Martin Indyk served two stints as US Ambassador to Israel during the Clinton Administration. He is one of the individuals that the Kerry campaign has identified as part of its Middle East advisory team, and many think he will return to a significant government job in the diplomatic arena, were Kerry elected. It is therefore of more than passing significance that Indyk last week argued that the Golan Heights belong to Syria, and Israel will not realize peace without surrendering it.

The Indyk statement received surprisingly little media attention. The Kerry campaign has been struggling to maintain the traditionally large Jewish majority for Democratic candidates in Presidential elections this year, and the Indyk statement would certainly not be reassuring to the pro-Israel community, the segment of the Jewish voting population that is most likely to support President Bush in November, based on his very strong record of support for Israel.

Then came the bombshell that the German newspaper Die Welt was reporting that Syria had sent a chemical weapons team to Darfur in the Sudan to test its chemical weapons capability. The “tests’ succeeded apparently in killing many black African victims, and incapacitated many others. The victims from this attack in Darfur, and all the others in recent months, are Muslims of course, but they are being killed because they are not Arabs. It can be safely concluded that the Syrians and their Sudanese allies did not distribute nor receive informed consent forms before the “tests” were conducted.

It is accepted wisdom in Israel, and in the US Defense Department, that Iraq transferred much of its chemical and biological weapons capability to Syria before the US invasion began in March, 2003...