SYRIAN UPDATE: 4.8.17 - Does Daniel's Vision Predict Assad's Downfall?

Trump Launches Attack on Syria, Seeking God's Wisdom to Stop the 'Horror' - http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2017/april/trump-launches-attack-on-syria-seeking-gods-wisdom-to-stop-the-horror

 

The United States blasted a Syrian air base with 59 cruise missiles Thursday night in retaliation for this week's horrific chemical weapons attack that killed at least 87 civilians, including 31 children.

 

It was the first direct American assault on the Syrian government and Trump's most dramatic military order since becoming president.

 

"Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children," Trump said in a statement following the attack. "No child of God should ever suffer such horror."

 

The president wants the surprise attack to send a strong message to the Syrian government that the United States will not allow it to use banned chemical weapons.

 

"There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons," he said. "Numerous previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all found and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies."

 

President Trump then called on the world to pray for Syria and to ask God for wisdom in dealing with a nation broken by civil war.

 

"Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syrian and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. We asked for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who passed."

 

The strikes hit the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S. officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken off.  The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower, and ammunition areas, officials said.

 

Syrian state TV reported a U.S. missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an "aggression." Many wonder if war could be looming in the future.

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the airstrikes will send a strong message beyond Syria. 

 

"President Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," Netanyahu said. "Israel fully supports President Trump's decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime's horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere."

 

The attack sparked mixed responses on Capitol Hill.

 

Senator Rand Paul criticized Trump for acting without getting congressional approval.

 

"While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked. The President needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate," he said.

 

Meanwhile, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham applauded the strikes.

 

"We salute the skill and professionalism of the U.S. Armed Forces who carried out tonight's strikes in Syria.  Acting on the orders of their commander-in-chief, they have sent an important message the United States will no longer stand idly by as Assad, aided and abetted by Putin's Russia, slaughters innocent Syrians with chemical weapons and barrel bombs," the senators said.

 

Some Democrats even applauded the president's move, while others said he needs to consult with Congress on future military actions.

 

Pentagon officials say Russia was informed before the attack, to avoid any military conflict with them and prevent Russian casualties on the ground in Syria.

 

But Russia and Iran strongly condemned the attack with threatening language.

 

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes the U.S. strike is an "aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international law."

 

The head of an Iranian parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy was quoted as saying "Russia and Iran won't be quiet against such acts which violate interests of the region."

 

He said serious consequences would follow the U.S. action.

 

Does Daniel's Vision Predict Assad's Downfall? - By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz - https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/86257/assad-may-be-nero-of-the-east-tyrant-whose-downfall-brings-messiah-in-jewish-prophecy/#e8AyZz0kOKlCD6Eu.99

 

"And Hashem said unto her: Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger." Genesis 25:23 (The Israel Bible�)

 

A  Jewish text enigmatically describing the fall of the eastern tyrant Nero as presaging the rise of the Messiah may refer to Syrian leader Bashar al Assad, according to both Jewish and Arab sources.

 

The Jewish text predicting the rise of an 'Eastern Nero' and his destruction is known as the Otzar Midrashim, which relates the story of a Talmudic sage who received an angelic message regarding the coming of the Messiah.

 

This will be for you a sign: when you see that the Nero of the East has fallen in Damascus, the kingdom of the east will fall, and then the salvation of Israel will grow, and the Messiah of the House of David will arrive and [the Jews] will go up to Jerusalem. (Otzar Midrashim)

 

The rule of the original Nero, who was an emperor of ancient Rome, is associated with tyranny, extravagance, cruelty and madness. Strangely enough, it was the Arabs who first identified Bashar al Assad with the Nero of the East. In a political cartoon widely circulated in the Arab world in 2012, Assad was portrayed as Nero fiddling while his country lay in ruins around him.

 

Jewish observers quickly found another clue to the parallel. Soon after the cartoon came out, Rabbi Avraham Feldman of the Ohr Yerushalayim Yeshiva in Jerusalem noted that the gematria (Hebrew numerology) of niron mizrachi - "Nero of the East" - equals that of the name 'Bashar Assad'.

 

Assad, who inherited power from his father, has held onto his leadership through a brutal and bloody civil war which has claimed the lives of nearly 300,000 Syrians and forced millions more to flee, creating a worldwide refugee crisis. Media critics of his regime have been violently subdued and thousands of protesters killed outright by the military.

