Militaristic Israel's Nuclear Bomb Factory & Secrecy Historically--Part 2

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.”

(Downtown 1/15/92)