This author is symptomatic of misguided idiots who love to equate the Holocaust with every despicable action that occurs around the world. The Jews were never the enemy (sworn to kill) of the "allies" who's antisemitic governments and population either helped or were complicit in the plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe (or perhaps the entire world). The Syrian "Rebels", population (obviously not all) are sworn enemies of Israel, or should I say Jews! Does this author and others really think that there is equivalence here? Does he really believe that Israelis should have sacrificed their lives in an attempt to stop the insane hatred their Arab neighbours have for each others' religious sects and ideology?
Why does this Journal even bother to print such rubbish?

If Israel intervened to try to save lives,ALL Arab States including Egypt and Jordan would have united AGAINST us.
Instead we now have a weakest Syria. OK ,Iran is now crawling around the Sunni States-Also good for us .-
Let Trump sort out the Iranians. Its none of Israel's bizniss..And I believe Iran will be sorted out ,bomb and all.

All this terror for the OTHERS has done a lot to strengthen Israel very much

All this ISIS bizniss has done a lot to get rid of the Obananoids and Clintonites.

We now have an ideal constellation of events which could lead to real eternal peace.

Please don't worry about Russia. Things will pan out fine.

Invade Syria to save Syrians from other Syrians? Really.

What idiotic whine will be next the French should have invaded Germany to save the SA from the SS?

1. Israel was not idle in the conflict, it aided any wounded that could get to the border, it provided food aid, and indirect aid through other organizations.
2. None of the fighting groups in Syria would be willing to work with Israel, and given the animosity between the Arab world and Israel, any one accepting direct Israeli aid would become a target.
3. Israel could not go up against Russia.
4. Israel could save its Christian allies in Lebanon during the first Lebanon war - how could it save Syria?

I think Israel did what it could. Assad, Russia and Iran are the ones to blame, But really this is just another example of the Arab worlds inability to provide decent government for its people - look at Yemen if you want to see another Arab human tragedy unfolding.

in its quest for power-grab. Such idiocy has to be searched for far far away....

Israel, a tiny nation would have all the Arabs states attacking it if would have struck one Syriam target without just cause

at best ridiculous assertion IDF could have done anything but bomb a few sites in Aleppo & other Syrian massacre sites. we couldnt field troops on the ground to alter russia iran hizbullah syria & turkey's forces. and we shouldnt have either. i.e. we behaved properly, justly, NOT tossing into chaos another military outfit. especially since then we would have been blamed for whatever went on. As we are now... at worst this is fodder for left wing worldwide blaming us for any/everything in arab world. just as we are for palestinian fascism, failed state, and phony humanitarianism by NYT, EuroNGOs, UN, Arabs, et al. Even worse than worst, a rather silly take on Jewish and Israeli capacity to determine anyone's fate, let alone our own.

What railways, what bridges and what concentration camps should have Israel bombed in the last five years in order to save hundreds of thousands of Syrians, most of whom would rejoice seeing Ronen Bergman's throat slit and the skull of his children smashed? Aren't the horrors, they're just going through exactly those horrors most of them wholeheartedly wish to see befall the Israelis? How many Israeli lives is Ronen Bergman ready to sacrifice in retaliations from Hezbollah and Hamas, in order to save lives of people bent on the destruction of your state? And they don't mean some fuzzy wannabe destruction lite, but the full menu. But it's still time to draft Ronen Bergman, put him a gun in the hand and drop him off somewhere close to the road from Aleppo to Idlib, where he can purify his conscience.

The answer and I do not mean to be facetious is not as the author suggests an equivalence with the situation during the WW11 where the allies stood idly by whilst giving Mr Hitler carte blanche in his dealings with the so called Jewish question but all to do with a very different situation in that the Jewish State of Israel is in enough hot water with the overwhelming majority of the nations of the UN even when it defending itself against the surrounding Arab nations and their proxies of Hamas and Hezbollah with their terrorist backer nation Iran.
Russia does what Russia does with impunity and not one practical action is taken against it other than facile sanctions which are as fleabites.
If Israel would have as suggested and would most certainly have decimated the Syrian forces and probably got rid of Assad in the process...but and it is a very big but...what then?
Israel then would be expected as a consequence to fight IS, Al Queida, Al Nusra Front who would have filled the vacuum left with no Syrian leader capable of holding that fractious nation together with its multitude of religious factions and divided loyalties and there would have been no thanks from the international community.
Israel would have ended up fighting Iran's proxies as if she does not have enough problems maintaining peace within its own borders....get real Mr Ronen Bergman you are out of your depth with your simplistic statements.

