Israeli Generals and Intel Officials Oppose Attack on Iran
Analysis by Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON, Aug 13, 2010 (IPS) - Pro-Israeli journalist Jeffrey Goldberg's article in "The Atlantic" magazine was evidently aimed at showing why the Barack Obama administration should worry that it risks an attack by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Iran in the coming months unless it takes a much more menacing line toward Iran's nuclear programme.
But the article provides new evidence that senior figures in the Israeli intelligence and military leadership oppose such a strike against Iran and believe that Netanyahu's apocalyptic rhetoric about an Iranian nuclear threat as an "existential threat" is unnecessary and self-defeating. Although not reported by Goldberg, Israeli military and intelligence figures began to express their opposition to such rhetoric on Iran in the early 1990s, and Netanyahu acted to end such talk when he became prime minister in 1996.
The Goldberg article also reveals extreme Israeli sensitivity to any move by Obama to publicly demand that Israel desist from such a strike, reflecting the reality that the Israeli government could not go ahead with any strike without being assured of U.S. direct involvement in the war with Iran.
Goldberg argues that a likely scenario some months in the future is that Israeli officials will call their U.S. counterparts to inform them that Israeli planes are already on their way to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.
The Israelis would explain that they had "no choice", he writes, because "a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people."
He claims the "consensus" among present and past Israeli leaders is that the chances are better than 50/50 that Israel "will launch a strike by next July", based on interviews with 40 such Israeli decision-makers.
Goldberg is best known for hewing to the neoconservative line in his reporting on Iraq, particularly in his insistence that that Saddam Hussein had extensive ties with al Qaeda.
Goldberg quotes an Israeli official familiar with Netanyahu's thinking as saying, "In World War II, the Jews had no power to stop Hitler from annihilating us. Six million were slaughtered. Today, six million Jews live in Israel, and someone is threatening them with annihilation."
In his interview with Goldberg for this article, however, Netanyahu does not argue that Iran might use nuclear weapons against Israel. Instead he argues that Hezbollah and Hamas would be able to "fire rockets and engage in other terror activities while enjoying a nuclear umbrella".
But Israel relies on conventional forces - not nuclear deterrence - against Hezbollah and Hamas, making that argument entirely specious.
Goldberg reports that other Israeli leaders, including defence minister Ehud Barack, acknowledge the real problem with the possibility of a nuclear Iran is that it would gradually erode Israel's ability to retain its most talented people.
But that problem is mostly self-inflicted. Goldberg concedes that Israeli generals with whom he talked "worry that talk of an 'existential threat' is itself a kind of existential threat to the Zionist project, which was meant to preclude such threats against the Jewish people."
A number of sources told Goldberg, moreover, that Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli army chief of staff, doubts "the usefulness of an attack".
Top Israeli intelligence officials and others responsible for policy toward Iran have long argued, in fact, that the kind of apocalyptic rhetoric that Netanyahu has embraced in recent years is self-defeating.
Security correspondent Ronen Bergman reported in Yediot Ahronot, Israel's most popular newspaper, in July 2009 that former chief of military intelligence Major General Aharon Zeevi Farkash said the Israeli public perception of the Iranian nuclear threat had been "distorted".
Farkash and other military intelligence and Mossad officials believe Iran's main motive for seeking a nuclear weapons capability was not to threaten Israel but to "deter U.S. intervention and efforts at regime change", according to Bergman.
The use of blatantly distorted rhetoric about Iran as a threat to Israel - and Israeli intelligence officials' disagreement with it - goes back to the early 1990s, when the Labour Party government in Israel began a campaign to portray Iran's missile and nuclear programmes as an "existential threat" to Israel, as Trita Parsi revealed in his 2007 book "Treacherous Alliance".
An internal Israeli inter-ministerial committee formed in 1994 to make recommendations on dealing with Iran concluded that Israeli rhetoric had been "self-defeating", because it had actually made Iran more afraid of Israel, and more hostile toward it, Parsi writes.
Ironically, it was Netanyahu who decided to stop using such rhetoric after becoming prime minister the first time in mid-1996. Mossad director of intelligence Uzi Arad convinced him that Israel had a choice between making itself Iran's enemy or allowing Iran to focus on threats from other states.
Netanyahu even sought Kazakh and Russian mediation between Iran and Israel.
