Team B And The Jerusalem Conference.
Since Israelâs genocidal assault on Gaza began, Zionist officials, pundits, journalists, and their Western opposite numbers have endlessly invoked the sinister specter of âterrorismâ to justify the industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians. It is because of âterrorism,â twice-failed U.S. Presidential candidate and unconvicted war criminal Hillary Clinton representatively wrote for The Atlantic on November 14 that âHamas must be permanently erased.â Destroyed hospitals and schools and civilians killed en masse are reasonable âcollateral damage.â Such is the unparalleled evil of âterrorists.â
Yet, the relentless stream of heart-rending clips documenting the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) Holocaust deluging social media feeds the world over, and the ever-ratcheting child death toll has compelled countless citizens to ask, âIf Hamas are terrorists, then what are Zionists?â It is surely no coincidence YouTube recently yanked the official video of a groundbreaking track by renowned rapper and MintPress News contributor Lowkey, âTerrorist?â posing this precise question.
âTerrorist?â was released in 2011, at the height of the U.S. Empireâs âWar on Terror.â Then, the purported global threat of âterrorismâ was exploited throughout the West to savage civil liberties at home and wage relentless illegal military âinterventionsâ abroad. Mainstream usage of the term precipitously plummeted thereafter. It is only now regaining popular currency due to the Gaza genocide.
This is no accident. As we shall see, Israel â and specifically its veteran leader, Benjamin Netanyahu â was fundamental to concocting the mainstream conception of âterrorism,â explicitly to delegitimize anti-imperial struggles while validating Western state violence directed at oppressed peoples across the Global South. The impact of this informational assault can be felt in every corner of the world today â not least Gaza.
In fact, one might reasonably conclude the specific foundations of Nakba 2.0, which is unfolding in grisly real-time right now, were laid decades ago as a result of the connivances of Netanyahu, the international Zionist lobby, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. What follows is the little-known history of how âterrorismâ came to be. A majority of the worldâs population â the Palestinian people in particular â live with the mephitic consequences every day.
It BeginsâŠ
Our story starts in 1976, at the peak of détente between the U.S. and Soviet Union. After two-and-a-half decades of bitter enmity, the two superpowers resolved to peaceful coexistence at the start of the decade. They collaborated to systematically dismantle the structures and doctrines that defined the immediate post-World War II era, such as Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.).
In May of that year, the CIA produced its annual National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a comprehensive report combining data from various intelligence agencies intended to be a basis for crafting foreign policy. In keeping with the past five years, it concluded the Soviets were in severe economic decline, favored diplomacy over conflict, and desperately sought an end to the Cold War. Such findings lay behind Washingtonâs push for dĂ©tente and Moscowâs eager acceptance of major disarmament and arms control treaties.
However, newly-appointed CIA director George H. W. Bush categorically rejected these conclusions. He sought a second opinion and constructed an independent intelligence cell to review the NIE. Known as Team B, it was composed of hardcore Cold Warriors, defense-industry-funded hawks, and rabid anti-Communists. Among them were several individuals who would become leading figures in the neoconservative movement, such as Paul Wolfowitz. Also present were the infamous CIA and Pentagon dark arts specialists who had been professionally ostracized due to détente.
Team B duly reviewed the NIE and rubbished each and every one of the Agencyâs findings. Rather than dilapidated, impoverished and teetering on total collapse, the Soviet Union was, in fact, more deadly and dangerous than ever, having constructed a vast array of âfirst strikeâ capabilities right under the CIAâs collective nose. To reach these bombshell conclusions, Team B relied on a confounding hodgepodge of peculiar logical fallacy, paranoid theorizing, crazed conspiratorial conjecture, unsupported value judgments, and amateurish circular reasoning.
For example, Team B repeatedly assessed that a lack of evidence Moscow possessed weapons systems, military technology, or surveillance capabilities comparable or superior to Washingtonâs own was inverse proof the Soviets, in fact, did. They were so sophisticated and innovative, Team B concluded, that they couldnât be detected or even comprehended by the West. Team Bâs analysis was confirmed to be a total fantasy when the USSR collapsed. Yet, its methods informed all subsequent NIEs throughout the Cold War and likely endure today.
