Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 12 December 2024. © Richard Kemp

The Turkish foreign ministry has strongly condemned Israeli military action in Syria, including the IDF’s advance into the buffer zone between Israel and Syria. ‘Israel is once again displaying its occupation mentality,’ according to Ankara. Never mind that Turkey has invaded, illegally occupied, and ethnically cleansed large areas of northern Syria since 2016.

Jerusalem has temporarily deployed its forces into largely uninhabited areas of critical terrain to prevent Syrian rebels from using them to threaten Israel. It has also been conducting precision attacks against weaponry that would otherwise fall into jihadist hands.

Turkey, meanwhile, has carried out airstrikes against Kurds in northern Syria, while its proxies have killed and kidnapped civilians. Looting and burning homes, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army has seized the northern towns of Tal Rifaat and Manbij, previously held by the US-backed and largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces which played a key role in vanquishing the Islamic State.

Turkey’s condemnation of Israel’s legitimate defensive actions is perhaps understandable for a regime that wants to deflect from its expansionist activity in Syria. Outspoken criticism has also been heaped on Israel’s actions by Iran, again hardly surprising as the ayatollahs lick the wounds inflicted by their ignominious withdrawal from Syria and the devastation wreaked on their number one proxy, Hezbollah, both from Israeli military assault and the loss of Syrian territory vital for its survival.

However, right on cue, the UN, never willing to miss an opportunity to attack Israel, also demanded that the IDF pull back from the buffer zone and cease its air strikes against Syrian military assets. France, too, leapt onto the anti-Israel bandwagon. Search as I might, I have seen only tumbleweed at the UN and across much of the media on Turkey’s egregious assaults against northern Syria in the last few days, even though there have been reports of several hundred killed.

Israel is accused of breaching the 1974 Disengagement Agreement with Syria following the Yom Kippur War. Israel’s position is that, with the fall of the regime, that agreement is void until order is restored in the country. Given current instability, the potential for infiltration from Syria is obvious. Indeed, last weekend, the IDF had to come to the aid of peacekeepers when a UN post on the edge of the buffer zone was attacked by a group of armed men.

As for the destruction of Syrian planes, ships, tanks, missiles, chemical weapons and armaments factories, it is equally obvious that no responsible country could risk these weapons being seized by any of the jihadist gangs that now have free rein in Syria. Aside from the direct threat to Israel, let us not forget the vast quantities of advanced weaponry that were distributed around the region after the withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan and the fall of Gaddafi in Libya.

As we were belatedly thankful for Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme in 1981 and Syria’s in 2007, we should now be grateful to the Jewish state for making the world safer, rather than the knee-jerk ‘Israel bad’ reaction.

Prime Minister Netanyahu rightly likened his airstrikes in Syria to Churchill’s 1940 bombing of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir in Algeria. The purpose of that was twofold. Firstly to prevent the warships from enlarging the Nazi Kriegsmarine and secondly to demonstrate Britain’s resolve to fight on after the fall of France.

In Israel’s case, the denial of these munitions to jihadist gangs is equally vital. But there is also much to be gained from a demonstration of ruthlessness in a region that respects strength above all else, regardless of hand-wringing by the cold and timid souls in UN headquarters for whom Israel can do nothing right anyway.

The contrast between Israel’s and Turkey’s actions in Syria could not be more stark. President Erdogan’s agenda is the domination of Syria and the crushing of his Kurdish opponents. Netanyahu’s is the defence of his country from aggression on this front as well as six others.

Erdogan gives us a lesson in savage repression, Netanyahu in strategic resolve. But there is another lesson also: the moral inversion among international bodies and much of the media, whose full-throated attacks on Jerusalem and silence on Ankara embody the shameful anti-Israel propaganda campaign that has been growing relentlessly since October 7 last year.

Image: Wikimedia Commons