During the 2008 election campaign both Democratic President-Elect Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State-Designate Hillary Clinton expressed their concern that the U.S. imperialist version of “Peace in the Middle East” would be threatened if the Iranian government acquired nuclear weapons. Ironically, the Zionist movement’s militaristic Israeli government in the Middle East--which Obama & Clinton regard as a U.S. government ally—has already been producing nuclear weapons at its Dimona nuclear bomb factory for many years.
Like Iraq in the 1990s, neither Libya nor Iran possessed in the 1990s the kind of nuclear arsenal and nuclear bomb factory operation which Militaristic Israel has long possessed, historically. In his 1988 book The Undeclared Bomb, Leonard Spector noted that “for the foreseeable future, nuclear weapons” were “likely to remain beyond Libya’s grasp;” because “its indigenous capabilities” were “too rudimentary to permit the production of weapons-grade nuclear materials, and the global embargo on nuclear transfers to Libya” was “likely to prevent it from making further advances.” In the same 1988 book, Spector also concluded that in 1988 there was “no evidence to indicate that Tehran” possessed “the capability to manufacture nuclear arms or the necessary nuclear material” and there was “little reason to believe that Iran” was “making substantial progress toward nuclear arming.”
The Israeli War Machine has apparently not been reluctant, historically, to use sabotage methods and aerial attacks against other nations in order to preserve its superior nuclear warfare capacity over the military forces of neighboring Middle Eastern countries. According to Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal by Peter Pry, “Mossad, the Israeli secret service, has apparently sabotaged nuclear equipment stored in Europe, that Western corporations had sold to Arab nations and were planning to ship to the Middle East.” And on June 7, 1981, a French-build nuclear reactor in Osirak, Iraq was destroyed when the Israeli military bombed it from the air.
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Senior Associate Spector expressed some concern about Militaristic Israel’s nuclear war preparations in The Undeclared Bomb in 1988 and recommended that “In the Middle East, strategies focused on freezing Israeli nuclear capabilities and constraining its delivery systems may also be appropriate, given recent Israeli advances, which reportedly include the development of weapons using the H-Bomb principles and the testing of a missile able to reach” the former “Soviet Union.”
Downtown asked then-War Resisters League staff person David McReynolds in late 1991 whether he thought the large size of the Israeli government’s nuclear arsenal threatened peace in the Middle East.
“I think the large size isn’t as important as the fact that Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons pushed the Arab states into inevitably attempting to match Israel,” McReynolds replied. “Israel did not take a position in support of a nuclear freeze in the Middle East, but instead opted for a decision to rely on nuclear weapons.”
In McReynolds’ view, it was “crazy for Israel” to rely on nuclear weapons for its security since—if its military foes are able to eventually retaliate in a nuclear way against Israel—only “one bomb means the end of Israel,” because Israel’s land area is so small. Other nations in the Middle East, on the other hand, might still survive a nuclear exchange because of their large land space.
McReynolds thought in the early 1990s that people in Israel were actually more threatened by Israel’s decision to rely on nuclear weapons, instead of a nuclear freeze, than are most other people in the world.
“It was stupid for Israel to base its security on acquiring nuclear weapons—although perhaps historically understandable. But very few countries think rationally. In fairness to Israel, look at England—which also decided to acquire nuclear weapons and only made itself a target by doing so,” McReynolds said in late 1991.
In the early 1990s, McReynolds didn’t think the Israeli War Machine would possess a monopoly on nuclear weapons in the Middle East forever, because “the only way to preserve its nuclear monopoly” was “if Israel” was “prepared to keep launching attacks.”
Although McReynods didn’t believe in late 1991 that the Israeli War Machine was prepared to initiate a nuclear war, he thought it was dangerous for a small power like Israel to rely on a policy of nuclear weapons possession to deter a nuclear attack. By possessing nuclear weapons, in McReynold’s view, “You make yourself a target for a nuclear attack.”
According to The Undeclared Bomb:
“Information disclosed in 1985, on Sweden’s largely secret nuclear weapons development program of the 1950s and 1960s…indicate that Sweden’s prototype nuclear bomb, on which design work was completed by 1958, was to have weighed 1,300 pounds…and was to have been aerodynamically shaped to permit it to be carried on the exterior of an aircraft…By 1965, Swedish specialists had repeatedly tested all of the key components of the weapon, except the nuclear core, and had gained high confidence that the design would work. Sweden’s nuclear weapons program was terminated in 1968, although some relevant experimental work continued until 1972.”
But in the early 1990s, War Resisters League staff person McReynolds felt that Sweden had pursued a wiser national security policy than Israel, when it opted out of the nuclear arms race, despite Sweden’s closeness to a previously nuclear-armed Russia.
Although its political opponents in the Middle East have never possessed nuclear weapons, the Israeli government has “gone to full nuclear alert—meaning that nuclear missiles have been wheeled out of silos and put on launches—three times, twice during the 1973 war and once” in early 1991 “while Israel was under missile attack from Iraq,” according to the Oct. 20, 1991 issue of the New York Times.
Yet no matter how many times it goes on nuclear alert, how many nuclear bombs it produces in the Holy Land, and how much special influence its political allies in the United States purchase in the U.S. Congress, Militaristic Israel is not likely to bring much peace to the Holy Land until the Zionist movement’s government stops attempting to resolve political conflicts through more militarism, instead of by genuine, good faith negotiations.
(Downtown 1/15/92)
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