Missive in a missile: 9 things to know for July 25

1. Israel’s downing of a Syrian jet that apparently strayed into its airspace is being touted by some politicians and pundits as a message — a deadly, costly and potentially explosive message saying that Israel won’t accept any violation of its sovereignty.

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a “gross violation” of Israel and Syria’s 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement, and said Israel would continue to defend its borders.
• Unsourced reports in Hebrew media, though, likely dictated by the military’s opaque flack, indicate that the shooting down of the jet was a one-off and the army will go back to only shooting down missiles.
• “Zero tolerance,” reads the headline of Israel Hayom, Israel’s most widely read daily and often seen as a window into Netanyahu’s mindset.
• “Israel’s policies are not just meant to defend Israeli territory, but also to draw a clear border to more problematic actors than Syria’s faltering air force,” writes Yoav Limor in the tabloid. “Iran, for example, which could take advantage of holes in Israel’s defense to carry out attacks, or Russia, seemingly an ally in coordination, but which could also send jets into the Golan to gather intelligence.”
• Yedioth Ahronoth’s Yossi Yehoshua writes that the incident needs to be seen as part of the larger picture of “Israeli efforts to redesign the rules of the game vis-a-vis the Assad regime for the day after he takes total control of the Golan, which will likely happen soon.”

2. Yet Israel’s envoy to the UN described the shooting down as a split second decision, with the army not knowing whether the plane had come to attack or merely strayed over the border, as it now believes it did, making it seem more like a deadly error than strategy.

• “When an armed fighter jet is three seconds from Katzrin, you need to act quickly,” Brig. Gen. Shahr Shochat tells Army Radio.
• “This is not a long-term escalation and does not herald a war on the Syrian border. The two latest incidents … are side effects of the main operation that is already underway: the Syrian Army’s retaking of southern Syria,” writes Amos Harel in Haaretz.
• ToI’s Avi Issacharoff similarly notes, “There is little to suggest the Syrian air force had any intention of striking Israeli targets; rather, the pilot was probably busy bombing rebel targets adjacent to the Syria-Jordan-Israel border triangle as part of a wide Syrian and Russian offensive.”

3. Syria claimed that its plane was shot down while operating in Syrian airspace. Russia, however, seemingly did not back up that claim and stayed mum about the incident.

• In Kremlin mouthpiece Sputnik, though, former UK ambassador to Syria Peter Ford says he thinks Israel is not telling the truth: “”The Israelis have a track record of lying about these things, not to put too fine an edge on it. Only yesterday they admitted they had lied about an earlier incident involving Syrian missiles.”
• Ford also tell the site that Israel has no claim to the Israeli-annexed side of the Golan, thus there can be no Israeli airspace there.
• Syria has also claimed the downing of the jet was part of Israel’s supposed support for rebel groups. As The Washington Post notes, “On several [Syrian] television channels, indignant guests claimed that the Israeli strike had targeted Syrian warplanes as they bombed Islamic State positions near Damascus.”

4. The wreckage of Israel’s decision to send a message and try to draw a new state of play with Assad is on full display in Hebrew media early Wednesday afternoon, with most news sites representing pictures of the planes wreckage published by the Islamic State.

Islamic State publishes photos said showing Syrian jet shot down by Israel https://t.co/nPTH4G2Rs8 pic.twitter.com/kQH6TKNHqu

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— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) July 25, 2018

• On Twitter, IS watcher Rita Katz says that other pictures and video sent out by Islamic State in the area shows the group actually gaining ground in the triangle between Israel, Jordan and Syria.

2) #ISIS provided photo/video evidence of seized areas throughout #Daraa & #Quneitra regions, showing scenes of fighters in vehicles driving through captured towns, clashes,& bodies of slain Syrian regime soldiers. pic.twitter.com/oWn5RjV5C3

— Rita Katz (@Rita_Katz) July 24, 2018

• That seems to dovetail with statements made by Syria White Helmets who were evacuated out of the region recently, who told the AP that the advance of jihadists, and not regime forces, actually complicated the rescue operation.

At least 50 people were killed by the Islamic State during their suicide attacks in Suwayda City. The Islamic State captured Busan, Shurayhi and Shabki east of Suwayda. The Syrian Arab Army recaptured the villages after hours of clashes.

Map: https://t.co/49Hh6dZ1GA pic.twitter.com/y2TsW87zvu

— Syrian Civil War Map (@CivilWarMap) July 25, 2018

5. While Israel isn’t expected to down any more Syrian jets, it will continue to act against missiles. A day after Yedioth Ahronoth unveiled a NIS 30 billion ($8 billion) plan to bolster the country’s already robust missile defense, the same paper reports that defense officials are fuming at treasury chief Moshe Kahlon for taking credit.

