Did Israel Take Out Syrian Nuclear Facility?

On September 6th an Israeli air-strike took out a Syrian facility of some sort. Despite speculation that Syria might have been actively pursuing nuclear weapons, Syria has maintained that it was an “unused military facility or an agricultural research facility.” Israel has remained silent, yet smug, about the results of the mission, which tells me that it involved something more than “unused military facility.”

Allahpundit at Hot Air reports that earlier today it was discovered that a

Syrian ambassador to the UN allegedly admitting during a UN committee meeting that Israel’s air raid on September 6 hit some sort of nuclear facility.

Syria now claims that the statement was a mistranslation.

Indeed, it was not July 6th, it was September 6th that Israel carried out the operation. But what about the reference to nuclear facilities?

Israeli Foreign Ministry Deputy Director General for Strategic Affairs Miriam Ziv, who took part in the U.N. meeting, confirmed [Syrian U.N. Ambassador] Jaafari had made the remark, Haaretz reported.

Source

The UN has changed the document in question, so now there is no mention of a nuclear facility,

Moreover, the entity that was the fourth largest exporter of lethal weapons in the world, that which violated the airspace of sovereign States and carried out military aggression against them, as had happened on 6 September against Syria, such an entity, with all those characteristics and more, had no right to go on lying without shame.

UN Doc

However, Hot Air commenter rw has provided a link to the Google cache of the original. (Thanks, rw!)

This is how the paragraph used to look:

Moreover, Israel was the fourth largest exporter of weapons of mass destruction and a violator of other nations’ airspace, and it had taken action against nuclear facilities, including the 6 July attack in Syria.  He vowed that whenever a right of reply was exercised, Syria would expose the underlying goals of the Zionist entity.

Google Cache

So did the Syrian Jaafari slip up, and now the U.N. is covering up the confession? Or was the original translation wrong, and Ambassador Miriam Ziv mistaken about what she heard? Remember, it was only after other U.N. officials exposed the Syrian Ambassador’s statements that the U.N. ‘revised’ the website, and the first reports of the confession had nothing to do with the translation/paraphrase done by the U.N.

Syria has confirmed that the target of an IAF raid deep within its borders last month was a nuclear facility, Israeli Foreign Ministry officials said Wednesday. The comments were first reported to Israel by Foreign Ministry Deputy Director General for Strategic Affairs Miriam Ziv, who took part in the UN meeting.

In an official response, the Foreign Ministry confirmed the content of Ziv’s report, but declined further comment.

Haaretz

Filed under: Politics , Israel, Nukes, Syria, United Nations