By Dr. Kevin Barrett
President Donald Trump is reviled by mainstream media as a serial liar. Yet he has an unsettling habit of blurting out taboo truths—the same truths that big media work overtime to conceal. From the JFK assassination (“Ted Cruz’s CIA-Cuban father may have been involved”) to 9/11 (“Bush was responsible”) to rape accusations against Bill Clinton (“Let’s chat with Bill’s accusers after our debate, Hillary”), Donald Trump has repeatedly broached subjects deemed off-limits by mainstream gatekeepers.
And now Trump has done it again. In the wake of the massive blast on August 4 that leveled the Port of Beirut and damaged much of the city, killing over 150 people and injuring more than 6,000, Trump said that he had spoken to “our generals” who said it was a bombing attack. Defense Secretary Mark Esper frantically contradicted Trump, insisting that the blast was generally believed to be an accident. A few hours later, Trump rebuffed Esper, asking, “How can you say accident?” Four days later Esper attempted to walk back his dispute with Trump, saying that “the bottom line is that we still don’t know.” In all likelihood Trump was truthful and Esper was lying. Multiple lines of evidence point to the conclusion that Israel perpetrated the Beirut atrocity.
Trump is not the only source confirming that Israel attacked Beirut. Robert Baer, the former top CIA operative in the region, told CNN: “It was clearly a military explosive. It was not fertilizer like ammonium nitrate. I’m quite sure of that.” Journalist Richard Silverstein, a highly regarded reporter on Israeli affairs, wrote on August 4: “A confidential highly informed Israeli source has told me that Israel caused the massive explosion at the Beirut port earlier today. . . . The source received this information from an Israeli official having special knowledge concerning the matter.”
Thierry Meyssan, a former French intelligence operative who is now close to Syrian intelligence, reported on August 7 that Israel destroyed the Port of Beirut using “a missile with a tactical nuclear component in its warhead” similar to those Israel has already used repeatedly in Syria and against Iranian naval targets in the Persian Gulf. Meyssan and others have pointed out that photos of the Beirut blast show a smoke mushroom cloud almost identical to those of similar Israeli bombs dropped on Syria.
Despite its pro forma denials, Israel has hinted that it is behind the bombing. A few hours before the Beirut explosion, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened Lebanon and Hezbollah, saying that Israel’s foes should know “we will do what is necessary in order to defend ourselves.” Here’s a likely translation: “We will do anything, including dropping a nuclear weapon on a crowded city, to terrorize the world into submission.” Two years earlier, on Sept. 27, 2018, Netanyahu had stood before the United Nations brandishing a satellite photo of an alleged Hezbollah arms depot near the Port of Beirut, with arrows pointing to where the Israeli missile would hit.
Netanyahu’s barely disguised admission of guilt was one of many Israeli statements predicting or taking credit for the Beirut terror attack. During the past few years Israeli officials have repeatedly said that they will “flatten” Lebanon in the next war. The Israeli military calls this the Dahiya (“flattening”) Doctrine, which advocates using massively disproportionate force against civilian targets. Essentially, Israel has been bragging for years that it is planning to drop nuclear weapons on cities full of civilians. The Beirut blast may be the opening salvo of what could become a regional nuclear genocide.
Exactly one week before the Beirut blast, Israel co-Prime Minister Benny Gantz publicly ordered the Israel Defense Forces to prepare to bomb Lebanese infrastructure. Senior Lebanese officials responded that Gantz’s terrorist threat against Lebanese civilian infrastructure amounted to a “declaration of war.”
It seems that Israel all but announced that it was going to drop a nuclear bomb on the Port of Beirut and then carried out its threat. Countless witnesses in Beirut have testified to hearing warplanes shortly before the explosion. Enhanced infrared photos appear to show an Israeli Delilah missile fired from an F-16. Sounds of the plane were recorded on dozens of cell-phone videos.
Israel’s flattening of the Port of Beirut fulfilled a decades-old Zionist dream. Beirut is the only major competitor to Israel’s main port of Haifa. The Zionists have yearned to destroy the Port of Beirut ever since Israel was founded in 1948. They chose to do it now in order to destabilize Lebanon’s government and escalate Israel’s ongoing war against Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.
It was the biggest nuclear attack on civilians since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet the newspapers won’t report it. The ongoing coverup of the Beirut atrocity tells you everything you need to know about who owns our media.
Kevin Barrett, Ph.D., is an Arabist-Islamologist scholar and one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. From 1991 through 2006, Dr. Barrett taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin. In 2006, however, he was attacked by Republican state legislators who called for him to be fired from his job at the University of Wisconsin-Madison due to his political opinions. Since 2007, Dr. Barrett has been informally blacklisted from teaching in American colleges and universities. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, public speaker, author, and talk radio host. He lives in rural western Wisconsin.
