if you just joined us a very warm welcome this is r.t. in new center here in moscow the top syrian security officials including the defense minister and his deputy have been killed in a suicide blast in damascus it culminates four days of violent shaking the syrian capital and is the deadliest opposition assault on high ranking government members since the syria conflict began. russia says the policy of supporting the opposition will lead to an impasse as the u.n. delays a vote on a new syria resolution which could see sanctions imposed on damascus. an explosion is headed past caring israeli tourists at an airport in the city of burgas killing

at least seven people the blast is believed to have been a terrorist attack with israel already blaming iran i'll be back with more on those stories with the news team in half an hour from now in the meantime peter lavelle and his guests cross talk of the media coverage of the conflict in syria and why the mainstream broadcasters are rallying support for regime change heated debate next on r.t. . in . a move welcome to cross talk i'm curious about covering syria are we witnessing a new generation of warfare and information war there appears no doubt western

media aims to construct a consensus to provide overwhelming public support for regime change in damascus and is the truth the place casualty of this conflict. and. to cross-talk syria and the ongoing information war i'm joined by it tomorrow rabinovich in tel aviv he is a distinguished senior fellow at the brookings institution and a former israeli ambassador to the u.s. interaction we have. he is a professor and dean at jindal school of international affairs and in san jose we cross the stephen zoom as he's a professor of politics and international studies at the university of san francisco all right gentlemen cross talk rules in effect stephen if i can go to you first as a western narrative of this conflict in syria based on distortions manipulations lives in videotape. the overall narrative i think is pretty accurate but of course the spin always tends to lean towards

western perceptions maybe it's not that there aren't severe human rights abuses by the syrian regime there certainly are but when you contrast to the coverage of say bahrain. or allied regimes that are being challenged by popular movements you can really tell different similarly while the the bulk of the struggle against assad has been nonviolent there are also extremist elements involved including including terrorist groups this angle has been downplayed somewhat so so so the short answer is yes there are certain certainly some exaggerations going on that are served to. national political opinion but you know they these are real these are real ok we got to tel aviv mr ambassador what do you think of western media coverage one sided biased you know pretty much what we just

heard. over here as you said there is an information warfare it is part of this conflict as it is of almost every conflict in today's world both the regime and the opposition trying to shape the narrative according to the interests there is a great deal of support. for the rebellion oh it's a great deal of these gusts particularly in the western media with the brutal suppression of began actually is a mostly. quiet. demonstration against the regime. but. on the whole of these correct but with a few distortions if i could stay with you mr ambassador so there are the rebels are the good guys they wear white hats right. no question what do you mean by rebels because as has been said before there are according to some estimates

about a thousand g. how these are penetrated syria who perpetrate acts of terror and nobody certainly nothing my country has a great deal of sympathy for for the jihad these so we don't say that universally all the rebels are and where white heads are good guys but if you ask most experts at this point in time there are genes to live a legitimate easy. or use the tide of history on the side of the rebels or the opposition the answer would be the larger ok thing going to turn around what do you think of the coverage of the media coverage of this conflict it is a civil war after all. well the i.c.r.c. is now calling it a civil war and that's a welcome change because until then the media was painting the so-called free syrian army as a bunch of ragtag guerrillas with no training and with very light weapons and with

and that they are outnumbered and that basically this is a war of the state against its own people the fact is on the ground the i.c.r.c. itself now says a civil war which acknowledges basically that the opposition is heavily armed it has the capacity to inflict damage on the on the government forces and that most obviously defectors a bunch of defectors with no training cannot be so heavily armed and organized it means there is external support that part is totally been covered up in the western media projection of this war it's been shown as some kind of indigenous movement of freedom fighters against the us of dynasty when the fact remains that you know there is significant external support and we need to really uncover that and that's why we need alternative media the other way is it will be a battle of perceptions that will be lost by those who need a peaceful transfer of power in syria rather than this kind of regime change that is engineered through in a form of a silent cool with the connivance of the western media is even if we hear enough about the opposition and what they're doing you know not nearly enough though

