Nuclear Israel And Its Special Influence Historically

“In the near term, there is little risk that Iraq’s now dormant nuclear program could lead to the production of nuclear arms or that Iraq could obtain nuclear weapons material clandestinely, because such material does not appear to be available for sale.” (The Undeclared Bomb by Leonard Spector in 1988)

“Israel has `hundreds’ of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, including more than 100 nuclear artillery shells, nuclear landmines in the Golan Heights and hundreds of low-yield neutron warheads.” (The New York Times on Oct. 20, 1991)

Like the transnational oil companies and the government of Kuwait Inc., Nuclear Israel seems, historically, to have a special influence in U.S. political life. One reason for Nuclear Israel’s special historical influence is because its political allies in the United States are willing to spend a lot of money to fund the political campaigns of influential members of the U.S. Congress.

According to the 1990 book, Stealth PACs: How Israel’s American Lobby Seeks To Control U.S. Middle East Policy by Richard Curtis, “the ability to spend more on elections than any other special interest in the United States while remaining virtually invisible to the public, and to evade with impunity the letter and the spirit of the law limiting contributions to congressional candidates, are only two of the `special’ qualities of pro-Israel PACs [political action committees].” Seventy-eight pro-Nuclear Israel PACs, for example, donated more than $5.7 million to 477 candidates for the U.S. Congress during the 1988 U.S. election campaign.

Nuclear Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation that produces nuclear bombs on Middle East soil. At the Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona, the Israeli government continued to increase the size of its nuclear weapons arsenal in the 1990s. In his early 1990s book, The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, Seymour Hersh estimated that the Israeli government possessed 300 nuclear warheads in the early 1990s.

(Downtown 1/15/92)