Israel's dirty secret is out

[Hedley Lamarr]

Israel's dirty secret is out
Cast your mind back to South Africa circa 1975 when the segregation of white and non-white citizens was official government policy.

This was a time when mixed marriages were prohibited and one million black South Africans were stripped of their nationality before being sent to reserves known as "homelands." Certain jobs were restricted to whites only, while government buildings, public transport, parks and shops had separate entrances for different racial categories. Drinking fountains, public toilets and even graveyards were segregated.

Families were pulled apart when certain members were subjected to racial tests; children whose skin was darker than their parents or whose hair was more curly were sometimes abandoned. Those who raised their voices in protest were tortured, imprisoned or killed; their leaders were made to disappear under a system of detention without trial. Spearheading this ugliness and brutality was P.W. Botha, who together with his massive security apparatus was blamed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for many of the horrors of white rule.

At a time when the US and Britain had discontinued weapons trading with South Africa — and when the UN General Assembly had requested its members to sever their political, educational, cultural, sporting and transportation links with what had come to be seen as a pariah state — Israel was keen to supply this evil white supremacist regime with nuclear weapons.

In recent days, a top secret 1975 military agreement signed by the person who is today Israel's President Shimon Peres and P.W. Botha — then the South African Defense Secretary — has been declassified in response to a request by American academic and author Sasha Polakow-Suransky.

Code-named "Chalet" the deal centers on the delivery to South Africa of nuclear-capable Jericho missiles. Minutes of a meeting disclose Botha's stipulation that the "correct payload" should also be made available in "three sizes" — believed to be a euphemism or nuclear and chemical weapons besides the conventional type. The documents confirm an earlier admission by a former South African naval commander, Dieter Gerhardt, who following the collapse of apartheid disclosed Israel's intention to equip South Africa with eight nuclear missiles and warheads.



'Nuclear ambiguity'

It's unsurprising the Israeli authorities did their best to prevent the South African government from releasing the agreement and memos, which not only blow a hole in Israel's carefully contrived so-called policy of "Nuclear Ambiguity" but also show that Israel has no compunction about selling such weapons of mass destruction to despised regimes.

Particularly damning is a declassified letter dated Nov. 22, 1974 from Shimon Peres to the then South African Information Secretary Dr. E.M. Rhoodie thanking him for facilitating cooperation between their two countries "based not only on common interests and on the determination to resist equally our enemies, but also on the unshakeable foundations of our common hatred of injustice and our refusal to submit to it."

Our common hatred of injustice!! That, coming from the representative of a country known for its brutal occupation and segregation of its citizens to one that existed upon racial lines sounds like a sick joke. It seems that Peres would say anything to get his country into bed with South Africa whereas, today, Israeli politicians bristle at any outside comparison between South Africa under apartheid and the Jewish state.

The documents vindicate Oxford University students who harangued Peres as a war criminal as he attempted to deliver a lecture at Balliol College in 2008. In an unsuccessful attempt to get the lecture canceled, South African academics and anti-apartheid veterans had written to the College to remind its Master of Peres' role in assisting apartheid South Africa procure weapons at the time it was subject to an international weapons embargo.

In fact, Israel supplied South Africa with six or more warships, patrol boats, military electronics and computers, missiles, warplanes, rockets, radar bases, weapons technology and tanks that were used to murder non-white South Africans.

Israel's embarrassment is compounded by the fact that the individual who signed the "Chalet" agreement is today its president. However, despite the clear evidence, the president's office has chosen to deny the claims that were first reported in Britain's Guardian newspaper. "There is no truth to the Guardian report," said a spokesperson for the presidential office Ayelet Frisch without elaborating further or condemning the agreement and supporting documentation as forgeries.

For Israel, the timing of these revelations couldn't be worse. It comes when President Barack Obama has embraced the concept of a nuclear-free Middle East and makes a mockery of US attempts to ignore Israel's nuclear arsenal on the basis that Israel is a moral and responsible democracy that would never sell to rogue entities. The disclosure also provides grist for the mill of Arab states that have long been pressing the international community to ensure Israel comes clean on its WMD status and signs up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.



