http://pilger.carlton.com/print/58883
The big threat in the Middle East is Israel, not Iraq:
It could play the nuclear card to blackmail the Americans
By John Pilger: 14 May 2001
As George Bush escalates the new cold war begun by his father, the
attention of his planners is moving to the Middle East. Stories about
the threat of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" are again appearing
in the American press, this time concentrating on Saddam Hussein's
"new nuclear capability". These are refuted by the International
Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors have found no evidence that
Iraq, in its devastated state, has a nuclear weapons programme.
The distraction, however, is vital. The only weapons of mass
destruction in the Middle East are in Israel, an American
protectorate. What is not being reported is that, as Israel's hawks
fail to put down the Palestinian uprising, their leader, Ariel Sharon,
may well remove the country's nuclear arsenal from its nominal
strategy of "last resort".
This prospect is raised in the current Covert Action Quarterly
(www.covertactionquarterly. org), by John Steinbach, a nuclear
specialist whose previous work includes the mapping of deadly
radiation hazards in the United States. He quotes Israel's former
president Ezer Weizman: "The nuclear issue is gaining momentum [and
the] next war will not be conventional." From the 1950s, writes
Steinbach, "the US was training Israeli nuclear scientists and
providing nuclear-related technology, including a small 'research'
reactor in 1955 under the 'Atoms for Peace' program". It was France
that built a uranium reactor and plutonium reprocessing plant in the
Negev desert, called Dimona. The Israelis lied that it was "a
manganese plant, or a textile factory". In return for uranium, Israel
supplied South Africa with the technology and expertise that allowed
the white supremacist regime to build the "apartheid bomb". In 1979,
when US satellite photographs revealed the atmospheric test of a
nuclear bomb in the Indian Ocean off South Africa, Israel's
involvement, writes Steinbach, "was quickly whitewashed by a carefully
selected scientific panel, kept in the dark about important details".
Israeli sources have since revealed "there were actually three tests
of miniaturised Israeli nuclear artillery shells".
It was at Dimona that the heroic Mordechai Vanunu worked as a
technician. A supporter of Palestinian rights, Vanunu believed it was
his duty to warn the world about the danger Israel posed. In 1986, he
smuggled out photographs showing that the plant was producing enough
plutonium to make 10 to 12 bombs a year, and that at least 200
miniaturised bombs had been built. Vanunu was subsequently lured to
Rome from London by Mossad, the Israeli dirty tricks agency. Beaten
and drugged, he was kidnapped to Israel, where a secret security court
sentenced him to 18 years in prison, 12 of which were spent in
solitary confinement, in a cell barely big enough for him to stand.
Steinbach says that, whatever "deterrent effect" the founders of the
Israeli nuclear programme may have intended, "today, the nuclear
arsenal is inextricably linked to and integrated with overall Israeli
military and political strategy". While Israel has ballistic missiles
and bombers capable of reaching Moscow, and has reportedly launched a
submarine-based cruise missile, "a staple of the arsenal are neutron
bombs [which are] miniaturised thermonuclear bombs designed to
maximise deadly gamma radiation while minimising blast effects and
long-term radiation - in essence designed to kill people while leaving
property intact".
These are the same "limited" nuclear weapons the Reagan administration
seriously considered using in Europe and which Ariel Sharon's zealots
may use as a "demonstration" that they have no intention of
relinquishing the occupied territories.
"Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches," said Sharon before
he became prime minister. Steinbach says such a threat could be used
to compel the Bush administration to act exclusively in Israel's
favour were it to waver in the face of growing international support
for the intifada. Francis Perrin, the former head of the French
nuclear weapons programme, wrote: "We thought the Israeli Bomb was
aimed at the Americans, not to launch it at the Americans, but to say,
'If you don't want to help us in a critical situation [when we]
require you to help us . . . we will use our nuclear bombs'." Israel
used this blackmail during the 1973 war with Egypt, forcing Richard
Nixon to resupply its badly shaken military. The Israeli nuclear
threat is seldom raised in this country, in parliament and the media,
and is a non-issue in the United States. This is in line with a news
agenda on Palestine that is still set by Israel. However, since the
election of Sharon, who haspresided over massacres of Palestinian
civilians since 1953, this may be changing. Television pictures from
Gaza and the West Bank ought to leave little doubt that Israel is a
terrorist state, with a policy of state murder.
One of the most impressive critics of his own government I met in
Israel more than 25 years ago is Israel Shahak, then professor of
organic chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a survivor of
the Warsaw Ghetto and the Bergen-elsen death camp. As Israeli society
becomes more and more polarised, Shahak's courage and wisdom endure.
Three years ago, he said: "The wish for peace, so often assumed as the
Israeli aim, is not in my view a principle of Israeli policy, while
the wish to extend Israeli domination and influence is." He added this
prophecy, of which all but one element has so far proved correct:
"Israel is preparing for war, nuclear if need be, for the sake of
averting domestic change not to its liking [and is] clearly prepared
to use, for the purpose, all means available, including nuclear ones."
