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Assad's Houla Propaganda - Part II
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In his response
to our piece "Assad's
Houla Propaganda", John Rosenthal engages in a rather hypocritical
and illogical retort. He initiates his screed by accusing us of engaging in a
"bait and switch" regarding our correction of the half-truths
presented in his piece covering the Houla Massacre and the sources he
utilized. What better way to go about establishing that we were engaged in
such a practice than by going off on a tangential feat of mental gymnastics
about how Al Qaeda is involved in the conflict, recycling the same disproved
data, and then arguing that critiquing the sources he used was not an
effective manner of criticism? While Rosenthal accuses us of engaging in
conspiratorial thinking, it is actually the theory he is pushing on the
massacre that requires one to believe in an outlandish conspiracy.
Rosenthal asks what we would, "make of
the string of suicide bombings in Damascus, in Aleppo, and elsewhere in
Syria". This line of questioning bears no relation to our piece, which
dealt with the specifics of the Houla Massacre, the erroneous claims of the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung(FAZ), and the very narrative that has sprouted up
around conspiracy websites. Instead, this tangential line implies that Al
Qaeda was involved in the massacre, which in turn is simply more narrative.
What is more, we both clearly stated our assessment about the potential rise
of a Sunni Islamist Syria:
"The outcome of Assad's removal,
assuming that Syria or even its Sunni heartland can hold together, may well
be a new Sunni Islamist regime. However, this does not excuse the regime's
attempts to disseminate patent falsehoods."
Obviously, Rosenthal hasn't read our other
pieces discussing sympathizers of Al Qaeda
in the Free Syrian Army or the "very real fear of Sunni Islamism"
held by minorities
in Syria.
In the (FAZ)
story Rosenthal promotes, Alawites and Sunni converts to Shiism were the
victims of the Houla Massacre.
For starters, even the master propaganda
spinners in Syria's official media made no mention of Alawites and Shi'a
being killed during the Houla Massacre. The FAZ also stated that of those
killed in the massacre, "the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament
who is regarded as a collaborator" was also murdered. Yet, the only
corroborating source for this claim is the state-run outlet Syrian Arab News
Agency (SANA).
Alex Thomson, a journalist with Britain's
Channel 4, actually visited the area of Houla. Thomson can hardly be called a
propagandist for the rebels and did not hesitate to point out that some
rebels tried to get him killed near the city of Qusayr in order to score
a propaganda victory against the Assad regime.
He also observed that the Syrian army began
shelling the area as soon as left the immediate vicinity, yet those who
believe the Houla massacre was perpetrated by rebels claim that there has
been no evidence of shelling by the Syrian armed forces. Even the Assad
regime does not deny the evidence of shelling, but instead argues it was the
work of militias armed with "heavy weapons."Thomson
then visited the Alawite and Shi'a villages in the area of Houla. The
villagers claimed that the victims of the massacre were actually casualties
from internecine strife between Sunni tribes. They do not claim that
those slaughtered were Alawites or Shi'a.
The Houla massacre story forwarded by FAZ
doesn't add up. Why would Sunnis carry out a burial of massacred Alawites and
Shi'a and then do so in the fashion utilized by Sunnis? FAZ claims it was to
trick the media. Then why was there no outcry by the Alawite or Shi'a
communities? What about the children shot and stabbed—Did those wounds simply
appear due to a communal stigmata brought on by their hatred of Bashar al-Assad?
Indeed, Rosenthal must believe that the injuries suffered by the locals
whom Thomson interviewed were part of an elaborately faked P.R. campaign.
Rosenthal then goes on to re-cite Dutch
"Middle East expert" Martin Janssen. A Damascus based Arabist,
Janssen portrays himself as someone whose primary
concern is about the rise of Islamism. It is also clear that he has
followed the liberationist
line on Tunisia
and Egypt,
echoing Ed Husain'sclaims
that what differentiated the protests in Egypt from those in Syria was that
the former were crying for freedom while the latter were chanting 'Allah u
Akbar' and 'jihad'. The demagogue George Galloway (another friend of the Syrian regime) parrots
the same line. Since he started reporting from Syria, Janssen's long list of
articles have been little more than rehashing the same old pro-regime line.
