Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday denied a Wall Street Journal report on Israel’s ongoing, though modest, financial aid to rebel groups in southern Syria.
Speaking, of all places, at Ziv Medical Center in Tzfat, to which many a wounded Syrian rebel had been rushed over the past six years, the PM insisted that “we do not intervene in this terrible bloody conflict, but we do provide humanitarian assistance to wounded children.”
Would that be children of all ages? The Health Ministry’s website in December 2016 ran a Davar story that was very clear on the fact that some 700 (the true figure is easily triple that) wounded Syrians who receive medical care at Ziv Medical Center – whose names must be kept secret.
Netanyahu may not have read his own cabinet’s widely circulated information on the constant stream of injured rebels limping into Tzfat from the battlefields up north, preferring instead to describe them as civilian patients.
“I see men, women and children who once saw us as enemies when they arrive here, and more than a thousand have already arrived here,” Netanyahu said. “They understand more than ever that the State of Israel is a moral bastion and a ray of light in our region. They represent different religions and entire communities, Jews and non-Jews, Druze, Christians, Muslims and Bedouins. Everyone who comes here receives the same equal treatment, this is a beam of light in our region,” he added.
On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal quoted Syrian rebels who declared that if not for Israel’s monthly injection of some $5,000 each to several rebel groups, for salaries and ammunition, they would have long since been defeated.