{"id":94096,"date":"2013-11-25T22:40:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-25T21:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/silentcrownews.com\/wordpress\/?p=2440"},"modified":"2013-11-25T22:40:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-25T21:40:00","slug":"a-nuclear-free-zone-in-the-middle-east-why-israel-will-not-join-the-non-proliferation-treaty-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/a-nuclear-free-zone-in-the-middle-east-why-israel-will-not-join-the-non-proliferation-treaty-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A \u201cNuclear-Free Zone\u201d in the Middle East? Why Israel will not Join the Non-Proliferation Treaty"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Timothy Alexander Guzman, Silent Crow News<\/strong><\/em> – Iran\u2019s New President Hassan Rouhani has requested that Israel to sign and become a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as he spoke\u00a0for a second time at the United Nation General Assembly. \u201cAs long as nuclear weapons exist, the threat of their use exists,\u201d<\/em> Rouhani said, citing the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Rouhani is calling for \u201cnuclear-free zone\u201d<\/em> in the Middle East. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that had not and will not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel would use nuclear weapons if it felt it was threatened by any nation in the Middle East. The nuclear capability of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) defensive capabilities just reached another plateau this past April. It purchased its 5th<\/sup> nuclear submarine that can be deployed anywhere in the world with first strike capability. The Israel News Agency reported that Israel purchased a fifth Dolphin class submarine called the \u201cINS Rahav\u201d from Germany. The article headlined \u201cIsrael Launches Ninth Submarine, Ready To Strike Iran Nuclear Weapons.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong> Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said \u201cThe submarines are a strong, strategic tool for the IDF. The State of Israel is ready to act anytime, anywhere \u2014 on land, sea and air \u2014 in order to ensure the security of Israel\u2019s citizens.\u201d<\/em> \u00a0The submarines are equipped with Israeli-designed Popeye missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. It is no secret that Israel has nuclear weapons. Some estimates suggest that Israel has between 100 and 400 nuclear weapons. No one knows exactly how many nuclear bombs Israel possesses, but we do know they have the capability to produce them at a moment\u2019s notice.<\/p>\n

Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli technician at the Dimona nuclear research center in the Negev desert exposed Israel\u2019s nuclear program to the world in the 1986 Sunday Times (UK). Vanunu was kidnapped in Italy by Mossad agents and brought to Israel to face an Israeli court. He was convicted and imprisoned for more than 18 years at Shikma Prison in Ashkelon, Israel. Half of his prison term was in solitary confinement. He was eventually released in 2004. Since then, Vanunu has been arrested and even imprisoned for violating his parole. He was also arrested for trying to leave Israel at one time. Former Israeli Prime Minister and Noble Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres said \u201che was a traitor to this country\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

Since Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; the Dimona Nuclear Research center is not subject to inspections from the international community such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). According to the Federation of American Scientists<\/em> in a 2007 report, Israel has between 75 and 400 nuclear warheads, but some estimates have their nuclear warheads at less than 200. It is also known that Israel has the ability to deliver them by intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a range of 5,500 kilometers or 3,400 miles, the Jericho III missile named after the biblical city of Jericho, various aircrafts and of course submarines. The report stated the following:<\/p>\n

By the late 1990s the U.S. Intelligence Community estimated that Israel possessed between 75-130 weapons, based on production estimates. The stockpile would certainly include warheads for mobile Jericho-1 and Jericho-2 missiles, as well as bombs for Israeli aircraft, and may include other tactical nuclear weapons of various types. Some published estimates even claimed that Israel might have as many as 400 nuclear weapons by the late 1990s. We believe these numbers are exaggerated, and that Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons inventory may include less than 100 nuclear weapons. Stockpiled plutonium could be used to build additional weapons if so decided<\/em><\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s nuclear program began after World War II. Israel\u2019s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion once said \u201cWhat Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Teller, the three of them are Jews, made for the United States, could also be done by scientists in Israel, for their own people\u201d.<\/em> \u00a0David Ben-Gurion wanted to establish a Jewish State with a military force that would repel an attack by any of its adversaries especially in the Arab world. Ben-Gurion\u2019s speech to the elected assembly of Palestine Jews on October 2nd, 1947 made it clear on the intentions of a new Jewish state:<\/p>\n

Political developments have swept us on to a momentous parting of the ways \u2014 from Mandate to independence. Today, beyond our ceaseless work in immigration, settlement and campaign, we are set three blazing tasks, whereof fulfillment will condition our perpetuity: defense, a Jewish State and Arab-Jewish Cupertino, in that order of importance and urgency.<\/em><\/p>\n

