Because the Syrian government says it didn't.

Foreign journalists perused the rows of corn and the groves of date palms pregnant with low-hanging fruit here this week, while agents of SyriaÂ’s ever present security services stood in the background, watching closely, almost nervously.

“You see — around us are farmers, corn, produce, nothing else,” said Ahmed Mehdi, the Deir ez Zor director of the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands, a government agricultural research center, as he led two of the journalists around the facilities.

It was here at this research center in this sleepy Bedouin city in eastern Syria that an Israeli journalist reported that Israel had conducted an air raid in early September.

Ron Ben-Yishai, a writer for the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot, grabbed headlines when he suggested that the government facility here was attacked during the raid, snapping photos of himself for his article in front of a sign for the agricultural center.

He said he was denied access to the research center, which sits on the outskirts of the city, and he did not show any photos of the aftermath of the raid, though he said he saw some pits that looked like part of a mine or quarry, implying that they could also be sites where bombs fell.

Interesting analysis in the comments at Washington Monthly

And in related news, the Syrian government spokesman also denied that Senator Larry Craig was cruising for gay sex in a Minneapolis Airport restroom, and that Bill Clinton had sex with that woman, Monica Lewinski.

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