Tel Aviv- Several Israeli officials have considered the chemical attack in northwestern Syria’s Idlib province a direct security threat to Israel and not just the Syrian people.

The officials urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday to take action to deter such a threat.

Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, head of the Institute for National Security Studies think-tank and former head of Military Intelligence, was one of the few people to urge direct action against the head of the Syrian regime Bashar Assad, calling the chemical attack a “crime against humanity.”

Assad should be taken to trial to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, he said on Twitter.

Speaking to Army Radio, Yadlin encouraged Israel to destroy the planes used in Idlib “from afar,” in an apparent reference to a missile attack.

“An action that weakens Assad is right morally and strategically,” he said.

Netanyahu on Tuesday said the world must act to rid Syria of chemical weapons after the gas attack killed at least 72 people, including 20 children.

“I call on the international community to fulfil its obligation from 2013 to fully and finally remove these horrible weapons from Syria,” he said.

Israel’s defense minister said he is “100 percent certain” that Assad’s forces carried out the attack.

Several Israeli experts have criticized the international community for failing to take action.

Military expert Alex Fishman said the Syrian regime continues to possess small amounts of chemical weapons, including the sarin nerve gas.

Since the implementation of the agreement to destroy its chemical weapons, the regime used the arms on several occasions, he said.

But the deadly sarin nerve gas reportedly used in the Idlib attack was the first in four years, Fishman added.