As The Power Peddlers: How Lobbyists Mold America’s Foreign Policy by Russell Howe and Sarah Trott noted in 1977, “today, the Israeli Air Force can bomb a more or less defenseless Lebanon [and Gaza] in search of Palestinian guerrilla camps, immolating hapless civilians in its passage, with nary a word being said about the provisions of the Foreign Military Sales Act…”
One reason for the Militaristic Israeli government’s ability to apparently violate the provisions of the U.S. government’s Foreign Military Sales Act without getting its military aid cut-off by the U.S. government may be because its lobbying organizations in the U.S. have had ties, historically, to the Big Media and also have, historically, spent a lot of money on spreading pro-Israeli War Machine propaganda in the United States. As The Power Peddlers, for example, revealed in 1977:
“The 1963 Fulbright hearings into foreign lobbies probed the activities of the Jewish Agency, the United Israel Appeal, the United Jewish Appeal, the American Zionist Council and AIPAC [The American Israel Public Affairs Committee]. The AZC’s report for the previous year noted that it had supplied free lecturers and articles and sent `journalists and others’ on junkets to Israel. The report, without naming names, said its magazine committee was `chaired by a man who holds a key position on the editorial level in the magazine business. He knows everyone in the trade, has important contacts, and exploits them on behalf of Israel.’ The magazine committee was responsible for `the writing and placement of articles on Israel in some of America’s leading magazines.’ The TV-radio committee had been `fortunate in securing the services of the director of creative projects of an important TV chain.’ This would `expand the influence’ of the American Zionist Council on television…
“Gottlieb Hammer and Isidor Hamlin of the Jewish Agency testified that they had spent over $5 million between 1957 and 1962 on propaganda in the United States…In a 1974 article, [then-] Senator Abourezk accused the World Ziionist Organization—an Israeli Government front—of spending `$5 million a year’ on propaganda in the United States…”
Remember former New York Daily News Owner Robert Maxwell, who came to Midtown Manhattan in early 1991 to “save” the New York Daily News from bankruptcy?
Well, according to a former agent of the Militaristic Israeli government’s Mossad Intelligence Agency, Victor Ostrovsky, Maxwell was apparently eliminated by a Mossad assassination team of the Zionist movement in November 1991; after Maxwell threatened to reveal certain secrets unless the Mossad quickly provided him with enough money to prevent his own financial bankruptcy. (At one point, Maxwell was worth $1.2 billion; but his cash flow problems became so severe, just prior to his death, that the former New York Daily News owner secretly took $765 million from the pension fund of the labor he employed at his Mirror newspaper in London).
In his 1990s book The Other Side Of Deception, Victor Ostrovsky wrote the following:
“The ties between Maxwell and the Mossad went back a long way…He provided an unending supply of slush money for the organization…
“A small meeting of right-wingers at Mossad headquarters resulted in a consensus to terminate Maxwell…
“Maxwell was asked to sail on his yacht to Madeira and wait there for a message.
“…On Friday, Nov. 1 (1991), a special Mossad troubleshooting team that was in Spain…was dispatched. The team flew to Morocco, where they were met by a confederate who’d already taken care of all the necessary equipment and other arrangements…
“On Nov. 2…Maxwell…was…told that the meeting with the money people would now take place on the island of Tenerife.
“When he reached Santa Cruz on the island of Tenerife, he headed for a meeting in the Hotel Mency. As he dined alone in the hotel restaurant, someone walked over to him and gave him a message indicating that he should be in Los Cristos on the other side of the island the next morning. He was to make his way there in his yacht…
“The Kidon (Mossad assassination team)…managed to get to Maxwell at sea while the yacht was cruising at 15 knots…Some time during the night of Nov. 4-5, the Mossad’s problem was laid to rest in the salty waters of the Atlantic…”
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.
With regard to the 124 political action committees [PACs] in the United States which were established since 1976 by U.S. political allies of Militaristic Israel to purchase special political influence in Congress, the Zionist movement’s Israeli government has, historically, not sought too much publicity.