On June 27 of that year, mere weeks after Team B was set to work on reigniting the Cold War, Air France Flight 139, en route to Paris from Tel Aviv, was hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Redirected to a Ugandan airport, the plane was greeted on the runway by Idi Aminâs military, who ushered the passengers â the majority of whom were Jewish or Israeli â into the terminal, watched over by scores of soldiers, intended to prevent their escape or rescue.
The hijackers relayed a demand to the government of Israel. Unless a ransom of $5 million was paid to them and 53 Palestinian prisoners were released from jail, the hostages would be executed. In response, 100 elite IOF commandos launched an audacious action to free the hostages. Their mission â known as the Entebbe Raid â was a stunning success. All but four hostages were rescued alive, and the IOF lost just one commander â Yonatan (Jonathan) Netanyahu, the older brother of Israelâs sitting Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
âPropaganda To Dehumanizeâ
For years, by that point, Israeli officials had been attempting to popularize the term âterrorismâ to explain the motivations and actions of Palestinian freedom fighters. That way, their righteous fury at repression could be reframed as a destructive ideology of violence for violenceâs sake without rationale and Zionist colonial tyranny as warranted self-defense. This effort became turbocharged in September 1972, when the kidnapping of 11 Israeli athletes at that yearâs Olympics in Munich by Palestinian militants ended with all hostages murdered.
This particularly public bloodshed centered world attention on Israel and left Western citizens wondering what couldâve possibly inspired such actions. Zionists had hitherto managed to largely conceal their systematic, state-enforced repression and displacement of Palestinians from the outside world. Journalists were kept well away from the scenes of major crimes. At the same time, Amnesty Internationalâs Israeli branch was secretly financed and directed by Tel Avivâs Ministry of Foreign Affairs to whitewash facts on the ground.
For the Netanyahu family, the Entebbe raid was a tragedy â but also an ideal opportunity to validate and internationalize the concept of âterrorism,â as espoused by Zionists. In 1979, Benjamin Netanyahu founded the Jonathan Institute in honor of his slain brother. Its purpose, he said, was:
To focus public attention on the grave threat that international terrorism poses to all democratic societies, to study the real nature of todayâs terrorism, and to propose measures for combating and defeating the international terror movements.â
In July that year, the Institute convened the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism (JCIT) in Jerusalemâs Hilton Hotel. It gathered together a 700-strong mob of Israeli government officials, U.S. lawmakers, intelligence operatives from across the âFive Eyesâ global spying network, and Western foreign policy apparatchiks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many representatives of Team B were in attendance. For four days and seven separate sessions, speaker after speaker painted a disturbing picture of the worldwide phenomenon of âterrorism.â
They unanimously declared that all âterroristsâ constituted a single, organized political movement that was being secretly financed, armed, trained, and directed by the Soviet Union. This devilish nexus, it was claimed, posed a mortal threat to Western democracy, freedom, and security, requiring a coordinated response. Eerily, as academic Diana Ralph later observed, the JCITâs collective prescription for tackling this purported menace was precisely what transpired just over two decades later during the âWar on Terrorâ:
[This included] pre-emptive attacks on states that are alleged to support âterroristsâ; an elaborate intelligence system apparatus; slashed civil liberties, particularly for Palestinians targeted as potential terrorists, including detention without charge, and torture; and propaganda to dehumanize âterroristsâ in the eyes of the public.â
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin addressed the JCITâs opening session. He set the tone by claiming Western state violence was ultimately âa fight for freedom or liberationâ and, therefore, fundamentally opposed to âterrorism.â He concluded his remarks by imploring the assembled throng to go forth and promote the conferenceâs message once it was over. And they did.
âThe Terror Networkâ
Among the JCIT attendees was American author and journalist Claire Sterling, who cut her teeth as a reporter decades earlier at the Overseas News Agency, an MI6 propaganda operation seeking to boost U.S. public support for entering World War II. Following the conference, she frequently amplified the claims of JCIT speakers in articles for prominent newspapers, leading to an epic March 1981 front-page exposĂ© in The New York Times, âTerrorism: Tracing The International Network.â
A book published later that year, âThe Terror Network,â expanded significantly on Sterlingâs oeuvre and firmly cemented the notion of Moscow as a grand spider sat in the middle of a vast, globe-spanning web of deadly political violence in the Western public mind. It caused a sensation upon release, receiving rave reviews from major news outlets, being translated into 22 languages, and becoming a bestseller in several countries.
