THE WISDOM FUND: News & Views
Chicago Sun-Times
April 18, 2003

Israel Wants Strike on Syria

by Robert Novak

Coinciding with the Bush administration's tough talk about Syria, a senior Israeli official Monday exposed a smoking gun. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Tel Aviv newspaper Maariv: "We have a long list of issues we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians, and it would be best done through the Americans."

Mofaz's Hebrew-language interview was not widely distributed in Washington, but a few members of Congress who learned of it were stunned by its audacity. With Prime Minister Ariel Sharon long having urged changing Iraq's regime by force of U.S. arms, his government now hopes to ride the emerging American imperium to regional reconstruction along Israeli lines.

That is the goal of prominent Pentagon civilian officials who see virtual identity between U.S. and Israeli interests.

. . . Rumsfeld's selection of retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner as Iraq's interim military governor. Now a defense contractor, he helped develop the Arrow missile-defense system for Israel. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Garner visited Israel as guest of the hard-line Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and signed that organization's letter praising Sharon's treatment of Palestinians. . . .

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Patrick J. Buchanan, "Whose War," American Conservative, March 24, 2003

["The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history."--Ari Shavit, "White Man's Burden," Ha'aretz, April 5, 2003]

"Ambassador to U.S. calls for 'regime change' in Iran, Syria," Reuters, April 28, 2003

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