Post by Moses on Jan 22, 2006 9:25:24 GMT -5
Iran and Israel: The Ambiguous Nuclear Weapons
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To object to Iran's nuclear future without pressuring and bringing Israel into open and honest negotiation seems outrageously insulting.
By Mary La Rosa
PalestineChronicle.com
Over the last 50 years, Israel has been directly and indirectly aided and funded in its development of weapons of mass destruction by the United States, France, Norway, Britain and Germany. These powerful nations have neither been forthright nor accountable in their roles in giving one small country in the Middle East enough clout to wipe out most of their neighbors via nuclear holocaust. Such a stance is not only controversial and hypocritical to non-proliferation; it is intrinsically detrimental to all other diplomacy and hopes concerning peace in the future of the Middle East.
Iran's rather defiant and overt intentions re: producing and maintaining nuclear energy, calls for a closer scrutiny and study of defiant nuclear ambitions in the Middle East. Israel's long-standing ambiguity about its nuclear weapons, gives Iran and the world, pause and speculation as to why some governments, especially the US government and including some EU governments, chose to either subvert emphasis on non proliferation, or simply did not have the adequate intelligence to discern what historians and journalists are now only beginning to piece together as history, concerning Israel's illegal acquisitions of heavy water and uranium.
Either ponderance brings with it a profound sense of unease and mistrust of any governments or political leaders who also remain silent about past, present and future Zionist "Manifest Destiny" that makes excuses for ethnic cleansing and massive group punishments of a people suffering decades of brutal Occupation; a people still having land stolen from them.
Further more, to object to Iran's nuclear future without pressuring and bringing Israel into open and honest negotiation about its arsenal including forthright inspections, seems either absurd or outrageously insulting not only to the Arab world but also to the world in general.
The United States and most of Europe, now rumbling and grumbling and on edge over Iran still avoids even discussion let alone confrontation over Israel's proliferation, and thus presents this rather poor standard for diplomacy. A foreign policy that favors and entitles one country with rogue weapons while condemning another, perpetuates an uneasy clime and double standard wherein peaceful negotiation is doomed before it ever begins.
How Israel Went Nuclear
Israeli journalist, Michael Karpin, recently published a book version of "The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear and What That Means For the World" and provides readers with an interesting history of scientists, politicians and spies. Karpin determines and explores the influences and raison d'etre of Israel's nuclear weapons and the secrecy about them. He writes of the Holocaust and Israel's size and demographic compared to surrounding sizable neighbors. Karpin's book follows in the wake of his earlier (2001) documentary on the same subject, and provides us with the history, without philosophical, moral or religious agendas. Perhaps it has always been the philosophical and morality that has been lost all these years in ambiguity.
Karpin has carefully, although selectively, researched a history made intricate and complicated in alliances with purpose to buy and sell arms. France, Germany, USA, Norway and Britain all played major roles in supplying the state of Israel with the major "ingredients" for nuclear weapons. Karpin details the influence Israel exerted upon EU countries and the sequence of US administrations and public opinion.
In 1960, US military satellites determined that the reactor in Dimona might NOT be in existence for "peaceful" purpose, while the New York Times reported (Dec 19) what the CIA already knew.... that " officials are studying with mounting concern recent evidence indicating that Israel, with the assistance of France, may be developing the capacity to produce nuclear weapons." The article further implied that Israel had been deceiving the United States in its nuclear ambitions. These realizations and sentiments did not deter Israel from achieving its goal via any and often nefarious means.
Norway had willingly provided Israel with enough heavy water to build hundreds of bombs, but only under agreement of inspections. This agreement was rather dormant until 1986 and the kidnapping, secret trial, testament and punishment of Israel's nuclear whistle blower, Mordechai Vanunu. Only then did Norway fully realize the real price of selling "heavy water" to the state of Israel.
Recently two British lawmakers have accused their government of a cover-up in trying to conceal the secret sale of heavy water to Israel in 1959. Although Britain maintains the deal and sale was only between Norway and Britain, admission comes now regarding prior knowledge of where that heavy water would find its final "home". A BBC report further claims that Brits took the water out of its own stockpile and loaded it on board Israeli ships. Documents also show that Britain was well aware of Israel seeking to buy uranium from South Africa.