But he reversed that policy when he became convinced that Tehran was seeking a rapprochement with Washington, which Israeli leaders feared would result in reduced U.S. support for Israel, according to Parsi's account. As a result, Netanyahu reverted to the extreme rhetoric of his predecessors.
That episode suggests that Netanyahu is perfectly capable of grasping the intelligence community's more nuanced analysis of Iran, contrary to his public stance that the Iranian threat is the same as that from Hitler's Germany.
Netanyahu administration officials used Goldberg to convey the message to the Americans that they didn't believe Obama would launch an attack on Iran, and therefore Israel would have to do so.
But Israel clearly cannot afford to risk a war with Iran without the assurance that the United States being committed to participate in it. That is why the Israeli lobby in Washington and its allies argue that Obama should support an Israeli strike, which would mean that he would have to attack Iran with full force if it retaliates against such an Israeli strike.
The knowledge that Israel could not attack Iran without U.S. consent makes Israeli officials extremely sensitive about the possibility that Obama would explicitly reject an Israeli strike
Goldberg reports that "several Israeli officials" told him they were worried that U.S. intelligence might learn about Israeli plans to strike Iran "hours" before the scheduled launch.
The officials told Goldberg that if Obama were to say, "We know what you're doing. Stop immediately," Israel might have to back down.
Goldberg alludes only vaguely to the possibility that the threat of an attack on Iran is a strategy designed to manipulate both Iran and the United States. In a March 2009 article in The Atlantic online, however, he was more straightforward, conceding that the Netanyahu threat to strike Iran if the United States failed to stop the Iranian nuclear programme could be a "tremendous bluff".
Showing posts with label Israeli Nuclear Weapons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israeli Nuclear Weapons. Show all posts
Monday, August 16, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
More Zionist Warmongering on Iran
Israel hiding behind the "Iranian threat"
Steven Zhou
The Canadian Charger
July 22, 2010
With the recent formation of The Emergency Committee for Israel, the neoconservative and Likudnik characters on the American right have stepped up their anti-Iranian lobbying efforts. Among other things, they have again brought up how a nuclear Iran would pose an "imminent threat" that would tear the region apart.
This renewed exaggeration of an Iranian threat to Israel comes at a time when Israel is clearly being shown to be a strategic liability to the U.S., a fact the Israel Lobby has so far concealed with great success.
Israel’s obsession with Iran, though, is two-sided. While some perceive a nuclear Iran to be a major existential threat, others on Israel’s far right cite pragmatic, if not cynical, reasons for this rancid rhetoric.
The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is undoubtedly using the threat of Iran to create a climate of fear that will distract world attention from The Gaza Massacre and the Flotilla incident, both of which have seriously undermined Israel’s standing in the world.
This tactic also reinforces the rhetoric about Israel’s “sacred bond” with the U.S. in the war against “Islamic Terrorism,” while not having to answer for its own nuclear arsenal
Since Israel’s American-backed arsenal of nuclear weapons does not receive nearly as much attention as does Iran’s attempts to acquire nuclear power, it might be useful to look at things from Iran’s perspective.
For its part, the U.S. has managed to have weak, but still damaging, sanctions imposed on Iran, while Israel, a genuine nuclear power, constantly shouts about bombing it.
Recently, the U.S. navy shipped missiles and more than 300 “bunker busters” to the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which is within striking distance of Iran. Furthermore, several of the countries that border Iran have U.S. troops.
Considering these factors, along with the fact that Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, even hawkish analysts within the Israeli establishment have noted Iran’s need to have at least the option of a nuclear deterrent.
Israeli strategist Martin Van Creveld, for example, has noted that Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “not crazy at all,” and that he would essentially do what Ahmadinejad is doing if he were in his position.
Furthermore, Iran can cite UN Security Council Resolution 1887, which states that threats of force are illegal when settling nuclear disputes. No amount of anti-Iranian hysteria, though, can hide the fact that Israel is at a crossroads.
Its only chance of preserving a Jewish state is through a two-state solution with the Palestinians, but settlement-building throughout the years has pretty much destroyed that option.
Israel’s unpopularity is also costing the U.S. all kinds of strategic leverage in the region and precipitating hatred toward both countries. Given its need for oil, a complete lack of U.S. allies in the Middle East would prove disastrous.
