Two days ago, another 100 victims, mostly women and children, who died in the aerial -- and possibly chemical -- attack by Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces in the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, were added to the increasingly long list of fatalities of the Syrian civil war. It seems the wave of condemnation failed to leave much of an impression on Assad and his allies. Yet the world, after years of carnage, somehow seems to have been surprised by the painful images. Assad has butchered the people of Syria day in and day out for six years now, and the world has been silent. Day in and day out, dozens of civilians are killed -- mostly women and children -- by mortar shells, bombs and the barrel bombs thrown from the attack helicopters, and especially by chlorine gas, which the U.N. does not define as an illegal chemical weapon. But none of this was enough to move the international community to take action. Even the U.N. Security Council failed over and over, due to the Russian and Chinese veto, in its efforts to stop the bloodshed in Syria, and could not even muster up a condemnation of the Syrian regime for its actions. Several factors are responsible for the death toll in Syria. One of them is the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama, the Nobel Prize laureate, who signed a controversial deal with the Syrian dictator four years ago. This agreement granted Assad immunity for using chemical weapons that led to the deaths of thousands of his own people, granted him immunity from any future military attack against him and in the end, did nothing to prevent him from holding on to some of the chemical weapons at his disposal. But Obama is old news. There is a new president in the White House now: Donald Trump. His position on Syria is well-known -- that the problem in Syria, and the challenge the Americans face there, is the Islamic State group, not necessarily Assad's regime. This position was reflected in statements by senior U.S. officials these past few days that indicated Washington would not call for Assad's removal from power, as this was a matter for the Syrian people to decide in "democratic" elections like the ones Syria has been accustomed to hold under the Assad dynasty. But it is vital to remember that the issue at hand is not just the fate of Assad or the fight against Islamic State, but the question of the U.S.'s global standing. It is not just Moscow and Damascus that are waiting to see how the Trump administration will respond to the actions of the Syrian regime. The leaders of North Korea and Iran are also looking on with interest at the U.S. response, and should it be perceived as weak and hesitant, or even isolationist and shirking its duty as the leader of the free world, Washington will pay for the mistake -- not just in Syria and the Middle East, but elsewhere around the world. There is no need to waste our breath on the U.N. and the EU. They are too busy counting the structures Israel erects in Judea and Samaria. For Israel, the tragedy in Syria is a lesson not just on international hypocrisy, but on the irrelevance of the international community. At the end of the day, one must remember that, despite all the criticism of Obama and Trump, they are not the ones with blood on their hands -- Assad is. And since Russia and Iran are the real players waging the war in Syria, while Assad trudges along, those two countries are full partners in the strategy and tactics that result in the mass killings in Syria. This, then, is Israel's strategic environment, and these are its neighbors. One must remember that Israel's strength and power of deterrence are what deter Assad and his partners from acting against Israel in the same manner in which they act against their own people, not morals and international pressure. This is an important lesson to keep in mind ahead of both Passover and Independence Day.
