by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
On Saturday at 7:30 in the morning, while drinking my coffee, I was inspired, as I usually do, to turn on the radio, ον one of the big, mainstream («systemic”) stations. I knew that I would hear a lot of nonsense, but what can I do? Stop listening to the radio too?
But even if I was prepared to hear some outrageous things about what is happening in Greece and the world, this time I was really surprised.
First I listen to the two presenters of the early morning emission describing the horror of the terrorist attack in Moscow. So far so good. Then, they launched an offensive against the “Islamic State” (ISIS), hurling insults at the “Islamists” responsible for the terrorist attack in Moscow.
The Russian authorities may not have come to a conclusion yet, leading Russian experts and parliamentarians may already blame the Ukrainian services (responsible for a series of murders and terrorist attacks on Russian territory, including the burning alive of dozens of protesters in Odessa), but for the radio operators in Athens there is no doubt that ISIS is behind the attack.
It doesn’t even occur to them to ask the simple question why genuine Islamic terrorists would think now of attacking Russia – which condemns Israel’s attacks on Gaza – and not Israel, which is at the same time carrying out genocide in Palestine. Why would they launch such an attack on Moscow at the moment the very survival of the Palestinian population in Gaza is in question, no one knows when they will possibly start dying like flies from hardship, and Israel and the “collective West” behind it are under enormous political pressure to stop the extermination of Gazans?
As for the alleged ISIS announcement itself does not tell us a single one of the alleged reasons for the attack. It limits itself to saying that a “concentration of Christians” was hit, even ignoring the fact that a not insignificant percentage of the Russian population are Muslims, Jews and others.
However, according to the Russian channel Readovska, the photos of the “five assassins” released as “suspects/wanted” do correspond to Islamists from the Caucasus. Only they were killed a month ago in Ukraine fighting with the Ukrainians! The information is of course still coming in now and it is too early to have a clear picture of what has really happened.
A little about ISIS
It is true that at some point our radio “commentators” asked the question “who is behind the terrorists? who has put them up?”, but they didn’t even attempt to answer it. Because the most basic questions in any crime, and especially of this type, are two: who ordered it? Who benefits from it?
Obviously our “journalists” have not read anything – if you are informed, it is harder to misinform – about the fact that ISIS was probably created in Jordan ten years ago by US, British, Turkish and Israeli secret services, at least according to reports in Kurdish newspapers affiliated with the PKK. Even if this is not true, there is extensive documentation of the links between these services and ISIS, which they used extensively against the Assad regime in Syria. Israel has even treated wounded “fighters” of this organisation https://www.quora.com/Is-Israel-providing-medical-treatment-to-Al-Qaeda-wounded-terrorists-in-Syria . As Ephraim Inbar, head of the influential Israeli Peace (sic) Institute Begin-Sadat BESA and Israel’s “theoretician” of “permanent war”, has noted in the past:
“The West must seek to further weaken the Islamic State, but not to destroy it… Letting bad guys kill bad guys sounds very cynical, but it’s useful, even moral to do so if it keeps the bad guys busy and less able to hurt the good guys. Moreover, instability and crises sometimes contain portents of positive change…”
Since then, ISIS is supposed to have been defeated and from time to time appears claiming authorship of extremely bizarre attacks, behaving as a peculiar international provocateur. It is distinguished for the primitivism of its proclamations, but for no primitivism at all when picking targets and timing. For example, it has carried out or claimed authorship of attacks in Britain and France before crucial elections or at decisive junctures in the Yellow Vest struggle. One wonders whether it is used (or invoked) as a useful tool by the secret services of various states.
Hamas as ISIS
Anyway, none of this is known to our “journalists” of the radio. After having denounced in all tones the brutality of the “Islamic terrorists”, they now compare it with the brutality of Hamas, the “bastards”, the skunks, the “rapists” Palestinians, who “hide their headquarters” under hospitals and behind children, and now they “cry pitifully” about what the Israelis are doing to them. Adding at the end for good measure that the Palestinian people are not to blame for any of this.
These people are not moved by the hundreds of news reports about the incredible atrocities committed by the Israelis that come to us every day, they are not moved by the thousands of buried children and thousands of crippled people resulting from targeted bombing, they are not moved by the sight of tortured prisoners, nor by the complaints of international organisations and states, nor by the decision of the International Court of Justice, nor by the complaints against Israel by dozens of states of the world. Not even by Netanyahu’s own statements that he wants to expel Palestinians from Gaza, or by his ministers calling Gazans “human beasts”, or by the urging of the deputy mayor of Jerusalem to bury alive those Palestinians they capture. They are not moved by the suffering of hunger and thirst that has been inflicted on two million people, including children, the elderly and the sick.
The Greek media have managed to conceal almost all the information about the two major wars in our neighbourhood (Ukraine and Palestine, although the latter should be described as a massacre rather than a war), which threaten to lead us to fascism and world war and are already having terrible consequences of all kinds.
Here however, our so-called “journalists” are not restricted to just that. In fact, they are not even content to keep quiet. They actively support the genocide of the Palestinians and, stripped of all traces of dignity, they turn themselves into vulgar tools of these Israeli military propaganda that has nothing to envy from Goebbels. I wonder if these people have children.
The view that “Hamas is the same as ISIS” is a central argument of Israeli propaganda. Even the most serious Western media, wanting to somehow protect their so damaged credibility, so that their own prestige (including their ability to support Israel) is not compromised, the Associated Press for instance, have been quick to refute the outrageous Israeli claims ( https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-war-islamic-state-group-29e59446a42d077323a3a216127c4978).
This is the kind of “information” – poison that the Greek people receive today, both for international and domestic politics, from the majority of their “media”. And it will not do them any good.
I might add that I am also impressed by the speed with which the “line” is spread across all media when something happens. In today’s Greece trains can crash head-on, ambulances can arrive in time for the patients to have died, or military bases blow up or flood, but our “information mechanism” works both quickly and flawlessly! Even on Friday night into Saturday. No kidding!
Published in Greek, translated by Christos Marsellos
