On April 6, Hamas terrorists fired a Russian Kornet laser-guided missile at a school bus in southern Israel. How did Hamas get such a missile?
It turns out that Russia does not license others to produce this missile; every single Kornet is manufactured in Russia at the KBP factory. The KBP web site helpfully touts all the wonderful qualities of this weapon.
So how did Hamas get its hands on the Kornet it used to try to kill dozens of Israeli schoolchildren? Syria is the obvious guess, as Russia sells Kornets to Syria and Syria maintains close relations with Hamas and Hizballah. The United States has previously sanctioned the KBP plant for providing missiles to Syria that then reached Hizballah, as this Israeli news item notes. The only thing we don’t know is whether it was Hizballah or Syria who turned Kornets over to Hamas.
The ultimate culprit remains Russia, which is selling Syria missiles that it has every reason to know will be given to terrorist groups. Russia is of course a member of the Middle East Quartet, whose goal is supposed to be peace—not arms supplies to terrorists. If the scheduled Quartet meeting takes place this Friday, April 15, Sec. Clinton should lead off by telling Russia Foreign Minister Lavrov that this must stop. A discussion of how Russian arms get to terrorists who murder Israelis would be a great deal more useful than hours of debate over what tactics to use in the United Nations.
Meanwhile, the Asad regime’s cozy relations with terrorists groups provides yet another reason we should hope the people of Syria are successful in their efforts to rid themselves of the odious dictatorship under which they live.