Security is our chief problem. I do not minimize the virtue of statehood even within something less than all the territory of the Land of Israel on either bank of the Jordan; but security comes unarguably first. It dominated our concerns since the Yishuv [Jewish community in Palestine] began from the start of colonization we knew we must, in the main, guarantee it ourselves. But recent upsets and upheavals in Palestine, in the Middle East and in the wide world, and in British and international politics as well, magnify it from a local problem of current safety into Zionism\u2019s hinge of destiny. In scope, in intensity, in purport, it is entirely different now. Just think of the new factors that invest the problem with a political significance of unprecedented gravity \u2014 and I could add a dozen others: the anti-Zionist policy pursued by the Mandatory Government during the past ten years, the obliteration of European Jewry with the willing aid of the acknowledged leader of the Palestine Arabs, the establishment of an Arab League active and united only in combating Zionism, Bevin\u2019s ugly war against the Jews, the crisis in Britain and its political and economic aftermath, the creation of armed forces in the neighboring States, the intrusion of the Arab Legion. And not a single Jewish unit exists.<\/em><\/p>\n

We can stand up to any aggression launched from Palestine or its border, but more in potential than yet in fact. The conversion from potential to actual is now our major, blinding headache. It will mean the swiftest, widest mobilization, here and abroad, of capacity to organize, of our resources in economics and manpower, our science and technology, our civic sense. It must be an all-out effort, sparing no man.<\/em><\/p>\n

Several months later on May 14th<\/sup>, 1948, the state of Israel became a reality with David Ben-Gurion as its first Prime Minister. Ben-Gurion, Executive head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946 until 1956 and the head of the influential Weizmann Institute of Science and Defense \"\"<\/a>Ministry Scientist Ernest David Bergmann recruited Jewish Scientists from abroad during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Israel\u00a0recruited and funded Jewish scientists to help Israel establish a nuclear program. By 1949, the Israel Defense Forces Science Corps or \u2018Hemed Gimmel\u2019 was in search of Uranium in the Negev Desert, but only small amounts were discovered in phosphate deposits. Hemed Gimmel financed several students to study nuclear technology overseas. One of the students attended the University of Chicago to study under Enrico Fermi, who developed the Chicago Pile-1, the first nuclear reactor. Fermi also made scientific contributions to nuclear, quantum and particle physics among others. By the late 1950s Shimon Peres had established\u00a0LEKEM, or the \u2018Science liaison Bureau\u2019\u00a0a new intelligence service\u00a0that would\u00a0search\u00a0for technology, materials and equipment needed for\u00a0Israel\u2019s nuclear program. By 1952, Hemed Gimmel was under Israel\u2019s Ministry of Defense to become the Division of Research and Infrastructure (EMET). By June 1952, The Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) was established with Ernest David Bergmann as the first chairman. Hemed Gimmel was renamed Machon 4 which became the \u201cchief laboratory\u201d of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC). France was a major partner for Israel\u2019s nuclear program. France also sold weapons to Israel. The France-Israel relationship was instrumental in the development of the Dimona Nuclear Research Center. Israel signed American President Dwight Eisenhower\u2019s Atoms for Peace<\/em>, an agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation between the U.S. and Israel along with Turkey to build a \u201csmall swimming pool research reactor\u201d<\/em> at Nachal Soreq. It was the first step to building the Dimona nuclear research center in the Negev desert in collaboration with France who faced political turmoil in its former colonies in North Africa. Israel also faced Arab hostilities in the Middle East, so the cooperation on matters regarding new military technology complemented each other. On March 20, 1957 a public signing ceremony to build a \u201csmall swimming-pool research reactor\u201d<\/em> took place between France and Israel. But the reality was that France and Israel collaborated to build a larger facility at Dimona. In \u2018Israel and the Bomb\u2019<\/em> by Avner Cohen, he describes Ben Gurion\u2019s ambitious plan regarding Israel\u2019s nuclear program was advanced through the Atoms for Peace<\/em> Initiative:<\/p>\n