there is certainly the support of saudi arabia qatar others of the of the rebels. that has not gotten the kind of play that it should ok explain explain to my viewers why that's the case do you think. well i mean obviously i mean this is been the history of we we've seen for many many years that for example in the popular revolutions in central america. the business on the u.s. was there the cuban support the soviets a poor which is grossly exaggerated trying to downplay the indigenous roots of the populist progress or some given soviet support but that was the main thrust of the revolution and when it comes to syria of course the narrative is just reverse they totally downplay or fail to even mention the external support stressing indigenous

troops now personally i disagree with the iranian colleague and i believe that the syrian revolution is primarily indigenous but and has popular support but that does not mean there is not also a foreign element in there and some of these foreign elements frankly rather sketchy in terms of their ideology and tactics mr massey when you think about that sketchy it's a good word for some of them. well just small correction to be right now and they're going to make but anyway i was talking more about the free syrian army not so much about the civilian population which may have grievances against the assad dynasty for forty years i'm talking about letters analyze the rulz the funding the etymology for lack of a better word of this free syrian army we have has it come about it has been described as nothing and now they're saying they're about to take power and they're already in damascus so how did this transformation happen such

a short time and would the forces that are behind this but have to ambassador has a view on this because he's in israel ok mr mansour you want to jump in there. yeah i have a view not just because i mean. i would say the following it's. about the opposition of the opposition is divided it is politically weak normally when i speak to and to another insofar as the events in syria i try something on the audience and i say can you mention two or three names of opposition leaders and the reason embarrassing silence they have not been able to portray themselves as a viable alternative to the regime the second point is that. i fully agree with professor sunni's the reason envision a genuine revolution at this point against the regime but i think he's also at the same time in irene a regional conflict between iran and iran's rivals an enemy in the region iran

tries to shore of the regime enemies and rivals like saudi arabia qatar and others are arming the opposition and of course in a country like syria when you will become the reno regional war and international conflict the population pays the price but mr ambassador if i can stay with you i mean is this a proxy war here but it's not described that way and in western mainstream media it's all about democracy and human rights isn't it but you said something very different. depending on which media you read and i try to read every piece that is written about syria i also contribute to western media and i've seen quite a few references to these proxy wars so. there's always an element of starry eyed people who. take a romantic view or evolution but i think the reason sufficient those of realistic

reading of what the geopolitics of these. chamfer got back to you in town what do you think about that. well i think i'm biased is spot on i think civil war is also a misleading term because you know the term internal war and civil war have been often use even during the cold war some of the worst most barbaric proxy wars financed by eastern west in africa and parts of asia and latin america were called civil wars the point is that the regime as well as opulent as as we know have some sectarian divisions but this is being heightened by usage of such terms we need to highlight the international war economy that is behind this whole syrian game rather than simply calling it a domestic uprising it was a domestic uprising but domestic uprisings can get hijacked and that's what we need to highlight other ways the narrative will go towards another security council resolution followed by possible nato intervention we've been trying to avoid this for a while and russia has some are holding the fort but i'm afraid that the propaganda

war is not so advanced that they're making it look like you know twenty thousand or twenty five thousand dead you know all kinds of figures coming from london and who knows who's behind all these things and kids venturing to even go back to it looks like a strategy of massacre marketing ok anything anyone that's killed in syria it's the fault of the regime and then we people tend to forget and i'm not defending a son but every regime will defend itself it will even use force. well certainly and then in some of the some of the massacres we later came out were not completely unprovoked there were fighting at the scene which is not to say there weren't were crimes committed by the regime i think there's quite a bit of an evidence the six six suggest that but it was within the context of fighting and this is why why don't make a moral judgment against oppressed people who feel the need to take up arms i think that the going towards an armed struggle was a major mistake by the syrian opposition in the first six months or so it was an

overwhelmingly nonviolent movement a popular movement the regime call them terrorists would back then there wasn't much in the way of terrorism this is a popular nonviolent democratic movement there are similar to what we saw in tunisia in egypt and yemen bahrain elsewhere but unfortunately you start again these defections from the syrian army people brought their guns with them joined with arms civilians joined with foreign supporters and outsiders and it is turned in to a a sort of more of a civil war with outside powers trying to to manipulate it and i think you know. the best hope for cereal is that all you hold that your statement it's all down to get away short break we'll go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on syrian state t.v. . one

