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- From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (Harel Barzilai)
- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
- Subject: Z MAGAZINE: Israel and the Nuclear Problem
- Message-ID: <1992Dec12.055347.3905@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
- Date: 12 Dec 92 05:53:47 GMT
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- Topic 42 Israel and the Nuclear Problem
- pnews "Z" 8:37 pm Dec 11, 1992
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- Subject: Israel and the Nuclear Problem
- From: Hank Roth <odin@world.std.com>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- <<< via P_news/p.news >>>
- From: Philip Feeley <pfeeley@unixg.ubc.ca>
- To: odin@world.std.com <Hank Roth>
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-
- =============================================================
- I S R A E L A N D T H E N U C L E A R P R O B L E M
- =============================================================
- by Gideon Spiro, Z Magazine Nov. '92, p 38-39
-
-
- Continued international efforts to neutralize Iraq's
- [although not the means used --HB]
- nonconventional military capabilities deserve the support of everyone
- who cares about the well-being of the Middle East, and the security of
- the global community. Meanwhile, unfortunately, the recent efforts to
- disarm Iraq are sharply contradicted by the international community's
- silence regarding the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of
- Iraq's chief rival: Israel. This double standard is especially
- troubling, since it was Israel that started the non- conventional arms
- race in the region when it decided, in the 1950s, to become a nuclear
- power and build the Dimona reactor with the cooperation of France.
-
- The basic facts about Israel's nuclear arsenal have been know
- since 1986, when Mordechai Vanunu handed over the internal plans of
- the Dimona plant to the London Sunday Times. Vanunu, who worked as a
- nuclear technician at the facility for nine years, revealed that
- Israel had over 300 nuclear bombs, far more than any think-tank or
- intelligence experts had imagined. But does a country like Israel
- need such weapons? The answer, in my opinion, is unequivocally
- no--even after allowing for Israel's legitimate security concerns.
- Plainly, no defensive military needs--not even deterrence--can justify
- such an arsenal.
-
- Unfortunately, nuclear weapons have tempted Israel's leaders
- to believe they can lord it over the Middle East, maintaining their
- nuclear monopoly with raw military force, as needed, and James
- Bond-style operations. Prime Minister Menachem Begin's decision in
- 1981 to bomb the Iraqi Osirak research reactor was an expression of
- this Israeli perception of power. Though such tactics may receive
- welcome cheers in Tel Aviv, they should be viewed as the provocative
- acts that they are.
-
- Moreover, the perception of power that drives such a policy
- may be an illusion. With hindsight it is clear that the 1f981 raid on
- Baghdad not only did not deter Iraqi nuclear ambitions, it may even
- have fueled them. Following the Gulf War, the UN inspection team
- concluded, based on their review of Iraqi government documents, that
- Israel's 1981 raid served to accelerate rather than frustrate
- Hussein's nuclear program.
-
- Nor is it likely that Israel's nuclear capabilities will deter
- other nations from pursuing the nuclear option. Iran apparently is
- making a major bid to join the nuclear club. In late March 1992 the
- German weekly, Stern, interviewed a senior Iranian leader who stated
- that Israel's nuclear arsenal "leaves us no choice but to acquire the
- same weaponry."
-
- And Syria and Egypt already have armed themselves with the
- poor nation's alternative to the bomb, chemical and biological
- weapons, in an effort to protect themselves until such time that they
- can acquire nukes.
-
- Some argue that nuclear weapons are less dangerous in the
- hands of Israel than in the hands of an ayatollah or a Saddam Hussein,
- since "Israel is a responsible democratic state." But such views
- reflect a naive understanding of the situation in the Middle East.
-
- In the first place, Israel's history of occupation and its
- continuing military rule over two million Palestinians is not the
- behavior of a responsible state--just the opposite, in fact.
-
- Secondly, because the harsh realities of arms trade and the
- effects of militarization exert such a powerful corrupting influence
- on all states in the Middle East, the differences between democratic
- and totalitarian governments can sometimes narrow and even vanish
- altogether.
-
- Just as the Iraqi decision to build nuclear weapons was made
- by only one man, Saddam Hussein, so also the earlier Israeli decision
- was made by one man alone, David Ben Gurion. Nor did Israel's
- democratic institutions play any role in that decision. Indeed, over
- the years, the nuclear issue has never once been openly discussed in
- the Knesset (Israel's parliament) and only rarely has it been
- mentioned in the Israeli press. Considering this wall of silence, the
- differences between democratic Israel and totalitarian Iraq on the
- nuclear issue seem almost irrelevant.
