Earlier this week, the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons. Resolution 2118, the result of negotiations between the United States and Russia now gives these major powers the access to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons under international control.

While Syrian President Bashar Al Assad has said his country would abide by the agreement, he added that such a process is “two-sided” and indicated it would only work if the US halts its threats of military action against Syria, does not arm Syrian rebels, and if Israel also ratifies its weapon ban conventions. Is there a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) double standard in works? Why is Israel not disarmed of its weapons?

The fact of the matter is that Zionist Israel should be brought under the same microscope as Syria. Until Israel is forced to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and after they open their nuclear, chemical and biological capability to international inspection and sanction, we are going to continue to have problems.

Most countries in the world including the United States, whose track record on weapons of mass destruction goes back to the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945 — until everybody is held to the same standard, we are going to have a very serious ongoing problem.

Clearly, the responsible elements in the international community don’t want that.

The fact of the matter is that a significant number of Japanese lost their lives in the most horrible fashion imaginable just so we could put on a show of demonstration of our possession of these weapons of mass destruction.

One way to reduce the tensions surrounding the Syrian crisis would be for Israel to also give up its alleged chemical and biological weapons. Both Russia and the US are likely to ask Israel to dismantle its stocks because they did sign the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which came into force in 1997, but has never been ratified. It remains to be seen whether Tel Aviv will now ratify it, as well the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972. The truth is that the main danger of WMD is the Israeli nuclear arsenal, whether the international community wants to believe it or not.

— The reader is a South African educator based in Cape Town, South Africa