Israeli military officials came clean on Tuesday about its support for Islamist rebels in Syria, a subject it has been coy on since the outset of the war in the country ‒ at least according to an article later inexplicably deleted by the Jerusalem Post.
It has long been an open secret that israel was arming and supporting groups seeking to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Reports of israel treating al-Qaeda-linked extremist fighters of the Al Nusra Front in their hospitals under Operation Good Neighbor have fueled speculation of a deeper connection between the so-called rebel groups occupying the Golan Heights and Israel, which illegally annexed the western two-thirds of the area in 1967. In 2015, before the official launch of Operation Good Neighbor, then-Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon characterized their support for Golan Islamists as humanitarian and as a bargaining chip to keep the militants from slaughtering members of the Druze minority in the area.
But on Tuesday, Israeli authorities admitted that Operation Good Neighbor is more than just a super-secret, codenamed, humanitarian mission — and in fact gives the potpourri of the seven or so jihadist groups in the Golan light arms and munitions. That's according to the Jerusalem Post, which deleted an article summarizing the subjects of a Tuesday press conference held by senior members of the Israeli…
