
 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Sept. 26, 2007
/ 14 Tishrei 5768
The curious incident in Syria: A nuclear mystery
By
Jonathan Gurwitz
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story "Silver Blaze," Sherlock Holmes makes his famous observation about the dog that did not bark in the night.
"That was the curious incident," Holmes tells a Scotland Yard detective. Its silence was a telltale clue.
Something significant happened just after midnight on Sept. 6, deep in Syria's eastern desert. We don't know and may not know for a long time what exactly transpired. But, as in the Holmes tale, the silence of some and barking of other diplomatic hounds provide crucial evidence.
After the sun rose, the Syrian government issued a statement accusing Israeli warplanes of violating its airspace. The sparse statement said the jets had "dropped munitions" and that air defenses had chased away the invaders. An Israeli Cabinet minister confirmed only that Israeli planes had indeed violated Syrian airspace.
That might have been the end of the story. The Israeli military regularly sends supersonic signals to the Syrian dictatorship. During a particularly tense period in June 2006, Israeli jets buzzed the summer palace of President Bashar Assad, setting off sonic booms. The message: If terrorists you support strike at Israel, we can strike at you ... personally.
But after the ho-hum Syrian statement and the low-key Israeli acknowledgment, something curious happened. North Korea unexpectedly condemned the Israeli incursion.
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry issued a statement that "strongly denounces the above-said intrusion and extends full support and solidarity to the Syrian people in their just cause to defend the national security and the regional peace."
Huh? Who asked?
Then the Turkish government issued a complaint when discarded Israeli fuel tanks were found near its border with Syria hundreds of miles away from the Israeli-Syrian frontier and hundreds of miles away from southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah's Syrian-supplied weapons threaten northern Israel.
How much farther might the jets have ranged from Syria's northern border with external fuel tanks? And what were they doing there?
Some answers came from the Sunday Times of London on Sept. 16. After 10 days of silence, Israeli sources disclosed off the record that the planes and a commando team had struck a top-secret Syrian nuclear weapons facility.
Syria's chemical and biological weapons capability and shared missile technology with Iran are well known. But a nuclear capability is a new and ominous wrinkle, as is the implication that North Korea is an integral part of the program.
If the reports are even partially accurate, then the Israeli raid ranks with the rescue at Entebbe and the destruction of Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear reactor as one of the most audacious in modern military history.
Why wouldn't the Syrians denounce the Israeli attack deep in their territory in the strongest terms, as their North Korean allies did, and show the world the destructive evidence of Zionist aggression? They wouldn't if doing so would require them to disclose the existence of an illicit nuclear weapons program or if it revealed the incompetence of the Syrian military on which the Assad dictatorship rests.
Why would the Israelis be tight-lipped about such a triumph? The Osirak strike in 1981 earned Israel the condemnation of the international community. Even the United States joined a U.N. Security Council resolution to censure Israel an appeasement of Arab sentiment that U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Secretary of State George Schultz later regretted.
The Middle East would be a far more dangerous place, the response to the 1991 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait would have been far different, if Saddam had been allowed to develop nuclear weapons. A decade from now, the world may once again belatedly thank Israel for keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of another Middle Eastern despot.
Israel doesn't mind quietly doing the world's dirty work when its existence is at stake. It can, however, do without the international community's blaring hypocrisy.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
JWR contributor Jonathan Gurwitz, a columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, is a co-founder and twice served as Director General of the Future Leaders of the Alliance program at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. In 1986 he was placed on the Foreign Service Register of the U.S. State Department.
Jonathan Gurwitz Archives
© 2007, Jonathan Gurwitz
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|