{"id":181136,"date":"2018-12-27T06:26:51","date_gmt":"2018-12-27T06:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=181136"},"modified":"2018-12-30T07:12:01","modified_gmt":"2018-12-30T07:12:01","slug":"revealed-israels-idf-used-passenger-airliners-as-cover-during-christmas-day-attack-on-damascus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=181136","title":{"rendered":"REVEALED: Israel\u2019s IDF Used Passenger Airliners as Cover During Christmas Day Attack on Damascus"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">21<sup>st<\/sup> Century Wire \u2013 Dec 26, 2018<\/h1>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Missiles-over-Damascus.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-181137\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Missiles-over-Damascus.jpg\" alt=\"Missiles over Damascus\" width=\"540\" height=\"363\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Missiles-over-Damascus.jpg 610w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Missiles-over-Damascus-300x202.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>Yesterday, Israel carried out an unprovoked Christmas Day attack against Syria. According to reports citing the Russian Ministry of Defense, six Israeli F16 fighters violated neighboring Lebanese airspace and while passing over Sidon, fired 16 laser-guided GBU-39 bombs towards targets in and around the capital city of Damascus, 14 of which were intercepted by Syrian air defense systems.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">More shocking details were revealed today, as the Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed that the IDF jets flew in to firing position \u2013 just as two civilian passenger airliners were in the air preparing for their landings into both Beirut and Damascus airports.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">As a result, Syrian military defense units did not deploy its surface-to-air missiles and electronic jamming <em>\u201cto prevent a tragedy\u201d<\/em> and instead allowed Damascus air traffic control divert one of its passenger flights to an emergency destination at Khmeimim in Latakia.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Israel\u2019s IDF would have been fully aware of these passenger airline flights, and therefore would have specifically chosen this exact position and timing in order to carry out their air operation against Syria. Based on this, one can logically conclude then that the IDF placed those civilian flight in danger, and that the <strong>Israeli military used those civilian airline flights as cover<\/strong> to increase their odds of executing a successful military airstrike.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">In an official statement to the press today, Russian Defense spokesman Igor Konashenkov stated:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><em><strong>\u201cProvocative acts by the Israeli Air Force endangered two passenger jets when six of their F-16s carried out airstrikes on Syria from Lebanese airspace.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Had the Syrian military not hesitated, and engaged the initial Israeli bogey \u2013 and accidentally hit one of the passenger airliners the IDF was using as cover \u2013 the international outrage would have been substantial, with the western media most certainly blaming \u2018the Assad Regime\u2019 and \u2018Putin\u2019s Russia\u2019 for the \u2018humanitarian tragedy.\u2019 It\u2019s possible that an incident would have been enough to prompt renewed calls for the US forces to remain in Syria \u2013 effectively reversing the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/21stcenturywire.com\/2018\/12\/21\/mattis-resigns-after-trump-announcement-to-pull-out-of-syria-and-afghanistan\/\">announcement made by President Trump last week to withdrawal US troops<\/a><\/strong><\/span> from their illegal occupation on northeastern Syria. Whether this was the Israeli motive for carrying out such a risky move is uncertain, but yesterday\u2019s reckless incident by Israel follows a familiar and disturbing pattern of using other country\u2019s aircraft as cover in order bait Syria\u2019s air defenses to hit the wrong targets while conveniently concealing their own visibility on their enemy\u2019s radar systems.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_181139\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Israeli-F35-F16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-181139\" class=\"wp-image-181139 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Israeli-F35-F16-300x164.jpg\" alt=\"Israeli F35 F16\" width=\"300\" height=\"164\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Israeli-F35-F16-300x164.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Israeli-F35-F16.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-181139\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Israeli F-35 and F-16. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Back in September, Israel executed a similarly reckless maneuver which led to <strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/news\/439151-russia-israel-il-20-negligence\/\">the downing of a Russian surveillance Il-20 plane<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 killing all 15 crew on board. Israel\u2019s F-16s effectively used it as cover during the attack, which led to the Russian plane being shot down by Syrian air defense systems as it attempted to land near Tartous. To make matters worse, Israeli officials failed to provide the correct location data of their fighter jets, instead feeding misinformation to Russian officials at the last moment, instead claiming IDF jets were going to attack several \u2018industrial facilities\u2019 in northern Syria. This move prompted Russian officials to condemn the deceptive act as one of \u201ccriminal negligence\u201d, stating at the time:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">\u201c<em>The misleading information provided by the Israeli officer about the area of strikes did not allow the Russian Il-20 airplane to move timely to a safe area.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">After the Syrian air defenses responded to the initial Israeli strike, IDF jets then switched on radar jamming and pulled back \u2013 in what many have labeled as a <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.presstv.com\/Detail\/2018\/09\/28\/575425\/Syria-Russia-Israel-downing-plane-Damascus-warning-S300\"><strong>\u201c<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">cowardly act<\/span>\u201d<\/strong><\/a> on the part of Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">To date, Israel has refused to acknowledge any responsibility for the Christmas Day attack, but according to a report by <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/Middle-East\/Were-Hezbollah-members-targeted-near-Damascus-575469\">Newsweek quoting a source in the US Defense Department<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, Israel was targeting \u2018senior Hezbollah leaders\u2019 in the air strikes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/21stcenturywire.com\/2018\/12\/26\/revealed-israels-idf-used-passenger-airliners-as-cover-during-christmas-day-attack-on-damascus\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russian says Israel used passenger planes as cover to launch strikes on Syria; effectively using passengers as human shields <\/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-181136","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\/181136","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=181136"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181183,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181136\/revisions\/181183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=181136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=181136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=181136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}