The conflict in Syria has been even closer to home for Israel this week. Photo: Signpost showing distance between Israel, Syria in Golan Heights. Illustrative. By Joshua Spurlock
A brewing Israel-Syria conflict is heating up, and it’s even started a war of words after Syria falsely claimed to have shot down two Israeli aircraft. Over the last several years during the Syrian civil war, occasional weapons have been fired from Syria into Israel as has happened this week. But this time, conflict has been more forceful and prolonged than usual.
With half a dozen projectiles launched from Syria at Israel in the last week alone, Israel has been striking back at artillery positions of the Syrian regime, according to the IDF Spokesperson’s Twitter feed. During one of those Israeli forays into Syria, the Syrians fired two surface-to-air missiles according to IDF Spokesperson Lt. Col. Peter Lerner’s Twitter feed. Despite Syrian claims via the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) that an Israeli fighter jet and a drone were shot down, Lerner tweeted “at no point was the safety of #IDF aircraft compromised.”
To make that point even more clear, Israeli Prime Minister’s Office spokesman Ofir Gendelman said on his Twitter account, “The IDF confirms that no Israeli warplanes were shot down over Syria.”
And the Israelis weren’t scared away by the incident from continuing to exercise self-defense in response to the Syrian attacks. On Wednesday evening, the IDF Spokesperson tweeted, “In response to the projectiles which hit Israel today, IAF targeted artillery positions of the Syrian Regime in the Syrian Golan Heights.”
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, September 13, 2016)