by Keith Woods, The Unz Review:
Zionist apologists commonly present support for Israel as a necessary extension of opposition to radical Islam and the threat of Jihadi terrorism. “Support us fighting them here, so you don’t have to fight them there” is a common plea to the West from Zionist spokespeople within Israel. Yet when it comes to the Syrian Civil War, the conflict which sparked the major refugee crisis responsible for flooding Europe with millions of Muslims, Israel has been firmly on the side of Jihad, even and most particularly Al-Qaeda.
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Israeli support for Jihadis in Syria first became known in the West when reports circulated of Israel providing medical care to anti-Assad fighters on its contested border with Syria.
Israel portrayed this as a principled humanitarian response, but in 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported that only a third of those treated by Israel were women and children. Electronic Intifada:
The rest have been fighters who Israeli officials admit are not screened and likely belong to al-Nusra.
Once it became undeniable, Israel confessed it was treating fighters, but claimed that they were moderates.
But after al-Nusra captured and ejected UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights last August, there was no longer any doubt that al-Nusra was the dominant force among opposition fighters in the area.
Efraim Halevy, a former head of Mossad, defended the aid on humanitarian grounds, but confirmed there was a “tactical consideration”. In a 2016 interview, Halevy dismissed the idea that Israel would suffer any blowback from supporting Al-Nusra, the Syrian offshoot of Al-Qaeda. While rejecting the idea Israel might also offer medical assistance to Hezbollah fighters on similar humanitarian grounds, he explained that the difference between Hezbollah and Al Nusra Front was that Israel was “not specifically targeted by Al-Qaeda”.
In 2019, an outgoing Israeli army commander Gadi Eisenkot confirmed suspicions that as well as medical aid, Israel had been providing lethal material support for Syrian Jihadists. Eisenkot said that Israel had been years providing light arms weapons to rebel groups along the Syrian/Israeli border. Eisenkot also acknowledged that “we carried out thousands of attacks [in recent years] without taking responsibility and without asking for credit.”
Israeli support for these groups actually went well beyond the “light arms” Eisenkot acknowledged. In September 2018, Foreign Policy magazine reported that Israel had funded “at least 12 rebel groups in southern Syria”, based on reports from “more than two dozen commanders and rank-and-file members of these groups.” The transfers included:
Assault rifles, machine guns, mortar launchers and transport vehicles. Israeli security agencies delivered the weapons through three gates connecting the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to Syria—the same crossings Israel used to deliver humanitarian aid to residents of southern Syria suffering from years of civil war.
Israel also provided salaries to rebel fighters, paying each one about $75 a month, and supplied additional money the groups used to buy arms on the Syrian black market, according to the rebels and local journalists.
Israel also carried out numerous airstrikes in the region which exclusively benefited groups like Al-Nusra front. In one incident, Israel responded to some rebel group firing rockets into the occupied Golan Heights by launching airstrikes on Syrian army artillery positions.
