Asghar Bukhari: Israel’s covert war on Muslims

Asghar Bukhari of MPACUK says Zionists have launched a targeted campaign to discredit him because of his pro-Palestinian activism. Here, he unveils their techniques…

I am going to tell you my story, one where violence, intimidation, letters in the night and psychological torture techniques were used to silence me.

I have been interested in the Palestinian struggle for freedom and the wider struggle for Muslim freedom (although I did not understand it in those terms) ever since I can remember.

But it was only when I became a fully fledged activist did I encounter the dangers it brought with it. I always put it down to being part of the game, a risk Muslims had to run by being vocal — but I realise now, this was a mistake, for it allowed Zionists (those who support Israel) to get away with the most sinister tactics against activists without the threat of anyone holding a spotlight to them.

Over the years, I have seen both individual and organised attempts by Zionists at every level to try to silence me speaking up for Palestine — including violence.

On an organised level, Zionists use their influence in various bodies to smear those they wanted to gag. Take the example of the Union of Jewish Students, a body I was later to hear was funded from Israel.

It used its lobbying influence within the NUS and its access to the then President of the NUS, to lie about MPACUK, the Pro Palestinian organisation I am a member of. It unbelievably linked us to Al-Muhajiroun a group widely known to be the polar opposite of MPACUK. Al-Mahajoroun do not even consider MPACUK as Muslims!

As a result the National Union of Students passed a motion, without ever speaking to us and despite Muslim students opposing it.

They are quick to campaign when trying to mute opposition voices too. A number of times after I had appeared on television, call-in campaigns would inundate the television station — asking why I was allowed on. So much so, that a senior member of a News Channel remarked, “They really have it in for you!”

Targeted campaign

The brilliant book, ‘They Dare To Speak Out’ documents, how mass complaints into the media and other institutions is standard practice for the Zionist lobby.

Since the book was published, it has become public knowledge that Israel employs thousands to troll the net, creating websites, targeting wiki pages, and trolling activists to smear, silence and intimidate anyone speaking out against its racist policies — they are now so widespread, that the word “hasbara” has become synonymous amongst Palestinians activists with — Zionist harassment.

I have personal experience of this, go to my Twitter page on any single day and you will find Zionists racially abusing me and even threatening me with violence.

Type my name into a search engine and see the pro Israel linked websites smearing me and if you really want some fun, test it yourself — go to my Wiki page and try to write something positive — I don’t know if this article will change anything, but at the time this article is being written, any positive Wiki entry, is erased and changed within a matter of hours.

And these internet trolls are not just a nuisance Muslims have to live with when venturing onto the net. After heated arguments with pro-Israel advocates on the internet, I have had letters posted through my door at night saying ‘we are watching you’; people searching my bins in the middle of the night, and even people contacting me saying “I know where you live,” only to post a freshly taken picture of my home on the net a little while later — someone had walked past my home within hours of the argument and taken it.

If one tactic didn’t work — they moved to another, each time, their tactics became more and more sinister. Darker and more dangerous.

I regret not documenting every incident of harassment, and the article would go on for too long if I tried now but suffice to say there have been many.

Many Muslims suffer a deluded sense of importance

The latest attack on me even took me by surprise. You see I am a practical man, I don’t like to suffer the disease I see of many Muslims — a deluded sense of importance (despite my on-line persona giving the impression otherwise). I didn’t really think myself important enough to warrant such a focus by Israel — I was wrong.

You see, I’ve seen too many Muslims, make fools of themselves as they strut around like peacocks, small men with egos tens times their ability or importance.

I understand, or at least I thought I did, my own measure. I was after all, just an activist, nothing more. I appeared on the odd television channel to talk about the causes of terrorism, but lets face it, sticking a camera in someone’s face for two minutes, didn’t make you any more intelligent or important —remember they could always take that camera away.

The harassment I had received, I had put down as normal in the battle for Palestinian rights. I didn’t think that made me a specific target, I just thought, everyone got hell, when they spoke for Muslims and Palestine.

Then it all changed. My home was broken into — and nothing taken but a shoe?