Pro-Militaristic Israel PACs which specialize in funding U.S. congressional candidates “rarely mention the Middle East, Israel, or Judaism in their titles,” according to the 1990s book Stealth PACs: How Israel’s American Lobby Seeks To Control U.S. Middle East Policy by Richard Curtis. “Other PACs established by corporations, trade associations, consumer organizations, and religious or ideological groups, identify their sponsors or purposes in their titles,” according to the same book.
Among the nondescript names which the pro-Militaristic Israel PACs operate under are “National PAC,” “Washington PAC,” “Hudson Valley PAC,” “Joint Action Committee for Public Affairs PAC,” and “Desert Caucus PAC.” According to Stealth PACs, since 1984 nearly all the pro-Militaristic Israel PACs “have deliberately sought nondescriptive titles to mask their purposes from the American public.”
Among the leading recipients of pro-Militaristic Israel PAC donations between 1978 and 1988 were the following U.S. politicians: Senator Thomas Daschle of South Dakota ($286,630); Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada ($208,540); Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania ($163,423); Rep. Richard Durbin of Illinois ($146,633); and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont ($106,200).
According to Stealth PACs, “Suggestions that in coordinating contributions of pro-Israel PACs, and in some of their other activities on behalf of Israel, present and former officers of American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] like Michael Goland have violated both the letter and the spirit of the law are generally ignored by the media and met with extreme hostility…” Southern California real estate developer Michael Goland, a former member of the board of directors of the AIPAC pro-Militaristic Israel political lobbying organization “was convicted of federal law violation” in 1988 “for concealing the fact that he was the source of the funds” for the successful 1984 campaign of Militaristic Israel’s political allies to defeat Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, according to the Stealth PACs book.
Percy was regarded by Militaristic Israel’s political allies as more sympathetic to Arab aspirations than his opponent, former U.S. Senator Paul Simon of Illinois. AIPAC board member Goland had illegally spent $1.2 million of his personal funds in AIPAC’s successful 1984 campaign to defeat Percy. Although Goland was fined $5,000 in 1988 for his 1984 federal law violation, he was again indicted in 1990 “on charges that he used other individuals as fronts to conceal illegal contributions of $120,000 of his own funds” to finance the U.S. senatorial campaign in California of Michael Valleni, and he “was convicted…of exceeding the [then] limit of $1,000 on individual donations to a candidate,” according to Stealth PACs.
Downtown twice attempted in late 1991 to speak to a press representative at the Manhattan office of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] regarding its response to some of the charges made in Stealth PACs about the methods used by AIPAC to secure congressional support for Israel. But the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was not too eager to speak to the public. The first time Downtown telephoned, all the AIPAC spokespersons “were out to lunch” and Downtown was told to telephone an hour later.
When Downtown telephoned AIPAC a second time, the receptionist asked Downtown what it wanted to talk about. After Downtown told her it wanted to talk about “congressional support for Israel,” she replied, “Oh, political questions,” and put Downtown on “hold.” A minute later, Downtown was taken off “hold” and the AIPAC receptionist informed Downtown: “We don’t talk to the press.”
U.S. law requires the U.S. president to cut off U.S. economic and military aid to any country which violates the provisions of the 1968 Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty. Yet Militaristic Israel still received over $6 billion in direct U.S. government grants in the early 1990s despite its Holy Land Nuclear War preparations and its refusal to sign the 1968 Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty, historically. But it’s not too likely that the pro-Militaristic Israel PAC donation recipients in the U.S. Congress will ever be too likely to vote for a cut-off in U.S. military and economic aid to Israel—now matter how many bombs the Israeli War Machine drops on civilians in Gaza or Lebanon, in pursuit of its undemocratic political objectives and ethnically-chauvinist settler-colonialist goals..
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.
In 1987, nine Australian senators, the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and 36 members of the British Parliament nominated Mordechai Vanunu for the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize. In their letter of nomination, the nine Australian senators wrote the following:
“We believe that Mordechai Vanunu’s action in revealing details of Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal to the world was motivated by a great and long standing desire for world peace, and we believe that he deserved the world’s recognition for his selfless action. The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to him would be a timely and appropriate expression of such recognition.”