Enough is enough

With Israel's ethical credibility in tatters, it remains to be seen whether it will be supported by the international community for much longer. This week, Australia has taken a leaf out of Britain's book by expelling an Israeli diplomat in connection with the Mossad's alleged cloning of British, Australian and European passports for use by their hit squads.

Israel's democratic rights of free speech have also been challenged in recent weeks when it was found that Anat Kam, an Israeli journalist, had been secretly placed under house arrest for alleged treason, while another Uri Blau is hiding out in London following his expose of Israel's murder of a Palestinian.

The fact that the Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu has been thrown back into jail for "the crime" of chatting with a Norwegian woman exposes Israel's lack of free speech and has spurred Amnesty International to give him the designation "Prisoner of Conscience." Israel's free speech credentials were also challenged last week when the respected US academic Noam Chomsky was refused entry to the West Bank to speak to the students of Ramallah's Bir Zeit University on the grounds that Israel doesn't like what he says.

One by one, Israel's fabricated ethical pillars are being toppled. When stripped of its façade what remains is a nuclear-armed occupier that is has proved itself willing to sell its WMD to corrupt regimes. Moreover, it is holding the 1.5 million residents of Gaza under siege while threatening its neighbor Iran with military strikes as well as saber-rattling against Lebanon and Syria. This is a country that pays only lip service to the concept of free speech and is prepared to track down and assassinate its enemies wherever it finds them in violation of international law.

When, oh when, will Washington and its allies have the courage to say enough is enough... and mean it!

[orangeman]

That story could have been one of many dirty secrets.

As Jimmy Cricket used to say, "there's more " !

[Hound]

That story could have been one of many dirty secrets.

As Jimmy Cricket used to say, "there's more " !

Yeah, if selling weapons to the South African government 36 years ago was Israel's "dirty secret", I think we'd all feel a sense of anti-climax!

I thought Chomsky was allowed in after all?

[Hedley Lamarr]

Israel denies offering S. Africa nuke warheads
By AGENCIES

Published: May 24, 2010 18:44 Updated: May 24, 2010 18:44

JERUSALEM: Israel described as baseless on Monday reported findings in a new book that it offered to sell nuclear warheads to South Africa in 1975.

Britain's Guardian newspaper said documents uncovered by a US academic in research for a book on Israel's ties with South Africa's then-white minority government provided the first official documentary evidence the Jewish state has nuclear arms.

Israel is widely believed to have built more than 200 atomic warheads at its Dimona reactor but it maintains an official policy of ambiguity over whether it is a nuclear power.

The Guardian said documents declassified by South Africa's post-apartheid government at the request of the academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, included top-secret minutes of meetings between senior officials of the two countries in 1975.

Those papers, the newspaper said, showed that South Africa's defense minister at the time, P.W. Botha, asked for nuclear warheads and his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres, now Israel's president, offered them in "three sizes".

In an official response to the report, a statement from Peres' office said: "Israel has never negotiated the exchange of nuclear weapons with South Africa. There exists no Israeli document or Israeli signature on a document that such negotiations took place."

It said there was "no basis in reality for the claims" and the Guardian's conclusions were "based on the selective interpretation of South African documents and not on concrete facts".

The South African documents, which are dated March 31, 1975 and marked "top secret," show Peres' offer was made in response to Botha's request for warheads. But they make no mention of any "exchange" between the parties. At the time, South Africa had not yet acquired nuclear capabilities and would not do so for several years.

At the talks, Israeli officials "formally offered to sell South Africa some of the nuclear-capable Jericho missiles in its arsenal," the memo said. It also said Peres and Botha signed an agreement about military ties between the two countries including a clause which said "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.

According to the Guardian report, the alleged nuclear deal did not go ahead, partly because of the cost.

Speculation about Israeli-South African nuclear cooperation was raised in 1979 when a US satellite detected a mysterious flash over the Indian Ocean. The US television network CBS reported it was a nuclear test carried out by the two countries. But the US Central Intelligence Agency, in a document written in 1980 and released in 2004, said the United States could not determine "with certainty the nature and origin of the event".