 

Nonetheless, there are signs that the long-time enemy of Israel may, as the prophecy predicted, be falling. On Tuesday, a horrific chemical attack in Syria's Idlib province killed over 70 people, including many children; world leaders jumped to condemn Assad's regime, which both US and UN investigations have concluded is behind the massacre.

 

Dov Bar Leib, an end-of-days blogger, is sure that this ancient source is may be referring specifically to  Assad and his imminent downfall.

 

"Assad is unique in the Arab world. Unlike most leaders of Muslim-majority countries, Assad is not a religious Muslim," Bar Leib explained to Breaking Israel News. "He is a westernized secular leader. In Hebrew, secular is chiloni which comes from the word 'Hellenized'. Assad is a mixture of Greece and Arab, Edom and Ishmael. He is the Greek Nero in the Middle East."

 

Bar Leib explained that this unusual characteristic of Assad is also referred to in the Book of Daniel.

 

And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom. Daniel 2:41

 

Bar Leib believes this verse clearly refers to Syria and Assad, describing the Arab leader as a "mixture of modern iron and old-world clay". "Syria is where the conflict between iron and clay is taking place," he said.

 

The parallels between Nero and Assad are striking. Assad's extreme policies have led to the destruction of his country. Similarly, Nero was accused of setting the fire that destroyed most of Rome in 64 CE in order to make room for a new palace, which he began building as soon as the flames died down. Like Nero, Assad is accused of murdering his own subjects wholesale. And like Nero, Assad was an aristocrat born to the throne whose rule was plagued by civil unrest and rebellion.

 

Though the reincarnation of historical figures is not discussed in modern politics, Bar Leib explained that the connection to historical figures is a necessary part of the tikkun olam ("fixing of the world") that precedes the coming of the messiah.

 

"In the End of Days, all of the great ancient leaders who harmed Israel will come back in order to be destroyed, thereby fixing what they did in their previous lifetimes," said Bar Leib.

 

For Assad, as an incarnation of Nero, his fall necessarily means Israel ascending. Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, a medieval French rabbi known by the acronym 'Rashi', explained in his biblical commentary that as one nation rises, the other must fall, bringing a further proof from Ezekiel.

 

I shall be filled with her that is laid waste. Ezekiel 26:2

 

Syria, formerly a formidable existential threat to Israel backed by Russia, is now a shadow of its former might. As the Arab Nero, Assad's impending downfall, achieved with little direct intervention by Israel, may indeed portend a prophetic era of Jerusalem rising.

 

 

 Assad regime 'crossed many lines' with chemical attack - http://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-assad-regime-crossed-many-lines-with-chemical-attack/

 

US president calls Syria incident 'an affront to humanity'; UN envoy says US may be 'compelled to take our own action'

 

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday denounced the Syrian regime's latest alleged chemical weapons attack as an "affront to humanity" and warned it would not be tolerated.

 

Speaking alongside Jordan's King Abdullah II at a White House news conference, Trump did not lay out in any detail as to how the United States would respond to the killings.

 

While continuing to fault predecessor Barack Obama for much of the current situation in Syria, he acknowledged that dealing with the crisis is now his own responsibility and vowed to "carry it very proudly."

 

Only days earlier multiple members of Trump's administration had said Assad's ouster was no longer a US priority, drawing outrage from Assad critics in the US and abroad. But Trump said Tuesday's attack "had a big impact on me - big impact."

 

"My attitude towards Syria and Assad has changed very much," he said.

 

Trump said of this week's attack that "it crossed a lot of lines for me. "When you kill innocent children, innocent babies - babies, little babies - with a chemical gas that is so lethal, people were shocked to hear what gas it was, that crosses many, many lines." US officials said the gas was likely chlorine, with traces of a nerve agent like sarin.

 

Since the attack Tuesday in rebel-held territory in northern Syria, Trump has been under increasing pressure to explain whether the attack would bring a US response. After all, Trump's first reaction was merely to blame Obama's "weakness" in earlier years for enabling Assad.

 

Obama had put Assad on notice in 2013 that using chemical weapons would cross a "red line" necessitating a US response, but then failed to follow through, pulling back from planned airstrikes after Congress wouldn't vote to approve them. Trump and other critics have cited that as a key moment the US lost much global credibility.