• “It’s just a campaign gimmick. There’s hasn’t been a single serious discussion. There’s no agreements, everything is on the basis of: ‘before we start let’s run and tell our friends,’” a Defense Ministry source tells the paper.

6. While there are no elections on the horizon, Israel’s Hadashot news published a poll Tuesday night showing Likud remaining at 30 seats and the Yesh Atid Party jumping up to 19 seats.

• While the result would see Likud still in power and with the same exact number of seats, the channel calls it a drop for Netanyahu’s party, given previous polls that showed Likud rising to 35 seats.

7. Netanyahu and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan got into a Twitter tiff Tuesday, proving wrong all of those who said previous rows were related to Turkish elections.

• After Erdogan compared Israel’s nation-state law to Nazi legislation, Israel Hayom hits back by echoing Jerusalem’s indignation at being given a scolding by a leader as repressive as Ankara’s “Democrator,” in Netanyahu’s coinage.

Then someone on his team awoke to the fact there was a snarkier way to appreciate Erdogan’s congrats so the @IsraeliPM office tweeted out a corrected Netanyahu statement coining the term “democrator.” Burn, right? pic.twitter.com/DtejuYzJXj

— Noga Tarnopolsky נגה טרנופולסקי نوغا ترنوبولسكي (@NTarnopolsky) July 24, 2018

• While columnist Nadav Shragai makes do with comparing Erdogan to Hitler, fellow analyst Elad Beck calls for Israel to take action against Ankara.
• “Israel needs to act to isolate Turkey and Erdogan in the international community,” he says
• Hadashot News’s Arad Nir tweeted Tuesday that Israel was considering moving from words to actual action.

As Erdogan and his adviser continue to slam Netanyahu and the Jewish-Nationality-Law, Israel considers a harsher response. Most probably further limiting Turkey's acees to assist the Palestinians. https://t.co/cZCupLLe85

— Arad Nir (@arad_nir) July 24, 2018

• A Foreign Ministry spokesperson, though, tells ToI he knows of no plans to do anything of the sort.

8. Erdogan isn’t the only one with a beef with the nation-state bill, and some in Israel’s right wing are beginning to recognize the damage it is doing to the Arab minority.

• On Wednesday, Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett says the government has “a responsibility to find a way to heal the rift” specifically with the Druze community, acknowledging the contributions it has made to the state.
• This comes after former Likud whip David Bitan told Israel Radio Tuesday that the Druze should be happy for whatever scraps they get.
• “I don’t understand them. The Druze also have to respect the majority,” he says.
• In Haaretz, Arab affairs columnist Zvi Bar’el also strikes out at the country’s Arab minority, saying they should dig in their feet on speaking Arabic rather than be subsumed by the Hebrew lingua franca, or not complain about the bill’s demotion of the language.
• “Arabic’s status is closely linked to the Arab community’s status. And an Arab who isn’t willing to fight for his language’s prestige in his own community can’t then complain about his language’s inferiority nationally,” he writes.

9. The US media is currently have a field day with the publication of transcripts of US President Donald Trump’s recorded conversations with lawyer Michael Cohen about paying hush money to cover up an alleged affair.

• But it’s a different CNN expose about transcripts, or lack thereof, that might interest Israel watchers more, after it was revealed that the White House will not reveal transcripts of calls with world leaders anymore, including Netanyahu and Erdogan, both of whom he spoke with last week, but which the White House stayed mostly mum about.
• Tony Blinken, who served as an aide to Barack Obama, says the policy will only help the other leader who was talking to Trump: “these readouts help shape the narrative. If we aren’t doing a readout, but the other country is, their narrative is going to prevail.”
• In Netanyahu’s case, he has little to worry about, given the Israeli leader’s bromance with the US president.
• Trump himself jokingly gave a Midwestern audience a taste of his calls with world leaders in a mostly overlooked passage from his speech to a Missouri VFW Tuesday, in which he recalled opposition to his moving the US embassy to Jerusalem.
• And so I leave you with an unedited passage from the White House transcript of that speech:
• “When it came time, and when people were hearing rumors about it, I was inundated from calls of every leader from all over the world, imploring me, even demanding that we not do it, to a point where I never took their calls. I called them back after I did it. You know, it’s one of those jobs — (laughter) — ‘let me call them back.’ (Applause.) I was getting calls from kings and presidents and dictators. I was getting a call from everyone. And when I knew what it was about, I’d say, ‘Tell them I’ll call them next week.’ (Laughter.) Then I called them and I said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you felt that way. Well, it’s too late.’ (Laughter.)”