With the return of Ben Gurion to power in 1955, nuclear energy became a matter of national priority. Ben Gurion gave political backing and financial support to those in the Ministry of Defense who were committed to promoting nuclear energy-Peres, Bergmann, Mardor, and the nuclear enthusiasts at Machon 4. There was also a change in the international climate concerning nuclear energy, in the wake of Eisenhower\u2019s December 1953 Atoms-for-Peace initiative. Until then, nuclear energy in the United States, Canada, and Britain, the three major countries dealing with nuclear energy, was largely closed to other countries. The Atoms for Peace Initiative made nuclear energy technology available to the rest of the world.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The United States under President Eisenhower allowed Israel to seek a nuclear program that would advance its defense capabilities militarily. By 1958, the construction of the Negev Nuclear Research Center located in the Negev desert in secret through the Protocol of Sevres<\/em> agreement.\u00a0 It was a secret agreement between Israel, France and Great Britain at Sevres, France to overthrow Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser through an invasion of Egypt after Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal.\u00a0Four days after the S\u00c3\u00a8vres meeting, Israeli forces invaded Egyptian territory.\u00a0\u00a0French and British forces invaded shortly after they vetoed a US sponsored UN Security Council resolution under the guise that they would separate both Israeli and Egyptian forces after Egypt refused their call to withdraw from the Suez Canal.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In 1958, Charles de Gaulle became President of France. Almost immediately after he assumed office, he wanted to end France\u2019s assistance to Israel\u2019s nuclear program. He would only support Israel\u2019s nuclear program if international inspectors were allowed to inspect Dimona and that Israel would declare that its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes and that under no circumstances reprocess plutonium. Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres negotiated with the French government allowing a window of opportunity for French companies to continue its work until 1966 with the Israeli government.\u00a0\u00a0Israel also had declared its nuclear program was \u201cpeaceful\u201d. BBC News received secret documents that\u00a0the British government\u00a0also supported Israel\u2019s nuclear program by sending illegal and restricted materials that started in the 1950\u00e2\u20ac\u00b2s. In 1961, the Ben-Gurion informed the Canadian government that a pilot plutonium-separation plant would be built at the Dimona facility.\u00a0\u00a0By 1962, the nuclear reactor at Dimona went \u201ccritical\u201d meaning a critical mass with a small amount of fissile material was needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Shortly after, Israel secretly acquired more than 90 tons of uranium oxide (yellowcake) from Argentina to fuel the reactor. \u00a0By 1965 the Israeli reprocessing plant was completed and ready to convert the reactor\u2019s fuel rods into weapons grade plutonium for a nuclear bomb. After the Six-Day War, Israel went live producing nuclear weapons. A new era began in the Middle East. One that\u00a0was a dangerous step to a nuclear disaster if Israel decided to use its nuclear weapons against an Arab country. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Seymour M. Hersh\u2019s \u2018The Samson Option: Israel\u2019s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy\u2019<\/em> stated the concerns Israel\u2019s leaders had, especially Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion if they did not obtain nuclear weapons. Hersh wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is Israel?\u201d he was quoted by an aide as asking. \u201c. . . Only a small spot. One dot! How can it survive in this Arab world?\u201d Ben-Gurion believed that he understood Arab character and was persuaded that as long as Arabs thought they could destroy the Jewish state, there would be no peace and no recognition of Israel. Many Israelis, survivors of the Holocaust, came to believe in ein brera, or \u201cno alternative,\u201d the doctrine that Israel was surrounded by implacable enemies and therefore had no choice but to strike out. In their view, Hitler and Nasser were interchangeable.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

For these Israelis, a nuclear arsenal was essential to the survival of the state. In public speeches throughout the 1950s, Ben Gurion repeatedly linked Israel\u2019s security to its progress in science. \u201cOur security and independence require that more young people devote themselves to science and research, atomic and electronic research, research of solar energy . . . and the like,\u201d he told the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in November 1955.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Ernst Bergmann explicitly articulated the ein brera fears in a letter two years later: \u201cI am<\/em> convinced . . . that the State of Israel needs a defense research program of its own, so that we shall never again be as lambs led to the slaughter.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Ben-Gurion, Shimon Peres, and Ernst Bergmann believed that Israel\u2019s independent arsenal finally could provide what President Eisenhower would not\u2013the nuclear umbrella.<\/em><\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s nuclear program was built on the belief that it had \u201cno alternative\u201d but to build a nuclear weapon to deter Arab aggression. Their experience with the Holocaust justifies their intentions on maintaining their nuclear weapons. Israel\u2019s believes that another Holocaust can be prevented, this time not from Germany but from Iran. But many Israeli\u2019s during the development stages of nuclear weapons were not keen on obtaining a nuclear bomb because of the Holocaust:<\/p>\n

