A HORRIFYING HYPOCRISY   
Isn't it rather strange how, when Syrian strongman Bashar el-Assad's father cold-bloodedly murdered as many as 20,000 of his own civilians in one blow in the city of Hama, the whole world - including the United States and those Israelis who often manifest a moral double standard - nonetheless considered him a trusted peace partner for Israel to negotiate with?
Remember how President Bill Clinton flew to Geneva to meet honorably with Hafez el-Assad to see whether a deal could be made with him concerning the Golan Heights; how even self-deluded Israelis were willing to consider giving some of the Golan to that dictator who, in one fell swoop massacred more of his own people than his son has managed to kill with all his military forces in a year?
Yet now that some courageous journalists out of concern for the victims of Bashar Assad's cruelty, have risked their lives to show the world what is happening in Homs and other places - now suddenly the international community is doing what none of them (not even Israel) did to his father: demanding that he be removed from power!
How very strange.
Why did America, Europe and Israel not level such criticism at Assad's father? Where is the morality of the Israeli left, who always seem to turn a blind eye at the horrors perpetrated by those with whom they castigate Israel's leaders for not having done enough to make peace with?
Should we now say that Bashar Assad's only mistake was that he did not do it - like his father, in one massive blow? That perhaps then he could have counted on many nations still considering him a man worthy not only to receive the Golan Heights - lost by Syrian aggression against the Jewish state - but that, if Israel refused, he could yet count on these very nations to pressure the Jewish state into doing so?
With what hypocritical double standards these left-leaning Israelis - and the world at large - are willing to express their self-delusional hopes and efforts to live in peace with murderers, not just of themselves, but of their own people.
In this way peace will never come!
Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director
International Christian Zionist Center