Israel will present this as a “proxy attack” against a so-called “Russian ally” while Russia will present it as the “successful defense” of that selfsame “ally”. Even though the attack didn’t make any difference, it’ll still tickle the imagination of each side and reinforce their self-serving but false “rivalry” narrative.
Israel bombed Syria yet again on Friday night in its latest attack against the Arab Republic, but this time it was likely only for political reasons instead of the military ones that it claims usually drive its acts of aggression. The Jewish State has hit its neighbor literally hundreds of times since the Syrian Conflict started, with these missions noticeably ramping up since Russia’s anti-terrorist operation began in September 2015 due to the deconfliction mechanism agreed to at the time by Putin and Netanyahu.
The purpose behind that pact was to prevent midair collisions and thus offset the possibility of a Russian-Israeli conflict by miscalculation throughout the course of Tel Aviv’s bombing runs against the IRGC, Hezbollah, and their allies in that neighboring state where the Russian Aerospace Forces rule the roost. I explained the military-strategic dynamics at length in this analysis that I published in February 2021 here, which also hyperlinks to 15 other related pieces for background context on this subject.
In short, Russia “passively facilitated” these attacks by always standing down and never letting Syria obtain direct control of the S-300s that were dramatically dispatched to the Arab Republic after September 2018’s midair incident that President Putin described as a “chain of tragic circumstances”. Those systems were only sent there as a political pressure valve to placate the angry masses in that West Asian country and their followers in the Alt-Media Community (AMC) who demanded a response.
Those two then proceeded to pump out countless pieces of fake news falsely alleging that Russia was “against” Israel, which contributed to further relieving the pressure upon Moscow to do something in response to Tel Aviv even though the Kremlin wasn’t ever countenancing anything of the sort. In fact, many in the AMC have been so successfully misled by their trusted community influencers’ disinformation about this sensitive subject that they’re still convinced that this narrative is true.
Russia, for its part, continued to occasionally reaffirm its commitment to international law by condemning Israel whenever the same strikes that it “passively facilitated” became too provocative to ignore. This inadvertently added fuel to the information warfare fire and unwittingly reinforced the false perceptions about its stance towards the Jewish State that were being peddled around the AMC. All the while, nothing changed in their strategic partnership, though the misled masses never realized this.
Israel appears to have just attempted to catalyze the exact same sequence of narrative events through its latest strike on Syria wherein it sought to set into motion a self-sustaining information warfare process that would successfully relieve the newfound pressure upon it to respond to Russia. To explain, just like Russia dispatched the S-300s to Syria in order to placate the angry masses on its side, so too did Israel just strike that same country in order to placate its own angry masses at home and abroad.
The purpose was to do something dramatic that would influence its supporters into falsely thinking that it’s “against” Russia after the fury over its refusal to arm Kiev, which Israel declined to do since that would have gone against its objective national security interests. Nevertheless, its shrewd decision unintentionally discredited five major Western narratives about the Ukrainian Conflict, hence the urgent need to distract the public in order to continue staying the course without this newfound pressure.
By striking Syria exactly when it did, Israel suggested that it was indeed supposedly “against” Russia in spite of the latest allegations that it was tacitly on that newly restored world power’s side, which isn’t the case since it’s truly neutral in practice. Tel Aviv’s votes against Moscow at the UN are purely symbolic since the Jewish State has refused to walk the walk by imposing sanctions against its de facto strategic partner, which speaks to its pragmatism in the New Cold War.
Casual news consumers in the US-led West’s Golden Billion, to say nothing of this bloc’s easily manipulated decisionmakers, still think that those anti-Russian votes matter in some practical sense despite Israel never following through with tangible anti-Russian actions. The skeptics among them, however, were just successfully misled by Israel’s latest strike in Syria. This development was specifically timed to neutralize the pressure that’s been building upon it to do something “against” Russia.
The reality is that this attack actually serves both countries’ interests since they can spin it however they’d like in order to advance their speciously contradictory but factually complementary narratives. Israel will present this as a “proxy attack” against a so-called “Russian ally” while Russia will present it as the “successful defense” of that selfsame “ally”. Even though the attack didn’t make any difference, it’ll still tickle the imagination of each side and reinforce their self-serving but false “rivalry” narrative.
That’s precisely what Russia and Israel aim to do, namely revive the artificially manufactured perception that they’re supposedly “rivals” in Syria and not de facto allies like they truly are. The purpose behind doing so is to relieve the newfound pressure upon Tel Aviv after the Jewish State’s pragmatic refusal to arm Kiev, which enraged the Golden Billion and even many within Israel itself. By stage-managing the latest strike on Syria, however, Israel was able to successfully distract the masses.
Those who remain skeptical need only to see what top Syria-focused influencers in the AMC are saying, which is predictably the same nonsense that they’ve always spewed alleging that Russia is also supposedly “against” Israel. Neither side’s online activists realize it, but they’re actually extending false credence to the completely fabricated conspiracy theory that Russia and Israel supposedly “hate” each other and are thus “irreconcilable enemies”, which helps relieve the pressure upon them.
For these reasons, Israel’s latest strike on Syria can be described as a carefully orchestrated operation that was indirectly coordinated with Russia in order to mislead the global public, knowing fully well that each side’s activists couldn’t resist biting this irresistible bait. They automatically revived their false narratives about those two’s relations, each in advance of their own narrative agenda but both of which unintentionally complement one another, exactly as Russia and Israel keenly expected to happen.
After this latest development, it’ll become much more difficult for either of their activists to pressure the respective state that they support since this attack added false credence to the conspiracy theory that they’re actually “against” one another and not de facto allies like they truly are. The West will thus lose its narrative ammunition to pressure Israel after Tel Aviv’s pragmatic refusal to arm Kiev while Russia’s supporters will go back to falsely thinking that President Putin is supposedly an “anti-Zionist”.
While your analysis is spot on, I wish you would stop referring to Tel Aviv as if it was the capital of Israel. While Australia and the Arab world deny that Jerusalem is the Eternal Capital of Israel, you shouldn't spread this lie.