Throughout the years, historians and investigative journalists have sought to clarify all of the murkier more ambiguous details that have never been addressed. The cover story for SPIEGAL May 2004, "Black Market of Horror" was recently translated by Victor Diodon and presents us with further details about the well known Mossad commando, Rafi Eitan, who was not only responsible for the abduction of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann but whose next greatest purpose was to acquire fissionable materials for the atomic weapons program Israel wished to have.
Also detailed is a company from Apollo, Pennsylvania , Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp (NUMEC), owned and run by the son of an orthodox rabbi and ardent Zionist who strangely lost track of a certain amount of enriched uranium that was stored at the plant for legitimate US government contracts. Rafi Eitan, master mind in spying and stealing technological secrets, paid NUMEC a visit. More than 100 kilos of uranium disappeared and owner, Zalman Shapiro, did not report the loss. He feigned ignorance and ignorance and there was only enough evidence for the United States Atomic Energy Commission to shut the plant down and could not convict him.
In Brussels, according to the same Spiegal cover story, Eitan takes similar action, only this time with forged papers and the cooperation of a German businessman. Somewhere close to Cyprus a ship carrying a load of uranium disappears, but not before the "goods" were loaded onto an Israeli ship headed for Haifa. Later German businessman, Herbert Schulzen, declares himself an unknowing intermediary for a client he did not know.
In 1982, the most eager of all Israelis to have the "bomb in the basement" was Eitan's friend and then Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon, who was allegedly prepared on more than one occasion to directly attack Syria and the man responsible for orchestrated the 1982 massacre of hundreds of thousands civilian Lebanese and Palestinian refugees. Eitan and Sharon, in 1985 would use and abuse and then later distance themselves from American spy for Israel, Jonathan Pollard. Before they snubbed him, however, they received much in the way of technological "high security" secrets.
Nuclear for Protection?
Iran, filled with mistrust, hate and hateful paranoia towards Israel and the West, seems to have as much practical reasons for acquiring a nuclear reactor under the guise of "energy" as Israel did. Given its turbulent history, and the fact that two of its closest neighbors are now occupied by the West, it seems quite reasonable for Iran to desire the same “protection” as Israel "secretly" has.
Nuclear Weapons come in all shapes and sizes and the Dolphin class submarines that complete Israel's fleet and can carry missiles. In 1989, the very same Mossad commando set out to find a shipyard able and willing to build submarines for Israel. In 1998, Yossi Melman wrote an aptly named article published in Haaretz called "Swimming With the Dolphins: Israel's New Dolphin Submarines, Built in Germany, Will Add a New Dimension to the Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East". In this article he describes how George the Father HW Bush agreed to allow US funding to pay for Israel's submarines to be built in German shipyards but that the plan for new Dolphin submarines was not realized until the beginning of the Gulf War.
The same German government that allowed German companies to sell materials to Iraq for "unconventional" chemical weapons now approved the funding and the construction of submarines for Israel with potential to be used with nuclear war heads in a "second strike" position. In other words, if the reactor at Dimona was suddenly attacked and wiped out, there is now in place the ways and means to provide immediate second strike in retaliation.
On June 15, 2002, the Washington Post disclosed:
During these last two White House terms, the American public has been recklessly thrust into a seemingly endless occupation inspiring what was not there before (suicide bombers) with mounting death tolls to military and civilian population. Bush's War, based upon faulty intelligence leaks and motivation for reconstruction via war contracts, leads us closer to disaster at a time when only the finest form of diplomacy and leadership is required. The corrupt level of intelligence leaks and spying can only make one look more carefully at the news breaking story that leaked to the L.A. Times October 12, 2003 concerning Israel's acquisition of Dolphin submarines from Germany.
This story was posted in alternative news media but got little mention mainstream media. In retrospect, considering the anonymous sources who are described as Bush administration officials, one must also consider such a "leak" to possibly have been a planned manipulation. Who were those Bush administration officials? And how did they take it upon themselves to warn Israel's enemies or was it a commanded maneuver?
Did the map that MSNBC aired on television in April 2003 come from such an official source as well? Who are these Bush administration "official" peddlers of secrets?
