories” and justified the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon that left 1,200 mostly civilians dead. He has consistently attempted to derail investigations into Israeli war crimes — savagely attacking Richard Goldstone, who led the UN investigation of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, which killed 1,400 Palestinians in Gazain 2008 and 2009.

It should come as no surprise that Cotler’s support for U.S.-backed foreign interventions extends to the other side of the Atlantic as well. In Venezuela, he has been instrumental in furthering the U.S. agenda and undermining governance in an independent and sovereign state.

Cotler has gone so far as to state that “recognizing Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s leader is not a coup, it’s an embrace of democracy.” Cotler has called for the de-legitimization of the Maduro government, and the sanctioning of top officials to hasten the demise of Maduro and to “speed the transition to democratic governance” in Venezuela. He described the Venezuelan government as being responsible for the “worst ever humanitarian crisis in the region,” while ignoring the U.S. role in creating and maintaining that “humanitarian crisis” through crippling sanctions aimed at undermining the Maduro government. This is such a textbook regime-change script and Cotler adheres to it without deviation.

In his exposé on Cotler, Engler claims that Cotler has been working with Guaido’s right-wing Popular Will Party for four years with the aim of ousting the Maduro government. Regional media outlet ‘VenezuelaAnalysis’ pointed out that Cotler was “one of three international experts” responsible for a 400-page Canadian-backed Organization of American States (OAS) report on rights violations in Venezuela. The panel recommended OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro “submit the report to the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC [International Criminal Court] and that other states refer Venezuela to the ICC.”

Cotler’s dedication to the “mobilization of shame against human-rights violators” is invariably directed against states and leaders who oppose U.S. global hegemony.

In 2012 the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that the U.S. State Department had reportedly removed the anti-Iran MKO hypocrites from the terrorism list. According to the article: “Iranian Americans sympathetic to the plight of MKO enlisted the support of a number of pro-Israel figures, including Nobel Peace laureate and Holocaust memoirist Elie Wiesel; Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz; and Irwin Cotler, the former Canadian justice minister.”

As an aside, earlier this year the White Helmets were recipients of the Elie Wiesel Award from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (HMM) for their “work” in Syria. Raed Saleh was available to receive the award on behalf of al-Qaeda’s auxiliaries and simultaneously picked up a check from the U.S. government for $5 million to “help us with acquiring ambulances and to help us with search and rescue operations.”

Former CIA counter-terrorism officer Philip Giraldi wrote a scathing article condemning the hypocrisy of the award, the irony of the taxpayer-funded HMM honoring what he called a “terrorist group … used in support of Israeli propaganda vis-a-vis Syria.”

Giraldi concluded: “Perhaps, while they are at it, the museum’s board just might also want to check out Elie Wiesel, for whom the award is named. Wiesel, who was a chronicler of Jewish victimhood while persistently refusing to acknowledge what Israel was doing to the Palestinians, notoriously mixed fact and fiction in his best-selling Holocaust memoir, Night. Ironically, the award and recipient are well matched in this case, as mixing fact and fiction is what both Elie Wiesel and the White Helmets are all about.”

Cotler, Wiesel’s comrade in defending the MKO terrorists and promoting the White Helmets, was responsible for the organization of three “Iran Accountability” weeks. In 2014 Cotler invited MKO terrorist leader Maryam Rajavi to appear in the program alongside UN human-rights officials and “pundits from a hawkish American think tank.” Cotler later argued that Rajavi’s inclusion in the event was “issue specific,” but his prior support for this brutal terrorist cult undermines such an argument.

Cotler employs blatant “human rights” double standards in his condemnation of governments in U.S. and Israeli crosshairs, while systematically ignoring the appalling human-rights records of governments or organizations included within the U.S. circle of power.

As in Syria, it seems that prominent neoconservatives will favor terrorist groups over legitimate governments that are perceived to threaten Israeli security.

Cotler is also a member of the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians (ICJP). The ICJP has operated under the auspices of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) since 2006. Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel, is chairman of the ICJP and vice president of the WJC. Engel is another vociferous supporter of the MKO.