-
- Nor do the Islamic states have a monopoly on nationalist
- religious fundamentalism. Jewish fundamentalism also exists and
- influences a large proportion of the Israeli population. Jews with
- extremist views hold many positions of power throughout Israeli
- society: in the military, the government, the weapons industry, and in
- the financial and industrial sectors. And Jewish fundamentalist
- thrive across most of the wide spectrum of Israeli politics, from the
- hawkish wing of the Labor Party to Likud and the far right. The
- danger posed by such people close to the Israeli nuclear trigger is
- not fundamentally different from the threat of a nuclear-armed Saddam
- Hussein.
-
- There is also a rude irony in the fact that, should Israel's
- leaders one day decide to use nuclear weapons, the fateful step could
- be self-defeating. In a geographically compressed region such as the
- Middle East, any local use of nukes certainly would contaminate Israel
- with radioactive fallout. Furthermore, even in peacetime the mere
- presence of nuclear reactors and bombs carries the ever-present risk
- of a nuclear accident. But unlike Russia, where people were able to
- flee to safety, Israel is so tiny that even a mini-Chernobyl would be
- a national catastrophe.
-
- And there is the matter of nuclear waste. Due to the long
- standing Israeli government policy of total secrecy, even today
- Israeli citizens do not know what has been done with the waste
- generated by the Dimona reactor over the past 30 years. No one knows
- what safety precautions--if any-- have been implemented to protect the
- nearby towns and villages. No debate on nuclear waste has ever been
- held in Israel. Nor has any political party made the issue a part of
- its agenda.
-
- In December 1991, three decades after the establishment of the
- Dimona facility, the first anti-nuclear demonstration was held in
- front of the Dimona reactor by the Israeli Committee for Mordechai
- Vanunu. Demonstrators called on the government to release information
- about storage of nuclear waste, to open the reactor to international
- supervision, to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, and to halt
- production of nuclear weapons. And the demonstrators also called for
- the release of Mordechai Vanunu.
-
- Indeed, it is not possible to talk about Israel's nuclear
- weapons without mentioning Vanunu. It was Vanunu who took the
- courageous step of exposing Israel's lie that it would not be the
- first to introduce nuclear arms into the Middle East--whereupon the
- Israeli government reacted immediately to silence Vanunu. He was
- kidnapped from Rome and prosecuted in Israel behind closed doors. And
- for nearly six years, since the day he was highjacked, Vanunu has
- remained in solitary confinement.
-
- Though the cruel measures used against Vanunu raise serious
- doubts about Israel's democratic pretensions, Israeli officials try to
- justify their behavior by comparing Vanunu with the spy Jonathan
- Pollard. But it is a false equation. Pollard was a U.S. citizen who
- sold state secrets to another country. Vanunu, on the other hand,
- acted as an exemplary citizen on behalf of the truth. In fact, it was
- Vanunu's commitment to democracy- -not the lure of money--that
- compelled him to expose the lies of his government.
-
- Vanunu is more favorably compared with Daniel Ellsberg and
- Tony Russo, who together released the Pentagon Papers and showed that
- the U.S. government was lying to the American people about the Vietnam
- War. Later their efforts were backed up by a U.S. court when it
- rejected the Nixon administration's efforts to prevent publication of
- the Papers. In so doing the court protected the American public's
- right to know the facts about its government's activities.
- Unfortunately, because Israel does not have a constitution, the same
- rights are not protected by law in Israel.
-
- Another measure of Israel's irresponsibility is its
- development of biological weapons at a research facility in NesZiona,
- near Tel Aviv. This research on biological warfare violated all
- international conventions. Once again, the Israeli government hid the
- project from its citizens, and employed military censorship to block
- any information from reaching the public. Several months ago, a
- leading Israeli newspaper was prohibited by military censors from
- printing an article describing research at the NesZiona Institute.
-
- If Israel's leaders were truly responsible, they would ask the
- United States to help initiate negotiations to transform the Middle
- East into a nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons free zone. Had
- we an Israeli version of South Africa's De Klerk, Israel would already
- have announced its intention to end further production of nuclear
- weapons, and to destroy those weapons already existing--as part of a
- peace treaty with its Arab neighbors. But this has not happened, not
- is it likely to happen in the near future.
-
- The international community has every reason to be alarmed by
- the spreading arms race in the Middle East. And it has a moral duty
- to work toward the dismantling of all nuclear, chemical, and
- biological weapons in the region. However, due to Israel's dependence
- on the United States, the U.S. alone has the means, and there for a
- special obligation, to use its considerable influence to prevail upon
- Israel to sign the non-proliferation treaty already approved by most
- of the world's nations, and to submit to international inspections.
-
- Israel's nuclear weapons are not simply an internal Israeli
- issue, they are a world concern. It is high time that Israel's
- continuing refusal to comply with international nonproliferation
- standards be brought before the UN Security Council. Israel should be
- held to the same standards that are now being implemented in the case
- of Iraq.
-
- (The author is an Israeli journalist and peace activist living in
- Jerusalem, Israel.)
-
-
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