John Hajjar in respond to Marc Siros

Nov 12th 2010

Often a hidden mole in a propaganda network loses control over his cover up and busts himself out. It usually happens when the propagandists sees an article that demolishes years worth of subversion or if the "masters" are under tremendous pressure and wants him to do all they can, including destroying the agent's credibility. It looks like a Jihadi apologist hidden under his journalistic media cover, just did that to himself. Canadian born Marc Sirois, who spent years in Beirut writing in defense of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran couldn't help himself from attacking an article in the Wall Street Journal authored by international expert Walid Phares under the title "Prosecute Hezbollah." Sirois exploded in unparalleled rage, lost his temper, shed his credibility and exposed his advocacy for Hezbollah. All in one online piece posted on "Lobelog Foreign Policy" titled "Neocon Walid Phares bogus call for Justice in Lebanon."

Marc Sirois wrote that "today’s shaman of shamelessness is Walid Phares, whose latest drivel in the Wall Street Journal (“Prosecute Hezbollah”, November 9) would make history’s top propagandists proud. Phares, who not only admits but actually boasts that he is part of the neocon Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, simply cannot be taken seriously as a voice for anything but Israel and its apologists."  

Before even examining Sirois arguments on the substance, let's contemplate the oddity of his words as he attacks the author of an article in the Wall Street Journal who is accredited as one of the leading counter terrorism experts with the US Congress and the European Parliament. Sirois is angry, very angry and you don't need a psychologist to figure out why, although you may need a thorough investigation to understand how this Canadian "journalist" ended up living more than 11 years in Lebanon, when the country was under Syrian occupation and Hezbollah dominance. According to open information Sirois was hired as a managing editor of the Daily Star English language publication at the height of Syrian Baathist control when the Mukhabarat (intelligence) was co-opting the Lebanese media making sure to insert propagandists at the service of Damascus and Tehran at all levels of editorials and management.

Sirois is among those "journalists" who infested Lebanon since 1976 and increasingly as of 1990, to offer their services to the Syrian occupation, and later to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. They get their special information from the propaganda departments of these networks and are tasked to defend Hezbollah and the Iranians and attack both Lebanese and international voices that exposes the oppression inside Lebanon. You're talking mercenaries similar to those who roam the third world selling their services to the dictators and terrorist factions. Sirois has a long trail online and in print showing his "collaboration." Online he coins himself "Independent Middle East analyst and Former Managing Editor of The Daily Star." Good cover up but it doesn't fool researchers. The list of his nefarious pieces and blogs is too long.

Among his tasks is a systematic response to any criticism of Hezbollah, Iran or the Syrians. The list is comprehensive. In an essay titled "The History of Hezbollah" published on May 7, 2003 in the Yellow Times and re posted on al Jazeera info, "mercenary" Sirois praises the Terror organization and present it as clean and acceptable. On July 21, 2006 he publishes in the Daily Star a piece re-posted by the Electronic Intifada (A Jihadi Terror apologist, online tool) titled "Western media fail to tell the story in Lebanon." In it the Canadian Jihadophile criticizes the international media for not adopting Hezbollah's version of the War.  On October 24, 2002 apologist Sirois answers the question "if Hezbollah a terrorist organization." He writes "Hezbollah was hatched as an almost begrudging attempt to defend a community whose patience for oppression -be it foreign or domestic-had finally run out."

On May 17, 2008, few days after Hezbollah killed many Lebanese citizens in Beirut and in the Mountain between May 7 and 12, and after the pro-Iranian organization conducted a coup against the democratically elected Lebanese Government, Sirois the propagandist is at it again. He protects Hezbollah's terror militia by writing a piece titled "Hezbollah's arms should be finessed" in the Daily Star.  

Acting as an online "sniper" for the Iranian regime he unleashes another attack against Journalist Judith Miller in a piece titled "Judith Miller lies about Ahmedinijad's visit in Lebanon."  Sirois has no shame, no limits except what his masters in Tehran and in the southern Suburb of Beirut asks him to write. Insiders in the media in Beirut say Mark Sirois was Hezbollah's man inside the Daily Star. "We knew he was their man," says co-workers who declined to reveal their identity for fear of retribution. "See what happened to Gebran Tueni the editor of daily al Nahar when he exposed Hezbollah and Syria. He was brutally killed" the sources argue. "Sirois was protected by Hezbollah media department and acted as their point man from Beirut to target international media critical of the pro-Iranian organization. We're talking about an attack-dog that no one could remove from Daily Star. He was often seen in company of pro-Hezbollah and pro-Syrian people."