Rosenthal's illogical retort became even more
disturbing when he mentioned the murder of opposition doctor Adnan Wahbi.
Without a shred of evidence and lacking any connection to the original post
he cited, Rosenthal absurdly declares Wahbi was killed by the opposition
because he called for all sides to put down their weapons. In fact, the other
article by Hermann he cites makes no such assertion, and the Syrian
opposition claim Wahbi as a martyr murdered by the regime's
security forces.
Adding further speciousness to his response,
Rosenthal addresses the issue of Syrian nun cum Assad propagandist Mother
Agnes-Miriam and 9/11 conspiracy theorist Thierry Meyssan's interview with
her, by stating, "in a French media landscape as bereft of any semblance
of balanced reporting on the Syria crisis as the American one, I can assure
Al-Tamimi and Smyth that she will not have received many such requests [for
interview]."
However, Rosenthal clearly didn't do the
necessary research to prove his assertion. In 2012, Le Monde, one of France's
major newspapers, uncritically cited
figures presented Agnès-Mariam. France's Europe1, a major French radio
station, also interviewed
Agnès-Mariam in January. Agnès-Mariam was also interviewed by La
Vie Magazine, where she stated that she continued to support having
Bashar al-Assad as president of Syria and essentially repeated the line that
unrest in Syria is all due to a Western plot, echoing the theories pushed by
conspiracy theorists and pro-Assad propagandists.
Rosenthal claims he "was also aware that
this ephemeral connection would provide fodder for the defenders and
publicists of the rebellion to taint Mother Agnès-Mariam with guilt by
association." Rosenthal's grasp of the very narrative we refute is
equally disquieting. We didn't simply include conspiracy theorist Thierry
Meyssan to establish a "guilt by association" implication against
Mother Agnès-Mariam, but to establish the fringe atmosphere where this exact
pro-Assad line originated, to whom it was marketed, and why.
Rosenthal continues his defense of
Agnès-Mariam by muddying the waters, adding, "Perhaps Mother
Agnès-Mariam ought, after all, to have refused Meyssan's interview."
Mother Agnès-Mariam didn't simply accept a
single interview from the likes of the batty and conspiracy-minded Voltaire
Network, she actively pursued them, inviting "journalists" from the
group to visit her and travel around Syria in November 2011. In addition to posting
articles from the Voltaire Network on her official website, she
contributed a
number of pieces to site.
Agnès-Mariam didn't stop with the crackpots
at the Voltaire Network. On the same 2011 trip she helped organize, she also
brought along Webster Griffin Tarpley.
Like Meyssan, Tarpley is another renowned 9/11
conspiracy theorist frequently contributing to Iran's English language
propaganda channel, Press
TV. Tarpley went on to repeat
the narrative the Damascus
disinformation network hoped to propagate.
If anything, the connection with the
conspiratorial fringe was hardly, "ephemeral". Instead,
Agnès-Mariam vigorously sought out these types in the effort to attain an
uncritical audience who would happily disseminate the information she and her
peers presented.
Creating the image of a defenseless and
objective Catholic nun who is plainly ignored by the Western press, Rosenthal
attempts to place Agnès-Mariam in a protective bubble, even accusing us of
exposing her in an ad hominem style.
At one point, Rosenthal asks rhetorically:
"Why in the world would Catholic priests and nuns want or need to serve
as 'Assad propagandists?" This is a classic example of the No True Scotsman
fallacy. The Assad regime has also been able to compel
praise from parents of children it has tortured to death: Why can't
Catholic nuns and priests parrot the Syrian government's line or transmit
disinformation that aids the regime?
For Christians of the Middle East, their fate
in this time of turmoil is a complex conundrum. The threat of
"Islam" has been a constant, whether real or supposed. Thus, in the
minds of some Christian leaders, for communal survival, their political moves
often come down to supporting what they perceive as the lesser of two evils.
Nevertheless, this shouldn't be an excuse to blatantly lie and push
narrative.
