The Israeli Attack on Dayr az-Zwar, Syria

I haven't written in a few days, and no doubt thousands of you have been wondering... "What's up with Bruce?" Where is my daily dose of Conspiracy? Well, wait no longer!! But this post is not about conspiracy, its about Israel and Syria.

Why am I writing about Israel and Syria? Without belaboring this, one of my fascinations is Middle Eastern geopolitical strategy and of course being Jewish, I've always been obsessed with Israel.

Let me first say that while I am the type of person who would disband every army in the world and have everyone hold hands and sing together, I also have a left brain. My left brain is often fed with a deep seated kind of "rooting" for Israel in a similar way I am a New York Jets football fan.

From birth, it was banged into my brain that Israel is the underdog and that the State of Israel and the Jews of the world are always in imminent danger and must always be in a permanent state of readiness for the worst. I appreciate this point of view given the Holocaust and continuing anti-semitism in parts of the world that is very real. But I also know that most of what we are fed about the Middle East and Israel is not true and is driven by the same desire to heighten fear and thus retain profits and control.

That said, I follow Israeli politics as closely as I follow American politics and read Ha'aretz on a daily basis as well as Debka, a purported Israeli intelligence website that is very hawkish. I believe what I am reading is THE TRUTH about as much as what I believe from Fox News, but for me its not about the facts but the AGENDA behind the information, how it is presented and how the information is supposed to try to HOOK ME INTO THINKING something about the world. But, there is an event that has really caught my eye and can't look away.

On September 6, 2007, we are told that 4 to 5 brand new F15i fighter jets fresh off the Boeing production line crossed into Syrian airspace and flew to the far northeast corner of the country and blew up a "nuclear reactor" near Dayr az-Zwar, Syria close to the Euphrates river that was being built with the help of North Korea.

Millions of words have been written about this event including Sy Hersch in the New Yorker in the February 11Th of this year where he attempts to get at the "real" story behind this event. His story could be the most believable as he wonders aloud if this really was a nuclear plant at all but closer to some other type of military facility. However, the real story is the fact that Israel was able to send very un-stealthy planes deep into Syria, successfully blow up something, and return home safely without Syria's air defenses even knowing what was happening... and if they did, not being able to do anything about it.

And I believe he's right.

I'll assume for purposes of this post (and for the sake of the GAME) that the following are true:
1/ Israel flew fighter jets over Syria on 9/6/07 and blew up something
2/ No one wants to talk about it publicly because it is so embarrassing for all involved, that talking about what really happened and why would be unacceptable to everyone, and for completely different reasons depending upon where you are standing
3/ There are probably fewer than 100 people on the planet that actually know EVERYTHING about what happened on that day... and that may be the key to why no one still knows and believes everything that has been said

Let's go to the photos as presented in the media:
The photo shows a facility before, and then nice clean earth after. The story goes that immediately following the bombing, Syria scrubbed the location clean as not to leave any traces of what was blown up and thus not to be dealt an even more embarrassing revelation that they were building a nuclear power plant... and thus upset the very delicate situation in that region as well as the unbelievable stupidity and naiveté of thinking it could build one of these puppies and not have anyone figure it out before they finished.

As I stated earlier, so much has been written and speculated about this attack that I do not want to be just another cackling voice in the noise of cyberspace. But.... there is one aspect of this event that I find terribly fascinating and believe that this event is a bell weather for what is to come strategically in the Middle East.

What I find most fascinating, is that no one is talking on the record about this event... particularly the Syrians. The Iranians... silence. The Israeli government... silence. Congress was only briefed just recently on what US intel says happened, but one wonders if the Congress is ever told the truth about anything given the Bush Administrations propensity to lie about everything all the time to everyone.

But I've spent hours and hours looking and reading and asking myself... why this attack, why this place, why this time? Well, I firmly believe (as much as I love Israel), that Israel is an Army that acts like a country. WAY MORE than the United States. That being the case, Israel doesn't want to have uncertainty about their neighbor's capabilities. Whatever was there, it almost doesn't matter. What matters is the spanking new Russian made air defense system that Syria spent nearly a billion dollars installing and is being readied for Iran. They wanted to test it out and see if it works!!

From Debka.com: DEBKAfile’s military experts conclude from the way Damascus described the episode Wednesday, Sept. 6, that the Pantsyr-S1E missiles, purchased from Russia to repel air assailants, failed to down the Israeli jets accused of penetrating northern Syrian airspace from the Mediterranean the night before.

The new Pantsyr missiles therefore leave Syrian and Iranian airspace vulnerable to hostile intrusion.

Even if only 1/10th of what we see and hear about this story is true... this is a COLOSSAL DISASTER FOR SYRIA AND IRAN as it shows they are completely vulnerable to American and Israeli technology and that nothing on the horizon can protect them. The Russians had promised that this was THE system that would keep them safe from American and Israeli fighters and bombers.

Thus... the silence. This act of war by Israel was given a big fat PASS by everyone because the real problem is much bigger... the entire balance of power in the middle east and the perception that THERE IS ONE.

Syria doesn't want anyone to know that they and Iran are powerless to stop Israel... and NEITHER DOES ISRAEL!!! But Israel couldn't help themselves from testing out Syria's new toy to see if it worked.

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