\u201cLess compelling to the military men was the moral argument against the bomb raised by some on the left and in academia: that the Jewish people, victims of the Holocaust, had an obligation to prevent the degeneration of the Arab-Israeli dispute into a war of mass destruction\u201d<\/em> Stated Hersh. \u00a0\u201c Those who held that view did not underestimate the danger of a conventional arms race, but believed that, as Simha Flapan, their passionate spokesman, wrote, \u201cthe qualitative advantages of Israel\u2013social cohesion and organization, education and technical skills, intelligence and moral incentive\u2013can be brought into play only in a conventional war fought by men.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Another aspect of Israel\u2019s foreign policy one should consider is the \u2018Samson Option,\u2019 a policy that calls for a retaliation using nuclear weapons against an enemy who threatens the Jewish homeland of its existence. Hersh explains:<\/p>\n

Dimona\u2019s supporters had convinced most of the leadership that only nuclear weapons could provide the absolute and final deterrent to the Arab threat, and only nuclear weapons could convince the Arabs\u2013who were bolstered by rapidly growing Soviet economic and military aid\u2013that they must renounce all plans for military conquest of Israel and agree to a peace settlement. With a nuclear arsenal there would be no more Masadas in Israel\u2019s history, a reference to the decision of more than nine hundred Jewish defenders\u2013known as the Zealots\u2013to commit suicide in A.D. 73 rather than endure defeat at the hands of the Romans.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In its place, argued the nuclear advocates, would be the Samson Option. Samson, according to the Bible, had been captured by the Philistines after a bloody fight and put on display, with his eyes torn out, for public entertainment in Dagon\u2019s Temple in Gaza. He asked God to give him back his strength for the last time and cried out, \u201cLet my soul die with the Philistines.\u201d With that, he pushed apart the temple pillars, bringing down the roof and killing himself and his enemies. For Israel\u2019s nuclear advocates, the Samson Option became another way of saying \u201cNever again.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

[In a 1976 essay in Commentary, Norman Podhoretz accurately summarized the pronuclear argument in describing what Israel would do if abandoned by the United States and overrun by Arabs: “The Israelis would fight . . . with conventional weapons for as long as they could, and if the tide were turning decisively against them, and if help in the form of resupply from the United States or any other guarantors were not forthcoming, it is safe to predict that they would fight with nuclear weapons in the end. … It used to be said that the Israelis had a Masada complex . . .but if the Israelis are to be understood in terms of a ‘complex’ involving suicide rather than surrender and rooted in a relevant precedent of Jewish history, the example of Sarnson, whose suicide brought about the destruction of his enemies, would be more appropriate than Masada, where in committing suicide the Zealots killed only themselves and took no Romans with them.” Podhoretz, asked years later about his essay, said that his conclusions about the Samson Option were just that\u2013his conclusions, and not based on any specific information from Israelis or anyone else about Israel’s nuclear capability.]<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In a White House press conference on May 18, 2009, US President Barack Obama\u2019s concern about \u201cthe potential pursuit of a nuclear weapon by Iran.\u201d<\/em> The United States and other Western nations have not announced any plans to disarm Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons but rather focused its attention on Iran\u2019s nuclear program. Obama said \u201cIran obtaining a nuclear weapon would not only be a threat to Israel and a threat to the United States, but would be profoundly destabilizing in the international community as a whole and could set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.\u201d\u00a0<\/em> Israel already won the arms race in the Middle East. What is to stop Israel\u2019s \u201cZealot\u201d mentality from using nuclear weapons in the Middle East? Israel has threatened Iran in the past. In a 2006 interview with Reuters former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres \u201cthe president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map.\u201d<\/em> It was a response after a false claim Israel and its allies made on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad\u2019s comment in a 2005\u00a0speech at the Ministry of Interior conference hall in Tehran called \u201cThe World without Zionism\u201d<\/em> when he said Israel\u00a0<\/em>must be \u201cwiped off the map\u201d<\/em> which was misinterpreted. Earlier this year, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak said that the US and Israel would take action against Iran, \u201cI don\u2019t see it as a binary kind of situation: either they [the Iranians] turn nuclear or we have a fully fledged war the size of the Iraqi war or even the war in Afghanistan,\u201d Barak continued \u201cWhat we basically say is that if worse comes to worst, there should be a readiness and an ability to launch a surgical operation that will delay them by a significant time frame and probably convince them that it won\u2019t work because the world is determined to block them.\u201d Rouhani is seeking negotiations that would put Iran, the United States and Israel on a path to a peaceful resolution. One that will recognize Iran\u2019s right to a \u201cpeaceful\u201d nuclear program for its country so that they can export more oil and use the revenues it earned for the benefit of the Iranian people. But do not expect any significant breakthrough between Iran and the US\/Israel alliance that seeks to dominate the Middle East politically, economically and militarily.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration is not seeking any negotiations with Iran unless they stop its nuclear program which will not happen. Iran will insist that they are signatories to the NPT and have an \u201cinalienable right\u201d to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Israel will not be a signatory to the NPT because \u201cThis resolution is deeply flawed and hypocritical. It ignores the realities of the Middle East and the real threats facing the region and the entire world\u201d<\/em> according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Another reason Israel will not sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty is because they are victims of the Holocaust which is why they have violated hundreds of U.N. Security Council resolutions and has used chemical weapons on the Palestinians. The talks between Iran and the US that will be held in Geneva will fail come this October because the US wants to dominate Iran. Iran has its principles it will stand by, but so will the US on Israel\u2019s behalf. The US and its staunch allies want Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza strip and the West Bank and every nation on earth under their rule. That is the plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Timothy Alexander Guzman, Silent Crow News<\/strong><\/em> – Iran’s New President Hassan Rouhani has requested that Israel to sign and become a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as he spoke for a second time at the United Nation General Assembly. “As long as nuclear weapons exist, the threat of their use exists,”<\/em> Rouhani said, citing the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  Rouhani is calling for “nuclear-free zone”<\/em> in the Middle East.  Israel is the only country in the Middle East that had not and will not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Israel would use nuclear weapons if it felt it was threatened by any nation in the Middle East.  The nuclear capability of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) defensive capabilities just reached another plateau this past April.  It purchased its 5th<\/sup> nuclear submarine that can be deployed anywhere in the world with first strike capability.  The Israel News Agency reported that Israel purchased a fifth Dolphin class submarine called the “INS Rahav” from Germany.  The article headlined “Israel Launches Ninth Submarine, Ready To Strike Iran Nuclear Weapons.” <\/strong> Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “The submarines are a strong, strategic tool for the IDF. The State of Israel is ready to act anytime, anywhere – on land, sea and air – in order to ensure the security of Israel’s citizens.”<\/em>  The submarines are equipped with Israeli-designed Popeye missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.  It is no secret that Israel has nuclear weapons.  Some estimates suggest that Israel has between 100 and 400 nuclear weapons.  No one knows exactly how many nuclear bombs Israel possesses, but we do know they have the capability to produce them at a moment’s notice.<\/p>\n

Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli technician at the Dimona nuclear research center in the Negev desert exposed Israel’s nuclear program to the world in the 1986 Sunday Times (UK).  Vanunu was kidnapped in Italy by Mossad agents and brought to Israel to face an Israeli court.  He was convicted and imprisoned for more than 18 years at Shikma Prison in Ashkelon, Israel.  Half of his prison term was in solitary confinement.  He was eventually released in 2004.  Since then, Vanunu has been arrested and even imprisoned for violating his parole.  He was also arrested for trying to leave Israel at one time.  Former Israeli Prime Minister and Noble Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres said “he was a traitor to this country”.<\/em><\/p>\n

Since Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; the Dimona Nuclear Research center is not subject to inspections from the international community such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).  According to the Federation of American Scientists<\/em> in a 2007 report, Israel has between 75 and 400 nuclear warheads, but some estimates have their nuclear warheads at less than 200. It is also known that Israel has the ability to deliver them by intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a range of 5,500 kilometers or 3,400 miles, the Jericho III missile named after the biblical city of Jericho, various aircrafts and of course submarines.  The report stated the following:<\/p>\n

By the late 1990s the U.S. Intelligence Community estimated that Israel possessed between 75-130 weapons, based on production estimates. The stockpile would certainly include warheads for mobile Jericho-1 and Jericho-2 missiles, as well as bombs for Israeli aircraft, and may include other tactical nuclear weapons of various types. Some published estimates even claimed that Israel might have as many as 400 nuclear weapons by the late 1990s. We believe these numbers are exaggerated, and that Israel’s nuclear weapons inventory may include less than 100 nuclear weapons. Stockpiled plutonium could be used to build additional weapons if so decided<\/em><\/p>\n

Israel’s nuclear program began after World War II.  Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion once said “What Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Teller, the three of them are Jews, made for the United States, could also be done by scientists in Israel, for their own people”.<\/em>  David Ben-Gurion wanted to establish a Jewish State with a military force that would repel an attack by any of its adversaries especially in the Arab world.  Ben-Gurion’s speech to the elected assembly of Palestine Jews on October 2nd, 1947 made it clear on the intentions of a new Jewish state:<\/p>\n

Political developments have swept us on to a momentous parting of the ways – from Mandate to independence. Today, beyond our ceaseless work in immigration, settlement and campaign, we are set three blazing tasks, whereof fulfillment will condition our perpetuity: defense, a Jewish State and Arab-Jewish Cupertino, in that order of importance and urgency.<\/em><\/p>\n

