The White Helmets Rescued: Thank You, Israel

"Several days ago, U.S. President Trump contacted me, as did Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and others, and requested that we assist in evacuating hundreds of White Helmets from Syria."
"These are people who have saved lives and whose lives were in danger. Therefore, I approved their passage through Israel to additional countries as an important humanitarian gesture."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

White Helmet volunteers in Syria carry children out of bombed danger zones. Syria accuses the White Helmets of 'terrorism'. Photo: Sultan Kitaz, Reuters

And nor has this been the sole humanitarian commitment that Israel has been engaged in while Syrian President Bashar al-Assad mutilates and murders children and their Sunni parents, citizens of Syria who have protested their government's oppression of the majority Sunni population. Israeli medics have operated on Syrian children who have been wounded in the air strikes the regime has carried out against its civilian population. And as Syrians attempting to escape the bombardment by Russia's air attacks supporting the Syrian regime's barrel bombs, reaching the Golan Heights, Israel has delivered food, medical supplies and aid.

The selfless courage of the White Helmet volunteers throughout the latter years of this prolonged civil war in exposing themselves to danger while moving into bombed areas to rescue men, women and children buried in rubble. is well known. They have themselves fallen victims to those same attacks when the Syrian military has deliberately aimed at killing them. Hospitals, schools and medical clinics in areas where Sunni Syrians live have been deliberately targeted by both Syrian and Russian planes, to destroy the capacity of medical personnel to operate their facilities to save lives.

Now that the regime is recapturing areas of the country that had fallen to the Syrian rebels, all Sunni Syrians are regarded by their president as traitors. The White Helmets in particular are labelled 'terrorists' by the regime. Which is now excoriating the rescue of hundreds of White Helmet volunteers and their families from the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, bordering Israel. Israel, in a surprise, precise military action, has bused those they had escorted into the Israeli Golan Heights, on to Jordan which had agreed to accept them on a temporary basis.

The evacuation represents the first Israeli intervention (beyond bombing Hezbollah and IRCG transport of weapons) in Syria.  AP Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets

Germany, Canada and the U.K. have agreed to accept all those rescued as refugees. And they are indeed refugees from the carnage and certain death that Assad had planned for the the rescue service volunteers. Syria, in a vitriolic response to their rescue has characterized it as a "criminal operation" undertaken by "Israel and its tools". Also known as the Syria Civil Defence group, Assad accuses them of being a terrorist organization sponsored by the West. The White Helmets, he spits in fury, are joined with Al-Qaeda in Syria.

"98 male and female White Helmet volunteers, with 324 of their family members - mostly women and children - have arrived in Jordan through the occupied Syrian Golan Heights after being forced to flee their homes in southern Syria."
"The UNHCR participated in the coordination of the agreement to resettle the 422 rescue workers and their family members in countries including Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, among others."
"As Syrians who love our country, it breaks our hearts to be forced to leave it, but it was the only alternative for our trapped volunteers who would otherwise have faced detention or death at the hands of the Syrian regime and its ally Russia."
"In the absence of the requested protection, we thank all governments who contributed to the success of this operation to rescue the rescuers, and we ask that they do more to help the hundreds of thousands remaining in southern Syria. We confirm that the Syrian Civil Defense will continue its mission to serve the Syrian people in all possible areas. 3750 White Helmets remain working on the ground in Syria to do so."
Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets statement 

Note the absence of any mention of Israel in this statement of appreciation.

People walk past Israeli soldiers as they board a bus during the White Helmets extraction from the Golan Heights   Israel Army handout via Reuters

"Israel has always lied claiming that it doesn’t have a relation to the war waged on Syria."
"[Israel] has smuggled hundreds of members of the ‘White Helmets’ terrorist organization and of the leaders of other armed terrorist organizations in cooperation with the governments of the U.S., Britain, Jordan and Germany."
Syrian foreign ministry, Syrian official news agency SANA