This morning, a Syrian warplane approached the Israeli border. Obviously under surveillance the entire time, as it approached, Israel fired a Patriot missile from a base located “in northern Israel.”
The missile did not hit the aircraft. Instead; the Syrian plane turned and retreated from the border. To say that the missile did not hit its target would be incorrect. It did exactly what it was intended to do. The only question now is whether or not the Syrians are too stupid to read the message properly.
It goes like this. Think, Assad. Think. Israel has successfully targeted specific locations in Syria – by all that is logical, these were “secret” locations known only to the Iranians and the Syrians…and Israel. Time after time, we have sent our planes and missiles to obliterate whatever threatened us.
So, why didn’t we knock the plane out of the sky? That’s probably a question that military leaders around the world are asking today.
The answer is actually quite simply, and obvious to most Israelis (at least). We didn’t shoot down the Syrian plane, because we didn’t need to. And, because if it came down, it could come down on a town, even a hospital – and can you imagine the outcry then?
On the one hand, they would gleefully laugh at Isael for missing the plane, while if we hit it, they would accuse us of intentionally bringing the plane down to cause maximum civilian casualties.
The reality is that in each instance, our pilots (and all our soldiers) assess and avoid civilian casualties as much as possible. Or, for that matter, any casualties. The Syrian pilot didn’t die today because we didn’t need him to. We stopped him before he posed a threat to our northern residents.
Assad would be an even bigger fool than we know him to be, if he fails to take the warning to heart. Keep your war and your troops far from our borders.
And remember this one thing – Your civil war is your business, until it becomes ours.
