South Front

Israel has weaponized the WhatsApp messaging application to terrorize Syrian officers deployed in the south of the country, near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. According to reports, messages were sent from a number hosted in Cyprus to mobile phones of officers that allegedly have ties with Lebanese Hezbollah.

“Hezbollah and Iran are taking advantage of you to operate on the border against Israel, you bear responsibility and you won’t be away from our responses,” the message read.

This was not the first time when Israel sent direct threats to Syrian personnel. For example, on October 21, Israel dropped leaflets with threats to officers of the 1st Corps of the Syrian Arab Army. Three weeks later, on November 18 an Israeli airstrike destroyed the office of Major General Akram Hawija, the commander of the 7th Division of the 1st Corps. He was one of the officers mentioned in the Israeli leaflets. Additionally to the regular strikes on Syria, Israel has been conducting active psychological operations against Syrian personnel and their allies in the south. According to the Israelis, WhatsApp spam, anonymous leaflets and trashposting on social media should deter Hezbollah and Iran, and undermine their cooperation with Syria.

The issue is that for the past few years Hezbollah and Iran demonstrated themselves as consistent allies of the Syrians that were actively supporting Damascus in its fight with foreign-supported terrorists. At the same time, Israel was supporting terrorists in Syria while simultaneously claiming that the world should accept ISIS’ Caliphate as the new reality in the Middle East and that Iran is much worse than ISIS. Once in 2017, former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon even acknowledged that his country has an open communication channel with ISIS via which the terrorist group apologized for accidentally opening fire towards Israeli positions in the Golan Heights. Another open secret is that ISIS has never carried out attacks on Israeli military or civilian targets. Apparently, this is just a coincidence.

In this light, an interesting question is how it appeared that Syrian officers deployed close to the Golan Heights still use smartphones, WhatsApp, Facebook and other various social media. Apparently, modern warfare has evolved to the level that the newest Iphone for dramatic selfies has become the irreplaceable weapon on the battlefield.

Iranian social media warriors do not lag behind their Israeli counterparts and on December 4 they assassinated on Twitter an alleged ‘top Mossad member’, Fahmi Hinawi, near Tel Aviv. The aforementioned person died after at least 15 bullets were fired at a car he was driving when he stopped at a red light. Israeli sources deny claims that Hinawi was any kind of Mossad agent, while Iranian media outlets that launched the rumor provided no evidence to back their claims.

Despite this, Iranian supporters in social media immediately called this vengeance for the killing of the top Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, near Tehran in late November. In some cases, it looks like that even if a meteorite strikes Israel, there is always going to be a group of people on the Internet that would be ready to call this an Iranian retaliation strike or, if they are supporters of Israel, the act of an Iranian aggression.

In particular, the US administration regularly finds Iranian or at the very least Hezbollah traces in regions and countries where it faces some difficulties, like Venezuela, Iraq and Yemen. Currently, mainstream media and US officials are deeply concerned by Iranian tankers moving to Venezuela. In an unprecedented ‘act of aggression’, 10 tankers will allegedly deliver fuel to the country and help to export Venezuelan oil. The democracy is in danger!