If Iran sent agents to assassinate the top American (or Israeli) nuclear scientist (& this attack took place on US or Israeli soil) does anyone doubt that this would be immediately described (& condemned) as an act of terrorism? nytimes.com/2020/11/27/wor…
& I'll ask again: if the US or ISR have the right to assassinate #Suleimani & now #Fakhrizadeh , does it mean that Lebanon had the right to assassinate Eitan, Dagan & Sharon, who conducted deadly #terrorist bombing campaign in 1980s? If not, why not? See: mondoweiss.net/2018/05/remark…
Brennan was not DCI in 2010-12... BUT there is a larger point here:
US officials (& the US media) simply never, EVER, use the term "terrorism" to refer to actions by US allies, and especially NOT by Israel.
So despite the hypocrisy, Brennan's statement is quite extraordinary
Brennan is of course not in government anymore. To my knowledge (I might be wrong?) the LAST TIME a US official used the term "terrorism" to refer to Israel was in 1985. That's actually a funny story...
In 1985, on a visit to Tunisia, under Sec of State John Whitehead used the term "terrorism" to refer to the bombing of Tunis (where the PLO had its headquarters) by Israel. Note that this bombing was condemned as an "armed aggression" by the UNSC
Note: objective of #Fakhrizadeh assassination appears to be to provoke violent response by Iran, which would serve as pretext for war.
Israel (Sharon) did something very similar to justify invasion of Lebanon in 1980s
THREAD
Also: if the US or ISR have the right to assassinate #Suleimani & now #Fakhrizadeh , does it mean that Lebanon had the right to assassinate Eitan, Dagan & Sharon, who conducted deadly #terrorist bombing campaign in 1980s? If not, why not? See: mondoweiss.net/2018/05/remark…
In 1981 two @YediotAhronot journalists investigated remarkable story: senior @IDF officers had created & were running #terrorist group that was behind bombings in Lebanon.
Israeli military censor killed story
Terrorist campaign continued for years
THREAD mondoweiss.net/2019/10/it-is-…
The 2 journalists are Yigal Sarna and Anat Tal-Shir. They worked for Yediot Ahronot. The existence of this story (& of the censor's decision to kill it) was mentioned by David Remnick in his profile of Meir Dagan for the @NewYorker in 2012:
Remnick's piece is here: newyorker.com/magazine/2012/… A few days later, on the blog of @972mag , Noam Sheizaf mentioned Remnick's story and quoted Sarna as agreeing that "the censorship [on these stories] has been on for years. Horrifying things were done there, not just planned"
Great piece by @mtnassar : " In the New York Times, less than 2 percent of the nearly 2,500 opinion pieces that discussed Palestinians since 1970 were actually written by Palestinians. In the Washington Post, the average was just 1 percent." The New Republic? 0%
Nassar doesnt go into this but of course over the years countless Israeli officials have had access to OpEd pages of US papers. Here is Sharon writing in Aug 1982 in the NYT: at the time Sharon was secretly conducting a deadly terrorist campaign in Lebanon
Role Sharon personally played in FLLF's car bombing campaign was revealed by @ronenbergman nearly 3 years ago. Bergman works for @nytimes . And yet the NYT has not written a WORD about these revelations. Nor has @tomfriedman , who covered several of these bombings at the time!
Oct 2, 1981: NYT Front Page: "Bomb at PLO Office Kills 50"
Car bomb in crowded Beirut street. Mysterious terrorist group, the FLLF, claims responsibility. Over 2 weeks FLLF bombs killed 100s of civilians in one of deadliest False Flag #terrorist campaigns ever 1/
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As John Kifner wrote, the blast was "the sixth and worst of its kind in two weeks" and it "tore the facade from five buildings and squashed cars in the Fakhani neighborhood of Moslem West Beirut." 2/ Link to NYT article: nytimes.com/1981/10/02/wor…
As Kifner explained, following the explosion a mysterious group, the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners (FLLF) called Lebanese newspapers to claim responsibility, as they had after the previous car bombings 3/
ICYMI: Superb piece in @guardian about Operation Condor, probably the greatest state terrorism network to every exist & the best possible proof there is that the discourse on terrorism is, and has always been, pure propaganda theguardian.com/news/2020/sep/…
Here is a piece I wrote about a 1976 Declassified Memo on Operation Condor: we should never forget that already in 1970s Latin American dictatorships, w/ US support, set up this international terrorist network IN THE NAME OF FIGHTING the "evil terrorists": aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/…
Since 1960s numerous US officials, in secret documents now declassified, argued that the forces armed & trained by US in Guate, El Salv etc were engaged in terrorism. Yet policies continued for decades & were sold to US public as part of "war on terror" : academia.edu/12999739/Bring…