Vlaams Belang, BNP, and American Anti-Semites Attend Conference Claiming Israeli Conspiracy Behind ISIS

Don't Worry, I'm Not A Racist

From the Anti-Defamation League:

The Syr­ian government’s Coun­tert­er­ror­ism and Reli­gious Extrem­ism Con­fer­ence is the lat­est con­fer­ence orga­nized by a for­eign gov­ern­ment that has attracted Amer­i­can anti-Semites. 

The con­fer­ence in Syria, held on Novem­ber 30 and Decem­ber 1, brought together rep­re­sen­ta­tives from 25 coun­tries with Syr­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials who report­edly harshly crit­i­cized the U.S. led anti-ISIS coali­tion and sug­gested an “Inter­na­tional Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Forum” be estab­lished in Dam­as­cus instead to deal with this issue. 

Syria’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter Najm al-Ahmad report­edly stated at the con­fer­ence that the U.S. is “inter­fer­ing in other states’ affairs and breach­ing their sov­er­eignty under the pre­texts of human­i­tar­i­an­ism and counterterrorism.” 

Atten­dees from Europe at the con­fer­ence included far-right politi­cians such as Nicholas John Grif­fin, a for­mer chair­man and later pres­i­dent of the far-right British National Party and Philip Dewin­ter and Frank Creyel­man, mem­bers of Vlaams Belang, a far-right Flem­ish nation­al­ist party. 

Four of the eight Amer­i­cans who par­tic­i­pated in the con­fer­ence were from Vet­er­ans Today, a web­site that presents anti-Semitic con­spir­acy the­o­ries as news. 

Jim Dean, a man­ag­ing edi­tor for Vet­er­ans Today who has made claims of Israeli con­trol of Amer­ica, attended the con­fer­ence and told an Arabic-language news­pa­per that Vet­er­ans Today has “uncon­firmed reports that a secret U.S. orga­ni­za­tion sup­ported by the CIA and the Israeli Mossad car­ried out assas­si­na­tions of Iran­ian nuclear sci­en­tists” and that “the same orga­ni­za­tion has links to the Islamic State (ISIS) and it super­vises, through a spe­cial­ized depart­ment, the tele­vi­sion film­ing of behead­ings.” 

He claimed that this secret American-Israeli-supported orga­ni­za­tion sup­pos­edly “over­saw the film­ing of the behead­ing of Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist James Foley in August.” 

The del­e­ga­tion from Vet­er­ans Today also included Gor­don Duff, Colonel Jim Hanke, and Mike Har­ris, who has ties to mem­bers of the neo-Nazi National Social­ist Move­ment (NSM) and has claimed that Zion­ists are respon­si­ble for a num­ber of mass shoot­ings in Amer­ica. 

Among the Amer­i­cans was also Richard Hines, described by the Syr­ian media as a for­mer South Car­olina politi­cian who pre­vi­ously served in the Ronald Rea­gan administration. 

Cov­er­age of the con­fer­ence by Press TV, Iran’s government-run English-language satel­lite news net­work which pro­vides a plat­form to well-known Amer­i­can anti-Semites and Holo­caust deniers, was con­sis­tent with the conference’s mes­sag­ing, dis­cussing the West’s sup­posed “unprece­dented sup­port for ter­ror­ism in Syria” which aims “to cre­ate sec­tar­ian ten­sions and destroy Syria.” 

Press TV also claimed that even “U.S. experts slammed Wash­ing­ton for inter­fer­ence in Syria’s inter­nal affairs,” and then pre­sented Gor­don Duff, senior edi­tor at Vet­er­ans Today, as an expert. Duff told Press TV that “think­ing that ISIS…the intel­li­gence sup­port they’re get­ting, that it doesn’t involve mul­ti­ple intel­li­gence agen­cies, that it doesn’t involve a num­ber of gov­ern­ments, is unre­al­is­tic. We have to accept that we’re deal­ing with some­thing that involves a broad conspiracy.” 

Oth­ers at the con­fer­ence were not as spe­cific about who to blame for ter­ror­ism in Syria, but dis­cussed it as part of a gen­eral con­spir­acy. Syr­ian Prime Min­is­ter Wael Nader al-Halqi dis­cussed the need “to defeat the con­spir­acy” and Syria’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter Najm al-Ahmad stated that the cur­rent events in Syria rep­re­sented “orga­nized ter­ror­ism backed by sev­eral countries.” 

Addi­tion­ally, accord­ing to Syr­ian offi­cial media, Head of Hezbol­lah’s Arab Affairs Divi­sion, Sheik Has­san Ezzil Deen attended the conference.