Confronted with an insoluble domestic problem and the possibility of having no friends in the world, we see why Israel is forced to hide behind the “Iranian threat” to prove its “strategic worth” to the U.S.
____________
The Canadian Charger--Alternative Media--(A must listen Video Announcment)
Announcement
The Canadian Charger Publishing Staff Says:
--->We encourage readers to write Op-Ed's and submit to The Canadian Charger.
--->Readers need the Canadian Charger (TCC) because the main-stream media controls the truth according to a corporate culture rather than the actual truth.
--->Print technology is a dying one.
--->One reason the corporate media is innaccurate and untrustworthy is because it is dependent for its survival on corporate advertising. TCC is different asking for direct support from our readers. Any size donation will be appreciated.
--->The TCC is on the side of social justice.
____________
Zionist Jews manufacture fear and teach hate
The Canadian Charger
July 7, 2010
Yoav Shamir's documentary Defamation has been added to The Canadian Charger's recommended summer book/movie list. The film is a must-see for anyone wanting to understand how Zionist Jews manufacture fear, and teach Israeli schoolchildren to hate.
In his review, Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli Jew who participated in the occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s, writes:
“The film is an astonishing exposure of the morbid conditions that entangle contemporary Jewish secular identity. It explores and ridicules the current notion of anti-Semitism and the lobbies that are engaged in disseminating such a fear. It also exposes those Jewish ethnic campaigners who, for some reason, insist on shaping their identity around the phantasmic idea of being ‘racially’ persecuted, defamed or hated.”
One of the ethnic Jewish campaigners that Shamir exposes is Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Shamir, a young Israeli Jew, goes to New York to interview Foxman to get an answer to the following question: Could a Jew today lose his or her job just for being a Jew? If not, why is anti-Semitism still an important concern for the Anti-Defamation League.
Foxman says anti-Semitism comes from even “self-hating Jews,” who are critical of the Israeli government’s policies.
All anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian Jews are targeted by ADL, including Dr. Norman Finkelstein, whom Shamir also interviews.
Finkelstein, you will remember, lost his job as a professor because of a concerted smear campaign and has been barred from entering Israel.
Shamir even joined Foxman on his mission to the Ukraine, and filmed the ADL director lecturing that country’s leaders on the lack of moral equivalence between Stalin’s genocidal starvation of 11 million Ukrainians, and the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.
The highlight of Defamation, though, comes when Israeli high school students are taken on a tightly scripted and closely supervised indoctrination tour of Auschwitz before joining the army.
“I want to kill,” said one student afterwards. The lesson of the trip—the world is the enemy of the Jews—is accomplished.
That lesson was put on display following young Israeli soldiers killed nine civilians on the Gaza flotilla on May 31.
As described by Dr. Ilan Pappé in Scotland’s The Herald: “[There were] official parades celebrating the heroism of the commandos who stormed the ship and demonstrations by schoolchildren giving their unequivocal support for the government against the new wave of anti-Semitism.”
Steven Zhou
The Canadian Charger
July 22, 2010
With the recent formation of The Emergency Committee for Israel, the neoconservative and Likudnik characters on the American right have stepped up their anti-Iranian lobbying efforts. Among other things, they have again brought up how a nuclear Iran would pose an "imminent threat" that would tear the region apart.
This renewed exaggeration of an Iranian threat to Israel comes at a time when Israel is clearly being shown to be a strategic liability to the U.S., a fact the Israel Lobby has so far concealed with great success.
Israel’s obsession with Iran, though, is two-sided. While some perceive a nuclear Iran to be a major existential threat, others on Israel’s far right cite pragmatic, if not cynical, reasons for this rancid rhetoric.
The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is undoubtedly using the threat of Iran to create a climate of fear that will distract world attention from The Gaza Massacre and the Flotilla incident, both of which have seriously undermined Israel’s standing in the world.
This tactic also reinforces the rhetoric about Israel’s “sacred bond” with the U.S. in the war against “Islamic Terrorism,” while not having to answer for its own nuclear arsenal
Since Israel’s American-backed arsenal of nuclear weapons does not receive nearly as much attention as does Iran’s attempts to acquire nuclear power, it might be useful to look at things from Iran’s perspective.