Vanunu was a technician at the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory from August 1977 to November 1985 who, after becoming anti-war in his politics, decided to photograph for the world what the Israeli government was actually doing inside its Negev Nuclear Research Center. After passing the photographs on to investigative reporters at the London Sunday Times in 1986—which published the long news story on Oct. 5, 1986 that first revealed the existence of the Israeli government’s Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory—Vanunu was kidnapped in Rome by Israeli Mossad agents, taken to Israel, tried by a secret Israeli tribunal, convicted of espionage and treason on March 24, 1988, and sentenced to an 18-year prison term.
According to the book Triple Cross by Louis Toscano, after learning from the Israeli embassy in London that the London Sunday Times was about to print its expose of the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory, then-Israeli Prime Minister [now-Israeli President] Peres telephoned then-Mossad Chief Admoni on Thursday, September 25, 1986 “for a briefing on the Vanunu operation” and “Admoni assured Peres that agents were in position in London, prepared to pounce on Vanunu once the Sunday Times story appeared.” The then-Israeli Prime Minister [now-Israeli President] Peres then “indicated he didn’t want to hear any more, and instructed Admoni to inform him when the agents completed their mission.” According to Triple Cross, the reason why Peres didn’t want to “hear any more” about how the Israeli agents were going to kidnap Vanunu on foreign soil was that “it was important for government officials to be able to deny any knowledge of the dirty tactics employed by their spies.”
According to Triple Cross, the then-25-year-old Cheryl Hanin-Bentov, who had lived in Orlando, Florida for the first 17 years of her life, “became the key to capturing Mordechai Vanunu.” After moving to Israel in 1978 and receiving some intelligence training while serving in the Israeli Army, Hanin-Bentov had married a major who worked for Israeli Military Intelligence. A few weeks before the London Sunday Times was to publish its Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory expose’, Hanin-Bentov—“traveling on her U.S. passport NO. 040936379, issued at Miami, Florida”—entered London with other Israeli agents. After befriending Vanunu, she persuaded him to travel with her to Rome on British Airways Flight 504 a few days before the London Sunday Times article was to be published.
After Hanin-Bentov and Vanunu arrived in Rome, according to Triple Cross, she “walked briskly out of the terminal and waved at a man slouched against a small red taxi” and the taxi dropped the pair off in front of an apartment building. Entering the apartment building, according to the same book, Hanin-Bentov and Vanunu “climbed the stairs to a second-floor apartment” and then Hanin-Bentov “drew a key from her shoulder bag and opened the door, standing aside to let Vanunu enter first.” Former UPI Jerusalem Bureau Chief Toscano described in his Triple Cross book what apparently happened next to Vanunu:
“The door slammed shut behind him. In an instant, he was attacked by two Mossad agents…He was knocked to the floor on his stomach. As the agents knelt on either side of him, pinning his arms, Bentov took a syringe filled with a fast-acting sedative from a bag lying on a table. One of the agents pulled up Vanunu’s right shirt sleeve and Bentov plunged the needle into his arm. In a matter of seconds, Vanunu was unconscious.”
In a late 1991 telephone interview with Downtown, then-War Resisters League staff person David McReynolds said he thought Israel’s secrecy about its nuclear weapons was not unusual since “any country will be secretive about its nuclear weapons,” but that he thought the kidnapping and imprisonment of Mordechai Vanunu by the Israel government “was a scandal.”
One reason U.S. anti-war activists should consider supporting an academic boycott of Israeli universities is that universities like Tel Aviv University are “playing a major role in enhancing Israel’s security capabilities and military edge,” according to the winter 2008/2009 issue of the Tel Aviv University Review journal. As Gil Zohar revealed in his “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article that appeared in this same issue of Tel Aviv University Review:
“In the rough and tumble reality of the Middle East, Tel Aviv University [TAU] is at the front line of the critical work to maintain Israel’s military and technological edge.
“While much of that research remains classified, several facts illuminate the role of the university. MAFAT, a Hebrew acronym meaning the R&D Directorate of the Israel Ministry of Defense is currently funding 55 projects at TAU…
“Nine other projects are being funded by DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense.
