From
the Kosovo Protection Corps in the Balkans to the White Helmets of
Syria, a group of well-connected people with the fundings of
governments and elite billionaires have sought to wage a war on
public opinion and have recently exploited Jo Cox’s death to do so.
by
Vanessa Beeley and Whitney Webb
Part
8 - Crisis Action case study: Hamza al Khatib
Beyond
its dubious connections to powerful governments and organizations and
its “supportive” role to the White Helmets, Crisis Action has
directly promoted specific members of the group despite their known
ties to extremists and unsavory pasts. By obfuscating the reality of
the situation and elevating these individuals to practical sainthood,
Crisis Action provides numerous examples of how elite-connected NGOs
serve as PR agencies for the terrorist-linked foot soldiers of covert
regime-change operations.
A clear
example of Crisis Action’s role in promoting such dubious
individuals for the sake of narrative is Hamza Al Khatib, who at one
time was ubiquitously described as one of the “Last Doctors in
Aleppo,” particularly during the final battles between the Syrian
allied forces and Western-backed extremist factions just prior to
final liberation of East Aleppo in December 2016.
This
label was shamefully misleading on the part of the Western media, as
it effectively “disappeared” the 4,000-plus doctors operating in
Syrian government-secured West Aleppo, who had been extending aid
into East Aleppo at the request of the Syrian Government — until
the occupying militant groups began to refuse them entry in 2016.
The
colonial media battalion stepped up its hyperbole war as the curtains
came down upon the regime-change project they had supported in East
Aleppo for almost five years at the expense of the Syrian civilians
being held hostage, used as human shields, starved, tortured and
abused by the extremist gangs the media euphemistically labelled
“rebels.”
Mortensen’s
petition platform, Change.org, joined the throngs of Al Khatib
supporters alongside the Crisis Action campaigns. Over 779,000
signatures were allegedly achieved on the petition that called upon
its global community to “make the world a better place” by
supporting a “doctor who risked death to save lives”. A
team of Change.org “PR professionals” produced reports on a
variety of platforms to reinforce the emotive messaging. A.J.Walton,
one such “PR professional,” reached out on Medium and outlined
the organizations that supported this campaign: “Change.org is
fortunate to partner with great humanitarian organizations. A few
such organizations are Oxfam America, Mercy Corps, and USA for UNHCR,
all working to help the victims of the Syrian conflict.”
An
entire PR network rallied around the dying embers of the “revolution”
in East Aleppo, drawing on their global supremacy in the information
market to attempt to turn the tide of public consensus that was
rapidly seeing through their firewall of lies. Al Khatib directly
called upon “World leaders to save our lives in Aleppo”
via the Change.org petition.
Abdo
Haddad is a representative of the ancient Christian town of Maaloula
who has spent considerable time raising awareness on the origins of
the Syrian conflict, in Europe and further afield. The town is 56 km
northeast of Damascus and was built into the craggy mountains that
rise out of the surrounding plains. It is one of the few remaining
places in the world where Aramaic is still spoken and taught in
schools. Maaloula was briefly and brutally occupied by Nusra
Front-led forces in 2013 before being liberated by local Christian
militia, SAA and Hezbollah in 2014.
Haddad
shared his observations on Al Khatib with MintPress News and
reported: “Hamza Al Khatib is a pseudonym; his real name is
Zaher Emad Katerji. Here he is photographed surveying battle maps
with Fastaqim, one of the many extremist groups occupying East
Aleppo… I took these screenshots and photos from his social media
accounts … many of the posts have since been deleted.”
Haddad
also explained to MintPress that he had checked on Al
Khatib/Katerji’s Aleppo University medical degree status.
Haddad
had spent some time going through Al Khatib’s Facebook posts and
translating conversations to get a better picture of the darker side
of the “heroic Last Doctor.”
Haddad
told MintPress: “Al Khatib knew that the local foreign-backed
organizations, like the local councils and the so-called civil
defence [White Helmets], were thieves and criminals; but he never
mentioned that fact to the media channels who relied upon his
testimony.”
Haddad
also pointed out: “Al Khatib was described by Western media
outlets as some kind of saint. Do ‘saints’ leave mines and IEDs,
booby traps to murder more civilians after they have been evacuated
out of danger by the Syrian government in the green buses?
Conversations that Al Khatib had on Facebook with his cronies
demonstrate that he personally made sure these hidden killers were
planted in East Aleppo residential areas.”
Finally,
Haddad described how Al Khatib had clearly witnessed the execution of
at least one SAA prisoner-of-war by the militant groups, but had
never thought to mention these atrocities to Western media.
Crisis
Action and Change.org were responsible for the whitewashing of crimes
committed by the U.S. coalition armed groups in East Aleppo just as
surely as Al Khatib participated in them or denied their existence in
his reports on events in the beleaguered enclave. “I consider Al
Khatib a traitor to Syria and to his own people” Haddad told
Mint Press, adding: “Al Khatib played a criminal role in
enabling the terrorist occupation of East Aleppo; he watched Syrians
die under foreign-financed torture and sectarian violence but said
nothing. Is that the work of a genuine “doctor” or even a decent
human being?”
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