most of those who posted comments need to read the article again

Without a doubt, this article is the most idiotic I've seen under the Yediot Achronot banner.
If Israel would go into Syria, even to save civilian lives, all of the Arab countries and militias around us, including Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Jordan, Hamas, and Islamic Brotherhood would view this as a declaration of war against all of them.
Yes. the state of Israel has no interest in intervening, because the State of Israel has the obligation to protect and defend its own citizens and residents.
In a perfect world, the IDF could go in and rescue everyone, or stop the attacks on civilians. This is not the perfect world that Ronen Bergman sees from the rim of his coffee cup in the Tel Aviv cafe.

Well said - from SPAIN. You should be happy we're here. If we weren't, this land would turn into just another failed Islamic country where one tribe kills another - unless there is a brutal dictatorship keeping the "peace". Arabs/Muslims cannot handle freedom. Strangely, even when they escape their countries of origin, they then try to turn the new country into the same cesspool that they left. Europe is already lost to the Islamic disease. Hope the US wakes up in time.

Israel's first responsibility is to its own soldiers and to its people. As the father of a 16 year old boy who may be serving in a combat unit in several years, I certainly would NOT want him fighting to save ISIS from another enemy of the country, Assad. You can simply not make a comparison between saving the lives of Jews in the Holocaust to intervening in a war on behalf of a side that would be out to destroy Israel if given the chance. Also, the existential threat to Israel if this would not work out is huge.

a) Besides helping the wounded who knows what Israel is doing to defend the families of the Druze etc. behind the scenes.
b) Are there really just railway lines leading to ovens that one could simply bomb and end the carnage ?
c) At least 5 of the worlds strongest armies (USA, Russia, Trukey, Iran, etc) are in action in Allepo - Israel might be the strongest army in the region but in the world?

Israel should not loose this opportunity to bolster its population by absorbing immigrants who have been victims of radical Islam and who will have a strong commitment to fighting it and also appreciate what Israel offers.

suggest Israel should hold back and hardly defend itself - but when Islam is on the rampage in Syria - the same idiots cry out for Israel to give it all its got?
Let Allah take care of it - he is doing a good job.

All the "article", let's keep it for the time being in "quotation mark", is base on a false premise, which invalidades the whole "article".

Allied already bombed to hell german cities like Dresden and Hamburg, just look it up in case someone forgot about it. They did everything short of dropping an atomic bomb on Berlin. Street melted, temperatures rised to thousand of degrees, people died by lack of oxigen consumed by the flames ... ok, it was retribution.

Nazis couldn't have been rendered "more extremists".

So the sorry excuse of trying to avoid anything the nazis could have done is totally wrong, the nazis already did all their worse and some more.

There was a TOTAL war between allies and nazis, no hold barred (excepted chemical warfare).

There was no higher authority nor power above the two parts.

Allied didn't depend on anybody for raw materials, fuel and weapons.

Now everything is the opposite in the middle east.

Israel is not in a state of war neither partial nor total against arab/muslim countries.

Neither Israel nor our antagonists did their worse until now, since 1973 at least.

Israel depends on international partners for raw materials, fuel and weapons.

Any Israeli intervention in Syria, for or against any of the parts, would have been felt like crusaders/yahoudi invading dar al islam, thus provoking who knows what kind of warlike reaction.

On the international level USSR, China and their sicophants would have started to cry murder in some UN organization.

Without talking about the various demented "human rights"/boycott/free-falastine group financed by oil dictators or by the KGB .

Yes, the allied could have bombed trains, factories, camps without worsening in any way the conflict.
Yes Stalin could have done something while the nazis destroyed Warsaw ghetto.

But they didn't.

No, Israel couldn't have done anything in Syria without starting some kind of arab/Israeli conflict and having do withstand some international aggression and endangering our strategic supplies.

Why this "article" (that stay in quotation marks) has been written and published?