Suddenly, mid submarine negotiation, Germany decided to halt delivery, supposedly in lieu of the building arms race that now included Iran. But if there was ever such a peace worthy motivation, why in December of 2004 did Israel celebrate 40 years of diplomatic ties with Germany by acquiring two more Dolphin submarines? And by February 2005, the world learns of "German Gifting of Nuclear Submarines to Israel: NPT Delinquency".
Present foreign policy facades about arms control and non-proliferation will simply NOT work. The diplomatic situation grows worse. Neither bluffing nor bragging will convince Iran to reconcile with all its neighbors and the West in general.
Nuclear-Free Middle East
At a time when the world requires more focus on climate and environment, famine and disease, spending money on weapons systems to up the ante around and around again seems a futile spiral. The "second strike" suggestion and tactic set in motion by "anonymous" Bush and Israeli officials re: submarines with nuclear missile capacity, has had an opposite effect in terms of Iran's reaction to being bullied over nuclear reactors without the examples of Israel's honest commitment to peace. And now Russia has also decided to make a motion by selling arms to Iran.
For more than fifty years Israel has been directly and illegitimately funded and aided in its nuclear weapons production by France, the United States, Britain, Germany and Norway yet maintaining "ambiguity". During that time, Israel has also refused to sign or negotiate any commitment against the use of biological weapons, such as the 1972 Biological Weapons Conventions. Thus another ambiguous stance when peace requires making more clear the moral conscience and commitment towards peace and non-violence.
In spite of the warmongers and in spite of very little exposure, representatives and citizens from all around the world are continually working towards peaceful resolution and non-proliferation. Here in the US, we are barely noticed ...thousands marching in the streets of NYC against nuclear proliferation and very small awareness, locally and regionally. US Mayors for Peace marched, amid mayors from all over the world including many from Japan, while my Mayor avoided the issues.
Recently an Israeli peace group sent the enclosed The Parliamentary Network for Nuclear Disarmament letter to me. [See next post]Such Israelis exists, just as such Muslims exist, just as I exist.
You are also urged to send a similar message to your governments, urging no military action and especially no use of nuclear weapons over Iran, and a nuclear-free Middle East.
-Mary La Rosa is an artist and librarian living close to NYC. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com and can be reached at: mddalton@optonline.net
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To object to Iran's nuclear future without pressuring and bringing Israel into open and honest negotiation seems outrageously insulting.
By Mary La Rosa
PalestineChronicle.com
Over the last 50 years, Israel has been directly and indirectly aided and funded in its development of weapons of mass destruction by the United States, France, Norway, Britain and Germany. These powerful nations have neither been forthright nor accountable in their roles in giving one small country in the Middle East enough clout to wipe out most of their neighbors via nuclear holocaust. Such a stance is not only controversial and hypocritical to non-proliferation; it is intrinsically detrimental to all other diplomacy and hopes concerning peace in the future of the Middle East.
Iran's rather defiant and overt intentions re: producing and maintaining nuclear energy, calls for a closer scrutiny and study of defiant nuclear ambitions in the Middle East. Israel's long-standing ambiguity about its nuclear weapons, gives Iran and the world, pause and speculation as to why some governments, especially the US government and including some EU governments, chose to either subvert emphasis on non proliferation, or simply did not have the adequate intelligence to discern what historians and journalists are now only beginning to piece together as history, concerning Israel's illegal acquisitions of heavy water and uranium.
Either ponderance brings with it a profound sense of unease and mistrust of any governments or political leaders who also remain silent about past, present and future Zionist "Manifest Destiny" that makes excuses for ethnic cleansing and massive group punishments of a people suffering decades of brutal Occupation; a people still having land stolen from them.
Further more, to object to Iran's nuclear future without pressuring and bringing Israel into open and honest negotiation about its arsenal including forthright inspections, seems either absurd or outrageously insulting not only to the Arab world but also to the world in general.
The United States and most of Europe, now rumbling and grumbling and on edge over Iran still avoids even discussion let alone confrontation over Israel's proliferation, and thus presents this rather poor standard for diplomacy. A foreign policy that favors and entitles one country with rogue weapons while condemning another, perpetuates an uneasy clime and double standard wherein peaceful negotiation is doomed before it ever begins.