Engel presented a “gift of appreciation” to Cotler during a dinner at the King David Hotel in 2015, on behalf of the WJC. Engel said: “If one looks to this generation and seeks a role model that would be Irwin Cotler.” 

Engel connects again with Cotler in his condemnation of the Syrian government and support for increased “humanitarian” military intervention in Syria. Engel was responsible for the Caesar Civilian Protection Act, which was ostensibly introduced to increase economic sanctions against the Syrian government based upon claims made by an alleged former Syrian military photographer in the questionable Caesar Report. That report was commissioned by the government of Qatar, a Persian Gulf State heavily invested in the financing of terrorist groups and the White Helmets in Syria.

The Caesar Civilian Protection Act will effectively collectively punish the Syrian people for resisting efforts to destabilize their country and topple their elected government in the time honored tradition of U.S. Coalition sanctions that can only be considered siege warfare or economic terrorism. The orchestrators of this vindictive measure clearly have their roots in the neoconservative camp in the U.S.

There are now two more elements of Cotler’s influence on the global stage that I would like to examine in some detail. Cotler has been at the forefront of the new cold war campaigns to criminalize Russia, but that warrants an entire article dedicated to Cotler’s war against the Russian government’s perceived “culture of corruption and criminality.”

Alan Dershowitz, a controversial figure in his own right, has described Cotler as “his mirror image in Canada.” The Cotler-Dershowitz double act is a longstanding and powerful partnership with far-reaching influence among the world’s most powerful entities.

Dershowitz, and American lawyer and academic, was heavily implicated in the recent Jeffrey Epstein scandal that has sent shock waves through the establishment ruling classes, exposing decades of depravity among the most powerful sectors of society and a blackmail cartel that profited from the sexual perversion of their billionaire clients from within capitalist, political and intelligence inner circles.

Dershowitz negotiated the “sweetheart plea” for the now dead-in-jail Epstein that allowed him a “work release provision throughout his 13 months in Palm Beach County Jail” in 2008, when Epstein faced charges of sexually abusing under-age girls at his Palm Beach mansion.

Award-winning journalist Whitney Webb is publishing a series of articles for MintPress News detailing the horrifying implications of the Epstein case and the origins of this underworld-sanctioned debauchery. I asked Webb for a comment on the Dershowitz connections to Epstein and his role in furthering the U.S./Neocon “humanitarian” war agenda.

She told me: “Alan Dershowitz is an individual deeply involved in the pro-Israel lobby and has close ties to influential figures in the U.S. and Israel like casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson. In his pro-Israel activism, Dershowitz fits well with Cotler’s efforts to “shame” groups that run counter to their policy goals, and this has recently been seen in how Dershowitz has sought to intimidate and shame the young women who have accused him and his friend Jeffrey Epstein of rape.”

In 2016 Dershowitz nominated Cotler for the Nobel Peace Prize. Like his “heroes” in the White Helmets — who have, themselves, been unsuccessfully nominated several times. While Cotler may promote his hawkish policies under the cover of “humanitarian” branding, Dershowitz has openly advocated torture under specific conditions and argued that non-lethal “torturous techniques of interrogation should indeed be legally authorized.”

Dershowitz seems to endorse torture if the government makes the decision to torture an individual under any “reasonable” pretext. This is effectively the legitimization of state torture, which could very possibly be used against anyone classified by the government as high risk.

The Brussels-based Jewish Coalition for Kurdistan (JCFK) counts Dershowitz and Cotler among its pro-Israel members. The JCFK website declares its mission to support independence for Iraqi Kurdistan: “The Jewish Coalition for Kurdistan is committed to deepening friendship between the Jewish and Kurdish people worldwide, and supporting the further development and consolidation of relations between Kurdistan and the State of Israel, the only two democratic and pro-Western societies in West Asia.”

