lennart waaras blogg

Denna tredje artikel om Israels aktivt militära inblandning i kriget i Syrien visar att de stöd till rebel-grupper som slåss mot Bashar Al Assads legitima regim inte är några oskyldiga opponenter utan tillhör den salafistiska gren som är affilierde till Daesh/IS.

Israeli defense minister met with Syrian rebels, former IDF commander reveals in a first interview.

In a bombshell admission, a former senior Israeli commander has said that former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon personally met with Syrian rebels at the height of the Syrian war.

Maj. Gen. Gershon Hacohen was speaking at an Israeli Democracy Institute conference when he made a stunning claim – Ya’alon, who was Israel’s chief of defense from 2013 to May 2016, held a meeting with a group of Syrian rebels during his tenure. Hacohen, who was Israeli Defence Forces Staff Corps Commander before retiring in September 2014, said that he was also present at the never-before-reported meet-up.

Hacohen refused to specify when the meeting took place and or the subject matter of the discussions. He, however, offered a brief portrayal of his three Syrian ‘counterparts,’ saying that Ya’alon asked one if he was a Salafist because the minister ”wanted to understand who they were.”The rebel Ya’alon addressed was apparently somewhat perturbed by the prospect of cooperation with Israel.

”He [Ya’alon] asked one of them, ‘Tell me, are you a Salafist?’ And he said, ‘I really don’t know what a Salafist is. If it means that I pray more, then yes. Once I would pray once a week, on Fridays, now I pray five times a day. On the other hand, a Salafist isn’t meant to cooperate with the Zionists,” Haaretz reported, citing Hacohen’s recollection of the meeting.

Following Hacohen’s revelation, the Jerusalem Post reported, citing its own sources, that the meeting did indeed take place and that the main topic on the agenda was “humanitarian assistance.” The JP’s sources said the outcome of the talks was an agreement on humanitarian aid deliveries to the residents of the Syrian part of the Golan Heights.

The effort, which reportedly started as a one-time goodwill gesture, expanded to become Operation Good Neighbor, which formally inaugurated its headquarters in June 2016. Since then, Israel has been openly assisting the rebels, but insists that its assistance is strictly humanitarian and includes treating wounded militants and their families, supplying them with fuel, medicine, food, clothing and other essential products.

The operation was reportedly wrapped up this week after Syrian forces retook control over the Golan Heights from the rebels.

However, numerous reports have suggested that Israel’s support of the rebels is not as benign as Tel Aviv seeks to portray. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that the alleged humanitarian assistance, that had begun as early as 2013, included cash payments to rebel commanders who, in turn, used the money to pay militants’ salaries and buy weapons and equipment. It was reported that one group received a monthly allowance of some $5,000 from the Israeli military. The handouts were conditional upon the rebels’ ability to keep Hezbollah, which Israel sees as Iran’s proxies, away from the border.

Earlier this year, the Jerusalem Post was forced to hastily remove an explosive report on the IDF’s admission that it provided Syrian rebels with light weapons. The managing editor of the newspaper told RT in September that the story was taken down for ”for security reasons evidently,” while the IDF declined to comment on the issue.

The outgoing IDF chief of staff has acknowledged that Israel has been bombing Syria on a “near-daily” basis for years, in a massive military campaign allegedly aimed at degrading Tehran’s supposed military buildup in the region.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) rarely acknowledge striking specific targets in Syria but its outgoing chief of staff just openly confessed to running a large-scale bombing campaign in its neighbor’s territory. In 2018 alone, Israel dropped around 2,000 bombs on alleged Iran-linked targets, Gadi Eisenkot told the New York Times in his final interview as chief of staff of the IDF before he retires next week.

“We struck thousands of targets without claiming responsibility or asking for credit,” Eisenkot stated, confessing to carrying out strikes on a “near-daily” basis.

Later Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that Israeli air forces attacked a warehouse at Damascus airport late Friday, verifying the information issued by the Syrian military. Netanyahu said the IDF has “succeeded impressively in stopping Iran’s military build up in Syria, and in this context, the IDF has attacked hundreds of times Iranian and Hezbollah targets.”

While the Syrian government repeatedly accuses the Jewish state of constantly violating its sovereignty and aiding the terrorists by their raids in the country’s airspace, Eisenkot claimed the Israeli actions are justified – and that, anyway, neither Damascus nor Tehran can do anything about it.

We have complete intelligence superiority in this area. We enjoy complete aerial superiority. We have strong deterrence and we have the justification to act.

Despite the Lieutenant General’s claim about a moral high ground in the battle against the perceived Iranian threat, the Israeli Air Force was caught in several reckless –and sometimes lethal– actions during their missions in Syria. On Christmas Day the Israeli jets used two civilian aircraft in flight as cover to engage targets in Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry said, noting that the IDF’s F-16s flew in as civilian jets were landing at Beirut and Damascus airports.

While a tragedy involving civilian airliners was averted last month, similar Israeli tactics led to horrific consequences before. On September 17, Israeli jets put Russian Il-20 recon plane into the path of Syrian air defense interceptor missile after failing to give Moscow enough warning of a strike on Syrian targets.

The Israeli tactics resulted in the deaths of all 15 Russian crew on board and compelled Moscow to supply Syria with S-300 missile defense systems. Russian also warned that, in the event of any threat to its servicemen deployed in the country, it will jam radio and satellite signals from military aircraft approaching from the Mediterranean, which seemingly forced Israel to slightly adjust its bombing routine and routes.

Yet, despite repeated dangerous behavior in the air, Israel continues to intrude in Syrian airspace under the “the campaign between wars” military strategy which envisions a continuous and lengthy engagement to degrade an enemy’s military capabilities. Developed by Eisenkot, the tactic was given the green light by the cabinet in January 2017.

Since then Israel carried out thousands of sorties, allegedly striking “over 1,000 Iranian targets.” Yet Damascus claims the majority of Israeli missiles and bombs are being routinely intercepted by the Syrian air defenses. No official details or visual proof of the Israeli raids’ results has ever been presented, except for the time when Israel rushed to disavow any blame for the downing of the Russian plane and shifted the blame for the tragedy onto Damascus and Tehran.