Under the title “Israel’s Support for Syrian Opposition Exposed,” Kit Klarenberg highlighted on Dec. 14 in Al Mayadeen, Israel’s close support for the terrorist networks in Syria. He draws on a 2018 article in Foreign Policy, “Inside Israel’s Secret Program To Back Syrian Rebels,” as well as extensive contemporary quotes from members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), on their admiration and friendship with Israel. He notes Benjamin Netanyahu openly taking credit for the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and his plan to further expand Israel into the Golan Heights, and perhaps into Syria.
The Foreign Policy article, Klarenberg writes, “spelled out in detail ‘Israel’s secret program to back Syrian rebels.’ It documented how, since 2013, Tel Aviv ‘armed and funded at least 12 rebel groups’ in the country. The ostensible purpose was to ‘prevent Iran-backed fighters and militants of the Islamic State from taking up positions near the Israeli border.’” The “vast” military support to several terrorist groups fighting Assad “was funneled via the illegally occupied Golan Heights. Israel even ‘provided salaries to rebel fighters … and supplied additional money the groups used to buy arms on the Syrian black market.’ Initially, arms transferred were ‘mostly U.S.-manufactured’, but these were later ‘switched’ to ‘non-American weapons … apparently to conceal the source of the assistance.’”
He explains that Israel had a “long-running operation to provide medical assistance to insurgents wounded in the Syrian dirty war in field hospitals dotted across Golan…. From 2012 onwards, UN peacekeeping forces consistently testified to witnessing injured Al Qaeda, al-Nusra and ISIS fighters being treated by Israeli military doctors across the region.”
He concludes that HTS has done nothing to protest or try to stop the continuing Israeli destruction of the Syrian military capacities (up to 80%, he asserts), even though it leaves the country defenseless.
