Risk of regional war grows as Israel bombs Syria

Jan. 30 — Israel’s air force bombed a military facility in western Syria at dawn today, according to several media sources. Reports describe Israeli warplanes flying low, below radar, and destroying a building northwest of Damascus. The Syrian Arab News Agency reported that “a scientific research center used by the military” was hit, killing two workers and wounding five.

The United States and Israeli sources claimed the target was a convoy of weapons that Syria was sending toward its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon. The Syrian government denied the charges.

Israel, the recipient of billions of dollars yearly in U.S. military and economic aid, would not have taken such a provocative step without prior approval of its masters in Washington. The New York Times confirmed that “the Israelis had notified the Americans about the attack.”

SANA printed comments of the Syrian General Command of the Army only hours after the attack: “Israel is the motivator, beneficiary and sometimes the executor of the terrorist acts which target Syria and its resistant people.” The General Command assured the public that the attack “will not dissuade the Syrians from continuing to support resistance movements and just Arab causes, primarily the Palestinian cause.”

Israel launched a similar unprovoked air attack on Syria in 2007, claiming to target a secret nuclear reactor. Syria denied it was a weapons facility, but held off escalating the situation.

On Jan. 28, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, speaking to representatives of 50 nations gathered in Paris, called for the so-called “Friends of Syria” to donate hundreds of millions of dollars to bolster the Syrian rebels. (New York Times, Jan. 29)

Stop imperialist intervention in Syria

Jan. 29 also saw the discovery of dozens of bodies of civilians along a river in an area controlled by the contra rebels in the northern city of Aleppo. The bodies all were shot in the head and had their hands bound. Rebel death squads have been operating since the beginning of the armed uprising, following a script long promoted by the CIA in other contra wars like those in Guatemala and Chile.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry sent a letter to the President of the U.N. Security Council and to the U.N. Secretary General denouncing the Aleppo mass executions as the work of the al-Nusra militia group, which has even been condemned as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. The letter read, “Obstruction [by] some member states at the U.N. Security [Council] to issue a clear condemnation … as to what happened in previous situations means providing a political cover for the terrorists which encourages them to carry out more terrorist atrocities.” (SANA, Jan. 30)

The Foreign Ministry “calls on the Council once again to assume responsibilities and issue a clear, frank condemnation of those terrorist acts which target the innocents … and to condemn its perpetrators and those who supply them with weapons, equipment, money, shelter, political and media cover, encouraging them to go on with their crimes which seek to destabilize the state.”

The bombing of a site in Syria by Israel must be condemned by all anti-war activists in the imperialist countries, particularly the United States, which arms Israel to the teeth and supports the “opposition rebels” in Syria. Workers and the poor in the U.S. need jobs and health care, not war against Syria or any other country.