“Seven…Israel National Security Prizes have been awarded in recent years to members of TAU’s Blauntnik School of Computer Science—more than any other institution in the country. For security reasons, the recipients cannot be named.”
The results of some of the secret war research projects on Tel Aviv University’s campus have apparently been reflected in the weapons systems that are being brutally used against Palestinian civilians in Gaza by the Israeli War Machine, in violation of the Nuremberg Trial Accords, the United Nations Charter and international law. But the Tel Aviv University professors involved in these campus war research projects have tried to hide what they’re up to from any curious anti-war students or anti-war faculty members at Tel Aviv University. As the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article also observed:
“Not surprisingly, much of the defense-related research at TAU remains hush-hush, conducted in rooms and laboratories protected by barred windows, multiple locks and office safes. `There are people in this university dealing with very secret projects, and they won’t talk about it,’ matter-of-factly notes Dr. Michael Gozin, an expert in organic chemistry and explosives detection, who himself chooses words carefully to describe his work.”
Bu according to the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article, Tel Aviv University Professor Ady Arie, who heads TAU’s Institute for Electronic Devices, is working with Tel Aviv University Professor Aladar Fleischman in “designing systems to protect aircraft from missiles” in partnership “with El op, part of Elbit, which makes electrical optic defense systems.”
The head of the Applied Physics Group at TAU’s School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University Professor Abraham Katz, is “working on a laser-based counter-measure system against shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles (SAMs)…”
Tel Aviv University Professor Ron Bachrach of TAU’s Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences is doing research on “seismic waves and remote sensing technologies” that “may finally stop the flourishing underground trade between Gaza and Egypt.”
A “three-year project initiated by the IDF Intelligence Corps on how to enhance and stabilize video images shot from a long-distance” of about seven miles or more was also recently completed by Tel Aviv University Professor of Engineering Leonid Yaroslavsky.
The head of TAU’s School of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv University Professor Anthony Weiss, told the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article writer that “I’m not free to talk about things funded by the Ministry of Defense, naturally;” while “characteristically, MAFAT denied” Tel Aviv University Professor Michael Gozin “permission to speak in all but generalities about his research into the detection of `green explosives’—next generation munitions based on multiple nitrogen atoms in the molecules,” according to the same writer. The director of TAU’s Interdisciplinary Center for Technology Analysis and Forecasting [ICTAF], Tel Aviv University Professor Yair Sharan, also “is not free to discuss his current work with Israeli defense agencies including MAFAT, the counter-terrorism unit in the Prime Minister’s Office [MALAL], the Ministry of Defense and the police,” according to the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article.
Ironically, although these Tel Aviv University professors may be shy about fully disclosing the nature of their secret war research work to anti-war students at Tel Aviv University, at least one professor, Tel Aviv University Professor Oded Maimon, has not been shy about apparently violating the privacy rights of people around the globe who correspond with each other by e-mail. As Gil Zohar revealed in his “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article, “with implications for intelligence gathering, Professor Oded Maimon…mines cyberspace in a project funded by the European Union, Israel’s Ministry of Science and General Motors;” and “using sophisticated algorithms,” Tel Aviv University Professor “Maimon reads millions of e-mails and identifies those that are suspicious or important.”
Yet, according to Tel Aviv University President Zvi Galil, “people are” still “just not aware of how important university research is in general, and how much TAU contributes to Israel’s security in particular.”
Coincidentally, Tel Aviv University President Galil is a former Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science Dean. After moving from his Columbia University campus office in Manhattan to his Tel Aviv University president’s office in June 2007, former Columbia University Dean Galil stated:
“I look forward to continuing a dynamic, positive relationship with the American Friends of Tel Aviv University and collaborating with our friends in the United States…TAU and Columbia are separated by an ocean, but that has less meaning than at any prior time in human history.”
A former senior regional director for the militaristic Israeli government’s AIPAC lobbying firm named Sam Witkin was the president of the tax-exempt American Friends of Tel Aviv University until a few years ago; and before Witkin was replaced in 2007 by a former executive at the Zionist movement’s United Jewish Appeal office in New York City named Roni Krinsky, former American Friends of Tel Aviv University President Witkin was paid an annual salary of $248,972.