What was it meant to communicate to the public?

Actually it remembers some self hating Jew production.

..already bombing Britain on a daily basis. Israel and Syria, although technically at war for 70 years, were not actually bombing eachother. Bombing the concentration camps would have been just another bombing sortie for the Allies. Israel intervening in Syria would have risked starting a war.

Silly article and the writer knows it. He is just trying to be provocative.

intervene ? No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The uprising against a tyrant was a noble act.
Russia has continued to support this tyrant to cause trouble way beyond the borders of Syria.
For this reason, Syrians are dying.

US goal was to destroy Syria at any price. For that they created what the West likes to call as "REBELS", who are simply one of many American proxies in the Middle East. Israel is one such proxy, or simply a Puppet. And as such had to follow instructions given by Obama, the chief terrorist.
So Israel had no choice. That was the price for the military aid Israel received last time, for the new fighter-jets,...etc.
This is another proof that Israel is not a democracy, and it has never been.
Israel is an apartheid state, controlling over 3.5 million Palestinians on the territory which doesn't belong to Israel.

When Israel goes to war, it calls up reserve soldiers from the civilian sector. How long would Israel have to be involved in Syria, 5 years,10 years? What would be left of Israel? Mr Bergman has suggested a new way to destroy the state.

There is a reason President Bush requested that Israel stay out of the Gulf War - it would have consolidated the forces against Israel and whoever sided with Israel.

Without boots on the ground, bombing as some do, only agitates but cannot control how the pieces will fall.

Israel isn't foolish she knew if she did bomb Syria she'd start a war with other Muslim nations and even perhaps Russia.
An apology is easier than a war.
KEEP BUILDING !!

I think Syria is a no solution situation for the world and surely no possibility of Israel could possibly do anything to stop the massacre. The only logical way to help the Syrian people is the create a safe zone through the air. Israel can not challenge the Russians! Even before Russia inserted herself who would we creating a safe zone for ISIS? It would be a no win situation for Israel to insert herself between Shiites and Sunnis. Israel is helping greatly by treating the wounded.

And if Israel did intervene and got rid of Assad, then what? Would Israel want to acquire responsibility for another bunch of arabs that still want to throw us into the sea if they had the chance.

same for france and WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THOSE FABULOUS BROTHER ARABS...turned their backs on their own "filthy brothers"

yeah, let's let 1, 500,000 screaming Syrian muslins in to over run the land of Israel with it's already 20% of it's population living in poverty NOW! Don't you read?

the USA has settled the third largest group...hopefully they are the middle class, the doctors, intellectuals, the educated, the others clergy, the teachers, the devoted to others, that you find in every country...sadly they are the first ones shot by their brother arabs.

How about trying to save Syria from any more enslaughts and rebuilding it so that the 10,000,000 fleeing souls CAN HAVE THE RIGHT OF RETURN...

yeah, remember the"RIGHT OF RETURN" you horses' patoot!

Israel needs to keep worrying about Israel, so the Syrians one day may revitalize under a democracy, not the pencil necked butcher and demon, ASSad !

I am in favor of freedom of expression because it is the only way for some writers to let the whole world know how idiotic they are. It’s been a long time since I haven’t read such a stupid, populist, twisted, and otherwise insulting article against Israel. But we must continue to let Ronen Bergman speak. We mustn’t remain the only ones that know how thick and wicked this guy is.

Why should Israel save its enemies' lives? what does Israel owe to the syrians ,who hate Israel? why should I help he who wants to destroy me ?

If am not sure if the writer is joking or smoking (some of those Israeli medical flowers) but this guy needs to find a better job for himself.I would like to see him go into Syria and help some of the women and children escape their hell or give food and medicine instead of trying to blame Israel for not getting into a war that in the end would only hurt more people especially Israel's.Instead talk about all the Syrians that were helped by Israel in their hospitals.

It is the most stupid article that I read lately. Hear, Israel nullifying Assad's troops to save civilians! LOL! Well five minutes after starting the fighting for the rescue" of civilians, this act would have created a strong Muslim alliance against "the Zionist aggressor" with terrible consequences. If the US have shown that they are unable to establish order, should Israel do instead? To fight against the alliance Assad, Russia, Iran, etc ...?