Apparently, Israel Just Bombed Syria

Israel has bombed Syrian chemical weapons factories, multiple sources have reported.

Per the Guardian:

Israeli jets have reportedly bombed a Syrian government facility in north-west of the country believed to be associated with Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons programme. The strikes were initially reported by Hebrew and Arab media sources on Thursday morning. A Syrian military statement appears to confirm the reports. The airstrike on the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Centre was reported to have taken place overnight. Western intelligence reports have linked the centre near the town of Masyaf to Syria’s chemical weapons programme.

Syria’s military told the world that the Israeli strike happened on Thursday, damaging a building by the Mediterranean Sea. Four Israeli fighters seem to have hit the site, shortly after they entered the airspace of Lebanon. The attacks are a regular habit with the Israeli air force, which has been an active participant in the ongoing Syrian conflict. The Netanyahu government has been conducting massive military exercises, the largest in two decades, along Israel’s northern border. Their involvement is hardly surprising.

As CNN notes:

In its report, Syria’s state-run SANA news agency quotes Syria’s military accusing Israel of propping up ISIS’s “morale,” and linking the reported strike with recent military wins over the terror group in the strategic Syrian town of Deir Ezzor. “This aggression comes in a desperate attempt to raise the collapsed morale of the ISIS terrorists after the sweeping victories achieved by the Syrian Arab Army against terrorism at more than one front, and it affirms the direct support provided by the Israeli entity to the ISIS and other terrorist organizations,” the Syrian army said in a statement to SANA.

This is part and parcel of what the Guardian called Israel’s “increasingly bellicose statements.” Jerusalem recently accused the Iranian government of interfering in Lebanese and Syrian affairs, as part of an alleged Russian web of conspiracy. Despite its professions of neutrality, Jerusalem has conducted dozens and dozens of military strikes inside Syria’s borders since 2011.

The Guardian again:

Amir Eshel, a former Israeli air force chief, suggested in August that Israel had conducted dozens of airstrikes on weapons convoys destined for the Hezbollah over the past five years. Washington claims the al-Talai centre developed the sarin gas weapon allegedly used in a chemical attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun in April, which left about 80 people dead. UN war crimes investigators announced on Wednesday they had an “extensive body of information” that indicated Syrian warplanes were behind the attack. In a conference call with journalists, the former Israeli national security adviser Yaakov Amidror said the fact that the target was a Syrian military facility took Israeli intervention to a new level.

Israel is more than capable of upsetting the table on their own—and that is exactly what this strike will do. Jerusalem is complicating a vastly tangled knot, and will not help. From a political point of view, of course, it makes gruesome sense. A huge part of what happens in the Middle East consists of countries signaling, on a vast and horrific level, what they want America and its allies to do. Syria suffers, from above and from below, and Israel’s actions do not help. Civil war is the most intimate (and therefore most bloody) form of conflict, in a world which is old in killing but forever new in finding ways to do the deed.