Israel: Too Much Bark And Not Enough Courage

I’ve been observing an interesting trend in the manner in which the country of Israel has been conducting its foreign affairs in the past few years. It is moving toward becoming an increasingly closed society. Further, Israel seems to have lost its sense of righteousness, and is no longer willing to publicly and unapologetically stand up for its beliefs and values.

Case in point: By now, everyone in the world is well aware that Israeli Air Force bombed a suspected nuclear facility in Syria on September 6, 2007. You may not necessarily remember the details, but you certainly read or heard about it last year. Intelligence reports by Israel and US identified the facility as a joint venture between Syria and North Korea. Here’s one article about it from The Washington Post.

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister’s Spokesman Mark Regev appeared on BBC radio for an interview. When questioned by BBC’s reporter John Humphries, Regev refused to acknowledge anything about this incident, including the fact that Israel carried out the attack. Under the pretext of talking about the incident serves no one’s interest, Israel is deceptively justifying its action of crossing the border of a sovereign country and bombing it. Reminiscent of a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, however, Israel is unsuccessfully pretending that silence about the incident makes the world community think that it never happened!

A note of clarification: I make no assertion about whether bombing the Syrian nuclear facility was justified. That point is irrelevant. I am merely highlighting that Israel should firmly and courageously acknowledge its actions or step aside as a self-appointed Middle East police.

Read the transcript of the interview below (it’s short and well worth your time – trust me), and you will find my assertion to be exactly on the mark. The exchange is astonishingly silly, and proves my point better than I possibly can with my own words.

Regev: We in Israel, we’ve had a consistent policy and that policy has not changed. We are not talking about that incident whatsoever.
BBC: Why?
Regev: That is our decision.
BBC: Why?
Regev: That would serve no one’s interest.
BBC: Why not?
Regev: Well, leave that to us.
BBC: Does it serve anybody’s interest to have one country attacking another sovereign country, and offering no explanation whatsoever. Does it serve Israel’s interest?
Regev: I would remind you we’ve never talked about the attack.
BBC: Indeed! But you don’t deny the attack was carried out.
Regev: We don’t talk about it.
BBC: But you don’t deny that it was carried out.
Regev: We just don’t talk about it.
BBC: Why?
Regev: It would serve no one’s interest.
BBC: We are . . . (chuckle) . . . we’re going around in circles here. If we have the situation where one country can, at will, attack another country, cross its borders and bomb another country, and then say absolutely nothing about it, it’s a pretty incendiary position, isn’t it?
Regev: The Israeli position has not changed. We have not talked, and we have no reason to talk about these allegations.
BBC: But of course you have a reason to talk about it. If one country bombs another country, it must talk about it, surely. Otherwise we have anarchy.
Regev: Israel’s position has not changed. We have no comment whatsoever on this matter.

You can also listen to the audio here (based on which I typed the transcript) if you wish to fact-check me. The portion of interest is from 2:18 through 3:52 minute marks.