The fact of the matter is—and this is
understood by the Assad regime—that in many Western political circles, the
Iraq War and the subsequent ethnic cleansing, murders, and displacement of
Christians is still fresh. While the Iraq War has provided beneficial
hindsight in assessing what may become of threatened minority groups, the
same sentiments created by the war have been manipulated by the Syrian regime
in an attempt to establish a hyper-simplified, if not manifestly incorrect
claim they are the guardians of secular order against "extremism,"
even as the Assad dynasty has (i) supported
Hezbollah, (ii) killed
thousands of Christians in Lebanon (besides debilitating their political
power) and (iii) provided
backing for al-Qa'ida and other Sunni Islamist groups in Iraq renowned
for their brutality against civilians.
As before, Rosenthal establishes his ability
to twist and ignore demonstrable facts. Rosenthal, Mother Agnès -Mariam, and
others pushing the "all opposition are Al Qaeda and committing heinous
crimes against minorities" message, establish their own conspiratorial
explanation concerning why their speciously manufactured claims are ignored.
Emanating from the depths of Bizzaro World, these commentators
attempt to establish that the innately diverse nature of Western media is
actually a monolithic and biased (against them) source, whereas a dictator's
media outlets and propagandists sympathetic to the regime are reporting
"the truth."
If establishing the dubious nature of sources
and claims made by Rosenthal was not enough to demonstrate the lack of
credibility, he should also know that the FAZ piece was rife with errors. For
example, Tony
Badran noted:
"[T]he report stated that the supposed
Alawite victims were from the 'Shomaliya' family. The confused German
author—and everyone who uncritically picked up his report—didn't even bother
to check his facts or his sources. There is an Alawite village by the name of
al-Shumariya, near Houla, which the regime's media and its third-party
amplifiers claimed was attacked by 'armed gangs.'"
For further evidence of the errors and
inaccuracies of the FAZ piece, see
this post by Paul Woodward, in which he notes, with confirmation from
Human Rights Watch, that the Abd el-Razzaq family that comprised the majority
of the victims was Sunni. This tells against the FAZ piece's claim
that "those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to
Houla's Alawi and Shia minorities."
As Rosenthal notes, the pieces he quoted use
unnamed "monastery sources". In fact, for Rosenthal and his ilk all
roads lead back to the same monastery run by Agnes-Miriam. In any case, this
establishes the need to investigate her ideological leanings and what
messages she promotes.
To back up his assertions, Rosenthal
discusses the experience of Belgian priest Daniel Maes, who spent time at the
Monastery with Mother Agnès. For Rosenthal, Maes' testimony is confirmation
that Mother Agnès' story is perfectly acceptable.
What is implied is that Maes is a completely
objective Westerner critically analyzing the situation for the truth. Yet, a
cursory search on Google establishes Maes' wasn't simply one of many,
"other persons who have spent time at the monastery". Maes is
actually a personal friend
of Mother Agnès. After meeting Mother Agnès in 2004 he hosted her in Belgium
where she gave speeches since 2006. He had been visiting her monastery since
2010.
But what happens to anyone—especially
clergy—within the regime's grasp who "draws outside the lines"?
Take the case of Father Dall'Oglio. A resident of the Mar Musa Monastery for
over thirty years, the father was
expelled from Syria by the Assad regime for the simple offense of stating
that he felt Syria's non-violent protesting youth were, "suffering
enormously to achieve their desire of freedom and dignity…There are so many
young persons that are put in jail and tortured, just because they have
expressed, nonviolently, their opinions." He didn't openly sympathize
with the FSA –just non-violent protesters—and he was thrown out!
Neither of us is arguing for intervention and
we are certainly not trying to underplay Islamism. As analysts with a deep
interest in studying this turbulent section of the Levant, we are not
interested in moralism or propaganda from either side, but simply want to
explain what is going on and predict how events might pan out. We would hope
others involved in studying and writing about the situation in Syria would
endeavor to do the same.
Aymenn
Jawad Al-Tamimi is a student at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and
an adjunct fellow at the Middle East Forum. Phillip Smyth is a journalist and
researcher specializing in Middle Eastern affairs. He travels regularly to
the region.
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