According to its Form 990 financial disclosure form for 2006, between October 1, 2006 and September 30, 2007 the “non-profit” American Friends of Tel Aviv University group’s total revenues exceeded $22 million, while its total expenditures were only $16 million. In addition, during this same period the “non-profit” American Friends of Tel Aviv University earned over $1.3 million in dividends from the over $21.3 million in corporate stock that it owned; while the amount of State of Israel bonds that the American Friends of Tel Aviv University also owned exceeded $1.2 million.
Perhaps the surplus capital still controlled by the American Friends of Tel Aviv University should be used now to pay some reparations to the Palestinian civilians that the Tel Aviv University-supported Israeli War Machine has been brutally attacking in Gaza during the last three weeks, in violation of the Nuremberg Trial Accords?
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.
Within Nuclear Israel, there was some internal opposition to the Israeli government’s decision to produce weapons of mass murder in the Holy Land. According to the book Triple Cross by former United Press International Jerusalem Bureau Chief Louis Toscano, “seven of the eight members of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission [IAEC] resigned in protest over the decision to build weapons, but the reasons were never made public.” And in 1961, two of these former IAEC members helped form the Committee for the De-Nuclearization of the Israeli-Arab Conflict, which was opposed to Israel developing nuclear weapons.
To assure the U.S. government that no nuclear bombs were being produced at the Israeli government’s Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory, former Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion “agreed to permit regular inspections of the plant by American experts” in the 1960s, “but he secretly ordered severe restrictions on the inspectors’ access,” according to the Triple Cross book. The Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal book by Peter Pry notes that the 1969 U.S. inspection team “complained in writing that because the Israelis made their earlier inspection hurried and limited and did not permit them to move freely, they could not guarantee that there was no weapons-related work being done at Dimona.” And according to Triple Cross, on one second-floor corridor at the Machon 2 nuclear bomb factory are two elevators “that dropped into the heart of the weapons plant,” but the entrance to the corridor where the elevator doors are located “had been routinely bricked up when American inspectors were shown the building.”
After 1969, even the previously limited U.S. inspections of the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory were no longer allowed by the Israeli government. And in November 1976, thirteen U.S. Senators who were on a Middle East fact-finding tour were not allowed to examine the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory. According to Triple Cross, taped to a wall in Machon 2 in 1977 was “a newspaper clipping about the senators’ attempted visit and the government’s denial that any weapons were being built at Dimona.”
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.
Perhaps because most people in the world believe that the Holy Land should be a nuclear-free zone, the Israeli government set up its Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory operation covertly and continued to be secretive about its nuclear war preparations during the 1990s. According to the Oct. 20, 1991 issue of the New York Times, “journalists working in Israel’ in the 1990s were “not allowed to publish anything substantial on Israel’s nuclear program.”
The book None Will Survive Us: The Story of the Israeli A-Bomb by Ami Dor-On and Eli Teicher, for example, which was scheduled to be published in 1980 by the two Israeli journalists, “was banned from publication by Israeli government censors” and Dor-On and Teicher were “allegedly threatened with prison sentences of 15 years to life if they defy the ban,” according to the book Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal by Peter Pry.
In 1952, the Ben-Gurion government of Israel “secretly founded the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission [IAEC] and placed it under the supervision of the Defense Ministry,” according to Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal. “The architect of both the bomb factory at Dimona and the 30-year effort to keep it secret,” former Israeli Prime Minister [and now-Israeli President] Shimon Peres, was then director-general of the Israeli Defense Ministry and he persuaded the then-Prime Minister Ben-Gurion “to pursue the nuclear option,” according to Louis Toscano’s Triple Cross book.
In The Fall of 1956, according to The Undeclared Bomb by Leonard Spector, “France secretly agreed to supply Israel with a sizeable plutonioum-producing reactor to be built at Dimona.” The agreement between the French and Israeli government to construct the Dimona nuclear reactor was signed on Sept. 17, 1956; on Oct. 10, 1956, “further details” were “set forth in a classified accord,” and in November 1956, the French government made a “secret pledge to help Israel develop nuclear arms,” according to The Undeclared Bomb.