Security is our chief problem. I do not minimize the virtue of statehood even within something less than all the territory of the Land of Israel on either bank of the Jordan; but security comes unarguably first. It dominated our concerns since the Yishuv [Jewish community in Palestine] began from the start of colonization we knew we must, in the main, guarantee it ourselves. But recent upsets and upheavals in Palestine, in the Middle East and in the wide world, and in British and international politics as well, magnify it from a local problem of current safety into Zionism’s hinge of destiny. In scope, in intensity, in purport, it is entirely different now. Just think of the new factors that invest the problem with a political significance of unprecedented gravity – and I could add a dozen others: the anti-Zionist policy pursued by the Mandatory Government during the past ten years, the obliteration of European Jewry with the willing aid of the acknowledged leader of the Palestine Arabs, the establishment of an Arab League active and united only in combating Zionism, Bevin’s ugly war against the Jews, the crisis in Britain and its political and economic aftermath, the creation of armed forces in the neighboring States, the intrusion of the Arab Legion. And not a single Jewish unit exists.<\/em><\/p>\n

We can stand up to any aggression launched from Palestine or its border, but more in potential than yet in fact. The conversion from potential to actual is now our major, blinding headache. It will mean the swiftest, widest mobilization, here and abroad, of capacity to organize, of our resources in economics and manpower, our science and technology, our civic sense. It must be an all-out effort, sparing no man.<\/em><\/p>\n

Several months later on May 14th<\/sup>, 1948, the state of Israel became a reality with David Ben-Gurion as its first Prime Minister.  Ben-Gurion, Executive head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946 until 1956 and the head of the influential Weizmann Institute of Science and Defense \"\"<\/a>Ministry Scientist Ernest David Bergmann recruited Jewish Scientists from abroad during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.  Israel recruited and funded Jewish scientists to help Israel establish a nuclear program.  By 1949, the Israel Defense Forces Science Corps or ‘Hemed Gimmel’ was in search of Uranium in the Negev Desert, but only small amounts were discovered in phosphate deposits.  Hemed Gimmel financed several students to study nuclear technology overseas.  One of the students attended the University of Chicago to study under Enrico Fermi, who developed the Chicago Pile-1, the first nuclear reactor.  Fermi also made scientific contributions to nuclear, quantum and particle physics among others.  By the late 1950s Shimon Peres had established LEKEM, or the ‘Science liaison Bureau’ a new intelligence service that would search for technology, materials and equipment needed for Israel’s nuclear program.  By 1952, Hemed Gimmel was under Israel’s Ministry of Defense to become the Division of Research and Infrastructure (EMET).    By June 1952, The Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) was established with Ernest David Bergmann as the first chairman.  Hemed Gimmel was renamed Machon 4 which became the “chief laboratory” of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC).  France was a major partner for Israel’s nuclear program.  France also sold weapons to Israel.  The France-Israel relationship was instrumental in the development of the Dimona Nuclear Research Center.  Israel signed American President Dwight Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace<\/em>, an agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation between the U.S. and Israel along with Turkey to build a “small swimming pool research reactor”<\/em> at Nachal Soreq.  It was the first step to building the Dimona nuclear research center in the Negev desert in collaboration with France who faced political turmoil in its former colonies in North Africa.  Israel also faced Arab hostilities in the Middle East, so the cooperation on matters regarding new military technology complemented each other.  On March 20, 1957 a public signing ceremony to build a “small swimming-pool research reactor”<\/em> took place between France and Israel.  But the reality was that France and Israel collaborated to build a larger facility at Dimona.  In ‘Israel and the Bomb’<\/em> by Avner Cohen, he describes Ben Gurion’s ambitious plan regarding Israel’s nuclear program was advanced through the Atoms for Peace<\/em> Initiative:<\/p>\n

With the return of Ben Gurion to power in 1955, nuclear energy became a matter of national priority.  Ben Gurion gave political backing and financial support to those in the Ministry of Defense who were committed to promoting nuclear energy-Peres, Bergmann, Mardor, and the nuclear enthusiasts at Machon 4.  There was also a change in the international climate concerning nuclear energy, in the wake of Eisenhower’s December 1953 Atoms-for-Peace initiative.  Until then, nuclear energy in the United States, Canada, and Britain, the three major countries dealing with nuclear energy, was largely closed to other countries.  The Atoms for Peace Initiative made nuclear energy technology available to the rest of the world.     <\/em><\/p>\n

