the empire and the zionists that own it seem to always have complaints about how its opponents use 'civilian' hostages as ways to keep from being shot in their actions, and here is evidence that those virtue signalers are guilty in spades of doing what they tell you others do;

A Russian general on Thursday said that Syrian air defenses did not engage Israeli jets that reportedly carried out a strike in central Syria because there were two civilian airliners in the air at the time.

A Britain-based war monitor said the alleged Israeli airstrike in central Syria killed nine pro-government fighters, four of them Syrians and five of undetermined nationality.

Russian Rear Admiral Vadim Kulit told the Sputnik news site that the strike was carried out by four Israeli F-16 jets.

“The Syrian military leadership decided not to use air defense systems since at the time of the Israeli aviation attack, two civilian passenger aircraft were in the zone of destruction of the anti-aircraft systems,” Kulit said.

Russia has repeatedly accused Israel of using civilian aircraft as a “shield” against Syrian air defenses, amid lingering anger over a case in 2018, when the Syrian military shot down a Russian spy plane while responding to an Israeli strike over Syrian airspace.

Russia later declared that Israel was responsible for that incident, in which 15 crew members were killed, saying the Israel Air Force jets used the Russian plane as cover.

In that case, the Israeli military flatly denied the allegation that IDF jets had used the spy plane as shield, and defense analysts also cast doubts on the feasibility of such a maneuver.

The Syrian state news agency SANA had earlier quoted a military source as saying that the late Wednesday attack near the city of Palmyra had killed a soldier and wounded three others.

“At around 11:34 p.m., the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression… on the area of Palmyra, targeting a communication tower and several positions in its vicinity,” the source told SANA......read more.......