What about Syria?

President Bush is to be commended for recognizing in his State of the Union address the evil perpetrated by Iran, Iraq and North Korea and the imminent dangers they pose to the United States and other freedom-loving people.

But he forgot to mention one other major state sponsor of terror – and the only one illegally occupying a neighboring nation.

That terror state is, of course, Syria.

America and our allies will never be able to destroy the international terrorist infrastructure without addressing Syria’s role and its continued occupation of Lebanon – a nation it uses as a staging ground for training suicide bombers, airline hijackers and other violent enemies of peace and freedom.

Don’t misunderstand what I am saying. I am not calling for a U.S. invasion of Syria any more than I am calling for a U.S. invasion of North Korea.

But, if we are serious about this war on terrorism, we cannot avoid recognizing exactly who the enemies are. Syria is among the enemies.

Damascus plays a cunning game in international politics. That only makes it more dangerous. It uses lies to obscure its true goals and its own sins.

The latest example is the international propaganda campaign suggesting Israel and, specifically, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are behind the recent car bomb murder of Lebanese warlord Elie Hobeika Jan. 24.

Hobeika was the intelligence chief of the Lebanese Forces responsible for the killing of some 800 Arabs in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla in 1982, following the invasion of Lebanon by Israel in the Jewish state’s first major war against terrorism.

The Syrians say Hobeika had just decided, after 20 years, that the Israelis and Sharon were actually responsible for the killings, not his forces. According to Damascus, Hobeika had agreed to travel to Belgium to testify against Sharon in an international war crimes hearing. Thus, the Syrians say, Sharon and the Israelis snuffed Hobeika, using the favored assassination technique of the terrorists – a car bomb – in Syrian-occupied territory.

Hello? If you believe that, I have some prime real estate I’d like to sell you in the Bekaa Valley.

This was a hit sponsored more likely by Syria and carried out by its own terrorist friends on its own turf. Hobeika was a man with many enemies. He was a constant source of annoyance to the Hezbollah and other terrorists in the area – all of whom operate there under the sponsorship and authority of Damascus.

Some courageous Lebanese are speaking out against this sham.

Nagi Najjar, director of the Lebanon Foundation for Peace, is one of those brave souls.

In a letter to Human Rights Watch, which is urging Sharon to cooperate with this Belgian kangaroo court, he points out that the tragic events in Sabra and Chatilla can only be understood in context.

He points out that those killed in the refugee camps were, for the most part, followers of terrorist Yasser Arafat. They were not Lebanese Muslims, with whom Lebanese Christians lived in peace for centuries. They were invaders. They were Arafat’s forces who had fled Jordan after King Hussein’s war on them in his country.

“Your myopic vision of the Sabra and Chatilla massacres ignores the massacres perpetrated by Yasser Arafat and his murderers against the Christian Lebanese,” he said. Those massacres, which have received far less publicity in the international press, include:

• Dozens of civilians – mostly Christians – were tortured and killed in the town of Chekka in northern Lebanon.

• Dozens of civilians – again, mostly Christians – were slaughtered in the town of Damour, south of Beirut. Many young girls were raped by the forces that came from the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla.

• Innocent Christians were killed – solely because they were Christians – in Aintoura and Mtein by these same forces.

• Hundreds in the Christian towns of Hadath, Ain-el Remmaneh, Jisr el Bacha, Dekaouneh, Beirut and southern Metn were killed in daily assaults by Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization.

“The barbarism in Lebanon was an Arafat specialty,” says Najjar. “Christians were decapitated, girls were raped, parents and kids were murdered in the streets due to Palestinian military attacks against the Christian areas, as they refused to distinguish between adult men and women and children. All Christians, despite age or sex, were Palestinian targets.”

Najjar reminds us of what Sabra and Chatilla represented: They were not peaceful civilian refugee camps. They were the training grounds for international terrorism. They were visited regularly by the Red Brigades, Carlos the Jackal and Islamist extremists from Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Egypt.

Maybe, after Sept. 11, the world will take a new look at Sabra and Chatilla – perhaps with a little more understanding of the rage expressed there by people who saw their way of life and their very existence in danger.

But, for heaven’s sake, stop blaming Sharon. He wasn’t even there.

This is what the Syrian occupation of Lebanon has wrought. This kind of killing has been going on since Damascus invaded Lebanon. This is business as usual under the reign of the Assads.

You want to root out terrorism? Start in Syria.