 

"I now have responsibility," Trump said. "That responsibility could be made a lot easier if it was handled years ago."

 

Yet he was adamant that he would not telegraph any potential US military retaliation, saying anew that that was a mistake the Obama administration had repeatedly made.

 

"These heinous actions by the Assad regime cannot be tolerated," he said. "The United States stands with our allies across the globe to condemn this horrific attack."

 

Asked whether the attack, which Washington has squarely blamed on Assad, could trigger a change of policy on the Syrian conflict, Trump replied: "We'll see."

 

"I'm not saying I'm doing anything one way or another, but I'm certainly not going to be telling you," he told reporters.

 

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley was more explicit, threatening direct action.

 

"When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action," she told a Security Council emergency meeting.

 

At least 72 people, among them 20 children, were killed in the strike on Khan Sheikhun, and dozens more were left gasping for air, convulsing, and foaming at the mouth, doctors said.

 

It is thought to be the worst chemical weapons attack in Syria since 2013, when sarin gas was used.

 

"If we are not prepared to act, then this council will keep meeting, month after month to express outrage at the continuing use of chemical weapons and it will not end," Haley said. "We will see more conflict in Syria. We will see more pictures that we can never unsee."

 

She also lashed out at Russia for failing to rein in its ally Syria.

 

"How many more children have to die before Russia cares?" she said.

 

"If Russia has the influence in Syria that it claims to have, we need to see them use it," she said. "We need to see them put an end to these horrific acts."

 

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Russia needed to "think carefully about their continued support for the Assad regime."

 

"There's no doubt in our mind that the Syrian regime under the leadership of Bashar al Assad is responsible for this horrific attack," Tillerson said.

 

Early US assessments show the attack most likely involved chlorine and traces of the nerve agent sarin, according to two US officials, who weren't authorized to speak publicly about intelligence assessments and demanded anonymity. Use of sarin would be especially troubling because it would suggest Syria may have cheated on its previous deal to give up chemical weapons.

 

After a 2013 attack, the US and Russia brokered a deal in which Syria declared its chemical weapons arsenal and agreed to destroy it. Chlorine, which has legitimate uses as well, isn't banned except when used in a weapon. But nerve agents like sarin are banned in all circumstances.

 

As Trump and other world leaders scrambled for a response, the US was working to lock down details proving Assad's culpability. Russia's military, insisting Assad wasn't responsible, has said the chemicals were dispersed when a Syrian military strike hit a facility where the rebels were manufacturing weapons for use in Iraq.

 

An American review of radar and other assessments showed Syrian aircraft flying in the area at the time of the attack, a US official said. Russian and US coalition aircraft were not there, the official said.

 

Britain, France and the United States presented a draft resolution demanding a full investigation of the attack, but Russia said the text was "categorically unacceptable."

 

The draft resolution backs a probe by the Organization of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and demands that Syria cooperate to provide information on its military operations on the day of the assault.

 

Russia's Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told the council that the proposed resolution was hastily prepared and unnecessary, but voiced support for an inquiry.

 

"The main task now is to have an objective inquiry into what happened," he said.

 

Negotiations were continuing on the draft text after Russia's foreign ministry said in Moscow that "the text as presented is categorically unacceptable."

 

 

Will Trump Turn Damascus Into A 'Ruinous Heap'? - By Michael Snyder - http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=1139

 

Rumors of war are percolating in Washington D.C., and if the Trump administration is not extremely careful it may find itself fighting several disastrous wars simultaneously.  

 

Just one day after threatening North Korea with war, Donald Trump has committed to taking military action against the Assad regime in Syria.  

 

Trump is blaming the chemical attack in Syria's Idlib province on Tuesday on the Syrian government, and he is pledging that the United States will not just sit by and do nothing in response.

 

Trump has called the attack a "terrible affront to humanity", and he is placing all of the blame on the shoulders of the Assad regime.  

 

But now that Trump has committed the U.S. to take military action in Syria, what is that actually going to look like?

 

According to the Daily Mail, at this point Trump is not giving any hints as to when or where he will strike Syria...

 

He did not want to say in front of the cameras how he plans to respond to the crisis.

 

'I don't like to say where I'm going and what I'm doing,' Trump reminded. 'I watched past administrations say, "We will attack at such-and- such a day, at such-and-such an hour.'

 

But it isn't difficult to imagine what Trump may decide to do.  Past presidents have always favored using airstrikes to make a point, and that is what many of the "analysts" on television are recommending.