This Sirois is now attacking an author of an article published in the Wall Street Journal. Reason? Because the title said: "Prosecute Hezbollah," in the murder of former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafiq Hariri. Sources in Beirut said "you've got to expect that the Iranians would let the attack-dog (political sense) jump on the author of the Wall Street Journal. This is his job description. His masters were attacked he must counter attack. He is no journalist, he is a propagandist."     

So what did apologist Sirois write? He goes on a tirade "down through the ages, propagandists of all bents have viewed their craft as a forgiving one because even when they’re wrong, they can still be right – so long as a sufficient proportion of the audience remains unaware of (or unconcerned by) their errors/lies. Here Phares is at his very best, or worst depending on one’s perspective, mixing fact and fiction with glorious abandon." Most interesting is that Sirois -himself a chief propagandist- is using the term against the scholar who is sought by international instances to analyze terrorism. Better, via a quick search we realized that Sirois has used the same term used by several pro-Hezbollah web sites: Propagandist. Which means that the "war room" of the Iranians/Hezbollah, usually manned by Lebanese and Westerners at the payroll of Tehran, have decided to depict the piece as "propaganda."

Sirois goes on: "The headline of the piece gives away its author’s intention to stir the pot, flouting as it does the very assurance of Hezbollah’s domestic rivals in Lebanon that even if some of its members are indicted in the 2005 bombing that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and almost two dozen others, the party itself will not be on trial." The pro-Iranian propagandist reveals another talking point from the same "war room." The word in Beirut, as developed by the Iranian-Hezbollah axis is that even if few members are indicted, the organization will remain safe, legally. Phares argues otherwise and obviously the Iranian propagandists aren't happy. Hence mercenary Sirois strikes.  

He continues: "The subhead, of course, is just there to create a subliminal impression that a court (which has yet to issue an indictment despite five years of investigation) already has arrived at “findings” linking Hezbollah to an assassination." Sirois may impact few uneducated people but he doesn't impress those who understand law and its processes. When information circulates massively about the imminent indictment of leading members of Hezbollah and when the leadership of the latter is already warning that it will strike back against the decision of the tribunal, kids have already figured out that the organization is cornered. Besides this is a country which the UN has asked to disarm a powerful militia, under UNSCR 1559. Hezbollah is already in breach of international law on the count of keeping weapons, and in the court of public opinion on the count of having used these weapons against Lebanese citizens.  

Sirois gets nervous and reveals the fears of Hezbolah's leaders. He writes: "The opening sentence gets right to the point that whoever is indicted will ipso factobe the guilty party, perhaps dispensing with all the time and money that would have to be wasted on a trial." Precisely not, the funds spent on the tribunal, which Hezbollah tried to eliminate (another evidence of the guilt) led the investigators to the point where Hezbollah members were interviewed and a medical institution treating Hezbollah members was investigated by the UN. Besides, Sirois can sing his propaganda about the distinction between the movement and few members. This doesn't fool the last child in Lebanon. Obviously the leadership of Hezbollah is linked to a terror act against a former Prime Minister. Secretary General Nasrallah often asserted that nothing moves within Hezbollah outside a thorough review by the leadership.  

Sirois jumps to defend his regional masters by writing: "The first course is a bowl of traditional guilt-by-association tying Hezbollah to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accompanied by an artful insinuation that Tehran has tried to intimidate the court, and garnished with a dollop of old-fashioned bitters, belittling Hezbollah and its members as “minions” of a foreign power." When you read the Canadian born media mercenary you wonder if he had more than few glasses of wine the day before. So now Hezbollah is not tied to Iran? Has Sirois decided to crumble his own credibility in one sentence? Is he committing intellectual suicide. Is he that desperate to serve the Ayatollahs till the last drop of his barely standing credibility? 

Sirois then begins the hallucination phase of his piece: "Next to be dished out are complaints that Hezbollah and its most important backers, Iran and Syria (“Axis of Evil” is taken; how about “Triumvirate of Trouble”?) have “threatened” the Lebanese government – of which Hezbollah is a part – by indicating, naturally enough, that they will resist any attempt by the STL to serve as a stalking horse for Israel by unsaddling the only contestant who has ever got the better of the Israeli military." Straying away from the Wall Street Journal Sirois -in an evident lapse- used the exact same terminology of Hassan Nasrallah: "The only contestant to Israel." That wasn't even part of Phares' arguments. But Sirois seems to be rushing to cram all the Hezbollah propaganda material in a rebuttal piece which now looks like a Baghdad Bob production. 

