Very early Sunday morning last week residents of northeastern Israel again woke up to the sound of low-flying fighter jets.
Five Israeli warplanes flew toward Mount Hermon on the border with Syria after the buzzing sound of a drone had been audible prior to the arrival of the jets.
Once the planes arrived above the Golan Heights, their lights were extinguished and moments later the roar of the engines faded away.
A short time later the aircraft, probably of the F-151 type, were returning from their mission and were spotted heading to the south of Israel.
Because this pattern has repeated itself dozens of times over the last few years, the conclusion was obvious that the Israeli Air Force (IAF) had again carried out an airstrike against targets in the area around the Syrian capital Damascus, which is close to Mount Hermon.
Arab media were the first to publish details of the attack on “a residential area” in Damascus that reportedly killed 15 people.
Western media subsequently indulged in copycat journalism and used reports by the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) about the Israeli strike, claiming a building was hit housing “Iranian military installations.”
Before we get into what really happened, let’s talk about using SOHR as a source for news about Syria, and about media reporting on Syria in general.
The ‘organization’ does indeed operate from London and, according to its own statements, uses a network of contacts in Syria.
Now let’s look at what, in all likelihood, actually happened.
Reuters published a more detailed report on Wednesday, February 22, with two Arabic-speaking journalists from the news organization speaking to people familiar with the situation on the ground during the IAF attack and who revealed more details.
According to these Reuters sources, a meeting was being held in the building over Iran’s program of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and guided missiles when it was hit by IAF missiles.
This meeting was attended by, among others, engineers from Iran and Syria, while images released after the IAF attack also showed that the lower part of the building was heavily damaged by the missiles.
The Reuters sources confirmed that the attack targeted the basement of the building where the meeting was held, while other witnesses said officials from Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attended the meeting, where the further development of the guided missiles and UAV program of Hezbollah was on the agenda.
An unnamed Israeli official told Reuters that some of the victims were hit by Syrian surface-to-air missiles that missed their targets, and by revealing this actually admitted that Israel was behind the attack.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also held a series of five meetings with top IDF, IAF, Mossad and AMAN officials recently to discuss military action against Iran, according to Channel 12 News.
Two weeks ago Iran further stepped up its psychological war against Israel by publishing a photo of a ballistic missile with the Hebrew text: Mavet L’Yisrael (Death to Israel) written on it.
Netanyahu responded to this and other recent Iranian provocations by saying that the only thing that can hold off rogue regimes from reaching nuclear weapons capacity is to develop a credible military threat or to take military action.
The latter now seems to be in the final stages of preparation as the unusually high number of IAF activities in Israel’s airspace last week seemed to indicate.
No comments:
Post a Comment