Opinion | Editorials
Assassinations in Syria only benefit Israel
The style of the killings is very similar to what happened in Iraq after 2003
- Gulf News
- Published: 00:00 September 30, 2011
A suspicious string of assassinations in Syria this week has targeted the intelligentsia, with leaders of the protests blaming the Syrian government for terror tactics designed to frighten people away from joining the protesters. Others point at Israeli undercover operations, since it would suit Israel to see a much weakened Syria.
Aws Khalil, a nuclear engineer, who was killed in a hail of bullets on Wednesday in Homs, was the fourth in a string of murders of academics and scientists this week. Mohammad Saleh, an opposition figure in Homs, blamed government forces, quoting the deaths of Hassan Eid, chief of chest surgery at the Homs hospital who had treated wounded Syrian protesters in the past months, as well as Professors Nael Dakhil and Mohammad Ageel.
But the style of the killings and the targeting of the intelligentsia is very similar to what happened in Iraq after 2003, when the country was hit by a wave of assassinations of scores of physicians, professors and nuclear experts and led to a brain drain as many bright people fled to survive outside Iraq. This has led many to blame Israel for the deaths in Syria, as they also remember the murders of Egyptian scientists which have continued from the 1950s right up to recent times.
Israel has been very anxious to stop any Arab state acquiring nuclear capability. In 1981 it mounted a air raid and destroyed an Iraqi nuclear power station at Osirak. In 2007 it mounted Operation Orchard and bombed and destroyed a nuclear reactor in Deir Al Zor, putting Syria's undeclared nuclear programme back by years.
We may never know who is taking advantage of the confusion in Syria to murder leading professionals and strategic thinkers. But Syria does not benefit from this, and Israel certainly does.
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