South Africa completed its first workable nuclear device in 1979. It eventually had six nuclear devices, which were dismantled by June 1991.

[Hedley Lamarr]

Israeli President Shimon Peres has categorically denied that when he was defense minister in 1975, he offered to sell the South African apartheid regime nuclear warheads.

Few people, even in Israel will believe him. Further, many will read into this lie an implicit admission that the Israelis do indeed possess their own nuclear arsenal because what Peres did not say was that Israel could not offer to sell atomic bombs to South Africa because it did not have any.

Yet secret South African documents from that era show that Peres offered the white-supremacist regime a choice of small, medium or large nuclear warheads. The deal did not go ahead, apparently because the Israelis wanted too much money.  It is not yet clear, however, if South Africa was provided with Israeli nuclear technology to make the six nuclear devices it finally built by 1979. These warheads were dismantled in 1991. There remains much to be learned about an unexplained explosion in the Indian Ocean in 1979, which may well have been an Israeli nuclear test carried out with the cooperation of the apartheid government.

If Israel did indeed offer to sell warheads or the technology that enabled South Africa to begin building its own weapons, then it has placed itself in exactly the same position as Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan who was prepared, whether officially or unofficially is still unclear to sell his country's nuclear know-how to other states, including, possibly, Iran and North Korea.

The Israelis were quick to denounce Khan. Yet it seems clear that they were prepared to do the very same thing. And if they could make a commercial offer to South Africa, can they also have been hawking their nuclear technology elsewhere in the world?

The irony is that while Peres on Monday protested Israel's innocence, Tel Aviv again jailed the nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu who first produced evidence in 1986 of the Israeli nuclear weapons program at Dimona in the Negev Desert. Vanunu provided a British newspaper with testimony, documents and photographs which allowed experts to calculate Israel had probably then stockpiled 200 atomic warheads. Though he had fled to the UK, Vanunu was lured to Italy and kidnapped by Mossad and taken to Israel. Found guilty of treason he spent 18 years in jail, 11 of them in solitary confinement until he was released in 2004. His re-arrest came because of an alleged breach of his parole conditions.

Washington has always refused to open the issue of Israel's nuclear arsenal because it was seen as being defensive. "Defenseless little Israel needed the ultimate deterrent against its aggressive Arab neighbors." Now that it has been shown that the Israelis were prepared to sell warheads, even to a particularly unpleasant racist regime, the picture has surely changed. Can the Americans still allow Israel to stay out of the non-proliferation treaty loop? Is it not right that Israel's weasel words about its nuclear capacity should cease and the issue of its destabilizing armaments be properly addressed by the Obama administration?

[give her dixie]

Can we please ignore the elephant in the room here for a minute....

Israhell who have upwards on 300 undeclared nuclear weapons, and have NOT signed the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. is not the problem.

We must back Uncle Sam and Israhell in their quest for more Islamic blood by bombing and
going to war with Iran who don't have a nuclear weapon, and have signed up to the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Chomsky wasn't denied entry to Israhell, but rather denied entry to Palestine by Israhell.
He delivered his lecture the following day via Video link from Jordan.


Check out this story about the whistle blower on Israhell's Nuclear capabilities:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/10145852.stm

Mordechai Vanunu, the technician who revealed that Israel had nuclear weapons, has begun a three-month jail term for violating the terms of his release in 2004.

Mr Vanunu was convicted by an Israeli court in December 2009 and sentenced to six months' community service.

He refused, saying he would be in danger of being assaulted by a member of the Israeli public.

The court then returned him to jail instead.

Mr Vanunu spent 18 years in jail for revealing the existence of the clandestine Israeli nuclear programme.

Before being led away he shouted "You didn't get anything from me in 18 years; you won't get anything in 3 months. Shame on you, Israel."

He was arrested on suspicion that he met foreigners, violating conditions of his 2004 release from jail.

His lawyer said his arrest was because of his relationship with his Norwegian girlfriend, not for revealing secrets.

After his release from prison in 2004, the Israeli authorities banned Mr Vanunu from speaking to foreign media and travelling abroad.