 

Unfortunately, there would be great risk in targeting Syrian forces, because contingents from Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and elsewhere are mixed in among the Syrian military.

 

So could you imagine what it would do to our relations with Russia if airstrikes against the Syrian military resulted in Russian deaths?...

 

President Trump has several options in Syria, none without great risk. 

 

One is military action against Syria's air force - grounding the helicopters and fixed wing aircraft that are believed to have dropped the deadly agent - and the runways from which they operate. 

 

Yes, such strikes risk Russian casualties. But Moscow has consistently blocked U.N. action on Syria but proven unable to contain Mr. Assad's bad behavior. And President Vladimir Putin would be forewarned. 

 

Grounding Syria's air force, moreover, would help distance Mr. Trump from Mr. Putin, a politically useful benefit at this time.

 

And even if Trump did conduct airstrikes, there would be a limit as to what they could accomplish.  President Assad would still be in power in Syria, and the Syrian government would still be winning the civil war.

 

Trump could potentially send in special forces with the intention of assassinating Assad, but that would not necessarily topple the entire regime.

 

The truth is that the only way to change the outcome of the war and to guarantee regime change would be to send in U.S. ground forces on a large scale.  

 

And just introducing them into the country would not nearly be enough.  In order to end the war, Trump would have to commit to taking and holding Damascus.

 

In Isaiah 17, we are told that someday Damascus will be "taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap."  

 

Much of the city is already a heap of rubble, but if the U.S. were to start conducting a concentrated bombing campaign against the city it is easy to imagine how the entire city could soon come to resemble a "ruinous heap".

 

Of course the toppling of the Assad regime has been the goal all along.  Back in 2011, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hatched a plan along with Saudi Arabia and Turkey to use the "Arab Spring" as an excuse to try to remove Assad from power.  

 

Since 74 percent of the population of Syria is Sunni Muslim, Saudi Arabia and Turkey were very excited about the prospect of dealing Iran a major blow by transforming Syria into a full-fledged Sunni nation.  

 

So Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other Arab countries spent billions of dollars supporting and arming the "rebels", and at first everything was going great.  

 

But then Russia, Iran and Hezbollah all intervened, and now the tide of the war has completely turned.

 

The only way that the original plan can succeed now is for the United States to enter the war, but with Trump as president nobody thought that was going to happen.

 

But now this latest chemical attack has changed everything, and Trump appears poised to take military action in Syria.

 

And I have a feeling that this new attack is another false flag, because it wouldn't make any sense for the Assad regime to use chemical weapons at this point.  

 

Thanks to the assistance of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, the Assad regime is winning the civil war, and the only thing that could possibly turn the tide now would be military intervention by the United States.

 

So if Assad did actually use chemical weapons against a bunch of defenseless citizens on Tuesday, it would have been the stupidest strategic move that he possibly could have made.

 

In any controversy such as this, you always want to ask one key question: Who benefits?

 

Of course the answer to that question in this case is exceedingly clear.  The radical Islamic rebels that are being backed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey will greatly benefit if they are able to draw the western powers into the war on their side.

 

But what would the U.S. have to gain by getting involved in such a war?

 

I don't know if most Americans understand how dangerous such a move could be.  

 

The Russians are not going to just sit there while U.S. bombs are dropping and their personnel are being killed.  And of course the same thing could be said about Iran and Hezbollah.

 

Do we really want to risk a potential military confrontation with Russia, Iran and Hezbollah just to make a point in Syria?

 

To me, that would be exceedingly foolish.

 

And even more disastrous would be a decision to fully commit the U.S. military to toppling the Assad regime.  

 

That would require going all the way to Damascus, and it is very, very doubtful that the Russians, the Iranians and Hezbollah would just willingly stand aside and allow that to happen.

 

For quite a while I have been warning that the situation in Syria could potentially spark World War 3 if everyone was not very, very careful.

 

If U.S. warplanes try to strike Syrian military positions, the Russians could easily decide to start firing back.

 

And considering the anti-Russian hysteria that we are already witnessing in Washington D.C., how will our leaders respond when CNN starts showing U.S. aircraft being blown out of the sky by Russian missiles?

 

As I discussed in Part I, there is very little for the U.S. to gain by going to war in Syria.  