Most significantly of all, âThe Terror Networkâ had a particularly potent impact on newly-inaugurated President Ronald Reagan and his CIA chief William Casey. Committed anti-Communists, they entered office desperately seeking a pretext for brutally crushing left-wing, nationalist opposition to U.S. imperialism in Latin America. Sterlingâs work provided ample ammunition for achieving that bloodsoaked objective and was key to the White House decisively shattering dĂ©tente, a process begun by Team B five years earlier.
Consequently, âThe Terror Networkâ was circulated among U.S. lawmakers and heavily promoted overseas on the Reagan administrationâs dime. Casey furthermore tasked his Agency with verifying its thesis. They quickly assessed Sterlingâs work to be irredeemable garbage, ironically enough, as it was heavily influenced by CIA black propaganda. Enraged, Casey demanded the evaluation be revised. An updated appraisal was less scathing but nonetheless stressed the book was âuneven and the reliability of its sources varies widely,â while âsignificant portionsâ were âincorrect.â
Still dissatisfied, Casey asked a CIA âsenior review panelâ charged with scrutinizing Langleyâs formal estimates to write their own report on the subject. They concluded the Soviets did offer limited financial, material and practical assistance to a handful of anti-imperial Global South liberation movements, some of which were labeled âterroristsâ by Western powers. But there was âinsufficient evidenceâ of Muscovite culpability for the entire global phenomenon of âterrorism,â let alone funding and directing such entities as dedicated policy.
Undeterred, when Casey personally delivered the report to Reagan, he allegedly said of its findings, âOf course, Mr. President, you and I know better.â So it was CIA-backed death squads that ran roughshod across Washingtonâs âbackyardâ throughout the 1980s in the name of neutralizing Soviet influence in the region. Their actions were heavily informed by the Agencyâs guerrilla warfare manual, which encouraged assassinations of government officials and civilian leaders and deadly attacks on âsoft targetsâ such as schools and hospitals. âTerrorism,â in other words.
âWe Are All Palestiniansâ
Another example of Reaganâs âterrorismâ was sponsoring Afghanistanâs Mujahideen resistance fighters in their battle with â ironically enough â the Soviet Red Army. This policy endured after the âEvil Empireâ was vanquished. The same militants were transported to Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s to aid and abet the painful, forced death of Yugoslavia.
When these covert actions produced âblowbackâ in the form of the 9/11 attacks, several individuals who attended the JCIT, and their acolytes, were elevated to the Bush administration due to their supposed âterrorismâ expertise. Meanwhile, with public and state-level fears of âterrorismâ ramping up significantly the world over, many Western countries turned to Israel for advice and guidance on how to tackle the issue. As Nentyahu commented in 2008:
We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon and the American struggle in Iraq.â
This was not only because 9/11 âswung American public opinion in [Israelâs] favor.â In a blink, Zionist repression and slaughter were transformed from a source of international embarrassment and obloquy into a compelling sales pitch and unique selling point for Tel Avivâs welter of âdefenseâ and âsecurityâ firms. The Occupied Territories became laboratories, their inhabitants test subjects, upon whom new weaponry, surveillance methods, and pacification techniques could be trialed by the IOF, then marketed and sold overseas.
It is not for nothing that graphic videos showcasing IOF âsurgical strikesâ on Palestinians, their homes, schools, and hospitals are proudly displayed at international arms fairs, and private demonstrations of invasive surveillance tools such as Pegasus routinely wow repressive foreign security and intelligence agencies behind-closed-doors.
On top of a significant financial benefit, there is a diplomatic dividend, too. Israel secures an invaluable censure-stifling goodwill from customers, therefore permitting the Zionist project of permanently purging Palestine of its indigenous inhabitants to persist untrammeled. We see a palpable demonstration of this currently. While the streets of almost every major Western city have regularly teemed with pro-Palestine fervor ever since the latest attack on Gaza began, the protestersâ elected representatives are at best silent, at worst, actively complicit.
Impassioned chants of âWe are all Palestinians!â have been a frequent fixture at these events. This rallying call is highly apposite, for in addition to expressing sympathy and solidarity with the Palestinian people, it is urgently incumbent upon us all to reflect that the very same techniques and technologies of control and oppression to which they have been so cruelly subjected daily for decades are now firmly trained on us as well, as a result of Israelâs invention of âterrorism.â As such, it is no exaggeration to say Palestinians are canaries in the coalmine of humanity.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.
Source: Popularresistance.org