TEL AVIV’S bombing of Damascus international airport highlights Israel’s unconfirmed but nonetheless real alliance with the jihadist groups fighting to destroy Syria.

The regional rogue state claims to have targeted rockets sent from Iran to Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah, dressing up its attack on a neighbouring state as pre-emptive self-defence.

Imperialist media outlets carry such justifications unquestioned despite knowing that Hezbollah forces have resisted Israeli occupation of Lebanon but never initiated cross-border hostilities.

Hezbollah units have also been among the most effective anti-jihadist forces in Syria.

Israel’s involvement in the war to depose President Bashar al-Assad has unremittingly favoured the jihadists — not simply al-Qaida-linked forces operating under the Nato-approved Free Syrian Army label but also Islamic State (Isis).

Jihadist fighters wounded in battle in Syria’s Quneitra province, adjoining the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, have for years been able to cross the border for medical treatment in Israeli hospitals before returning to the fray.

They have benefited from air support by Israeli warplanes, most recently at the weekend when three members of a pro-Damascus militia group fighting against jihadists were killed by an air strike.

Tel Aviv’s de facto alliance with the extremist groups persists despite Syrian determination to avoid conflict with Israel by dispensing with aerial support for its forces in border areas, including this week’s advance in the Beit Jinn pocket.

Israel’s backing for al-Qaida and Isis in Syria is purely tactical.

It sees Damascus as the main regional obstacle to its expansionist project and will help any force that weakens the Assad regime even if the jihadists and their backers in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey pay lip service to the cause of Palestinian national liberation.

Israel pulled the same trick within Palestinian society, initially encouraging the development of Hamas as a counterweight to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, only to find that it had sown a wind to reap a whirlwind.

Growing popular support for Hamas, because of its welfare network and uncompromising opposition to Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land, especially following Arafat’s death in 2004, brought it victory in the 2006 general election.

Israel continued its divide-and-rule ploy then by assisting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s efforts to undermine the election result by arresting Hamas members of the Palestinian Legislative Council on the West Bank while Fatah launched an unsuccessful coup in Gaza.

It has maintained the same approach since then of dangling the negotiations carrot in front of Abbas while provoking armed conflict with Hamas whenever it feels the need for an emergency situation.

The principal arena in which Palestinians have built unity in action has been Israeli jails where around 1,500 political prisoners have been on hunger strike for a fortnight, mainly Fatah but around 10 per cent of them Hamas or Islamic Jihad members.

The strike was called by Marwan Barghouti, who is often described as Palestine’s Nelson Mandela.

This description is fitting not least because just as the US, Britain and the EU parroted apartheid South Africa’s assessment of Mandela as a terrorist for decades, so these Western allies accept apartheid Israel’s depiction of Barghouti.

Yes, Barghouti was found guilty by an Israeli occupation court of terrorist offences, but the Swiss-based Inter-Parliamentary Union called his trial “a violation of international law” that “failed to meet fair-trial standards.”

When will Britain’s mainstream mass media begin to question Israel’s role in backing terrorism in Syria and imposing a military occupation on Palestine?