Recycling Paranoia

You have to admire the theocrats and dictators in the Middle East for one thing, at least; they know how to recycle Cold War era Soviet propaganda. During the Cold War, the KGB spread the story that the US and other democracies were harvesting organs in the Third World (often the story involved children).

Now, as the invaluable MEMRI shows, the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia are saying the same thing. In the case of the former, in a work of propaganda disguised as fiction accusing the Israelis of harvesting organs from Palestinian children, in the case of the latter the Saudis are accusing the US Army of harvesting organs from Iraqis. Excerpts are below. If you want to go right to the full articles, you can read about Iran here and Saudi Arabia here.

First, from Iran.

Iran's Sahar 1 TV station is currently airing a weekly series titled "For You, Palestine," or "Zahra's Blue Eyes."

[...]

The story follows an Israeli candidate for Prime Minister, Yitzhak Cohen, who is also the military commander of the West Bank. The opening sequence of the show contains graphic scenes of surgery, and images of a Palestinian girl in a hospital whose eyes have been removed, with bandages covering the sockets.

In Episode 1, Yitzhak Cohen lectures at a medical conference on the advances being made by Israeli medicine regarding organ transplants. Later in the episode, Israelis disguised as UN workers visit a Palestinian school, ostensibly to examine the children's eyes for diseases, but in reality to select which children's eyes to steal to be used for transplants.

In Episode 2, the audience learns that the Israeli president is being kept alive by organs stolen from Palestinian children, and an Israeli military commander is seen kidnapping UN employees and Palestinians.

Sahar TV also broadcast an interview with the director of the series, a former Iranian education ministry official, who discussed his motivations for making a series "about children."

[...]

[Excerpts from episode 1]
Yitzhak Cohen (on TV screen): "We are the best of the races in the world. Our land should extend from the Euphrates to the Nile. The oil lies between the Euphrates and the Nile... The whole world will be shaken by the oil shortage problem. This is a difficult stage that will determine the fate of the entire world, and all eyes will be upon this region."

[...]

General: "This is the one! Here you go, Doctor."

Doctor: "Here you go, sir. Take a look."

Yitzhak Cohen: "Who is this?..."

Military man: "Zahra Abd Al-Rahman Muhammad. Age: seven; blood type: O+."

General: She lives in the central refugee camp. Eye color - green."

Yitzhak Cohen: "Good."

Doctor: "Her physical condition is not bad."

Yitzhak Cohen: "What is her medical condition?"

Doctor: "Not bad, but she needs better care."

Yitzhak Cohen: "Excellent. Bring her here. Prepare everything for her. Treat her like a princess."

General: "Sir, there are 32 children that you haven't seen yet, and there is also a ship docked at the shore with a cargo of artificial fetuses..."

Yitzhak Cohen: "This one! Her eyes remind me of my wife."

[...]

[Excerpt from Episode 2]

Child: "Uncle Ahmad, why don't we have lands like this that we could cultivate, and build houses on? Why, Uncle Ahmad? Tell me."

Uncle Ahmad: "Everything you see, the lands, the water, the air, and the birds, everything used to belong to us."

Child: "So where are they?"

Uncle Ahmad: "They exist ... in our hearts. They built these settlements on our lands by force."

Camp Nurse: "All of this is the land of Palestine, our land, the land of our forefathers. How does the poem you recite in school go? Oh Palestine, Oh Jerusalem... This is our country, but the Zionists took it from us by force. We fought for our homeland, and we will keep fighting, do you understand? Do you? We have sacrificed martyrs for it, and we will continue to sacrifice everything until we liberate our land..."

[...]

Interview with the Writer and Director of the Series

Ali Derakhshni: "I, Ali Derakhshni, screenwriter and director of the series 'Zahra's Blue Eyes' ... started working on this project when I was active in the [Iranian] education ministry, 17 years ago."

Interviewer: "In the film 'Zahra's Blue Eyes' there is a beautiful idea, as best as I recall: A girl with blue eyes. A Zionist father who is an army officer, sees these eyes and tries to steal them for his son."

Ali Derakhshni: "Theodore [Yitzhak Cohen's son] is a boy who symbolizes Israel. He has lost his kidneys, and he was paralyzed, and he wanted to rebuild his body.

"The major film companies are under the Zionists' influence. We are at the beginning of the road. Fortunately, the Iranian Islamic Republic and our Islamic regime have made many films and series like 'Zahra's Blue Eyes,' which is a film about children."

And, from Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Government Daily Accuses U.S. Army of Harvesting Organs of Iraqis

In the Saudi government daily Al-Watan, an article from Brussels written by Fakhriya Ahmad charges that, based on alleged secret European military reports, the U.S. military in Iraq is harvesting and selling human organs. The following day, the story was also published in the Iranian daily Jomhouri-ye Islami, as well as the Syrian daily Teshreen.

[excerpts from the article]

"Secret European military intelligence reports indicate the transformation of the American humanitarian mission in Iraq into a profitable trade in the American markets through the practice of American physicians extracting human organs from the dead and wounded, before they are put to death, for sale to medical centers in America. A secret team of American physicians follow the troops during their attacks on Iraqi armed men to ensure quick [medical] operations for extracting some organs and transferring them to private operations rooms before they are transferred to America for sale.

"The reports confirm the finding of tens of mutilated cadavers or cadavers missing parts. Some were found without a head. The American military command could not offer reasons to explain the bewilderment about the missing parts, suggesting that this may have been caused by the penetration of bullets to the [missing] parts. But these excuses cannot be medically accepted. The reports also confirmed that the burning of bodies was deliberate in order to conceal the crime of organ extraction. [The reports] further indicate that American medical teams have [made] active and suspicious moves in Iraq to recruit some Iraqis to guide them to dead and critically injured individuals to engage in the extraction of organs. These teams offer $40 for every usable kidney and $25 for an eye. The reports confirm the finding of mutilated bodies in Fallujah. The reports indicate that the cadavers are immunized inside special cars to prevent the spread of the plague until the bodies are buried by their relatives.

"The reports have indicated that a number of those killed in 'Abu Ghraib' and other prisons were subjected to operations for extracting their organs. Following their mutilations, the bodies were discarded far from the prisons to conceal the facts. The reports revealed that the American forces restricted the media by force to prevent them from getting near the scenes and recording the events. But the relatives of the Iraqis are aware of these facts. The reports have [also] indicated that the military forces of the European allies have noticed the absence of organs from the cadavers that were dealt with by the Americans and have reported to their high command, which instructed them to maintain silence and to avoid the discussion of the subject due to its gravity, while the military and intelligence high command have written secret reports about was observed by their forces and sent them to the European ministries of defense for their information."

While this is not an official government statement, Saudi media is tightly controlled. Stories like this do not appear unless they have official approval. Does the Royal Family actually believe that the US is harvesting organs? Who knows. The real audience, of course, is the 'Arab Street,' the masses who need to believe that the Americans and Jews are literally coming for their flesh in order to put up with the oppression heaped upon them by their own governments.

How much impact do articles and propatainment like these examples really have? It's hard to say with any certainty. But, apparently enough to be one component of an overall cultural environment that has inspired a generation of young men to see the struggle between political Islam and the regional dictators on one hand, and the West and modernity on the other, as an existential struggle for religious purity. In such a struggle any atrocity can be excused, any barbarity attributed to the will of god and any repression at home seen as a necessary sacrifice in the quest for paradise.

And, for us, these should be instructive as to why we are so hated by the enemy and what we have to do to win this war.