In 2007, Mr Vanunu, a Jewish convert to Christianity, was sentenced to six months in prison for breaking the conditions of his parole

[Aerlik]

NAtional ZIoniSm

[give her dixie]

"The Only Democracy In The Middle East"

Vomit, puke, boke......................

[give her dixie]

Chomsky weighs in on Middle East's recurring 'current crisis:



BEIRUT: Look back at the titles of Noam Chomsky's lectures over the years and you will notice a familiar title: "The current crisis in the Middle East." The reason for this, Chomsky says, is because often he is asked to give for titles for speaking engagements years in advance, and it is a title that is always relevant.

On a visit to Beirut as part of a regional tour, the world-renowned linguist, scholar and political analyst talks to The Daily Star about the most recent crisis facing the region, and how the United States and Israel are alone in blocking a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

"It's a joke of course, but it does work," he laughs, in reference to his lecture titles. The current and most pressing crisis in the region right now, according to Chomsky, is Iran, "and the US is working very hard to ensure that there is a crisis" he says.

"It was it was quite interesting to see how they reacted to the Iranian nuclear agreement brokered by Turkey and Brazil. They were terrified because someone else was intervening; they displaced the US as the primary agent in the region."

The agreement to which Chomsky refers calls for Tehran to ship around half its stock of low-enriched uranium to Turkey and months later receive a supply of more highly enriched uranium suitable for research and medical use. The problem was not the agreement itself, Chomsky argues, but that the US was excluded.

Chomsky proposes that the United States is actively encouraging a crisis with Iran with the goal of quelling its growing influence in the region. "The real winner in the Iraq war was Iran. The US destroyed Iran's main enemy in Iraq and left it the major regional power."

The United States' primary concern over the Iranian nuclear program, he continues, is over its deterrence capability. "No one in their right mind thinks Iran would use a nuclear weapon, it would be suicide, but to have it would deter the United States from aggression," he says, adding that the resolution being pursued by the US would be unlikely to have an effect on Iranian nuclear capabilities.



As part of his tour of the region, Chomsky had planned to speak at Bir Zeit University near the West Bank city of Ramallah, but was denied entry to the West Bank at the Israeli-controlled crossing from Jordan. Israel's Interior Ministry insisted the incident was a "misunderstanding" and said the 81-year-old professor had not been blacklisted, while a senior government source described the situation as "a total cockup."

"It was a cowardly excuse on the part of Israel" says Chomsky, "I heard a series of excuses and they finally hit on the one that I expected, in fact the person they blamed it on was the official on the border. But this was false; he was in constant contact with the Ministry of Interior during the whole interrogation, relaying queries and instructions."

On proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinians recently re-launched by US envoy George Mitchell, Chomsky says he has little hope.

"The fact of the matter is that it is the wrong people negotiating, it should be the United States and the world. Because what in fact has been happening for 34 years, and is happening now, is that there is an overwhelming international consensus on the general terms of a diplomatic resolution and the US is blocking it. On the ground Israel is blocking it, but Israel can't do anything without US authorization, so it is in fact the US who is blocking it."

This trip will be Chomsky's second visit to the country, the first being just weeks before the Israeli attack in 2006. "Unfortunately it has changed substantially," he said of the differences between now and then. Chomsky used part of his time in Lebanon to visit villages in the south that were devastated during the Israeli attack and met with Hizbullah official Nabil Qaouq.

On the possibility of another Israeli attack on Lebanon, Chomsky says Israel "would have to be crazy to do so."

"They are kind of irrational at this point and hard to predict. If they do it, it would be part of an attack on Iran. If they are planning to attack Iran they would have to simultaneously attack Lebanon, just to get rid of the deterrent, and they wouldn't do it in advance because they would lose the element of surprise."

[Hedley Lamarr]

Israel's big secret exposed
For decades Israel has jealously guarded the secrets of its nuclear reactor in Dimona and anything to do with its arsenal of nuclear warheads, estimated to be in the hundreds.

It had persistently refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, allow international inspection of its facilities or even admit to being a nuclear power. Ambiguity regarding the nuclear issue has been the cardinal policy followed faithfully by all Israeli governments.