This project brings Cotler and Dershowitz into alliance with Bernard Henri Levy, a French-Jewish philosopher with a deadly reputation for fomenting and supporting neocolonialist projects around the world, but perhaps most notoriously in Libya. Levy has been a long-time supporter of Kurdish “independence.”

While it would take a separate article to fully explore the neoconservative weaponization of Kurdish independence to weaken, destabilize and partition target states, including Syria, Iraq and Iran, the involvement of these three empire builders in the “cause” and the marketing of Kurdistan as the other “democratic and pro-Western society” in West Asia must indicate the direction in which this campaign is heading: the balkanization of West Asia.

Cotler must be considered a “humanitarian” fraud when one takes into account the extensive damage caused to nations that have had to resist one interventionist war after another by his neocon-aligned policies. Policies designed to remove non-aligned governments and collectively punish their citizens.

In his 2019 petition against the nomination of Cotler for the Nobel Peace Prize, Iranian-Canadian activist Mehdi Samadian states: “The petition organizers believe that Irwin Cotler has supported and advocated for political actors and policies instigating conflicts and prolonging instability at the international stage.”

Cotler’s protectionist campaign on behalf of the White Helmets should raise alarm bells among the legions of Palestinian movement supporters and ostensibly pro-Palestine journalists and talking heads who have promoted the concept of a grassroots “Syrian revolution” to their substantial Western audiences.

Whether wittingly or unwittingly, media figures like C.J Werleman, George Monbiot, Nafeez Ahmed, John Snow of U.K. Channel 4, and others have leapt to the defense of the White Helmets and joined the chorus of attacks and smears against journalists and academics who have dared to question credibility of the organization financed by the U.S. Coalition that clearly collaborates with terrorist groups committing heinous crimes against Syrian people.

Israel’s involvement in the evacuation of the White Helmets and the subsequent promotion of the group by personalities and governments heavily invested in expanding Israel’s interests must highlight who the organization serves in the region — and I do not believe it is the Syrian people, as their PR agencies claim.

Cotler’s “human rights credentials are a sham” according to Engler. Much has been made of his role as legal advisor to late South African President Nelson Mandela. Yet South Africa’s ambassador to Venezuela, Pandit Thaninga Shope-Linney, apparently denies this claim, thus stripping Cotler of his most potent “humanitarian” identity. According to Engler, Mandela himself does not name Cotler in his biography, although he does mention other lawyers by name.

Cotler has been merciless in pursuit of China for its alleged record of “gruesome organ trade.” Why then does Cotler not equally condemn Israel for its appalling history of organ trafficking and theft, particularly in Palestine?

In 2009, Nancy Scheper-Hughes was Chancellor’s Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley, the founder of Organ Watch and author of a number of academic books on organ trafficking.

I have taken the following quote from an article by long-time author and journalist Alison Weir: “While Scheper-Hughes emphasizes that traffickers come from numerous nations and ethnicities, including Americans and Arabs, ‘Israel,’ she states, ‘is at the top. It has tentacles reaching out worldwide.’ In a lecture last year she explained that Israeli organ traffickers ‘have a pyramid system at work that’s awesome…they have brokers everywhere, bank accounts everywhere; they’ve got recruiters, they’ve got translators, they’ve got travel agents to set up visas.”

What is perhaps even more disturbing and ominous is the fact that Cotler has not addressed the accusations of organ trafficking levied against the White Helmets themselves by the Syrian civilians who were forced to live under their occupation in areas of Syria formerly under the control of terrorist groups partnered by the very organization that Cotler nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 2019.

Cotler has not only defended the White Helmets, but he has also lauded them and invested his reputation in the whitewashing of their image. Cotler is a powerful sympathizer of the Israeli government and influencer with connections that reach into the darkest corners of state affairs in Canada, the U.S. and Israel. He has not chosen to ally himself with this fraudulent and criminal organization by chance.

We can only speculate that there is a connection between the White Helmets, accused of multiple child abductions and organ trafficking, and the nefarious activities connected to one of their staunchest supporters: Irwin Cotler and his double-act partner Alan Dershowitz. It certainly warrants a deeper investigation.

AS/SS