Dear Minister Davutoglu, Please Don't Stir Up War
Shlomi Eldar writes a personal letter to Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, who recently wondered publicly why Assad didn’t respond to the attack on Syria attributed to Israel.
Dear Mr. Davutoğlu,
I have given a lot of thought to the questions you raised at a press conference just before flying off to an international security conference in Munich.
“Why didn’t Assad throw even a pebble when Israeli jets flew over his palace and toyed with the dignity of his country?” you asked, and to avoid any misunderstandings, added, “Why did the Syrian army, which has been attacking innocent civilians for the past 22 months, fail to respond to this attack by Israel?”
I have no good answers to these questions. I don’t even know if they were intended to irritate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was once a close friend of yours, or to provoke the Israelis. It seems to me that both answers are correct.
