Army: Israel Attacks Islamic Jihad Base in Syria Sunday, October 05, 2003 JERUSALEM — Israeli warplanes attacked an Islamic Jihad (search) training base deep in Syria in retaliation for a suicide bombing at a Haifa restaurant that killed 19 people, the army said Sunday. Israeli media said it was the first Israeli attack on Syrian soil in more than two decades. The strike, which occurred late Saturday or early Sunday, targeted the Ein Sahev camp (search) about 10 miles northwest of Damascus, according to Israeli officials. The base was used by several terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the army said in a statement. "Syria has been warned more than once by the United States that it should close all the facilities of the Islamic Jihad," Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner said. "Apparently it has not done so. And it is our policy after what happened yesterday to go after Islamic Jihad wherever they are." The Syrian government had no immediate response. Speaking on the al-Jazeera (search) television network, Abu Emad El-Refaei, an Islamic Jihad spokesman in Beirut, Lebanon, denied that there were any Islamic Jihad bases in Syria. "We do not have any training camps or bases in Syria or any other country," he said. "All our bases are inside the Palestinian occupied territories." A senior commander for the radical Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command told The Associated Press in Damascus that the camp was one of their deserted bases, not on an Islamic Jihad camp. A civilian guard was injured, the commander said. The attack came several hours after a Palestinian woman wrapped in explosives entered a beachside restaurant in Haifa during the busy lunchtime hour and blew herself up, killing 19 people, including four children. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for that attack. "The army has started operating against those behind the attack, those who support (terror) and those who use the strategy of terror in order to harm citizens of Israel," the army statement said. Islamic Jihad, a militant Palestinian group responsible for many attacks against Israel, enjoys support from other countries, including Iran and Syria, the statement said. "Syria is a state that supports terror, that constantly tries to frustrate efforts to bring calm and stability to the region and gives cover in its territory and capital to the terror organizations that act against Israeli citizens," the army said. The statement also accused Iran of funding and directing Islamic Jihad. "Israel will not accept the rules of the game that the terrorists are trying to dictate, and will act with determination against all who harm its citizens, in accordance with the right to self defense and defense of the state," it said. On April 16, 2001, Israeli warplanes blasted a Syrian radar station in Lebanon, where Syria is the main power broker, killing three Syrian soldiers. That strike was the first in five years against the Syrian military and came in retaliation for an attack by Syrian-backed guerrillas in which an Israeli soldier was killed. Syria closed the offices of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad after the U.S. invasion of Iraq out of fear it could be the next nation targeted by the United States. The United States had been pushing Syria to act further and expel Hamas and Islamic Jihad leader, but Syria has refused. Western diplomats say Syria is loathe to be seen as betraying the Palestinian cause, and it also does not want to give up one of the few bargaining chips it still has in negotiations with Israel. Despite Syrian denials, the diplomats say Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders in Syria give directions to the groups' members in the West Bank and Gaza. http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,99140,00.html
Israel, the US, China, North Korea, and a handful of hopeless African states represent the last remaining states in the world where naked aggression and gross violations of other states' sovereignty are still national policy. Israel earns the highest marks in this regard, in that they actually practice what they preach. Literally, nowhere else will you find one country unilaterally bombing or invading another country without international backing and without consideration for international opinion. I guess America's not much better. We're in some great company here.
Harsh words Cohen, but the story is about Israel attacking Syria and not Palestinian suicide bombers.
When a terrorist organization attacks a country, there is justification to the terrorist organization headquarters or base.
Yes, but where is the evidence that this is indeed an islamic jihad base in Syria? Without evidence before an international body, it is just plain illegal.
Please see Syria's occupation of Lebanon in 75', that still lasts till this day, so you can stick em in your family of states who practice "naked aggression and gross violations of other states' sovereignty."