Missing shoes and sandals

Let me explain. Odd things had been happening in my home for some time. Things had been moved around, windows that my wife assiduously closed were open when we returned, the window seals on my car were pulled up, the gas on the cooker on, and on and on it went. Each time I put it down to forgetfulness, mistakes, or something none of us could explain, I just shrugged it off and got on with it.

Either way, I didn’t think much of it.

But on this night, something happened I knew was nothing to do with me being forgetful. It was all to do with a new pair of shoes.

Now before you write this off, read till the end — judge my hunch only after you have heard all the facts.

Let me start at the beginning. I had brought a new pair of shoes and left them where I always do, in the porch. I was looking forward to wearing them, that’s why I know for certain where I put them. A small detail, but significant.

The next morning, I awoke to find one of my new shoes missing and even stranger, the remaining shoe was inside the house. A place where we don’t wear shoes. It was odd. Could someone have moved it? I asked around the family and no one knew anything about it.

I searched for it, but there was no sign of it. Then I realised my sandals had also gone. That’s when I really knew something was up. I am a 44 year old man, and have never had a pairs of shoes disappear from my home in all that time. Now a pair of slippers and a single shoe had gone in the same night, from the same place.

I racked my brain as to what could have happened. Nothing explained it. They had not just gone, one of them had been moved — placed on the inside of a locked fire door.

Facebook ban

I had heard of this type of thing from another Muslim leader a few months before, she too had had the same type of weird experience. Things disappearing, moving — silly little things — unexplainable. So petty that to mention them would open you up to ridicule. It had spooked her so much, she had burst into tears to me on the phone.

My mind was racing, but I was still not 100% sure when I decided to post my thoughts, my hunch, on Facebook. Nothing made sense -but that’s when the really odd things started to happen.

Within hours Facebook had banned me and a global campaign against me started.

Within hours, Facebook had decided to ban me. They also banned all videos being uploaded onto the MPACUK Facebook page. In effect stopping me communicating to the very audience that had heard my message. The timing seemed far more than chance to me. No sooner than the ban took effect, scores of Zionists started to troll my page attacking me.

The story was passed to the media and a Zionist campaign started. Thousands of Zionists from around the world, including the-banned-from-Britain extremist, Robert Spencer, joined it; they were soon joined by the far right, amongst them Tommy Robinson and along with him, the usual brown faces who were paid good money to hate on the Muslim community — people like Maajid Nawaz.

Twitter was their main forum of attack. Over the next few days, vile racist abuse, ridicule and harassment — check my Twitter account today reader and you will probably see they haven’t stopped.

Their strategy was clear. They painted the narrative as a case of Muslim paranoia, something to be ridiculed.

It was high stakes for both parties. I knew their aim was to discredit me. If they succeeded another voice for Palestine would have been silenced.

High stakes

But for them, the stakes were higher still.

You see, thousands of British Jews fly out to Israel every year. Whilst in Israel they are trained by the military, including the intelligence services. Although some of them denied it, there was wide suspicion that they also took part as front line activities including both killing and maiming those they were sent to occupy — the Palestinians.

The hatred of Muslims by Israelis is legendary. You don’t have to look far, to see Zionist Jews at far-right marches waving the Israeli flag, nor notice the disturbing pattern of funders to the Islamophobia Industry who have links to Israel or noticed the racist trolls who hound Muslims on the net and their connection with Israel — barely concealing themselves as “atheists,” “far-right,” “liberals” and a myriad of others, to conceal the real reason for their Islamophobic hatred.

If my case gained traction, questions inevitably would be asked – are some of these Zionist Jews coming back and deploying their military training against Muslims and pro Palestinians activists back in the Western world — or worse was a foreign government, Israel, teaching them to target activists in the Western world?

That would be a whole heap of trouble for them. Had I, an activist from East London, inadvertently opened a massive can of worms?

I understand now why the campaign against me had to be so large, why ridiculing me was almost military in its ferocity.

I thought about it and finally decided to respond and made my first video — explaining my hunch. Until then, it looked bad for me to be honest.