Sirois goes deep in his desperate defense of the masters. The article becomes a joke:"This is followed by a generous but unsophisticated helping of sleight-of-hand, as Hezbollah is credited with fulfilling its threats. How do we know? Because a number of “anti-Hezbollah lawmakers and journalists” were attacked and “several anti-Syrian neighborhoods” were bombed “[b]etween July and December 2005”. Multiple misfortunes befall this dish: Hezbollah didn’t threaten those people or those neighborhoods; the attacks began in late 2004, not mid-2005; and several of the victims – not to mention countless residents of the neighborhoods – were anything but “anti-Hezbollah”. So according to the Canadian journalist who spent a dozen years of his career in Syrian and Hezbollah occupied Lebanon, the only force left with explosives, weapons and security apparatuses -other than the Syrians- has nothing to do with the sudden campaign to assassinate Lebanese critics of Hezbollah, with explosions that targeted the anti-Hezbollah areas. Maybe it is the Italians who committed that terror, or the Swedes? 

Sirois jumps to save Nasrallah's image. He writes: "The next plate features Hezbollah’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, skewered as a liar who in 2006 “claimed he was negotiating with Lebanon’s leaders to surrender his weapons, only to trigger a devastating war with Israel”. History records that Nasrallah’s party did, in fact, discuss what was to be done with its arsenal – retained after the 1975-1990 civil war because its mission was to deter and/or resist Israeli adventurism rather than to battle other sectarian militias – with its counterparts. It also makes plain that while Hezbollah did carry out a cross-border ambush of an Israeli patrol, in keeping with a long-stated policy of obtaining bargaining chips to gain the release of hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian detainees, it had no reason to even suspect, based on previous experience, that the response would be an all-out war, with emphasis on women and children." Sirois fall into the abysses of discredit is deep and fast. His lexicon, let alone his narrative is taken directly from Hezbollah's repertoir. Actually it is even translated from the jargon in Arabic that is spewed on al Manar TV, the Hezbollah's mouth piece. Mistakes are endless. First Hezbollah was created by the Iranians in 1981-1982 not in 1975. Second, Hezbollah fought on Beirut's battlefields in the 1980s and in 1990 he joined the Syrians in invading East Beirut. Hezbollah didn't attack Israel from 2000 for six years. It launched the cross border attack only after UNSCR 1559 was voted, Hariri was killed, a revolution took place and the Lebanese voted against Hezbollah in 2005. Result, Nasrallah waged a war to reestablish himself as a "resistance leader." Where we agree with propagandist Sirois, which indicts his own argument is that Nasrallah knew ahead of time what the Israeli response was to be. Something Nasrallah didn't admit but his apologist Sirois slipped in this piece. Here is his first shot in his own foot 

Then Sirois frantically tries to remove the accusation that Hezbollah resumed the killing of Lebanese politicians after the war. "The sauce on all this is a thin presumption that, following the war, Hezbollah proceeded to kill several more Lebanese politicians, including at least two whose deaths are widely presumed to have been ordered by rivals within their own pro-Western camp." Yes interesting "sauce" that the killings of Lebanese politicians was happening before and after the Hezbollah war with Israel. Obviously, during the war, the organization's intelligence focus was on the battlefield. Once the cease fire established the focus shifted back to resume the Terror against Lebanese. Sirois is shooting himself in the foot for the second time.  

Sirois leaps to bash the author of the article. First the message, then the messenger. He writes: "The main course consists of an assertion that conviction in the Hariri case would cripple Hezbollah and ruin “the image it cultivates as a legitimate resistance movement”. Given Phares’s own record of having opposed Hezbollah even in the 1990s, when Israeli occupation forces were recruiting reluctant collaborators by kidnapping and raping their sisters, he is hardly qualified to predict such a verdict, let alone to render one." So "Sheikh" Sirois has decided to render a "fatwa" on Phares for having dared "opposed" Hezbollah. Thus a scholar who displeases Hezbollah, and thus their Western mercenary -Mr Sirois- has no right to predict verdicts, render ones and even write pieces if not verified by the propaganda machine of Hezbollah, which Sirois is a prominent player in.  

Then the joke resumes. The journalist-turned joker writes: "In any event, the STL could convict Hezbollah and its entire leadership of every crime conceivable, and it wouldn’t amount to a hiccup because the group’s supporters are convinced – not without reason – that the court is stacked against them." Obviously the terrorists do not consider themselves as terrorists and the mafia consider itself as a red cross. Maybe Sirois is applying to a position inside Hezbollah's growing media companies, after he lost his job at the Daily Star. In his logic the entire international justice system is worth a hiccup just because Heabollah owns the largest arsenal of missiles in the Arab world, next to Syria. What an "independent journalist" he is.