note to cohen: please see sticky at the top of this discussion area note to murdock: please see thread on "biased american news sources"
ahem. there is no proof that islamic jihad, which freely admits responsibility for the terror bombing, uses that base. in fact, they flat out deny it. so the "jackass" in this case would appear to be ISRAEL. OOPS! they begging for a pan-middle east war. and america is going to be the unwillingly dunce in this as usual. fyi, here is what much of the rest of the world thinks on this issue: http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/10/05/mideast.reaction/index.html Fears over Israeli strike on Syria Sunday, October 5, 2003 Posted: 1945 GMT ( 3:45 AM HKT) JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Concern is growing around the world that an Israeli air strike in Syria on what the Israelis said was a Palestinian training camp could heighten already-strained tensions in the Middle East. The attack followed Islamic Jihad's claim of responsibility for Saturday's suicide bombing in a popular restaurant in Haifa in which the female bomber and 19 other people were killed. More than 55 people were wounded. The strike on Syria is the first Israeli attack there since the Yom Kippur war in 1973. Monday is the 30-year anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Syria's foreign minister on Sunday called the overnight raid on a camp "a flagrant violation and a serious escalation" and said Damascus would complain to the United Nations in a closed Security Council meeting hastily called for 4 p.m. (2000 GMT). Imad Moustapha, Syrian charge d'affaires in Washington, accused Israel of "becoming more and more militaristic in its tendencies." Arab League spokesman Hisham Yousof said Syria had asked the Arab League to meet Sunday night to discuss the situation. The Ein Saheb camp, deep inside Syria, had been used by "many terror organizations," including Islamic Jihad, for training, the Israel Defense Forces said. But a spokesman from Islamic Jihad in Beirut said the group carried out no military activities in Syria. Israeli government spokesman Ra'anan Gissin told CNN the camp was 16 kilometers (10 miles) from the Syrian capital Damascus. "We will take whatever measure is necessary to defend our citizens, regardless of geographical location of these training camps," Gissin said. Israel, he said, had decided "to enlarge the scope of our operation against the Islamic Jihad and Hamas." The attack, Gissin said, sent a message to Syria and Iran to end their support for terrorism against Israel. "We will not tolerate the continuation of this axis of terror between Tehran, Damascus and Gaza to continue to operate and kill innocent men, women and children," he said. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told CNN he had called the White House to ask the Bush administration to help de-escalate the latest violence. The Palestinian Authority has said it does not have the security resources to restrain militant groups such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad. And, even if it did, doing so would cause civil war among Palestinians. U.S. President George W. Bush telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Sunday to offer U.S. condolences on the Haifa suicide bombing and to discuss Israel's retaliatory strike on Syria, a Bush administration official said. The official said the two men "agreed on the need to avoid heightening tensions in the region at this time." When asked whether the president in any way condemned the Israeli attack into a neighboring country, the official said: "Israel has the right to defend itself, but should consider the consequences of any action it takes." Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak earlier called on the U.S. to restrain Israel and expressed concern the attack could presage a new cycle of violence. "We condemn what happened today concerning the aggression against a brotherly state under the pretext that some organizations exist there," Reuters quoted Mubarak as saying in a joint news conference with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Schroeder said regional peace efforts "become more complicated when ... the sovereignty of a country is violated. This is why the action in Syria is not acceptable." And in Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the terrorist attack on a Haifa restaurant and Israel's retaliatory strike on Syria have created "growing concern and worry." On its Web site, the ministry said: "It is obvious that such actions will lead to widening of the geographic boundaries of the confrontation." The United Kingdom said it had urged all sides to exercise restraint. A Foreign Office statement said: "Israel is of course entitled to take steps to protect itself from terrorist attack, but these steps should be within international law. "Every act makes it more difficult to get back to the peace process." Mamoun Fandy, an expert on the region at the U.S. Institute for Peace, in Washington, said the situation has left leaders in a tough spot. "What the Israelis did today is a major move on the strategic chessboard throughout the Middle East, as well as globally," he told CNN. "This move requires a very deliberate reaction, given the high stakes involved." Fandy said Syrian President Bashar Assad was faced with a particularly tough choice. He "has to respond and put the Middle East on a countdown to hell, or he does not respond, and undermines his own legitimacy internally." He added: "Everybody's shaking in their boots now. They don't know how to respond to this major bluff." -- CNN Correspondents Fionnuala Sweeney, Brent Sadler and Rula Amin contributed to this report.
aye to that. not sure about the extent of syria's occupation today, but there is no doubt they intervene in lebanese politics. again, that places us in some terrific company i say.
I suppose Syria is now justified to retaliate against Israel. I wish we'd just cut off this Israeli government, there's no point in the US being seen as the apologist for this crap. If they want to start a war they can start it on their own dime as far as I'm concerned. The radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for today's attack in statements issued to television networks and wire services identifying the bomber as Hanadi Tayseer Jaradat, 29, a woman from Jenin who recently graduated from law school in Jordan. The statement said Jaradat watched as Israeli troops shot and killed her brother, Salah, and a cousin, both Islamic Jihad supporters, at the family home in June. Associates of Jaradat's said that since the killings, she had become increasingly religious, reading from the Koran twice a day and fasting regularly, according to Palestinian media accounts. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/washpost/20031005/ts_washpost/a45087_2003oct4&e=3 Now we've got educated women out there blowing themselves up. The answer is obviously to kill more people.
It's about attacking a terrorist camp that targets another country. If a country gives safe haven to a terrorist org while they are allowed to attack other nations, then the harmed nation has every right to defend itself which would include crossing the border. The additional deragatory comment was because this post had come from a racist SOB.
Will you please direct me to the thread discussing the latest Palestinian suicide bomber, the one that killed 19 people within a week of the most holy Jewish holiday?
And thus, you now understand the point. This thread is about Israel's attack on a terrorist organization in response to a terrorist attack on a suicide bombing at an ordinary "civilian" restaurant in Haifa. It's the next best thing. To say that Israel's attack is unrelated to that suicide bombing would just be uninformed.