The United States under President Eisenhower allowed Israel to seek a nuclear program that would advance its defense capabilities militarily.  By 1958, the construction of the Negev Nuclear Research Center located in the Negev desert in secret through the Protocol of Sevres<\/em> agreement.   It was a secret agreement between Israel, France and Great Britain at Sevres, France to overthrow Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser through an invasion of Egypt after Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. Four days after the Sèvres meeting, Israeli forces invaded Egyptian territory.  French and British forces invaded shortly after they vetoed a US sponsored UN Security Council resolution under the guise that they would separate both Israeli and Egyptian forces after Egypt refused their call to withdraw from the Suez Canal.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In 1958, Charles de Gaulle became President of France.  Almost immediately after he assumed office, he wanted to end France’s assistance to Israel’s nuclear program.  He would only support Israel’s nuclear program if international inspectors were allowed to inspect Dimona and that Israel would declare that its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes and that under no circumstances reprocess plutonium.  Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres negotiated with the French government allowing a window of opportunity for French companies to continue its work until 1966 with the Israeli government.  Israel also had declared its nuclear program was “peaceful”.  BBC News received secret documents that the British government also supported Israel’s nuclear program by sending illegal and restricted materials that started in the 1950′s.  In 1961, the Ben-Gurion informed the Canadian government that a pilot plutonium-separation plant would be built at the Dimona facility.  By 1962, the nuclear reactor at Dimona went “critical” meaning a critical mass with a small amount of fissile material was needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction.  Shortly after, Israel secretly acquired more than 90 tons of uranium oxide (yellowcake) from Argentina to fuel the reactor.  By 1965 the Israeli reprocessing plant was completed and ready to convert the reactor’s fuel rods into weapons grade plutonium for a nuclear bomb.  After the Six-Day War, Israel went live producing nuclear weapons.  A new era began in the Middle East.  One that was a dangerous step to a nuclear disaster if Israel decided to use its nuclear weapons against an Arab country.      <\/strong><\/p>\n

In Seymour M. Hersh’s ‘The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy’<\/em> stated the concerns Israel’s leaders had, especially Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion if they did not obtain nuclear weapons.  Hersh wrote:<\/p>\n

“What is Israel?” he was quoted by an aide as asking. “. . . Only a small spot. One dot! How can it survive in this Arab world?” Ben-Gurion believed that he understood Arab character and was persuaded that as long as Arabs thought they could destroy the Jewish state, there would be no peace and no recognition of Israel. Many Israelis, survivors of the Holocaust, came to believe in ein brera, or “no alternative,” the doctrine that Israel was surrounded by implacable enemies and therefore had no choice but to strike out. In their view, Hitler and Nasser were interchangeable. <\/em><\/p>\n

For these Israelis, a nuclear arsenal was essential to the survival of the state. In public speeches throughout the 1950s, Ben Gurion repeatedly linked Israel’s security to its progress in science.  “Our security and independence require that more young people devote themselves to  science and research, atomic and electronic research, research of solar energy . . . and the like,” he told the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in November 1955.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/em>Ernst Bergmann explicitly articulated the ein brera fears in a letter two years later: “I am<\/em> convinced . . . that the State of Israel needs a defense research program of its own, so that we shall never again be as lambs led to the slaughter.” <\/em><\/p>\n

Ben-Gurion, Shimon Peres, and Ernst Bergmann believed that Israel’s independent arsenal finally could provide what President Eisenhower would not—the nuclear umbrella.<\/em><\/p>\n

Israel’s nuclear program was built on the belief that it had “no alternative” but to build a nuclear weapon to deter Arab aggression.  Their experience with the Holocaust justifies their intentions on maintaining their nuclear weapons.  Israel’s believes that another Holocaust can be prevented, this time not from Germany but from Iran.  But many Israeli’s during the development stages of nuclear weapons were not keen on obtaining a nuclear bomb because of the Holocaust:<\/p>\n

“Less compelling to the military men was the moral argument against the bomb raised by some on the left and in academia: that the Jewish people, victims of the Holocaust, had an obligation to prevent the degeneration of the Arab-Israeli dispute into a war of mass destruction”<\/em> Stated Hersh.  “ Those who held that view did not underestimate the danger of a conventional arms race, but believed that, as Simha Flapan, their passionate spokesman, wrote, “the qualitative advantages of Israel—social cohesion and organization, education and technical skills, intelligence and moral incentive—can be brought into play only in a conventional war fought by men.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Another aspect of Israel’s foreign policy one should consider is the ‘Samson Option,’ a policy that calls for a retaliation using nuclear weapons against an enemy who threatens the Jewish homeland of its existence.  Hersh explains:<\/p>\n