Following the secret French-Israeli government agreements of 1956, “hundreds of French technicians flooded the Negev to construct the facility, including a plutonium processing plant underground to elude American and Soviet spy satellites,” and “by 1967 Israel had enough plutonium on hand to build its first bomb,” according to Triple Cross. The same book also noted that “to explain the feverish construction activity in the Negev, Ben-Gurion announced Israel was building a textile plant”; and, after the U.S. government discovered that what was actually being built at Dimona was a nuclear reactor, “Peres claimed the power produced at Dimona would be used to desalinate billions of gallons of sea water for the irrigation of the Negev.” On Dec. 21, 1960, when then-Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion publicly acknowledged that a nuclear reactor—not a textile factory—was being built at Dimona, he had also “declared that the facility would be used exclusively for peaceful research and training,” according to The Undeclared Bomb. (end of part 1)
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.
According to Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal by Peter Pry, “Dimona’s corner of the Negev is ideal for hiding atomic bombs” because it is “protected from Jordan by the Dead Sea and the rough country of the eastern desert, and over 250 miles distant from the nearest Syrian military bases.”
At the Negev Nuclear Research Center, the Israeli government’s nuclear bombs are produced in “the windowless, two-story concrete building” next to the Dimona nuclear reactor, according to Triple Cross by Louis Toscano, a former United Press International Jerusalem Bureau Chief. The roof of the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory, which is called Machon 2, is “topped with an elevator tower” and its walls are “several feet thick,” according to the same book. Of the Negev Nuclear Research Center’s 2,700 workers, only 150 are allowed to enter the Holy Land’s Machon 2 nuclear bomb factory.
These 150 scientists and technicians build their nuclear bombs “in laboratories and work shops on six levels under the desert floor” and Machon 2 is “essentially a giant reprocessing plant” where plutonium is produced and “then fashioned into nuclear weapons,” according to Triple Cross. After the Machon 2 work on the nuclear bombs is completed, the bomb components are moved in convoys of unmarked cars to “a secret military airfield near Haifa,” where the spheres are “fitted with triggering devices and other technology needed to turn them into nuclear weapons,” according to the same book. Some of the Israeli government’s nuclear warheads in the 1980s were then used in nuclear-armed Jericho II missiles which were then deployed in hardened bunkers or silos by the Zionist movement’s Israeli government, according to The Undeclared Bomb by Leonard Spector, a senior associate in the 1980s at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
One reason the U.S. Corporate Establishment and its Big Media is still supporting the Israeli war machine’s brutal war against Palestinian civilians in Gaza (in violation of the Nuremberg Trial Accords, the UN Charter and international law) is that many U.S. corporations have invested a lot of money in the Zionist movement’s Israeli economy in recent years. U.S. Billionaire Warren Buffett's investment firm, for example, invested over $4 billion in Militaristic Israel a few years ago.
As the website of the American Israel Investments Associates at http://www.israelgrowth.com/about.html notes:
“With the highest GDP growth (5.2%) of any Western country (2005), Israel has become a very popular market for foreign investors. Warren Buffett’s $4 billion purchase of Iscar, his largest international investment ever, continues a trend that has sent foreign investors running to invest in the dynamic Israeli economy. Global stalwarts such as Johnson and Johnson, Intel, Ebay, Kodak, HP, Cisco, Alcatel, Broadcom, Microsoft, BMC Software, Verifone, and PMC Sierra all purchased Israeli companies in the last year.
“With more companies listed on NASDAQ than any other country except for the United States, Israel is the focus of more and more investor attention.
“Israel has become a destination for all types of investors who seek potentially high returns. Over $1.4 billion of venture capital money was invested in 2005. This ranks Israel second only to the United States in venture capital funding, outranking European and Asian rivals. As the privatization of government companies continues, the large global hedge funds and private equity firms have become very active players, investing billions of dollars in purchasing firms like Bank Leumi (Israel’s second largest bank) and Bezeq (the national phone company)."
