Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad reacts when asked if
he would tell the truth about the recent Israeli bombing of
his clandestine nuclear facility.

Damascus, Syria, Just Recently: President Bashar al-Assad, in a recent interview with the BBC, played down the Israeli bombing raid, saying that Israeli jets took aim at empty military buildings, but he did not give a specific location. His statement differed from the initial Syrian claim that it had repulsed the air raid before an attack occurred.

Israel has been unusually quiet about the episode on Sept. 6 and has effectively imposed a news blackout about it. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli opposition leader and former prime minister, on Sept. 19 became the first public figure in Israel to acknowledge that an attack even took place. Some Israeli officials have said, though not publicly, that the raid hit a nuclear-related facility that North Korea was helping to equip, but they have not specified where.

DEIR ZOIR, Syria, Oct. 9: Foreign journalists perused the rows of corn and the groves of date palms pregnant with low-hanging fruit here this week, while agents of Syria’s ever-present security services stood in the background, watching closely, almost nervously.

“You see — around us are farmers, corn, produce, nothing else,” said Ahmed Mehdi, the Deir Zoir director of the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands, a government agricultural research center, as he led two of the journalists around the facilities.

It was here at this research center in the sleepy Bedouin city of Deir Zoir in eastern Syria that an Israeli journalist reported Israel had conducted an air raid in early September.

Ron Ben-Yishai, a writer for the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot, grabbed headlines when he suggested that the government facility here was attacked during the incursion, snapping photos of himself for his article in front of a sign for the agricultural center.

He said he was denied access to the research center, which sits on the outskirts of the city, and he did not show any photos of the aftermath of the incursion, though he said he saw some pits that looked like part of a mine or quarry, implying that they could also be sites where bombs fell.

His claims have compelled the Syrian government, already anxious over the rising tensions with Israel and the United States, to try to vindicate itself after a recent flurry of news reports that it may have ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons.

President Bashar al-Assad, in a recent interview with the BBC, played down the Israeli raid, saying that Israeli jets took aim at empty military buildings, but he did not give a specific location. His statement differed from the initial Syrian claim that it had repulsed the air raid before an attack occurred.

Israel has been unusually quiet about the episode on Sept. 6 and has effectively imposed a news blackout about it. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli opposition leader and former prime minister, on Sept. 19 became the first public figure in Israel to acknowledge that an attack even took place. Some Israeli officials have said, though not publicly, that the raid hit a nuclear-related facility that North Korea was helping to equip, but they have not specified where.

On Monday, journalists toured the agricultural center’s facilities at the government’s invitation to prove once and for all, Mr. Mehdi said, that no nuclear weapons program or Israeli attacks occurred there.

“The allegations are completely groundless, and I don’t really understand where all this W.M.D. talk came from,” Mr. Mahdi said, referring to unconventional weapons.

“There was no raid here — we heard nothing,“ he added.

An entourage of the center’s employees lined up with him to greet the visiting journalists. In a seemingly choreographed display, they nodded their heads in agreement and offered their guests recently picked dates as tokens of their hospitality.

They showed off a drab-colored laboratory that they said was used to conduct experiments on drought-resistant crops and recently plowed fields where vegetables and fruits are grown. One goggled technician was apparently working with soil samples.

Mr. Ben-Yishai’s news report rattled Syrians for another reason as well: he apparently was able to slip into the country, which bars Israelis from entering.

Mr. Ben-Yishai apparently traveled throughout Syria, documenting in a series of articles his encounters the bustling traffic in Damascus’s Hamidia market and taking photographs of the banners plastered all over cars and billboards of Mr. Assad with the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and with Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah.

“I think he came in on a European passport,” said Ghazi Bilto, who said he was a graphic designer based in Damascus for the agricultural center.

Burhan Okko, who also said he was a graphic designer for the center and who sported a finely twisted mustache, interrupted: “No. No. It was definitely on a German passport.”

The international news media have speculated that the Israeli attack was aimed at thwarting an effort by Syria to acquire nuclear weapons materials, possibly with the aid of North Korea, which recently struck a deal with the United States to dismantle its nuclear facilities. Syria flatly rejects these claims.

Syria’s response to the incident, however, has many here concerned that it is at least losing the battle for public credibility. Syria’s state-run news media has been on the defensive, issuing multiple statements denouncing Mr. Ben-Yishai. “The statement concluded that the Zionist claims and lies about the research station are completely fictitious,” read an awkwardly worded excerpt on Sept. 30 on SANA, a Syrian news agency.

“The people here know that we’re lacking in public diplomacy,” said Osama Durrah, a Ph.D. student at the Arab-European University in Syria. “In many ways, we should be doing the same thing as the Israeli media.” He added, “Syria has valid claims to be made, like reclaiming the Golan Heights from Israel; it just doesn’t have the public diplomacy skills to match the Israelis.”

(NYT)