Source: Associated Press

By IAN DEITCH

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s former chief rabbi on Thursday compared the atrocities in Syria to the killing of Jews in World War II and suggested that Israel should intervene to stop the bloodshed in the neighboring country.

The comments by Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, who survived the Holocaust as a child, added one of the country’s leading voices of morality to a growing chorus of condemnations of the violence in Syria.

This week, dozens of civilians were killed in a chemical attack in Syria that Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said was carried out by Syrian government forces. Lieberman told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper he was “100 percent certain” the attacks were conducted under Syrian President Bashar Assad’s “direct and intentional order” and carried out with Syrian planes.