How Israel Went Nuclear
Israeli journalist, Michael Karpin, recently published a book version of "The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear and What That Means For the World" and provides readers with an interesting history of scientists, politicians and spies. Karpin determines and explores the influences and raison d'etre of Israel's nuclear weapons and the secrecy about them. He writes of the Holocaust and Israel's size and demographic compared to surrounding sizable neighbors. Karpin's book follows in the wake of his earlier (2001) documentary on the same subject, and provides us with the history, without philosophical, moral or religious agendas. Perhaps it has always been the philosophical and morality that has been lost all these years in ambiguity.
Karpin has carefully, although selectively, researched a history made intricate and complicated in alliances with purpose to buy and sell arms. France, Germany, USA, Norway and Britain all played major roles in supplying the state of Israel with the major "ingredients" for nuclear weapons. Karpin details the influence Israel exerted upon EU countries and the sequence of US administrations and public opinion.
In 1960, US military satellites determined that the reactor in Dimona might NOT be in existence for "peaceful" purpose, while the New York Times reported (Dec 19) what the CIA already knew.... that " officials are studying with mounting concern recent evidence indicating that Israel, with the assistance of France, may be developing the capacity to produce nuclear weapons." The article further implied that Israel had been deceiving the United States in its nuclear ambitions. These realizations and sentiments did not deter Israel from achieving its goal via any and often nefarious means.
Norway had willingly provided Israel with enough heavy water to build hundreds of bombs, but only under agreement of inspections. This agreement was rather dormant until 1986 and the kidnapping, secret trial, testament and punishment of Israel's nuclear whistle blower, Mordechai Vanunu. Only then did Norway fully realize the real price of selling "heavy water" to the state of Israel.
Recently two British lawmakers have accused their government of a cover-up in trying to conceal the secret sale of heavy water to Israel in 1959. Although Britain maintains the deal and sale was only between Norway and Britain, admission comes now regarding prior knowledge of where that heavy water would find its final "home". A BBC report further claims that Brits took the water out of its own stockpile and loaded it on board Israeli ships. Documents also show that Britain was well aware of Israel seeking to buy uranium from South Africa.
Throughout the years, historians and investigative journalists have sought to clarify all of the murkier more ambiguous details that have never been addressed. The cover story for SPIEGAL May 2004, "Black Market of Horror" was recently translated by Victor Diodon and presents us with further details about the well known Mossad commando, Rafi Eitan, who was not only responsible for the abduction of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann but whose next greatest purpose was to acquire fissionable materials for the atomic weapons program Israel wished to have.
Also detailed is a company from Apollo, Pennsylvania , Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp (NUMEC), owned and run by the son of an orthodox rabbi and ardent Zionist who strangely lost track of a certain amount of enriched uranium that was stored at the plant for legitimate US government contracts. Rafi Eitan, master mind in spying and stealing technological secrets, paid NUMEC a visit. More than 100 kilos of uranium disappeared and owner, Zalman Shapiro, did not report the loss. He feigned ignorance and ignorance and there was only enough evidence for the United States Atomic Energy Commission to shut the plant down and could not convict him.
In Brussels, according to the same Spiegal cover story, Eitan takes similar action, only this time with forged papers and the cooperation of a German businessman. Somewhere close to Cyprus a ship carrying a load of uranium disappears, but not before the "goods" were loaded onto an Israeli ship headed for Haifa. Later German businessman, Herbert Schulzen, declares himself an unknowing intermediary for a client he did not know.
In 1982, the most eager of all Israelis to have the "bomb in the basement" was Eitan's friend and then Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon, who was allegedly prepared on more than one occasion to directly attack Syria and the man responsible for orchestrated the 1982 massacre of hundreds of thousands civilian Lebanese and Palestinian refugees. Eitan and Sharon, in 1985 would use and abuse and then later distance themselves from American spy for Israel, Jonathan Pollard. Before they snubbed him, however, they received much in the way of technological "high security" secrets.
Nuclear for Protection?
Iran, filled with mistrust, hate and hateful paranoia towards Israel and the West, seems to have as much practical reasons for acquiring a nuclear reactor under the guise of "energy" as Israel did. Given its turbulent history, and the fact that two of its closest neighbors are now occupied by the West, it seems quite reasonable for Iran to desire the same “protection” as Israel "secretly" has.
