Interpreting the Latest Russian-“Israeli” GPS Jamming Scandal
Those who review President Putin’s own words about bilateral relations and the important role that Russian Jews play in serving as a bridge between these two, including what he told the Keren Heyesod Foundation during its annual conference in Moscow in September 2019, know better than to ever think that he’d do anything to endanger ‘Israel’ or Russian Jews there.
“Israel’s” Kan news reported on Monday that Russian GPS jamming from Syria is endangering civilian flights that enter their entity’s territory from the Mediterranean. This predictably prompted the Alt-Media Community (AMC) to repeat its “5D chess” conspiracy theory that Russia is secretly against “Israel”, allied with the Iranian-led Resistance, and thus actively seeking to destabilize its alleged enemy. That’s a completely false interpretation of events as is usual from the AMC and deserves to be clarified for the benefit of those objective observers who might be misled by this wishful thinking narrative.
Lost among the AMC’s typically wild hype are some crucial details that The Times Of Israel included in its report on this topic. According to them, “pilots began having issues a few weeks ago and Israel has sent a message to Moscow informing it that the system is interfering with its civilian airspace. Russia, however, has reportedly rebuffed the Israeli request, insisting the system is needed to protect its soldiers stationed in Syria…However, officials reportedly believe the jamming to be aimed at other targets, with Israel as collateral damage.”
From these revelations, it appears increasingly likely that the GPS jamming isn’t directed against “Israel” but was a reaction to the latest Russian-NATO tensions due to the undeclared US–provoked missile crisis in Europe. After all, the Russian-“Israeli”-Syrian strategic triangle is such that Moscow passively facilitates Tel Aviv’s strikes in the Arab Republic that it claims are aimed against Iranian-backed threats to its security. Although Russia occasionally condemns these attacks as illegal and destabilizing, it does nothing to stop them because it tacitly regards Iran’s anti-“Israeli” activities there as provoking them.
It’s absurd for anyone to countenance that President Putin would deliberately order his Syrian-based military forces to jam civilian aircraft’s GPS signals, some of which might even be transporting his own citizens to and from “Israel”. Those who review President Putin’s own words about bilateral relations and the important role that Russian Jews play in serving as a bridge between these two, including what he told the Keren Heyesod Foundation during its annual conference in Moscow in September 2019, know better than to ever think that he’d do anything to endanger “Israel” or Russian Jews there.
To the contrary, Russia has arguably become “Israel’s” top regional security provider as argued by the author in the 15 analyses over the years hyperlinked to in this piece from last year. Russia’s “passive facilitation” of “Israel’s” literally hundreds of strikes against Iranian-linked targets in Syria since the onset of its September 2015 anti-terrorist intervention there per the “deconfliction mechanism” agreed to between the two just weeks before that campaign began have done more to ensure “Israel’s” security than anything that the US has done during that time.
After September 2018’s tragic mid-air incident, the Russian Defense Ministry revealed all that it had done for their de facto ally in that country up until that point. According to RT, this includes carving out an anti-Iranian buffer zone near the occupied Golan Heights, protecting sacred Jewish places and graves in Aleppo, and even searching for the remains of long-lost “Israeli” servicemen in Syria in the midst of firefights between that country’s armed forces and ISIS terrorists. Less than a year later, Russia succeeded in discovering, unearthing, and returning the remains of Zachary Baumel to “Israel”.
There should thus be no doubt that Russia not only respects “Israel’s” regional security interests, but actively promotes them in Syria, both through its “passive facilitation” of its de facto ally’s anti-Iranian strikes there and also through its on-the-ground activities. Some observers wrongly predicted that the joint Russian-Syrian air patrols last week were some sort of anti-“Israeli” signal intended to ward off further strikes, yet this assessment was discredited after “Israel” once again bombed Damascus just a week later on Monday.
Quite clearly, those patrols had no deterrent effect, nor were they intended to, though. They were likely aimed at reaffirming the democratically elected and legitimate Syrian government’s authority over the areas of the country under its control. That’s why they importantly didn’t violate the line of control along the occupied Golan Heights nor the similar such line along the Euphrates River delineating the unofficial Russian/Syrian and American “spheres of influence”. Russia’s accompaniment of the Syrian jets was meant to signal to “Israel” that Moscow won’t let Damascus unilaterally violate lines of control.
Returning to the recent scandal that prompted this analysis, it very well seems to be the case that civilian “Israeli” aircraft are simply “collateral damage” of Russia’s proactive electronic air defenses that were placed into higher alert in response to the latest US-provoked tensions with NATO. According to their own reports, not even the “Israelis” themselves consider this to have been aimed against their forces. These “politically inconvenient” observations once again debunk the latest false narrative being spewed by the AMC’s “5D chess” conspiracy theorists.
President Putin, after all, would never endanger “Israel’s” security, let alone the safety of Russian Jews traveling to and from that entity. That would contradict the very basis of his country’s grand strategy that aims to “balance” between various rivals across Eurasia, though with an obvious priority focus in the West Asian context on increasingly making relations with “Israel” even more strategic than they presently are. As it presently stands, objective observers can therefore dismiss the AMC’s wild hype about Russia supposedly “turning against Israel” as nothing more than a wishful thinking delusion.