 

Unless it can be shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Assad regime is actually using chemical weapons, the Trump administration should not even be thinking about military action, because getting the U.S. military involved in the Syrian civil war would be absolutely disastrous.

 

So let us pray for peace, and let us hope that cooler heads will prevail.

 

 

 

 

Condemnation will not stop Assad's chemical war - http://www.debka.com/article/25996/Condemnation-will-not-stop-Assad's-chemical-war

 

Seven nations maintain elite military units in Syria - the US, Russia, Britain, Germany, France, Jordan and Israel. American, Russian and Turkish troops are backed by air support. Had those powers decided to destroy the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's poison chemical arsenal, they could have combined to do so and finished the job in a few days - and this week's horrific tragedy possibly been averted.

 

The death toll from the Syrian chemical warfare bombardment of the rebel-held town of Kkhan Sheikhoun Monday, April 3, is now estimated at 150 with several hundred injured, cared for in totally inadequate medical facilities. The number of child victims has raised the pitch of world condemnation  The total figure fluctuates according to source. 

 

But the most tragic truth of all is that no one in Moscow, Washington or Ankara is ready go ahead with this operation, any more than they are focused on ending the six-year old Syrian war, which has claimed a death toll of more than 600,000 - most civilians - and the displacement of 12 million refugees. Instead, they are calling the UN Security Council into another emergency (useless) session.

 

The most cynical aspect of this international wringing of hands is the sorry record of the way Assad's toxic warfare record has been handled.

 

On May 3, 2014, the US military reported that efforts to bring about the dismantling of the Syrian army's chemical weapons had come to naught after Bashar Assad refused to hand over the 27 tons of sarin precursor chemicals, so long as the UN disarmament agency (OPCW) insisted on his destroying their underground storage sites..

 

According to debkafile's sources, 12 of those bunker facilities are still operational and barred to access by UN inspectors.

 

Five months later, OPCW reported that Assad's chemical weapons stocks had been liquidated. US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shook hands in Geneva to flashing cameras to celebrate the successful outcome of their negotiations on the subject.

 

This turned out to a charade, staged to cover up President Barack Obama's decision to dodge his own red lines and abstain from action against the Assad regime if he resorted to chemical warfare.

 

Careful reading of the final OPCW report gives the game away: "To date, nearly 95 percent of all chemical weapon stockpiles declared by the possessor states have been destroyed under OPCW verification." For its extensive efforts in eliminating chemical weapons, the OPCW received the 2013 Nobel Prize for Peace.

 

So 5 percent of the poisonous substances remained intact. In the interim four years, the Syrian ruler was able to substantially build up his depleted stocks of poison gas, the use of which also spread to the war in Iraq. The Syrian air force meanwhile began unbridled air strikes with chlorine bombs. They were replenished by Iranian freight planes landing at the Damascus military airfield and the T4 military air base near Palmyra with fresh consignments of chlorine bombs custom-made at Iran's military industry factories.

 

Neither the Obama administration in Washington nor the Kremlin in Moscow lifted a finger to stop these deliveries. In the opposition camp, certain Syrian rebel groups, ISIS and Al Qaeda's Nusra Front branch started tests on homemade chemical weapons, some of them successfully building up stocks of primitive poison weapons. Other rebel groups simply purchased Syrian chemical weapons from Syrian army officers.

 

Today, no international inquiry commissions would be able to establish beyond doubt the source of the chemical substances that poisoned hundreds of people in Idlib this week or determine who was ultimately responsible for this atrocity. It must be said that only the Syrian military had the ability to carry out an aerial attack like the one that struck the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Russians will certainly try to use as a pretext for vetoing a condemnatory UN Security Council resolution the claim that Syrian warplanes had only struck an insurgent storehouse containing toxic substances. 

 

The task of locating destroying Assad's stocks of pernicious weapon of war can only be performed by troops on the ground. And that is unlikely to happen.

 

Israeli Officials Claim Assad Ordered Attack, warns of Syria's Chemical Weapons Plants - by Anna Ahronheim - http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Israeli-officials-claim-Assad-ordered-attack-warn-of-Syrias-chemical-weapons-plants-486165

 

Following Tuesday's deadly chemical attack at Syria's Idlib province, Israeli officials strongly believe the Syrian regime has begun to rebuild Sarin manufacturing plants.

