{"id":178840,"date":"2018-11-09T06:30:01","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T06:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=178840"},"modified":"2018-11-14T06:00:49","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T06:00:49","slug":"minister-israel-might-destroy-syrian-s-300s-even-if-manned-by-russians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=178840","title":{"rendered":"Minister: Israel might destroy Syrian S-300s, even if manned by Russians"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stuart Winer and Times of Israel — Nov 6, 2018<\/h1>\n
\"S-300<\/a>

S-300 air defense systems. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

An Israeli cabinet minister has warned that if the Syrians use their recently supplied advanced Russian air defense missiles to bring down Israeli planes over Israeli territory, the launchers would be targeted \u2014 even if that means endangering Russian military specialists at the launch sites.<\/span><\/p>\n

Environmental Protection Minister Ze\u2019ev Elkin, who is also co-chair of the Russia-Israel Intergovernmental Commission, told Russian media Monday that it was a \u201cbig mistake\u201d for Moscow to supply its ally Syria with the S-300 missile system, because the advanced missiles, which are considered a significant threat to Israeli air power in the area, \u201cmight lead to destabilization of the situation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Elkin cautioned that \u201cconsidering the mess\u201d that the Syrian army was in, the Syrians cannot be trusted to operate the equipment correctly and may end up shooting down an \u201cIsraeli military or commercial plane over Israeli territory.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel, he noted, reacts to attacks on its territory and aircraft with \u201cpractical actions,\u201d which would \u201cundoubtedly take place\u201d against the launchers should Israeli aircraft be hit in Israeli airspace.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI greatly hope that there would be no Russian military specialists [at the missile launch sites],\u201d he said, stressing that in the past Israel has taken pains to ensure that Russian military personnel are not hurt through its actions in Syria.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Israeli Air Force has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria in recent years against targets linked to Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, which Israel says are working to establish a military presence there that could threaten the Jewish state.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moscow shipped the missiles to Syria last month after one of its military planes was downed by a Syrian missile during an Israeli strike in the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moscow has blamed Israel for the incident, in which 15 Russian servicemen were killed, saying an Israeli jet had used the Russian plane as cover \u2014 a charge denied by Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although satellite images show the S-300s have been deployed in Syria, Israeli officials have said they are thought to not yet be operational.<\/span><\/p>\n

Elkin\u2019s comment came after last month Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman rejected reported demands by Moscow<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that Israel gives the Russian military additional warning before carrying out airstrikes in Syria.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hadashot TV news had reported that Russia is insisting it receives further advance warning of Israeli strikes, though the report did not say how much. Israel usually informs Russia minutes before an airstrike.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israeli leaders have vowed to continue carrying out strikes in Syria amid tensions with Russia over the downing of the Russian military reconnaissance plane, though no airstrikes have been attributed to Israel since the September 17 incident.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This may be more than an empty threat. After all, the IDF has already “inadvertently” shot down an Ilyushin-20 over Syria killing 15 Russians aboard <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,91,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies","category-russia","category-syria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=178840"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178865,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178840\/revisions\/178865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=178840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=178840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=178840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}