{"id":1423,"date":"2014-09-23T11:34:56","date_gmt":"2014-09-23T09:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=1423"},"modified":"2014-09-23T13:12:48","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T11:12:48","slug":"did-israel-help-us-by-downing-syrian-jet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2014-09-23\/did-israel-help-us-by-downing-syrian-jet\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Israel help US by downing Syrian jet?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today the US – backed by “moderate” Arab states like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Jordan – started bombing territory in another sovereign state, Syria, without a UN Security Council resolution or a plausible argument that it is acting in self-defence.\u00a0That makes it a crime of aggression, defined at Nuremberg as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that\u00a0it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”<\/span><\/p>\n

In a sign that Obama’s war on ISIS in Syria could\u00a0quickly\u00a0be extended into a war against Syrian president Bashar Assad, Israel downed a Syrian jet inside<\/em> Syria this morning with a US-funded Patriot missile. According to Israel, the Syrian plane had passed 800 metres into its territory before heading back into Syria, during what the Israeli media say was a sortie against “rebels” operating close to the Israeli border (that’s right – the people Obama is currently bombing but whose injuries\u00a0are being\u00a0mended in Israeli hospitals).<\/p>\n

Of course, we only have Israel’s word for it that the plane briefly crossed into Israeli territory, but watch to see how completely the western media will assume Israel’s story to be the only valid account.<\/p>\n

Let’s assume for a second that Israel’s claim is true. Even the Israeli media, presumably echoing the Israeli military, believe the plane was not threatening to attack Israel in any way, and it must have been over\u00a0Israeli\u00a0territory for seconds, or maybe fractions of a second. But the plane was shot down in<\/em> Syria because Israeli military “policy stipulates that any plane that breaches its territorial authority must be downed to avoid security risk”. Decoded, that means Syria has to be taught a lesson about who is boss. Israel, remember, has flown over Syrian and Lebanese territory on a regular\u00a0basis.<\/p>\n

The other, strong possibility is that Israel has been told by the US to help keep Syrian skies free of Syrian planes while the US goes about its business breaking international law. See how much play that gets in western media reporting.<\/p>\n

CORRECTION:<\/h4>\n

It has been pointed out to me\u00a0that actually the Haaretz article implies that when the Syrian plane reportedly\u00a0crossed into “Israeli territory” it was most likely passing briefly over the Golan \u2013 that is, Syrian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.<\/p>\n

I appreciate the correction.\u00a0It exposes\u00a0an additional\u00a0layer of misinformation in\u00a0this whole story.<\/p>\n

www.haaretz.com\/news\/diplomacy-defense\/1.617329<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today the US – backed by “moderate” Arab states like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Jordan – started bombing territory in another sovereign state, Syria, without a UN Security Council resolution or a plausible argument that it is acting in self-defence.\u00a0That makes it a crime of aggression, defined at Nuremberg as “the supreme international crime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,52,10],"class_list":{"0":"post-1423","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-israel-war-crimes","8":"tag-syria","9":"tag-war-on-terror"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}