SYRIA GOES BOOM

With the Syrian civil war having claimed an estimated half-million lives, the world has grown numb to the carnage there.

But just days after President Trump vowed to end America’s modest involvement in the conflict, Syria was once again grabbing Washington’s attention after another chemical attack on civilians.

Trump and his advisers were weighing what the New York Times described late Tuesday as “a more robust retaliatory strike against Syria than last year’s missile attack, reasoning that only an escalation of force would look credible and possibly serve as a deterrent against further use of chemical weapons on Syrian civilians.”

Meanwhile, in an action believed unrelated to the chemical attack, planes thought to be from Israel pounded an Iranian air base in Syria on Monday.

It’s not the first time the Jewish state struck at Iran in Syria, but with Russia’s mounting involvement there this week’s action was seen as jeopardizing its relations with the Vladimir Putin regime.

The Jewish Star political columnist Jeff Dunetz reports on the Israeli strike (“It had nothing to do with chemical weapons,” p. 22) and JTA’s Ben Sales considers the Russian connection (“Israel’s latest strike imperils its Russian relations,” p. 25).