George Galloway posted this photo today with the caption "What if this was your Dad? #Gaza." This man is not in Gaza and he is not Palestinian. He is Syrian, like me. His name is Mohammed Mohiedin Anis, known as Abu Omar. AFP photographer Joseph Eid took this photo in March 2017, in the ruins of Abu Omar's bedroom in al-Shaar, eastern Aleppo, the neighborhood devastated in the regime's 2016 offensive to retake the city. Abu Omar was a collector of antiques and vintage cars. The war took his home and most of his collection. He came back anyway, sat on his bed in the rubble, lit his pipe and played a record. The whole world knew this picture as the face of Aleppo's destruction. And Galloway knows exactly who destroyed Aleppo, because he was on their payroll. In 2012, Galloway began hosting a show on Al Mayadeen, the Beirut channel that has never disclosed its backers and is widely seen as the voice of Iran's "Axis of Resistance." He was reportedly paid around £3,000 an episode. He also presented on Iran's state channel Press TV, and spent nearly a decade on Putin's RT. The Axis: the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah, the Iraqi militias, the Houthis and, until December 2024, the Assad regime. For over 13 years after the 2011 uprising, Assad survived only because the IRGC, Hezbollah and Russia fought his war for him. When the regime finally collapsed, he fled to Moscow and was granted "humanitarian" asylum. The same humanity he denied every Syrian he bombed. Who doesn't remember the barrel bombs on bakeries and markets? The sarin in Ghouta and Khan Sheikhoun? The chlorine in Douma? Galloway remembers. On his show he called Assad "the last bastion of Arab dignity." When Assad gassed Douma in 2018, Galloway pushed the "staged attack" conspiracy, even though the OPCW confirmed chlorine was used. None of this is new. This is the man who stood before Saddam Hussein in 1994 and saluted his "courage" and "indefatigability." He was suspended from the House of Commons after an inquiry found strong circumstantial evidence that Saddam's regime, with his connivance, used the Oil-for-Food program, meant to feed starving Iraqi children, to fund his Mariam Appeal campaign. In 2014 he declared Bradford an "Israel-free zone": no Israeli goods, no Israeli academics, not even Israeli tourists. Police logged it as a hate incident. Last year he flew to Tehran to accept an award named after Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, called him a "martyr," and boasted that his most treasured possession is Haniyeh's personal passport. Then he flew straight to Moscow to applaud Putin's Victory Day parade. Today, the self-proclaimed anti-imperialist lives in what he calls "exile," broadcasting from Russia and China, lecturing the West about freedom. This is not an honest mistake. It is the method of Galloway and his camp, and it is what they mean by "by any means necessary." When the truth doesn't serve the cause, you invent a new one. A Syrian father, ruined by Assad and his Iranian and Russian patrons, becomes a Gazan victim of Israel. The real killers get erased, and the propagandist who defended them on their payroll gets applause from a Western audience that never bothers to check. Syrians remember who bombed Aleppo. They remember who went on TV to defend it. Abu Omar is not your propaganda, shameless George. @georgegalloway