{"id":330655,"date":"2017-10-16T08:08:15","date_gmt":"2017-10-16T07:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trump-ignores-israelisaudi-abuses-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2017-10-16T08:08:15","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T07:08:15","slug":"trump-ignores-israelisaudi-abuses-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trump-ignores-israelisaudi-abuses-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Ignores Israeli\/Saudi Abuses \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>By offering a propagandistic tirade on Iran\u2019s role in the Mideast \u2013 a classic neocon screed \u2013 President Trump has demonstrated his inability to bring any fresh or honest thinking to the regional crises, as Kathy Kelly explains.<\/p>\n<p>By Kathy Kelly<\/p>\n<p><u>Mordechai Vanunu<\/u> was imprisoned in Israel for 18 years because he blew the whistle on Israel\u2019s secret nuclear weapons program. He felt he had \u201c<u>an obligation<\/u> to tell the people of Israel what was going on behind their backs\u201d at a supposed nuclear research facility which was actually producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. His punishment for breaking the silence about Israel\u2019s capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons included 11 years of solitary confinement.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_23643\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/18556006_1318683931552670_3014289850417436130_n.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/18556006_1318683931552670_3014289850417436130_n-300x200.jpg\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-23643\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\"  \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-23643\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/18556006_1318683931552670_3014289850417436130_n-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\"  \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">President Donald Trump poses for photos with ceremonial swordsmen on his arrival to Murabba Palace, as the guest of Saudi King Salman, May 20, 2017, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>On Friday, reading about President Donald Trump\u2019s new <u>strategy on Iran<\/u>, Vanunu\u2019s long isolation and sacrificial commitment to truth-telling came to mind. Donald Trump promised to \u201cdeny the Iranian regime all paths to a nuclear weapon.\u201d But it is Israel, which possesses an estimated 80 nuclear warheads, with fissile material for up to 200, which poses the major nuclear threat in the region. And Israel is allied to the nation with the world\u2019s largest nuclear arsenal: the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Israel doesn\u2019t acknowledge its nuclear arsenal publicly, nor does Israel allow weapons inspectors into its nuclear weapons facilities. Along with India and Pakistan, Israel refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. And it has used conventional weapons in numerous destabilizing wars, which include aerial bombing of Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank.<\/p>\n<p>Vanunu, designated by Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg as the \u201cthe pre-eminent hero of the nuclear era,\u201d helped many people envision nations in the region making progress toward a nuclear weapons-free Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, Iran\u2019s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jawad Zarif, spoke eloquently about just that possibility, in 2015, <u>holding that<\/u>\u00a0\u201cif the Vienna deal&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/10\/15\/trump-ignores-israelisaudi-abuses\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By offering a propagandistic tirade on Iran\u2019s role in the Mideast \u2013 a classic neocon screed \u2013 President Trump has demonstrated his inability to bring any fresh or honest thinking to the regional crises, as Kathy Kelly explains. By Kathy Kelly Mordechai Vanunu was imprisoned in Israel for 18 years because he blew the whistle [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-330655","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}