In fact anything the world knows today about Israel's nuclear activities remains unofficial, uncorroborated and incomplete. Those who dared expose the secret, like Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, ended up paying dearly. Vanunu, who revealed important information about Israel's nuclear program to The Sunday Times in 1986 was kidnapped in Rome, smuggled to Israel, where he was tried, found guilty and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

And one of the best books on how Israel fulfilled its nuclear ambitions is Michael Karpin's "The Bomb in the Basement," published in 2007 and based on his research for a documentary released in 2001 on the same subject. But in his introduction, Karpin admits that the manuscript for the book was submitted to Israel's military censorship for inspection and that important references and information were eventually deleted. He says that the chief censor, an army general, is entitled by law to block publication of anything that might, in the censor's judgment, damage the state of Israel. Israeli reporters are forced to insert the words "according to foreign sources" when making any references to the country's nuclear program, and to replace the words "nuclear weapons" with "nuclear capabilities."

Such is Israel's determination to keep its nuclear secret under the lid. And yet no one doubts that Israel has, for decades now, acquired what Karpin calls "the ultimate deterrent weapon."

So it was a big setback, a debacle and a huge embarrassment for Israel that London's The Guardian published an exclusive report on Monday, backed by declassified South African documents, revealing that the Hebrew state offered to sell nuclear warheads to Pretoria's apartheid government in 1975.

The documents will be included in a book, to be published next week, entitled: The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's secret alliance with apartheid South Africa. The author, American academic Sasha Polakow-Suransky, is the one who managed to dig-up the documents and get the South African government to declassify them, despite Israeli protests.

So far the authenticity of the documents has been contested only by Israel. The office of Israeli President Shimon Peres has issued a statement describing the newspaper's report as "baseless" adding that there were "never any negotiations" between the two countries. But evidence provided by Polakow-Suransky from various sources confirms that top-secret meetings had taken place between Peres, then defense minister, and South Africa's Defense Minister P.W. Botha, now deceased.

These stunning revelations provide the first official documentary evidence of Israel's possession of nuclear weapons. Even worse, it implicates the government in a scheme to sell nuclear warheads to another country, in this case the apartheid regime of South Africa.

No effort of damage control will be enough to divert attention from Israel's nuclear capabilities, especially as the international community prepares to discuss nuclear non-proliferation in the Middle East next week in New York. These latest revelations will almost certainly be used by many countries to focus attention on Israel's irresponsibility as a nuclear power and the dangers it poses to world and regional security by refusing to sign international agreements and open its facilities to independent inspectors.

The Guardian's report, based on Polakow-Suransky's documentations, is the biggest blow to Israel's secretive nuclear activities since the Vanunu affair. But it comes at a time when Israel's defenders are busy trying to impose new sanctions against Iran for failing to meet international demands about its own nuclear program.

The two cases are strikingly different. Iran's intents, questionable as they may be, remain innocuous. It has assured the world that it is developing a peaceful nuclear program and that it has no intention of building a bomb. Moreover, Iran is still engaged with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation agreement. It has recently reached a deal, brokered by Turkey and Brazil, under which it had accepted to ship quantities of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for highly enriched nuclear fuel needed to power its medical research reactor in Tehran.

The world should not treat these latest revelations lightly. If the international and regional will is to ensure non-proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, then there is only one culprit with a devious track record; Israel. The South African documents prove that Israel has nuclear weapons and that it was willing to supply them to another country.

There is a conspiracy of silence and complicity surrounding Israel's nuclear arsenal. Israel has tried to keep its secret buried for many decades in spite of mounting circumstantial evidence that it had developed nuclear weapons away from the prying eyes of the IAEA. Now its secret is out in the open, but what is more worrying is that Israel has proved to be an untrustworthy nuclear state by offering to sell nuclear warheads to others. This is an act of a rogue state; a menace to world security.

As the US and its allies debate ways to penalize Iran, they should take note of Israel's long record of breaking international laws and agreements over the nuclear issue. Even-handed approach will be welcome, but we have come to expect all sorts of excuses coming from Israeli apologists. It would be unnerving to see those apologists lining up again to provide Israel with a reprieve.



All quiet on the western front