Hey, why shouldn’t Israel also be required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction?
So asks — actually, demands — Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Assad — who has spent the last two years slaughtering his own people, exporting violent extremists to Iraq, receiving and using Russian weapons on his own people, and allowing Iran to send weapons to the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon over Syrian soil — is concerned about stability in the Middle East
“If we want stability in the Middle East,” Assad said Sept. 12 in an interview with a state-run TV network in Russia, “all countries should adhere to agreements and the first country to adhere to the agreements should be Israel because Israel has nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and all types of weapons of mass destruction.”
Assad’s conscience is veritably anguished over the extent of Israel’s weapons of mass destruction. Not to mention, these weapons are all unnecessary; they long ago would have vanished had it not been for Israel’s intransigence and the malignant cooperation of the US, or so Assad said in his interview:
“When we proposed a project to liquidate stores of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, the US impeded the project. One of the reasons was to allow Israel to have such weapons.”
Imagine, the US impedes the destruction of weapons of mass destruction! The same US that has destroyed hundreds if not thousands of weapons in its own nuclear arsenal since the fall of communism in 1989. The same US that went to war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq because the US thought Hussein possessed WMD. Perhaps Assad ought to ask why this same US is not demanding that Israel destroy its own WMD.
But no. All that Assad can perceive is unfairness and injustice. He is being required by the US and Russia to dismantle his supplies of chemical weapons, while Israel, which Assad says possesses similar weapons, is not required to do the same. Not to mention, Assad has no nuclear weapons, while Israel, Assad says, does. Why the double standard? Assad wants to know.
A double standard is the application of different standards to the same circumstances. Alas for the logic and the anguish of Bashar Assad, the circumstances of Syrian behavior and the circumstances of Israeli behavior differ as radically as day and night, as good and evil.
Item: Syria has used weapons of mass destruction. Israel has never used them.
This is the obvious, moral and tactical distinction that has led to the world’s revulsion over Syria and to the demand that its WMD be destroyed forthwith. To Israel, WMD are defensive weapons. To Syria, WMD are offensive weapons.
Item: Syria has fought offensive wars designed to annihilate Israel. Israel has not fought offensive wars designed to annihilate Syria.
Syria declared war on and attacked Israel in 1947, 1967 and 1973. (Those are only the full scale wars; from 1948-1967 Syria shelled Israeli farms from the Golan Heights.) Israel fought back. Israel’s wars against Syria have been strictly defensive.
Bashar Assad is sanctimony itself. This mass murderer’s heart bleeds for “stability in the Middle East.” The easiest, quickest, simplest, most readily available, decisive and positive way to bring an immediate, marked and welcome stability to the Middle East — and to Syria’s own people — would be for Assad to resign.
Even better would be for Assad to voluntarily submit to a war-crimes tribunal. (We’re not holding our breath.)
Until such time as true stability comes to the Middle East with the fall of Arab dictators ranging from Syria to Saudi Arabia, and with the extirpation of the grassroots hatred of Israel, Israel will, yes, keeps its defensive WMD. What better deterrent?
Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News
