Barkai Center for Practical Rabbinics

The violence in Syria has steadily escalated since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, and it must end. Every single day dozens of men, women, and children, are dying in what can only be described as a genocide. As a global community, it's time for us to stand up and demand that this stops immediately. In light of the recent chemical bombing sanctioned by President Bashar al-Assad on April 4, 2017, in which over 70 people were killed including 20 children, it is clear that the situation has escalated well past the point where the United Nations needs to intervene. Chemical warfare is a war crime, and breaks both the Geneva Protocol of 1925 and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997. The Syrian government must be held accountable for this, and also must be prevented from committing future acts of gross violence and genocide.