For its part, the U.S. has managed to have weak, but still damaging, sanctions imposed on Iran, while Israel, a genuine nuclear power, constantly shouts about bombing it.
Recently, the U.S. navy shipped missiles and more than 300 “bunker busters” to the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which is within striking distance of Iran. Furthermore, several of the countries that border Iran have U.S. troops.
Considering these factors, along with the fact that Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, even hawkish analysts within the Israeli establishment have noted Iran’s need to have at least the option of a nuclear deterrent.
Israeli strategist Martin Van Creveld, for example, has noted that Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “not crazy at all,” and that he would essentially do what Ahmadinejad is doing if he were in his position.
Furthermore, Iran can cite UN Security Council Resolution 1887, which states that threats of force are illegal when settling nuclear disputes. No amount of anti-Iranian hysteria, though, can hide the fact that Israel is at a crossroads.
Its only chance of preserving a Jewish state is through a two-state solution with the Palestinians, but settlement-building throughout the years has pretty much destroyed that option.
Israel’s unpopularity is also costing the U.S. all kinds of strategic leverage in the region and precipitating hatred toward both countries. Given its need for oil, a complete lack of U.S. allies in the Middle East would prove disastrous.
Confronted with an insoluble domestic problem and the possibility of having no friends in the world, we see why Israel is forced to hide behind the “Iranian threat” to prove its “strategic worth” to the U.S.
____________
The Canadian Charger--Alternative Media--(A must listen Video Announcment)
Announcement
The Canadian Charger Publishing Staff Says:
--->We encourage readers to write Op-Ed's and submit to The Canadian Charger.
--->Readers need the Canadian Charger (TCC) because the main-stream media controls the truth according to a corporate culture rather than the actual truth.
--->Print technology is a dying one.
--->One reason the corporate media is innaccurate and untrustworthy is because it is dependent for its survival on corporate advertising. TCC is different asking for direct support from our readers. Any size donation will be appreciated.
--->The TCC is on the side of social justice.
____________
Zionist Jews manufacture fear and teach hate
The Canadian Charger
July 7, 2010
Yoav Shamir's documentary Defamation has been added to The Canadian Charger's recommended summer book/movie list. The film is a must-see for anyone wanting to understand how Zionist Jews manufacture fear, and teach Israeli schoolchildren to hate.
In his review, Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli Jew who participated in the occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s, writes:
“The film is an astonishing exposure of the morbid conditions that entangle contemporary Jewish secular identity. It explores and ridicules the current notion of anti-Semitism and the lobbies that are engaged in disseminating such a fear. It also exposes those Jewish ethnic campaigners who, for some reason, insist on shaping their identity around the phantasmic idea of being ‘racially’ persecuted, defamed or hated.”
One of the ethnic Jewish campaigners that Shamir exposes is Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Shamir, a young Israeli Jew, goes to New York to interview Foxman to get an answer to the following question: Could a Jew today lose his or her job just for being a Jew? If not, why is anti-Semitism still an important concern for the Anti-Defamation League.
Foxman says anti-Semitism comes from even “self-hating Jews,” who are critical of the Israeli government’s policies.
All anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian Jews are targeted by ADL, including Dr. Norman Finkelstein, whom Shamir also interviews.
Finkelstein, you will remember, lost his job as a professor because of a concerted smear campaign and has been barred from entering Israel.
Shamir even joined Foxman on his mission to the Ukraine, and filmed the ADL director lecturing that country’s leaders on the lack of moral equivalence between Stalin’s genocidal starvation of 11 million Ukrainians, and the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.
The highlight of Defamation, though, comes when Israeli high school students are taken on a tightly scripted and closely supervised indoctrination tour of Auschwitz before joining the army.
“I want to kill,” said one student afterwards. The lesson of the trip—the world is the enemy of the Jews—is accomplished.
That lesson was put on display following young Israeli soldiers killed nine civilians on the Gaza flotilla on May 31.
As described by Dr. Ilan Pappé in Scotland’s The Herald: “[There were] official parades celebrating the heroism of the commandos who stormed the ship and demonstrations by schoolchildren giving their unequivocal support for the government against the new wave of anti-Semitism.”