Dimona’s supporters had convinced most of the leadership that only nuclear weapons could provide the absolute and final deterrent to the Arab threat, and only nuclear weapons could convince the Arabs—who were bolstered by rapidly growing Soviet economic and military aid—that they must renounce all plans for military conquest of Israel and agree to a peace settlement. With a nuclear arsenal there would be no more Masadas in Israel’s history, a reference to the decision of more than nine hundred Jewish defenders—known as the Zealots—to commit suicide in A.D. 73 rather than endure defeat at the hands of the Romans.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In its place, argued the nuclear advocates, would be the Samson Option. Samson, according to the Bible, had been captured by the Philistines after a bloody fight and put on display, with his eyes torn out, for public entertainment in Dagon’s Temple in Gaza. He asked God to give him back his strength for the last time and cried out, “Let my soul die with the Philistines.” With that, he pushed apart the temple pillars, bringing down the roof and killing himself and his enemies.  For Israel’s nuclear advocates, the Samson Option became another way of saying “Never again.”<\/em><\/p>\n

[In a 1976 essay in Commentary, Norman Podhoretz accurately summarized the pronuclear argument in describing what Israel would do if abandoned by the United States and overrun by Arabs: “The Israelis would fight . . . with conventional weapons for as long as they could, and if the tide were turning decisively against them, and if help in the form of resupply from the United States or any other guarantors were not forthcoming, it is safe to predict that they would fight with nuclear weapons in the end. … It used to be said that the Israelis had a Masada complex . . .but if the Israelis are to be understood in terms of a ‘complex’ involving suicide rather than surrender and rooted in a relevant precedent of Jewish history, the example of Sarnson, whose suicide brought about the destruction of his enemies, would be more appropriate than Masada, where in committing suicide the Zealots killed only themselves and took no Romans with them.” Podhoretz, asked years later about his essay, said that his conclusions about the Samson Option were just that—his conclusions, and not based on any specific information from Israelis or anyone else about Israel’s nuclear capability.]<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n

In a White House press conference on May 18, 2009, US President Barack Obama’s concern about “the potential pursuit of a nuclear weapon by Iran.”<\/em>  The United States and other Western nations have not announced any plans to disarm Israel’s nuclear weapons but rather focused its attention on Iran’s nuclear program.  Obama said “Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon would not only be a threat to Israel and a threat to the United States, but would be profoundly destabilizing in the international community as a whole and could set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.” <\/em> Israel already won the arms race in the Middle East.  What is to stop Israel’s “Zealot” mentality from using nuclear weapons in the Middle East?  Israel has threatened Iran in the past.  In a 2006 interview with Reuters former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres “the president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map.”<\/em> It was a response after a false claim Israel and its allies made on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s comment in a 2005 speech at the Ministry of Interior conference hall in Tehran called “The World without Zionism”<\/em> when he said Israel <\/em>must be “wiped off the map”<\/em> which was misinterpreted.  Earlier this year, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak said that the US and Israel would take action against Iran, “I don’t see it as a binary kind of situation: either they [the Iranians] turn nuclear or we have a fully fledged war the size of the Iraqi war or even the war in Afghanistan,” Barak continued “What we basically say is that if worse comes to worst, there should be a readiness and an ability to launch a surgical operation that will delay them by a significant time frame and probably convince them that it won’t work because the world is determined to block them.”  Rouhani is seeking negotiations that would put Iran, the United States and Israel on a path to a peaceful resolution.  One that will recognize Iran’s right to a “peaceful” nuclear program for its country so that they can export more oil and use the revenues it earned for the benefit of the Iranian people.  But do not expect any significant breakthrough between Iran and the US\/Israel alliance that seeks to dominate the Middle East politically, economically and militarily.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration is not seeking any negotiations with Iran unless they stop its nuclear program which will not happen.  Iran will insist that they are signatories to the NPT and have an “inalienable right” to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.  Israel will not be a signatory to the NPT because “This resolution is deeply flawed and hypocritical. It ignores the realities of the Middle East and the real threats facing the region and the entire world”<\/em> according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  Another reason Israel will not sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty is because they are victims of the Holocaust which is why they have violated hundreds of U.N. Security Council resolutions and has used chemical weapons on the Palestinians.  The talks between Iran and the US that will be held in Geneva will fail come this October because the US wants to dominate Iran.  Iran has its principles it will stand by, but so will the US on Israel’s behalf.  The US and its staunch allies want Syria, Lebanon, the Gaza strip and the West Bank and every nation on earth under their rule.  That is the plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1247,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-94096","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94096","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\/1247"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94096\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}