industry in the soviet. display highly preschool. for the to catch up with the west. is. as for the. still being. live. live nation and free liquidations free in-store charges free to make amends free. free. free live the old free blog cancelling videos for your media

projects a free media to r.t. dot com. live to list still. listen to. the live. welcome back to prosecute the remind you we're talking about media coverage of the syrian crisis. live to list still live. ok stephen i go back to you in san jose you want to finish a point before we went to the break. if you look at uprisings that have successfully overthrown dictatorships in the past several decades you'll find that the largely nonviolent movements have a much stronger indigenous base they are more likely to lead to a genuinely democratic transition and less people get killed when the opposition

takes up arms however with a kind of martial values in vanguard mentality strict military hierarchy more authoritarian elements tend to dominate because they become dependent on foreign arms foreign governments come in and start influencing the movement and after and after the character was overthrown more often than not you end up with another dictatorship sometimes with the with the ongoing factional fighting and very often with over bearing influence by a foreign power that supported the armed struggle so again while not making moral judgments against people who feel that say feel need to take up arms against a repressive regime i think is a big mistake because it makes things a lot more messy a lot more complicated mr ambassador in do you think the the media under places sectarian differences in this conflict in the end i'm kind of going back to saudi arabia and qatar to go ahead. know no other know this point i think the media is

full of unfortunately correct description of the of the core of this conflict is a conflict between regime that is essentially a low i don't mean ated by members of the community. and the sunni and the sunni majority but i'd like to go back to an earlier point if i may know i think issue with. stephen because in the first six months when the. original of the demonstrations were quiet we had daily. events of police. should be highly men shooting into the demonstrators killing one hundred one hundred fifty a day that of course was. it wasn't designed to do that and say you're going to demonstrate demonstrators you know nonviolent they are saying this was nonviolent of course but it was very private about how long how long how long how long can you have a nonviolent opposition when the regime is using violence in egypt the decisive element

going to measure this as if it meant was that the army decided not to shoot at the civilians and the dictator had to go in syria this is not me in the case and this has become in the nature of of what is. almost a year and a half old this is. a long ongoing conflict ok if i got to turn around what about the sectarian number nine are under even got old and in egypt. you know the eighteen days egyptian uprising over nine hundred people were massacred by the police and military in egypt so you know they got out there largely nonviolent focused we've. we've seen and in many other kale. well i would also disagree with them in the shower on the shark and there are millions of people and i and thirty nine a look at this got it around go ahead. and the origins of people i mean if you look

at my own mar forty two years of brutal military rule and now you have evolutionary transformation towards a possible democratic future and the people have not taken up arms the burman majority so it's not necessary that you know violence is the answer and i would rather side with stephen on this point to say that you know mark mcgann the us once said and eye for an eye makes the whole world blind and i'm afraid that syria is too much and this could have been avoided it could have been slower the transformation could have been slower and people struggle for decades to get the desired outcome what is the hurry who are the regional powers who wanted a quick why did the pushing for it so fast and for a quick change this needs to be investigated what is the strategic game behind this whole so-called syrian uprising ok mr ambassador let's talk about the other proxies here what is the rounds role in this and that's maybe gets to the answer the question asked in turan. iran iran

supports the regime with primarily with money and weapons not so much diplomatically because iran doesn't have too much diplomatic leverage and so if you ask yourself how does the syrian regime over the syrian economy hold up. after so many months of violent disruption of the normal life part of the answer is you were in iranian supposed to have also been reports of participation of elements from hezbollah which is that you runs along i mean eleven on in together with the shah behind the. suppression of. sunni sunni opposition and unfortunately looks more and more like an extension of a sunni shia conflict in. the region well that's what i mean i was actually i was trying to get out earlier in the program no i'd even first i had i don't think that

