Israeli Air Force Chief: Israel Has Attacked Syrian Arms Convoys Nearly 100 Times in 5 Years

• Air Force Chief: Israel Has Attacked Syrian Arms Convoys Nearly 100 Times in 5 Years
  by Jason Ditz, http://news.antiwar.com/
  Providing the most specific details yet on Israel’s ongoing series of military strikes inside war-torn Syria, Air Force Chief Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel revealed today that Israel has carried out nearly 100 distinct military actions over the last five years specifically related to what they believed were Hezbollah-bound arms convoys.
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  This comes less than a month after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was caught on an open microphone admitting to “dozens” of strikes in Syria, though obviously this is far greater, because many Israel strikes on Syria clearly were not Hezbollah related.
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  Indeed, recently reported Israeli strikes in Syria have almost always been the result of stray artillery shells landing in empty territory inside the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and Israel responding by attacking Syrian military bases in the area.
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  Maj. Gen. Eshel appeared to offer a hint at this discrepancy, bragging that many of Israel’s strikes had managed to “go under the radar,” and while he insisted Israel acts “irrespective of the risks,” he also appeared quite keen on Israel carrying out such attacks without getting into an overt war over them.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkKQs5k4H84]

• Israel Has Been Secretly Funding Syrian Rebels (ISIS, Al Qaeda) For Years
  by Tyler Durden, http://www.zerohedge.com/
  Earlier, when discussing why the Syrian “rebels” fighting Assad are in “turmoil”, we said that as a result of the ongoing Qatar crisis the various Saudi and Qatari supply chains supporting the rebels, both in terms of weapons and funding, had dried up due to the diplomatic fallout involving Qatar and Saudi Arabia. “Together with Turkey and the United States, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been major sponsors of the insurgency, arming an array of groups that have been fighting to topple Syria’s Iran-backed president.”
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  We concluded that “the rebellion against Assad now seems moot, which is why the most likely outcome is a continued phase-out of support for forces fighting the Syria government until eventually the situation reverts back to its pre-2011 “status quo.”
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  That, however, may have been premature as it was missing a key piece of data, one which was just revealed by the WSJ and which many had suspected. According to the Journal, Israel and Saudi Arabia have been alligned from the onset of the Syrian conflict, “with Israel supplying Syrian rebels near its border with cash as well as food, fuel and medical supplies for years, a secret engagement in the enemy country’s civil war aimed at carving out a buffer zone populated by friendly forces.”
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  The Israeli army is in regular communication with rebel groups and its assistance includes undisclosed payments to commanders that help pay salaries of fighters and buy ammunition and weapons, according to interviews with about half a dozen Syrian fighters. Israel has established a military unit that oversees the support in Syria—a country that it has been in a state of war with for decades—and set aside a specific budget for the aid, said one person familiar with the Israeli operation.
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  This news comes as a major surprise because while it was well known that Israel has provided medical help for Syrian civilians and fighters inside its own borders in the past, with the IDF retaliating to occasional stray rockets in the restive border region with reprisals, it was previously thought that the Israeli authorities largely stay out of the complicated six-year-old conflict next door.
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  That now appears to have been dead wrong. “Israel stood by our side in a heroic way,” said Moatasem al-Golani, spokesman for the rebel group Fursan al-Joulan, or Knights of the Golan. “We wouldn’t have survived without Israel’s assistance.”
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  read more.

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