Question: did Israel destroy a Syrian nuclear reactor?

i alluded to this incident back in September, in this post about Rep. Dennis Kucinich's trip to Syria...that was early september. it's now mid-october. where is the outrage in the arab world?

this is the question that reporter Joshua Muravchik explores in a piece today in the LA Times:

Last month, one of the more mysterious episodes in the history of the Arab-Israel conflict began to leak slowly into the news. Although the facts are still unconfirmed, what seems to have happened has major implications not only for the region but even more for the laws of war and preemption that President Bush has been trying to redefine ever since his 2002 national security strategy paper.

First, Syrian spokesmen complained that Israeli planes had violated their country's airspace on Sept. 6 -- and had been driven off, or so they said. Within a few days came stories -- mostly from anonymous sources -- that the planes had fired into Syria; these were followed by still other stories that a target had in fact been hit. But what was it?

After further journalistic digging, the most plausible accounts said that the Syrian targets were related to nuclear weapons activity and may even have been manned by North Koreans. Later reports suggest some dispute within the U.S. government about how far Syria had progressed in achieving its nuclear ambitions, but these same reports confirm that this is what Israel was targeting.

read the whole thing...

why the silence from the arab world and the international community?

Ordinarily, the Arab states in the region are quick to condemn any warlike act by Israel, even measures as defensive as building a barrier against terrorists. Although many Arab states are unhappy these days with Syria's budding alliance with Iran, Israel is still, to one degree or another, the enemy, and Syria is, at worst, a wayward brother. So why were the Arab states suddenly mum about this invasion of Syria's sovereignty?

Their reticence -- and that of the rest of the international community, including the United States and Western Europe -- suggests, I think, that even though most governments believed that this was indeed a blow against Syrian nuclear ambitions, none of them, frankly, were displeased to see it happen....

...This latest episode suggests that an intense rethinking is underway in many capitals. Take away the nuclear issue and imagine a report that Israeli warplanes had flown over Syria, unprovoked, and had bombed ordinary military targets. The Arab states would have been up in arms, seconded by the other Muslim and "nonaligned" states and even Europe. The United States in all likelihood would have chastised Israel more gently and would probably have abstained, rather than vetoing a Security Council condemnation of Israel.

But instead, Israel received only pro forma rebukes -- apparently because it had blocked a weapon that no one wanted Damascus to have.

i wonder if the arab world's silence had anything to do with embarrassment at how easily israel flew into Syria, avoided a new anti-aircraft system, and bombed the shit out of a nuclear reactor?

reports have been alluding to how this reactor mess has something to do with North Korea's hiding their WMD there to comply with international demands placed on it's country, but i wonder if the Syrian program had anything to do with Iraqi WMDs being hidden in Syria prior to the U.S. invasion?

UPDATE: the New York Times weighs in...reports that Condi and Def. Secretary Robert Gates both had reservations about the Israeli action, and that the Bush administration is not commenting:

The White House press secretary, Dana Perino, said Saturday that the administration would have no comment on the intelligence issues surrounding the Israeli strike. Israel has also refused to comment.