photo: frontpagemag
Silence can speak at times, more than a thousand words. And Netanyahu's silence is doing just that.
It is a strange coincidence that at a time when Israel's mortal enemy is aiding Bashar al Assad, that Israel would play into the hand of Hezbollah by failing to denounce, or help the Syrian opposition.
When President Obama went to Israel last week, the tension was palpable. Obama spoke about the need to remove a dictator, while Netanyahu talked about 'other' states and staying mum about Syria.
Israel in many ways has made Assad's bloody attempt at quelling the civil war acceptable in not denouncing it. Although Netanyahu has expressed concern about the fate of chemical and other lethal weapons in Syria now that there is a civil war, it has said absolutely nothing on the mass assassination of citizens with mortar round and air strikes by the Assad regime.
Some are purporting that the prime minister's silence is kept in the hope that if there is a conflict with Iran, that Syria will not intervene. But that is counterintuitive: there is no way of telling what a post Assad Syria will be like, and Assad's loyalty rests with Iran, not Israel.
Israel is now in a position it has never been in before: Egypt's unrest to the south, Turkey's indignation to the north, and Syria's raging civil war to the East.
Is silence truly the best policy? It is not a coincidence that Israel issued an apology to Turkey following Obama's visit. It seems that encouraging Assad, is not a very good line of action. If Israel believes that the Assad regime can survive this civil war, then it will find herself having to issue a lot more apologies when, and not if, the Assad regime falls.
Even though Israel has rekindled old alliances with Jordan and Turkey who are both engaged with the rebels in Syria, and has provided medical assistance to Syrians in the Golan Heights, one has to wonder why it is not more vocal in its support of the regime's opponents.
Maybe the attitude we are witnessing is a wait and see approach, but the atrocities committed in Syria demand that the whole world pay attention and take sides, and Israel is not removed enough from that theatre to be afforded the luxury of silence.
Partial Source: France 24/ 3.29.13
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