Over a million people in Iraq have been killed since the Pentagon first bombed Iraq in January 1991. Yet the Democratic and Republican party politicians who have sat in the White House Oval Office, served as U.S. Vice-President or held cabinet and national security advisor posts since 1991 in either the Bush I, the Clintons’ Administration or the Bush II-Cheney Administration generally reject the U.S. anti-war movement’s allegation that they are personally responsible for war crimes in Iraq.
Coincidentally, as the following excerpt from the transcript of the March 21, 1946 and March 22, 1946 sessions of the Trial of The Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunalat Nuremberg indicates, former German Third Reich Marshall Hermann Goring also rejected the allegation that he was personally responsible for any war crimes during World War II:
Thursday, March 21, 1946 (87th day of international trial)
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: …Are you telling the Tribunal that you, who up to 1943 were the second man in the Reich, knew nothing about concentration camps?
GORING: …I did not know anything about what took place and what methods were used in the concentration camps later, when I was no longer in charge.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Let me remind you of the evidence that has been given before this Court, that as far as Auschwitz alone is concerned, 4,000,000 people were exterminated. Do you remember that?
GORING: This I have heard as a statement here, but I consider it in no way proved—that figure, I mean.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: If you do not consider it proved, let me remind you of the affidavit of Hoeftl, who was Deputy Group Leader of the Foreign Section of the Security Section of the Amt IV of the RSHA. He says that approximately 4,000,000 Jews have been killed in the concentration camps, while an additional 2,000,000 met death in other ways. Assume that these figures—one is a Russian figure, the other a German—assume they are even 50 percent correct, assume it was 2,000,000 and 1,000,000, are you telling this Tribunal that a Minister with your power in the Reich could remain ignorant that this was going on?
GORING: This I maintain, and the reason for this is that these things were kept secret from me. I might add that in my opinion not even the Fuhrer knew the extent of what was going on.
This is also explained by the fact that Himmler kept all these matters very secret. We were never given figures or any other details.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: But, Witness, haven’t you access to the foreign press, the press department in your ministry, to foreign broadcasts? You see, there is evidence that altogether, when you take the Jews and other people, something like 10,000,000 people have been done to death in cold blood, apart from those killed in battle. Something like 10,000,000 people. Do you say that you never saw or heard from the foreign press in broadcast, that this was going on?
GORING: First of all, the figure 10,000,000 is not established in any way. Secondly, throughout the war I did not read the foreign press, because I considered it nothing but propaganda. Thirdly, though I had the right to listen to foreign broadcasts, I never did so, simply because I did not want to listen to propaganda. Neither did I listen to home propaganda.
Only during the last 4 days of the war did I—and this I could prove—listen to a foreign broadcasting station for the first time.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: You told Mr. Justice Jackson yesterday that there were various representatives in Eastern territories, and you have seen the films of the concentration camps, haven’t you, since this Trial started? You knew that there were millions of garments, millions of shoes, 20,952 kilograms of gold wedding rings, 35 wagons of furs—all that stuff which these people who were exterminated at Maidanek or Auschwitz left behind them. Did nobody ever tell you, under the development of the Four Year Plan, or anyone else, that they were getting all these amounts of human material? Do you remember we heard from the Polish Jewish gentleman, who gave evidence, that all he got back from his family, of his wife and mother and daughter, I think, were their identity cards? His work was to gather up clothes. He told us that so thorough were the henchmen of your friend Himmler that it took 5 minutes extra to kill the women because they had to have their hair cut off as it was to be used for making mattresses. Was nothing ever told you about this accretion to German material, which came from the effects of these people who were murdered?
GORING: No, and how can you imagine this? I was laying down the broad outlines for the German economy, and that certainly did not include the manufacture of mattresses from women’s hair or the utilization of old shoes and clothes. I leave the figure open. But, also I do want to object to your reference to my “friend Himmler.”
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well, I will say, “your enemy Himmler,” or simply “Himmler,” whichever you like. You know what I mean, don’t you?
