Posted September 12 2007 by Yoni Gross
Rumors flying over Syria.
Last Thursday, Israeli aircraft violated Syrian airspace and did…something. No one seems quite sure what. Israel has been almost completely silent on the subject, only reluctantly admitting that the flight even occurred, and continuing to refuse to comment on what exactly happened.
To date, I have seen the following “reports” on what “actually” happened.
- Damascus is claiming Israel fired several missiles at the ground, but won’t say what the targets were. They seem to want the world to think both that this was an incredibly important event, worthy of enormous world criticism of Israel, and that the strike did nothing but make a hole in the desert.
- One report claims the strike was against a Russian-made antiaircraft missile system purchased recently by Syria.
- There are reports that Israeli fuel tanks were dropped near the Syrian-Turkish border, though there seems to be some confusion as to which side of that border the tanks were on. I’m a bit confused why Israel would fly over an enemy country to violate the airspace of a relatively friendly nation, and then leave behind evidence, but mistakes do happen.
- Some Washington officials believe the most likely target would be a weapons shipment from Iran bound for Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.
- CNN’s Christian Amanpour claimed there may have been ground forces involved in the operation as well, though there seems to be no evidence to support this claim, beyond her own unnamed sources.
- The New York Times today quoted one Bush Administration official as saying that “Israel had recently carried out reconnaissance flights over Syria, taking pictures of possible nuclear installations that Israeli officials believed might have been supplied with material from North Korea.” This report, in an article about the airstrike, has prompted some rather wild speculation that the strike was against those nuclear facilities. This option seems extremely far-fetched to me, since the IAF announced its attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 as soon as the planes had returned.
American officials confirmed yesterday that there was, indeed, an airstrike, but no one in a position to actually know anything has so far announced a single clear detail. When will the media stop wasting our time with idle chatter and try reporting only when they actually have some news to report? This isn’t like a Presidential campaign, where speculation can at least support some useful purpose, like predicting outcomes or informing the audience of what goes on behind the scenes. This is just useless guesswork about an event that actually happened. Real facts are going to have to come out sooner or later. Why not just wait for them?
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2 Comments currently posted. 
David Gertler says:
Moshe Glasser says:
Because it’s a slow news day. For God’s sake, i saw an AOL front page story this week about a poker player telling cops not to break up illegal games, and another about Shakespeare not having written those plays, both debates easily three hundred years old being treated as recent news. Three day Yom Tov is good - maybe there will be some actual news by the time it’s over.
John Loftus, the president of the Intelligence Summit, released very specific details on his radio show Tuesday night, the show will be posted to his website after the holiday, and you can download his report of the story at loftusreport.com