Sending Messages

A Comment by Tony Sayegh

It has now been confirmed that Israeli bombers penetrated deep into northern Syria, close to the Turkish border, and bombed some "target." The bombing left a "big hole in the desert" as CNN put it.

There was speculation that weapons from Iran and destined for Hizbullah "may have been targeted."

The U.S. military is "happy to have Israel carry the message to both Syria and Iran that they can get in and out and strike when necessary."

Obviously USrael has sent a message to Syria. A part of the message is that USraeli jets have the capability to jam the Russian air defense system recently sold to Syria. How else were the jets able to enter from the Mediterranean and reach all the way to eastern Syria? Why was this new, sophisticated, system unable to shoot down any of the jets?

Another message to Syria is to abandon Iran and to join the rest of the Arab puppet regimes in their surrender conference in New York this fall. This was the explicit message from the Arab League to Syria.

In the war of messages, was the rocket attack by Islamic Jihad on an Israeli army base north of Gaza, which left some 60 Israeli soldiers wounded, also a message? Considering that Islamic Jihad has strong ties to Syria and keeping in mind that this was by far the highest toll inflicted by the Palestinian resistance in a single rocket attack, was this a reply message from Syria? Coming only a few days after the Israeli attack on Syria, the timing might not be coincidental.

Syria in the past chose others (such as Hizbullah) in delivering reply messages to Israel rather than reply directly. Is part of the reply message that the Palestinians now have more effective rockets with more accuracy, payload and longer range? After all the base hit is near Ashkelon (contrary to the IOF report) which is not that close to the Gaza border.

I have the feeling that the two events are interconnected. Stay tuned, because we are in the early stages of provocation which will likely culminate in an all-out war in the months ahead.