The secrecy surrounding the attack on the nuclear plant in eastern Syria in September 2007 was justified only for the period immediately after the operation, according to the CIA head at the time, Gen. Michael Hayden. That secrecy had been meant to save President Bashar Assad from embarrassment that could have provoked him to retaliate.
nuclear threat
Berlusconi: “Iran is not guaranteeing a peaceful production of nuclear power [so] the members of the G-8 are worried and believe absolutely that Israel will probably react preemptively.”
Both [South Africa and Israel] certainly needed friends. Settler colonies – which both these were, Israel no less than South Africa – invariably do. Usually their biggest friends are the colonial powers that planted them in the first place, on whom they depend… especially in places overwhelmingly populated by ‘others’, and even more especially when those ‘others’ have been crudely dispossessed. Left to their own resources, such colonies are bound to be terribly vulnerable, with most historical examples… being destroyed as a result.
Amnesty International has accused the Israeli authorities of subjecting jailed nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by holding him in solitary confinement.
Two renowned South African journalists have revealed that Eschel Rhoodie, the apartheid government’s information minister who played a central role in establishing military ties to Israel, privately described in 1979 how he had transported “the trigger” as hand luggage on a flight from Tel Aviv. But they say they were unable to publish the account at the time because of censorship and the former minister’s concerns for his safety.
IOA Editor: This latest story, following an earlier Guardian report, was filed from Washington but received no mainstream media attention in the US. None. The Leading Newspaper didn’t find it “Fit to Print,” and neither did the others.
A recently declassified federal report bolsters a long-simmering Cold War theory that uranium was illegally shipped from an Armstrong County plant in 1965 to Israel to support its nuclear arms efforts… The FBI and CIA blocked efforts to release the GAO report in 1978, the report states. Even today, portions were blacked out for security reasons.
Israelis are engaged in a Kafkaesque conversation in which the military attack on the civilian ships is characterised as a legitimate “act of self-defence”, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it, and the killing of nine aid activists is transformed into an attempted “lynching of our soldiers” by terrorists.
The revelations in my book, “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Alliance with Apartheid South Africa,” have angered Israelis across the political spectrum… President Shimon Peres has said “there exists no basis in reality for the claims” put forward in my book. Beilin… has decided to stand by his former boss… as he told The New York Times: “The president’s denial puts an end to the subject.” It does not.
The submarines of Flotilla 7… have visited the Gulf before. But the decision has now been taken to ensure a permanent presence of at least one of the vessels. The flotilla’s commander, identified only as “Colonel O”, told an Israeli newspaper: “We are an underwater assault force. We’re operating deep and far, very far, from our borders.” Each of the submarines has a crew of 35 to 50, commanded by a colonel capable of launching a nuclear cruise missile.
Israel faces unprecedented pressure to abandon its official policy of “ambiguity” on its possession of nuclear weapons as the international community meets at the UN in New York this week to consider banning such arsenals from the Middle East. Israel’s equivocal stance on its atomic status was shattered by reports that it offered to sell nuclear-armed Jericho missiles to S. Africa’s apartheid regime in 1975.
Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state’s possession of nuclear weapons.
Alon Liel, former Israeli ambassador to Pretoria: “When we came to the crossroads in 86-87, in which the foreign ministry said we have to switch from white to black, the security establishment said, ‘You’re crazy, it’s suicidal’. They were saying we wouldn’t have military and aviation industries unless we had had South Africa as our main client from the mid-1970s; they saved Israel. By the way, it’s probably true.”
Mordechai Vanunu: “Shame on you Israel… The stupid Shin Bet and Mossad spies are putting me back in prison after 24 years of speaking nothing but the truth. Shame on you democracy, the Knesset, synagogues and the world media. Shame on you all the Arabs that are allowing me to be put back in prison. Shame on you Senate, congress, and the chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency for not protecting my freedom. Shame on you all the world’s religions, the stupid spies, the Jews, Christians and Muslims… Everyone knows that Israel has nuclear weapons, but no one is talking about it… The world doesn’t want nuclear weapons – not in Israel, not in the Middle East and not anywhere in the world.”
IOA Editor: In the original Hebrew version of this news story, Haaretz conforms to common Israeli practice by referring to Vanunu as the “nuclear spy” – knowing fully well that whatever he did involved no espionage whatsoever.
“Iran is perceived as a threat because they did not obey the orders of the United States. Militarily this threat is irrelevant. This country has not behaved aggressively beyond its borders for centuries. Israel invaded Lebanon with the blessing and help of the US five times in thirty years. Iran has not done anything like this.”
There are times when civil society has to take the initiative when government leaders are unable or unwilling to do so. Indeed, today, with tensions rising between Israel and Iran… it is time to talk, before it is too late.
Paul Jay asks [Helen Thomas] about her first question for President Obama. The question, asking President Obama to name all the countries in the Middle-East that have nuclear weapons, was avoided by the President, who claimed to not want to “speculate”. Thomas claims that knowledge of Israeli nukes is very public in DC and Obama’s answer shows a lack of credibility. She explains the importance of this question for U.S. policy in the region.
“The reason he gave was that Shimon Peres had received the Nobel Peace Prize, and Peres he alleged was the father of the Israeli atomic bomb and he did not want to be associated with Peres in any way.”
A general who was once in charge of Israel’s nuclear weapons has claimed that Iran is a “very, very, very long way from building a nuclear capability”. Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, 75, a war hero and pillar of the defence establishment, believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons.
Instead of addressing the question of how to destroy the Iranian nuclear project by military means, the real interest of all peoples in the Middle East, including the Israeli and Iranian peoples, is to safeguard their security not through nuclear arsenals but through denuclearization of all states in the area. The opposition to the nuclear threat cannot be a selective issue, and should not be handled with double standards.
The real reason for harassing Vanunu is a vindictiveness towards a man who has been impertinent enough to come out of jail unbowed. Of course, if Vanunu had been allowed to leave the country, he would have drifted out of public consciousness. Now, every time he is arrested the world is reminded that Israel has a nuclear weapons facility, a fact used by its enemies to justify their own weapons programmes.