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
More Evidence of Zionist Influence over US Policy
On Being Led By the Nose:
The Unchallenged Power of the Israel Lobby
By JAMES ABOUREZK
Counterpunch
July 12, 2010
I picked up a copy of a memoir written by the long-gone CIA Director, George Tenet. On the first page of the book's preface, Mr. Tenet described what it was like on the day after the World Trade Towers had exploded as a result of the terrorists' actions on 9-11-01.
I quote Mr. Tenet here:
“All this weighed heavy on my mind as I walked beneath the awning that leads to the West Wing and saw Richard Perle exiting the building just as I was about to enter. Perle is one of the godfathers of the neoconservative movement and, at the time, was head of the Defense Policy Board, an independent advisory group attached to the Secretary of Defense. Ours was little more than a passing acquaintance. As the doors closed behind him, we made eye contact and nodded. I had just reached the door myself when Perle turned to me and said, 'Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. 'They bear responsibility.' (Italics added).
“I was stunned but said nothing. Eighteen hours earlier, I had scanned passenger manifests for the four hijacked airplanes that showed beyond a doubt that al-Qa'ida was behind the attacks. Over the months and years to follow, we would carefully examine the potential of a collaborative role for state sponsors. The intelligence then and now, however, showed no evidence of Iraqi complicity."
The idea that George W. Bush's neocon advisers--Perle included--convinced him that the U.S. should invade Iraq received some attention after the Iraqi war started. But to my knowledge, no one, either in politics or the media, pressed the case too hard, lest they discover that those who wanted to invade Iraq had, not America's interest, but Israel's interest in mind.
There was never a threat to the United States from Saddam Hussein. He was a threat to his own people, but not to our country, a fact which became much more clear as the war went on. But Bush's critics stopped short of implicating Israel's interests as a reason for invading Iraq. A great many people believe, myself included, that Israel wanted Saddam out of the way because, while he was not really a military threat to Israel, he was a political threat. He was someone, like Hizbollah, who stood in the way of Israeli hegemony over the entire Middle East.
That desire by Israel goes a long way toward explaining why Israel has launched so many attacks on Lebanon and Syria. During the last several decades, Israel tried very hard to tame the country of Lebanon by using one excuse or another to invade that battered country. Each time, Israel came away without achieving its objective of control of Lebanon. It had installed Bashir Jamail as president only to see him assassinated during the confusion of the Lebanese Civil War. It conquered militarily the south of Lebanon in 1982, holding on to enough Lebanese territory to allow it to steal water out of the Litani River. By the year 2000, Hizbollah was strong enough to chase Israel out of Lebanon, remaining as a threat to Israel's hegemony from that time onward.
And Syria was warned not to get too rambunctious when Israel bombed Syria using one or another pretense to do so.
The most recent military planning by Israel to solidify what little hegemony it has over the area is the way it is shaking its fist at Iran, with the United States looking over its shoulder, adding weight to its threats against Iran.
What is different about this most recent threat is that Iran is no Iraq. Iran has the ways and means to retaliate against not only Israel, but against the United States as Israel's principal supporter in its efforts to tame Iran.
If we were to look rationally at the situation, we would soon realize that, while Iran is able to defend itself with the kind of military it possesses, it is quite incapable of invading another country, particularly one as militarily powerful as Israel. If we assume that Iran's nuclear program is intended to make a bomb, what earthly reason would it have to start a nuclear war against either Israel or the United States? Iran's leadership, while mouthy, and cruel toward its political dissidents, is not crazy enough to ask for someone to come in and wipe out their entire country, which is what certainly would happen should it start a war with nuclear weapons. Certainly, military and political people both in Israel and in the United States must realize this fact.
The most likely and rational reason behind such a nuclear program is one of self-defense against Israel, which has had a minimum of 200 nuclear warheads in its arsenal.
What, then, is behind this most recent insanity by Israel's supporters in America and by Israel itself? We can almost certainly agree that Iran is another country standing in the way of Israel's desired hegemony. I've been told by those who should know that the publicity given to Iran's nuclear program is cutting down on Jews either visiting or emigrating to Israel. That is an economic argument that the United States should not enter into, especially by going to war on Israel's behalf. But it's clear that is what Israel and its supporters here want.
One wonders what to make of the American politicians who are very much like an echo chamber for Israel's talking points concerning Iran. Do they realize that by being led around by the nose by Israel and its Lobby is very much against U.S. interests? Do they realize that even if Israel begins bombing Iran, the United States will pay the price?
