Israel treats Sunni militias like ISIS as pesticide against Hezbollah and Assad:
While the US was intervening to attack the Sunni jihadis, the IDF underlined its view of the real enemy by knocking down one of Assad’s antique fighters out of the sky.
That ancient MiG wasn’t downed because it was a threat to Israel, or because it was over the line. It was downed as a gesture. Bibi and his Likud allies are sulking, because the way they see it, we’re bombing the wrong Syrians. The Israeli elite has always wanted the US to intervene in the Syrian Civil War — but not against the Sunni jihadists, as we’re doing now. They want American planes and drones to obliterate the other side — the Alawites’ Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its Hezbollah allies.
Nobody ever seems to mention it, but the supposedly fearsome IS now owns the ground right under Israel’s Golan Heights fortifications, after moving in in June 2014 when the weary SAA, tired of being shelled by the IDF, moved out.
So IS has been in place right there on Israel’s border for months now—and there’s been no attack from Israel. Yes, folks, you might actually get the impression that the Israelis — who know a thing or two about threat assessment — just don’t take IS very seriously.
In fact, IS is a convenient little irritant, as seen from Jerusalem, a useful way to annoy the real enemy—the Shia-Alawite-Iran bloc.
This guy doesn’t have a clue about what happens in Golan. ISIL is in the North of Syria and the Center, not in the South. The South belongs to the rebel forces, but not ISIL. They are supplied by Jordan.
Lucklucky is right. The “War Nerd” is completely wrong.
Jabhat al Nusra, Syria’s Qaeda affiliate, controls part of the Golan Heights, and therefore shares a border with Israel. Nusra is not the same as Da’esh, and in fact is at war with Da’esh.
Israel’s policy is to stay the fuck out of Syria’s civil war, and this is the best decision the Israeli government has made in decades. The Syrian conflict is extremely destructive and dangerous to Israel, but Netanyahu and other Israeli officials seem to understand that there is no benefit they can gain from intervening in it to favor one side or another.
The fact that Israel occasionally attacks Hezballah and other Iranian-backed targets in Syria is at best tangentially related. Iran and Hezballah have been at war with Israel for decades and have proven that they can and will attack Israelis at home and abroad. Taking an opportunity to reduce their capabilities is just smart.