Nuclear Weapons come in all shapes and sizes and the Dolphin class submarines that complete Israel's fleet and can carry missiles. In 1989, the very same Mossad commando set out to find a shipyard able and willing to build submarines for Israel. In 1998, Yossi Melman wrote an aptly named article published in Haaretz called "Swimming With the Dolphins: Israel's New Dolphin Submarines, Built in Germany, Will Add a New Dimension to the Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East". In this article he describes how George the Father HW Bush agreed to allow US funding to pay for Israel's submarines to be built in German shipyards but that the plan for new Dolphin submarines was not realized until the beginning of the Gulf War.
The same German government that allowed German companies to sell materials to Iraq for "unconventional" chemical weapons now approved the funding and the construction of submarines for Israel with potential to be used with nuclear war heads in a "second strike" position. In other words, if the reactor at Dimona was suddenly attacked and wiped out, there is now in place the ways and means to provide immediate second strike in retaliation.
On June 15, 2002, the Washington Post disclosed:
During these last two White House terms, the American public has been recklessly thrust into a seemingly endless occupation inspiring what was not there before (suicide bombers) with mounting death tolls to military and civilian population. Bush's War, based upon faulty intelligence leaks and motivation for reconstruction via war contracts, leads us closer to disaster at a time when only the finest form of diplomacy and leadership is required. The corrupt level of intelligence leaks and spying can only make one look more carefully at the news breaking story that leaked to the L.A. Times October 12, 2003 concerning Israel's acquisition of Dolphin submarines from Germany.
This story was posted in alternative news media but got little mention mainstream media. In retrospect, considering the anonymous sources who are described as Bush administration officials, one must also consider such a "leak" to possibly have been a planned manipulation. Who were those Bush administration officials? And how did they take it upon themselves to warn Israel's enemies or was it a commanded maneuver?
Did the map that MSNBC aired on television in April 2003 come from such an official source as well? Who are these Bush administration "official" peddlers of secrets?
Suddenly, mid submarine negotiation, Germany decided to halt delivery, supposedly in lieu of the building arms race that now included Iran. But if there was ever such a peace worthy motivation, why in December of 2004 did Israel celebrate 40 years of diplomatic ties with Germany by acquiring two more Dolphin submarines? And by February 2005, the world learns of "German Gifting of Nuclear Submarines to Israel: NPT Delinquency".
Present foreign policy facades about arms control and non-proliferation will simply NOT work. The diplomatic situation grows worse. Neither bluffing nor bragging will convince Iran to reconcile with all its neighbors and the West in general.
Nuclear-Free Middle East
At a time when the world requires more focus on climate and environment, famine and disease, spending money on weapons systems to up the ante around and around again seems a futile spiral. The "second strike" suggestion and tactic set in motion by "anonymous" Bush and Israeli officials re: submarines with nuclear missile capacity, has had an opposite effect in terms of Iran's reaction to being bullied over nuclear reactors without the examples of Israel's honest commitment to peace. And now Russia has also decided to make a motion by selling arms to Iran.
For more than fifty years Israel has been directly and illegitimately funded and aided in its nuclear weapons production by France, the United States, Britain, Germany and Norway yet maintaining "ambiguity". During that time, Israel has also refused to sign or negotiate any commitment against the use of biological weapons, such as the 1972 Biological Weapons Conventions. Thus another ambiguous stance when peace requires making more clear the moral conscience and commitment towards peace and non-violence.
In spite of the warmongers and in spite of very little exposure, representatives and citizens from all around the world are continually working towards peaceful resolution and non-proliferation. Here in the US, we are barely noticed ...thousands marching in the streets of NYC against nuclear proliferation and very small awareness, locally and regionally. US Mayors for Peace marched, amid mayors from all over the world including many from Japan, while my Mayor avoided the issues.
Recently an Israeli peace group sent the enclosed The Parliamentary Network for Nuclear Disarmament letter to me. [See next post]Such Israelis exists, just as such Muslims exist, just as I exist.
You are also urged to send a similar message to your governments, urging no military action and especially no use of nuclear weapons over Iran, and a nuclear-free Middle East.
-Mary La Rosa is an artist and librarian living close to NYC. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com and can be reached at: mddalton@optonline.net