Israel bombs Syria - an act of war and another 'red line' crossed

Israel has just committed at least two significant acts of war in bombing Syria. Many people are, most likely, dead and injured as a result. Yet, the BBC has nothing to report about the true status of the aggression and little about the human cost. 

Consider if this had been a violation of Israeli airspace, an actual bombing of Israel or any such attack on a Western country. Imagine the 'international crisis'. The context would have been immediate and specific: 'an act of war', the coverage of victims massive and detailed.  

Nor are Israeli 'strikes', rather than bombings, reported by the BBC as specifically inhuman or illegal. They're described, rather, with a basic insouciance, as though 'terror states' and their people should routinely expect such treatment.

The BBC's Jonathan Marcus amplifies the view that such 'strikes' are not criminal acts of war but legitimate messages to Assad:

"Back in January of this year, Israel struck a weapons convoy that intelligence sources suggest was carrying SA-17 advanced surface-to-air missiles that were to be transferred from Syria to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. That strike was a warning, an effort to dissuade the regime of President Bashar al-Assad from contemplating any similar transfers to his allies in Lebanon. These latest strikes suggest that this hoped-for deterrent effect has not been achieved."  

And so, for Marcus, the 'deterrent' effort goes on:

"While President Barack Obama may be hesitant in acting to implement his "red-line" warning to Damascus over the potential use of chemical weapons, Israel is determined to enforce its own "red-line" relating to the transfer of sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah."

When a sovereign state deemed 'official enemy' by the West is bombed, the language is respectfully muted and sanitised, as in the BBC's main online report of the Damascus attack:

"The BBC's Yolande Knell in Jerusalem says the latest developments are a significant escalation in Israel's involvement in the conflict."

Note the crucial descriptor: "significant escalation". Again, not 'an act of war'. And certainly not 'a war crimes atrocity'.

Knell's rationale is, likewise, a straight reiteration of the 'defensive, pre-emptive response':

"She says Israel has already responded to fears of retaliation by locating two batteries of its Iron Dome missile defence system near Haifa, close to the Lebanese border."

Knell doesn't even include the most basic journalistic disclaimer, as in 'Israel says/claims that it has already responded to fears of retaliation', just an unquestioned acceptance and repetition of Israeli statements.

On the same page, BBC correspondent Jim Muir uses similar restrained and loaded terminology to avoid any 'act of war' interpretation:

"Two air strikes in 48 hours does indeed start to look perilously like the involvement in Syria's internal crisis the Israelis have always said they want to avoid, especially when they are visibly taking out military targets on the very edge of Damascus.

Once more, note the qualified words: "perilously like the involvement" that Israel "want[s] to avoid".

The intimation is vitally important: Israel has been 'forced', 'reluctantly', 'dutifully', in 'vigilant self-defence', to 'intervene'.

Consider the alternative and much more likely possibility, faithfully circumvented by the BBC.

Israel, seeing the significant advances of Assad's government forces, have bombed Damascus in order to give logistical support and sustenance to rebel and other Western/Saudi-backed forces.

But, why would Israel assist jihadi-driven forces? 

Muir's one-dimensional analysis is, similarly, conditioned by the accepted 'Israel-fears' line: 

"Objectively it would be hard to see Israel's interest in helping trigger an uncontrolled collapse of the regime, leaving the field open to rebel groups among which Islamist radicals currently make the running."

What Muir, like many other 'seasoned analysts', fails to discuss is Israel's key war-promoting part in the ultimate removal of Assad, the now zero-sum agenda to effect regime-change and dislocation of the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah nexus. 

Even if an Islamic-infused entity does comes to replace Assad, it will likely act, as with Libya, through the pacified understanding of Western/Saudi patronage, all border-policed by Nato-membered Turkey, a Western-colonised Iraq and, of course, nuclear-laden Israel.

Where is the most elementary exploration of these dark Western/Israeli manoeuvrings in such BBC 'analysis'? 

If the goal of calculated regime change is not seemingly deserving of considered discussion by the BBC, nor is it remotely ready to apportion the same 'red line' labels applied to Assad now the UN has credible evidence pointing to the use of sarin by rebel forces.  

Like the suppression of Israel's latest 'acts of war', the BBC and other Western-service media are unlikely to see even strong prima facie proof of rebel-deployed chemical weapons as a 'game changer' in Syria's civil war.

Nor might it contemplate similar Israel-excusing language were Syria to bomb Tel Aviv in response, or for any other state to bomb Israel for crossing chemical weapons 'red lines', such as attacking Gaza with white phosphorus.

In the same selective vein, illumination of Israel's own 'false-flag' involvement in chemical weapon use inside Syria remains prudently under-examined by a media repeating the dominant narrative of Israel's 'defensive actions'.

How many crossed 'red lines', illegal actions and indications of 'game-changing' subterfuge must it take for Israel to be denounced and described as a criminal, warmongering state?