Western media is trying to ‘whitewash’ Islamist terrorists in Syria as freedom fighters

(LifeSiteNews) — British independent journalist Richard Medhurst claims the Western media is “lying to you” over Syria, claiming in a new video that the “regime change operation” against the last remaining secular Arab state is the result of a CIA-directed operation costing over “$1 billion.”

Medhurst introduces himself as “a Christian and a journalist … born and baptized in Syria.” His brief analysis presented here is a rapid rundown of Western and Israeli-led regime change wars which have replaced stability with chaos across the region.

I was born and baptized in Syria. As a Christian and a journalist I have more interest than most in seeing Syria respect freedom of religion and freedom of the press.

Syria is secular. And those who celebrate it being turned into an Islamic Caliphate run by Al Qaeda, Israel and… pic.twitter.com/eslYLLZneg

— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) December 12, 2024

He warns viewers that media images of people “celebrating” in Syria showing “everything is fine and dandy … couldn’t be further from the truth.”

In his full-length analysis, available on YouTube here, he explains:

“The British, German, and the American media are whitewashing these scumbags as some kind of freedom movement.”

In fact, argues Medhurst, “they’ve sent the country backwards. They’re executing people.”

Medhurst cites a report by Beirut-based war correspondent Steve Sweeney:

I’ve been speaking to people that have fled Syria and they are describing horrific scenes in Homs. Terror groups hunting down former soldiers and members of the Shia community, slitting throats and even beheading people, all of which is being sanitised or ignored by Western media…

— Steve Sweeney (@SweeneySteve) December 10, 2024

Sweeney says he has reports of the so-called rebels “slitting throats and even beheading people” – which he says “is being sanitized or ignored by Western media – who are accused of acting as a PR arm for HTS.”

READ: World War Syria: Why is the US backing ‘rebels’ who butcher Christians?

Charles Lister, a leading Syria analyst at the Middle East Institute, explained that the so-called rebels are a group of 11 militias, being mainly “takfiri” Islamists who describe other Muslims and non-Muslims as “takfir” – “apostates.”

They are led by “Muhammad Al-Jolani,” whose real name is Ahmed Al-Sharaa.

The media campaign to “whitewash” the so-called “rebels” has failed to take account of recent Israeli pronouncements against HTS and its allied factions. The “rebels” led by Jolani’s HTS were described by the Israeli diaspora minister on December 8 as terrorists.  

He said, “The events in Syria are far from being a cause for celebration. Despite the rebranding of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its leader Ahmed al-Shara, the bottom line is that most of Syria is now under the control of affiliates of al-Qaeda and Daesh [ISIS].”

A report in the Jerusalem Post showed that Amichai Chikli’s statement was followed by an instruction from Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s office “not to comment publicly on the events in Syria.”

The Israeli position is a direct contradiction of the presentation of Jolani and the “rebels” in Western media. On December 2, some of the “rebels” told Israeli media, “We love Israel.”

In addition, ISIS issued a statement in 2016 explaining why it never attacks Israel. Despite all this, the Israelis appear to now be using the presence of the “Al-Qaeda” terrorists they have armed, supplied and medically treated as a reason to legitimize their invasion and bombing of Syria.

Sharaa took the name Al-Jolani as a nom de guerre – a war name – when he joined Al-Qaeda in 2003. Later, the leader of ISIS – Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi – tasked Jolani with setting up the extremist group in Syria. This became the Nusra Front, which was armed and backed by Hillary Clinton’s State Department after 2011.

Medhurst, whose mother is Syrian, reminds his audience that the removal of Assad by a force including many foreign terrorists follows the 2011 U.S. and U.K.-backed destruction of Libya. In a system dubbed the “Rat Line” by Seymour Hersh, the West supplied arms from Libya to the Nusra front led by Jolani.

Agreeing with Hersh, Medhurst says that chemical gas attacks were “faked” to smear former Syrian President Assad in a “false flag” operation to legitimize his removal. Gas attacks were a “red line” for the U.S. to intervene.

President Barack Obama decided against launching a U.S. ground invasion after analysis cast doubt on the origin of the gas samples collected from Syria, according to Hersh’s 2014 report, “The Red Line and the Rat Line.”

Following this, Medhurst says, “the CIA spent over $1 billion” trying to topple Assad, in “their most expensive operation in history.”

In addition, Medhurst shows that Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan has admitted on camera his involvement in the takeover of Syria – whilst “Netanyahu does a victory lap.”

On December 16 Antiwar reported that Israel had carried out “800 airstrikes since former President Bashar al-Assad was thrown out of power” and has “also invaded southern Syria.”

The latest wave of attacks, taking place “overnight Sunday into Monday, [caused] massive explosions, including one so big that it registered as a 3.1 magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale.”

Destroying historic Christianity

Medhurst stresses that Syria is the home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, saying this formerly “secular state, which protected religious minorities” has been replaced “with a climate of fear.”

As in Libya, the former state had extensive social welfare and education programs and was, before U.S.-led sanctions, “self-sufficient in oil, wheat and industry,” according to Medhurst.

“Look at the level of whitewashing,” says Medhurst. “The media are glorifying the head-chopping Al-Jolani – and it is me who gets arrested for terrorism.”

Medhurst was arrested at a U.K. airport over the summer under the Terrorism Act. His arrest was seen as a chilling move towards the suppression of reporting critical of Israel, and on the wider “Israeli agenda” in the Middle East – as Medhurst says. 

READ: Journalism against the globalist narrative is now considered ‘terrorism’ in the UK

According to him, Israel has now conducted its “largest air assault in history” on Syria, with “over 400 airstrikes” targeting civilian as well as military infrastructure.

And yet there is “not a word” in the Western media about this, says Medhurst. Nor is there any mention of the “Greater Israel” ambitions of Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich, whose televised desire to see Israel expand its borders to include Damascus he includes in his video.

READ: Syria’s power vacuum is a major step toward the Zionist dream of a Greater Israel

As Medhurst also points out, “Israeli tanks are now 19 kilometers from Damascus,” the capital of Syria.

Medhurst’s analysis is buttressed by the stark claim of former British diplomat and intelligence agent Alastair Crooke, who told Andrew Napolitano yesterday that “Syria has ceased to exist.”

“Syria no longer exists as a geopolitical entity,” he said.

What is more, Crooke says “there’s no government.”

He explains that “this is being presented as if there is a government but … HTS was a very small fragment of the militants of Idlib, who eventually took over.”

Crooke states that “nearly a third of them were not even Syrian but were professional jihadists who’d come in from Central Asia and the Uighurs from China and elsewhere.”

Additionally, he warns that HTS itself is not really in charge of its own forces, warning that infighting will soon break out within its ranks.

“HTS is an umbrella for … other jihadist organizations who oppose Jolani, who don’t like him, and contest the fact that he’s trying to take command,” Crooke said.

“They don’t like him taking command now and they contest it. There will be factional fighting flowing from this.”

Crooke also reminds viewers that this chaos replaced a Syria which was “a secular Arab state since 1949,” which he says was “a society based on the French legal and administrative system.”

As both Crooke and Medhurst argue, Syria’s regime change has transformed this formerly stable Arab republic into a war zone torn between competing factions, whose internal disagreements promise further violence.

Seen by “America … as the strategic pivot for American control over the Middle East and its oil supplies,” it is now the site of what Crooke has called “a war without limits,” as an unrestrained Israel and an ambitious Turkey strike deeper into a now defenseless Syria, one of the earliest homes of Christianity.