Do our politicians understand, that while it is good for their campaign contributions to be solicitous of Israel's objectives, it would be devastating for America to be threatened by even more terrorist attacks than we have been.What has been unspoken by the media and by political leaders is that our continuing support of Israel's objectives by not only financing Israel's military, but by invading Muslim countries for whatever reason only creates more danger for American interests?
This has been largely unspoken by our military and political leaders, but on occasion something will accidentally slip out, exposing the dangers to us for our blind support of Israel. George W. Bush, for example, blurted out, during a statement on the Iraq War, that it was not Israel's fault that we invaded Iraq. And lately, some of our generals are voicing their concerns about the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. But by and large, there is total silence on the issue by the media. Our leaders choose to remain silent on why our complicity with Israel puts us in danger from terrorist groups around the world, but plain and simple, that's what is causing the attacks on our interests. G.W. Bush tried to put a different face on it by saying that "they" hated our freedoms. We deserve better by our presidents.
It does not appear that any of our leaders, from President Obama on down to state legislators, care to rally solve our terrorism problem. (Last year, the South Dakota legislature enacted a resolution approving the 1998 Israeli slaughter in the Gaza Strip).
Iran has offered to join a nuclear weapons free Middle East, but it does not appear that our President cares to take them up on that offer. He would, it appears, need permission from Israel's right wing government to do so. After witnessing his most recent surrender to Netanyahu and his policies, it's not likely that he ever will join. For now, it is sufficient that a nuclear country like the United States can lecture other, smaller countries on who can and who can't have a nuclear weapon.
Are we asking too much that all nations foreswear possession of nuclear weapons, and not just those who are smaller than us?
Does anyone beside a few people in the United States see the danger to our country in being led around by the nose by the Israeli government?
____________
American Jewish Youth may Hold Key to Ending Radical Zionism
The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment
by Peter Beinart
The New York Review of Books
June 10, 2010
In 2003, several prominent Jewish philanthropists hired Republican pollster Frank Luntz to explain why American Jewish college students were not more vigorously rebutting campus criticism of Israel. In response, he unwittingly produced the most damning indictment of the organized American Jewish community that I have ever seen.
The philanthropists wanted to know what Jewish students thought about Israel. Luntz found that they mostly didn’t. “Six times we have brought Jewish youth together as a group to talk about their Jewishness and connection to Israel,” he reported. “Six times the topic of Israel did not come up until it was prompted. Six times these Jewish youth used the word ‘they‘ rather than ‘us‘ to describe the situation.”
That Luntz encountered indifference was not surprising. In recent years, several studies have revealed, in the words of Steven Cohen of Hebrew Union College and Ari Kelman of the University of California at Davis, that “non-Orthodox younger Jews, on the whole, feel much less attached to Israel than their elders,” with many professing “a near-total absence of positive feelings.” In 2008, the student senate at Brandeis, the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored university in America, rejected a resolution commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the Jewish state. MORE...
The Unchallenged Power of the Israel Lobby
By JAMES ABOUREZK
Counterpunch
July 12, 2010
I picked up a copy of a memoir written by the long-gone CIA Director, George Tenet. On the first page of the book's preface, Mr. Tenet described what it was like on the day after the World Trade Towers had exploded as a result of the terrorists' actions on 9-11-01.
I quote Mr. Tenet here:
“All this weighed heavy on my mind as I walked beneath the awning that leads to the West Wing and saw Richard Perle exiting the building just as I was about to enter. Perle is one of the godfathers of the neoconservative movement and, at the time, was head of the Defense Policy Board, an independent advisory group attached to the Secretary of Defense. Ours was little more than a passing acquaintance. As the doors closed behind him, we made eye contact and nodded. I had just reached the door myself when Perle turned to me and said, 'Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. 'They bear responsibility.' (Italics added).
“I was stunned but said nothing. Eighteen hours earlier, I had scanned passenger manifests for the four hijacked airplanes that showed beyond a doubt that al-Qa'ida was behind the attacks. Over the months and years to follow, we would carefully examine the potential of a collaborative role for state sponsors. The intelligence then and now, however, showed no evidence of Iraqi complicity."