GORING: Yes, indeed…
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: The Fuhrer, at any rate, must have had full knowledge of what was happening with regard to concentration camps, the treatment of the Jews, and the treatment of the workers, must he not?
GORING: I already mentioned it as my opinion that the Fuhrer did not know about details in concentration camps, about atrocities as described here. As far as I know him, I do not believe he was informed. But insofar as…
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: I am not asking about details; I am asking about the murder of four or five million people. Are you suggesting that nobody in power in Germany, except Himmler and perhaps Kaltenbrunner, knew about that?
GORING: I am still of the opinion that the Fuhrer did not know about these figures…
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Will you please answer my question. Do you still say neither Hitler nor you knew of the policy to exterminate the Jews?
GORING: As far as Hitler is concerned, I have said I do not think so. As far as I am concerned, I have said I did not know, even approximately, to what extent these things were taking place.
SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: You did not know to what degree, but you knew there was a policy that aimed at the extermination of Jews?
GORING: No, a policy of emigration, not liquidation of the Jews. I knew only that there had been isolated cases of such perpetrations…
GEN. RUDENKO:…You admit that as chief of the German Air Force and Reich Marshall you participated in preparations for the attack on the Soviet Union?
GORING: I once more repeat that I prepared for the possibility of an attack, mainly because of Hitler’s assumption that Soviet Russia was adopting a dangerous attitude. In the beginning the certainty of an attack was not discussed, and that is stated clearly in the directive of November 1940.
Secondly, I want to emphasize that my position as Reich Marshall is of no importance there. That is a title and a rank.
GEN. RUDENKO: But you do not deny—rather you agree—that the plan was already prepared in November 1940?
GORING: Yes.
GEN. RUDENKO: …Do you admit that the objectives of the war against the Soviet Union consisted of invading and seizing Soviet territory up to the Ural Mountains and joining it to the German Reich, including the Baltic territories, the Crimea, the Caucasus; also the subjugation by Germany of the Ukraine, of Bielorussia, and of other regions of the Soviet Union? Do you admit that such were the objective of that plan?
GORING: That I certainly do not admit…
GEN. RUDENKO: And so, summing this up on the basis of the replies which you gave to my question, it has become quite clear, and I think you will agree, that the war aims were aggressive.
GORING: The one and only decisive war aim was to eliminate the danger which Russia represented to Germany.
GEN. RUDENKO: And to seize the Russian territories.
GORING: I have tried repeatedly to make this point clear, namely, that before the war started this was not discussed. The answer is that the Fuhrer saw in the attitude of Russia, and in the lining up of troops on our frontier, a mortal threat to Germany, and he wanted to eliminate that threat. He felt that to be his duty. What might have been done in peace, after a victorious war, is quite another question, which at that time was not discussed in any way. But to reply to your question, by that I do not mean to say that after a victorious war in the East, we would have had no thoughts of annexation…
GEN. RUDENKO: You must have known about the mass extermination of the Soviet citizens from the occupied territories of the Soviet Union with the help of the SD and the Security Police. Is it not true that the Einsatz Kommandos and their activities were the result of the plan prepared in advance for the extermination of Jews and other groups of Soviet citizens?
GORING: No. Einsatz Kommandos were an internal organ which was kept very secret…
Friday, March 22, 1946 (88th day of international trial)
GEN. RUDENKO: If you thought it possible to co-operate with Hitler, do you recognize that, as the second man in Germany, you are responsible for the organizing on a national scale of murders of millions of innocent people, independently of whether you knew about those facts or not? Tell me briefly, “yes” or “no.”
GORING: No, because I did not know anything about them and did not cause them.
GEN. RUDENKO: I should like to underline again, “whether you were informed of these facts or not.”
GORING: If I actually do not know them, then I cannot be held responsible for them…
GEN. RUDENKO: …Was it your duty to know about these facts?
GORING: In what way my duty? Either I know the fact or I do not know it. You can ask me only whether I was negligent in failing to obtain knowledge.
GEN. RUDENKO: You ought to know yourself better—Millions of Germans knew about the crimes which were being perpetrated, and you did not know about them?
GORING: Neither did millions of Germans know about them. That is a statement which has in no way been proved…
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