Never underestimate the idiocy of the non-political Muslim

Muslim groups did not understand how big a story this was. Instead of demanding answers as to why Muslim speakers were harassed — they shut up, which is the only action they are experts at — that and being dumb.

Some apolitical Muslims too took to disbelief and ridicule. It was like a black black man laughing along with the a white racist as he insulted another black man. You can never underestimate the idiocy of the non-political Muslim. Just when you think you have gauged their dumbness — they surpass it.

To see my own Muslim brothers and sisters laugh along with the very people, who would if they had the chance, see them wiped off the face of this earth, murdered if they could — and not even offer a word of support to their own brother, proved to me how low some Muslims had sunk and how brainwashed they were.

It was pretty much me, alone versus every type of high profile Muslim hater out there you can think of —even the Israeli Ambassador got in on the trick. I was yet to realise how sinister his message was.

An attempt at psychological torture

The first video did well, over 40,000 people viewed it, showing how much interest the story had generated. It was my side, my explanation of why I made the initial post on Facebook and why I felt Zionists were behind it. At that point, I did not have much more than a hunch to go on. That was about to change.

Someone sent me an article from the Guardian. It made my jaw drop. It detailed how a psychological torture technique had been designed by the KGB against activists opposed to the regime. These operations were given a name, Zersetzung — literally corrosion or undermining. It was still being used today by intelligence agencies. I had read that Israel had used exactly this technique against pro Palestinian academics in America.

“According to former Stasi officers the aim was to “switch off” regime opponents by disrupting their private or family lives. Tactics included removing pictures from walls, replacing one variety of tea with another, and even sending a vibrator to a target’s wife. Many thought they were going mad; some suffered breakdowns; a few killed themselves.

The KGB concluding that “soft” methods of torture were preferable to open forms of persecution. The advantage of psychological operations was their deniability — important for a regime that wanted to maintain its international respectability.”

The thought that someone, some group out there was using techniques designed to torture the minds of its opponents was chilling.

Wikipedia explains the devastating impact of this sinister program on the minds and reputation of its targets:

“To threaten or intimidate or cause psychosis the intelligence agency assured itself access to the targets living quarters and left visible traces of its presence, by adding, removing, and modifying objects.

“The aim was a systematic degradation of the reputation, image, and prestige (of the victim). The victim would know that one part was true, verifiable and degrading, but he could never prove it, (since the other part was) false, plausible, irrefutable, and always degrading. A systematic organization of social and professional failures for demolishing the self-confidence of the individual”

Thanks to numerous files of the Stasi made public, the use of measures of Zersetzung is well documented. Estimates of the number of victims of such measures could be up to 10,000, of which 5,000 sustained irreversible damage.

Slippers found! — The fantastic Mr Fox

A day after my Jewish neighbours, both of whom are lawyers, stopped my wife and pointed out that they had found some slippers in their garden, they were placed, next to some feathers. They surmised a fox must have had something to do with it, they didn’t know much more as they had been on holiday.

The slippers, ripped and scuffed up, were the final nail in the coffin of any doubt that there was any plausible explanation at all for the strange and odd things that had happened over the last few months.

You see for those slippers to have been taken by an animal, that animal would have had to enter not just one door, but two, and then on the way out — lock both of them. There was no chance on earth an animal had taken my slippers or my shoes. I had been targeted for Zersetzung.

I released more videos explaining how impossible this was, but by then the story had died down. They had done their utmost to discredit me and in some respect had succeeded.

However, in trying to defeat me, the bungled attempt at trying to play with my mind had failed. They had made a story, where there was none. If they had left my post on Facebook, tens of thousands would never have never known about their actions — the invisible hand of Israel and its attempts to covertly destroy its opposition would have remained undocumented.

But in their rush to silence me, they made a strategic misjudgement — they decided to go big with it — they panicked, and played a hand they did not have to play and that misjudgement reader — is why you are reading this right now.

As for me — I would walk bare foot to defend my people.

“And [remember, O Muhammad], when those who disbelieved plotted against you to restrain you or kill you or evict you [from Makkah]. But they plan, and Allah plans. And Allah is the best of planners”. The Holy Quran

On Twitter @AsgharBukhari

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