The idea that George W. Bush's neocon advisers--Perle included--convinced him that the U.S. should invade Iraq received some attention after the Iraqi war started. But to my knowledge, no one, either in politics or the media, pressed the case too hard, lest they discover that those who wanted to invade Iraq had, not America's interest, but Israel's interest in mind.
There was never a threat to the United States from Saddam Hussein. He was a threat to his own people, but not to our country, a fact which became much more clear as the war went on. But Bush's critics stopped short of implicating Israel's interests as a reason for invading Iraq. A great many people believe, myself included, that Israel wanted Saddam out of the way because, while he was not really a military threat to Israel, he was a political threat. He was someone, like Hizbollah, who stood in the way of Israeli hegemony over the entire Middle East.
That desire by Israel goes a long way toward explaining why Israel has launched so many attacks on Lebanon and Syria. During the last several decades, Israel tried very hard to tame the country of Lebanon by using one excuse or another to invade that battered country. Each time, Israel came away without achieving its objective of control of Lebanon. It had installed Bashir Jamail as president only to see him assassinated during the confusion of the Lebanese Civil War. It conquered militarily the south of Lebanon in 1982, holding on to enough Lebanese territory to allow it to steal water out of the Litani River. By the year 2000, Hizbollah was strong enough to chase Israel out of Lebanon, remaining as a threat to Israel's hegemony from that time onward.
And Syria was warned not to get too rambunctious when Israel bombed Syria using one or another pretense to do so.
The most recent military planning by Israel to solidify what little hegemony it has over the area is the way it is shaking its fist at Iran, with the United States looking over its shoulder, adding weight to its threats against Iran.
What is different about this most recent threat is that Iran is no Iraq. Iran has the ways and means to retaliate against not only Israel, but against the United States as Israel's principal supporter in its efforts to tame Iran.
If we were to look rationally at the situation, we would soon realize that, while Iran is able to defend itself with the kind of military it possesses, it is quite incapable of invading another country, particularly one as militarily powerful as Israel. If we assume that Iran's nuclear program is intended to make a bomb, what earthly reason would it have to start a nuclear war against either Israel or the United States? Iran's leadership, while mouthy, and cruel toward its political dissidents, is not crazy enough to ask for someone to come in and wipe out their entire country, which is what certainly would happen should it start a war with nuclear weapons. Certainly, military and political people both in Israel and in the United States must realize this fact.
The most likely and rational reason behind such a nuclear program is one of self-defense against Israel, which has had a minimum of 200 nuclear warheads in its arsenal.
What, then, is behind this most recent insanity by Israel's supporters in America and by Israel itself? We can almost certainly agree that Iran is another country standing in the way of Israel's desired hegemony. I've been told by those who should know that the publicity given to Iran's nuclear program is cutting down on Jews either visiting or emigrating to Israel. That is an economic argument that the United States should not enter into, especially by going to war on Israel's behalf. But it's clear that is what Israel and its supporters here want.
One wonders what to make of the American politicians who are very much like an echo chamber for Israel's talking points concerning Iran. Do they realize that by being led around by the nose by Israel and its Lobby is very much against U.S. interests? Do they realize that even if Israel begins bombing Iran, the United States will pay the price?
Do our politicians understand, that while it is good for their campaign contributions to be solicitous of Israel's objectives, it would be devastating for America to be threatened by even more terrorist attacks than we have been.What has been unspoken by the media and by political leaders is that our continuing support of Israel's objectives by not only financing Israel's military, but by invading Muslim countries for whatever reason only creates more danger for American interests?
This has been largely unspoken by our military and political leaders, but on occasion something will accidentally slip out, exposing the dangers to us for our blind support of Israel. George W. Bush, for example, blurted out, during a statement on the Iraq War, that it was not Israel's fault that we invaded Iraq. And lately, some of our generals are voicing their concerns about the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. But by and large, there is total silence on the issue by the media. Our leaders choose to remain silent on why our complicity with Israel puts us in danger from terrorist groups around the world, but plain and simple, that's what is causing the attacks on our interests. G.W. Bush tried to put a different face on it by saying that "they" hated our freedoms. We deserve better by our presidents.
It does not appear that any of our leaders, from President Obama on down to state legislators, care to rally solve our terrorism problem. (Last year, the South Dakota legislature enacted a resolution approving the 1998 Israeli slaughter in the Gaza Strip).