quite that i don't think it's quite that simple i mean i think there certainly are distant elements within minority communities including the the christians alawite so i do oppose the regime the crony capitalist class which has really been the backbone of the assad regime and then respects is largely sunni we see the overwhelmingly opposition in bahrain fighting the us backed sunni dictatorship there they have gone on record in solidarity with the syrian opposition against assad i mean i think there is i mean i'm not denying certainly that you know they are sectarian elements within within the conflict and other conflicts but i think it's important not to overplay the sectarian division and similarly obviously iran has interests in keeping the syrian regime in power that is their only

real arab. ally and has been so for some time at the same time i don't want to. also has a tendency to exaggerate iran's role to some to some degree as well i mean what's going to happen i think ultimately is going to be settled by the syrian people and by and by the syrian government the my fear though is that the longer the bloodshed continues the longer the violence and both sides the more it's going to ossify the sectarian divisions and it could end up being self-fulfilling ok to go back to town one of the things western media doesn't like to admit is that assad does have some popularity with some groups but it's not mention too often. yeah that's the binary you see when you want to create a black and white situation when most of these kinds of conflicts have grey areas that's when you need binary and clear opposites you need a villain and you need a heroic uprising of the entire population that's been the legend of democratization in western popular myth but remember even samuel huntington who

wrote about the waves of democracy marketisation talked about how you know most democratic changes happen through peaceful negotiation and transfer of power rather than through muscle prizing so this kind of you know period of the masses you know running over the gates and or throwing the dictator out i think that's the kind of image they want to create because then you know you can justify foreign intervention saying that the masses need help and the point is that the masses in many parts of the world when we fought for serbia domination in our courts or in india we didn't get foreign help we didn't have external military assistance to through the british oh so this is the kind of situation. where the liberation of sardar is entwined with new imperial objectives and unless we separate the two i'm afraid that the middle east is hurting from arab spring into a long spell of war regional warfare with sectarian elements as well as with this

kind of vicious foreign intervention that is coached as humanitarianism and and sympathy for the human rights of the people of syria humanitarian imperialism we are living in that era and i'm expecting that it will it is on the downswing now because of the cuts to the u.s. military budget in the european union. own economic problems but still that game is being played out humanitarianism and the whole call for saving and somehow supporting the people of syria from outside and that is what i'm really afraid we're heading into we're the liberators are going to be foreigners once more ok mr ambassador that's a very good point is the west you know is that i'm talking about perceptions or they're the good guys in the liberators of the oppressed syrian people that's what it looks like is it that black and white. no actually worse they're worse than position is much more ambiguous than is often described you know they're getting aid we're getting aid from the west in the ally you have in the

region that's very clear yeah yeah but at the same time if you look at. it what the united states western europe could have done by way of pressuring the regime you find out that they could have done more and they don't do everything they have in the political diplomatic economic arsenal to push the regime. they know where you hide behind the russian opposition to sanctions in the security council and my my thesis here is that since the opposition has not been able to portray a clear vision of what syria would look like after the toppling or the fall of bush era loss and there is fear of the break breakdown of the syrian state spillover effect into neighboring countries there western countries are not pushing as hard as they could award given this complexity ok stephen i would it looks like that's

already happening to syria go ahead. you know i mean it's interesting that a lot of people forget that way syria's cooperated with the west at times and suppressing the palestinians the lebanese national movement during the early phases of the lebanese civil war in the one nine hundred seventy s. the syria was backed by the united states in the coup against. at the end of one nine hundred ninety series been a destination for the so-called extraordinary rendition program where a terrorist suspects were sent to syria to be tortured including and innocent canadian man who have now had the same name as a suspect to use he was grabbed at the kennedy airport in new york and sent to syria for nine months of a brutal torture. and so you know serious sometimes been willing to cooperate with the west in certain areas and there's concern about some of the salafi elements in the opposition and there and so there is indeed some ambivalence about

what's going to happen what's going to happen later the problem with syria and i think it what makes it makes it more difficult situation is unlike libya egypt cetera where you had essentially one man rule. syria is much the way i'm sorry i'm going to have to jump in here gentlemen we've run out of time and many thanks to my guest tel aviv today and in san jose and thanks to our viewers for watching us here see you next time and remember the last time.