 

uesday's chemical attack in the Idlib province of Syria is suspected to be the deadliest chemical weapon attack in Syria in years. Israeli officials  believe that the attack, which claimed the lives of close to 100 civilians and wounded hundreds more in the town of Khan Sheikhon, was a sarin gas attack order by President Bashar al-Assad's regime. 

 

Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, head of the Institute for National Security Studies think-tank and former head of Military Intelligence, speaking to Army Radio, urged direct military action by Israel to deter the Assad regime from carrying out further chemical weapons attacks, calling the strike in Idlib a "crime against humanity."

 

So will this attack prompt any military action?

 

Israel's security services have prepared a "situational assessment" of the attack, to see what potential risks Israel could face, but it is unlikely that Israeli citizens will be lining up to receive gas masks in the near future, as the army sees almost no chance of a chemical attack by Syria against Israel.

 

The Syrian military has denied responsibility, blaming the rebels and stating that it would never use chemical weapons. Israeli security officials, however,  believe that the attack was likely approved by senior officials in the Assad regime, if not by Assad himself.

 

The Assad regime agreed to dismantle the country's chemical weapons stockpiles in a 2013 deal brokered by the United States and Russia following the deadly regime attack on East Ghouta near the capital of Damascus where over 1,400 people were killed, including 426 children.

 

While the regime did comply with destroying much of their stockpiles as well as the infrastructure to produce them, removing over 1,290 metric tons of chemical weapons - including sarin, VX and sulfur mustard, a precursor to mustard gas - according to former Defense Minister Moshe Boogie Yaalon, Israel is under the impression that the regime cheated international inspectors and kept residual amounts of sarin. 

 

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Yaalon said "we cannot turn our heads aside to what happened but we cannot intervene militarily. One of the smarter things that Israel has decided was not to intervene in the war but there are other things that we can do to stop the butchering of the people of Syria. We must learn lessons from what happened yesterday, its clear that we can only rely on ourselves, we cannot rely on the international community or international bodies such as weapons inspectors.

 

Yaalon added that, "they [Assad] know how to lie and know how to conceal and they did that with the international bodies of the weapons inspectors."

 

Yaalon also said he hopes that the US will play a more positive role in the region, a reference to the Obama administration that did nothing when Assad crossed the 'red line" in the Ghoutta attack, stating it was a strategic loss by the Americans when they did that.

 

He added that the Assad regime most likely gained the confidence to carry out this type of attack after the Trump administration said that getting rid of Assad was no longer a priority for them last week.

 

Since the 2013 deal, Western intelligence agencies and Syrian opposition figures have accused the Syrian Army's secretive Unit 450, a branch of the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center that is at the center of the Assad regime's chemical weapons program, of dispersing chemical weapons stockpiles around the country.

 

Israeli security officials also believe that the Assad regime has been rebuilding and reopening Sarin manufacturing plants, albeit in a smaller amount than they had before in 2013.

 

In December 2016 Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, in a rare comment about an Israeli airstrike in Syria, said that Israel struck the presumed base of Unit 450 north of Damascus, stopping the transfer of chemical weapons to Hezbollah.

 

The regime has been accused of having used chemical weapons (mostly mustard or chlorine gas) several times since the deal but if Tuesday's attack is confirmed to be sarin, it would be the first time in several years that sarin has been used and the deadliest chemical weapons attack since the Ghouta attack which prompted then-US President Barack Obama to ask Congress to authorize military action against Syria in 2013.

 

The dozens of videos circulating on social media sites said to be from the town showed victims, including dozens of children, struggling to breath, while many others are seen unresponsive. Rescue workers who came to the scene were reported to have suffered from severe respiratory distress and hospitals treating the wounded came under additional airstrikes.

 

The attack was condemned by activists and world leaders around the globe, including by Israeli politicians and officials from all sides of the political specter who called on the international community to act.

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "strongly" condemned the attack and said that it "underscores the great imperative of the State of Israel to defend ourselves," and Education Minister Naftali Bennett requested a special emergency security cabinet session regarding the attack, saying that there is a "systematic genocide being carried out in Syria."

 

And so while Israel has provided aid and medical care to thousands of wounded Syrians, it is unlikely that the Jewish state and it's army, which remembers the 6 million Jews who lost their lives to Nazi gas chambers and death camps, will do much more than shed tears and call on the international community to stop the carnage in Syria, unless the threat does at one point impact Israel and its citizens.