Iran has offered to join a nuclear weapons free Middle East, but it does not appear that our President cares to take them up on that offer. He would, it appears, need permission from Israel's right wing government to do so. After witnessing his most recent surrender to Netanyahu and his policies, it's not likely that he ever will join. For now, it is sufficient that a nuclear country like the United States can lecture other, smaller countries on who can and who can't have a nuclear weapon.
Are we asking too much that all nations foreswear possession of nuclear weapons, and not just those who are smaller than us?
Does anyone beside a few people in the United States see the danger to our country in being led around by the nose by the Israeli government?
____________
American Jewish Youth may Hold Key to Ending Radical Zionism
The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment
by Peter Beinart
The New York Review of Books
June 10, 2010
In 2003, several prominent Jewish philanthropists hired Republican pollster Frank Luntz to explain why American Jewish college students were not more vigorously rebutting campus criticism of Israel. In response, he unwittingly produced the most damning indictment of the organized American Jewish community that I have ever seen.
The philanthropists wanted to know what Jewish students thought about Israel. Luntz found that they mostly didn’t. “Six times we have brought Jewish youth together as a group to talk about their Jewishness and connection to Israel,” he reported. “Six times the topic of Israel did not come up until it was prompted. Six times these Jewish youth used the word ‘they‘ rather than ‘us‘ to describe the situation.”
That Luntz encountered indifference was not surprising. In recent years, several studies have revealed, in the words of Steven Cohen of Hebrew Union College and Ari Kelman of the University of California at Davis, that “non-Orthodox younger Jews, on the whole, feel much less attached to Israel than their elders,” with many professing “a near-total absence of positive feelings.” In 2008, the student senate at Brandeis, the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored university in America, rejected a resolution commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the Jewish state. MORE...
Friday, July 9, 2010
Zionist Update: Israeli Nuke's, Netanyahu, "Christian" Millenialism
Exposed: The Truth About Israel's Land Grab In The West Bank
As President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet, a report reveals 42 per cent of territory is controlled by settlers
By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem and David Usborne
July 08, 2010 "The Independent" -- Jewish settlers, who claim a divine right to the whole of Israel, now control more than 42 per cent of the occupied West Bank, representing a powerful obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state, a new report has revealed.
The jurisdiction of some 200 settlements, illegal under international law, cover much more of the occupied Palestinian territory than previously thought. And a large section of the land has been seized from private Palestinian landowners in defiance even of an Israeli supreme court ruling, the report said, a finding which sits uncomfortably with Israeli claims that it builds only on state land.
Drawing on official Israeli military maps and population statistics, the leading Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, compiled the new findings, which were released just as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, arrived in Washington to try to heal a gaping rift with US President Barack Obama over the issue of settlements.
"The settlement enterprise has been characterised, since its inception, by an instrumental, cynical, and even criminal approach to international law, local legislation, Israeli military orders, and Israeli law, which has enabled the continuous pilfering of land from Palestinians in the West Bank," the report concluded.
Mr Obama's demand for a freeze on illegal building has caused months of friction between his administration and the Israeli government. But the US president, facing mid-term elections in November, appeared eager to end the dispute with Israel yesterday.
He said the country was making "real progress" on improving conditions in the Gaza Strip and was serious about achieving peace.
The two men made a joint public appearance, carefully choreographed to convey mutual ease and friendship.
When Mr Netanyahu last visited the White House, in March, US anger at his refusal to end construction meant the Israeli premier was denied a joint appearance with Mr Obama before the cameras. This time the photo-op was granted and the two men afterwards shared a meal – although not a state dinner but a working lunch.
"Reports about the demise of the special US-Israel relationship aren't premature, they are just flat wrong," Mr Netanyahu said, in response to a reporter's question about the perceived tensions. Playing to the same script, Mr Obama said that the "bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable".
But the revelations in the B'Tselem report suggest that despite Mr Netanyahu's stated desire for peace, his policy on settlements remains a dangerous obstacle to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and therefore to a durable peace.
They cast an uncompromising spotlight on Israeli practices in the Palestinian territories that have long drawn international criticism for establishing "facts on the ground" hampering the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
While most of the Jewish settlement activity is concentrated in 1 per cent of the West Bank, settler councils have in fact fenced off or earmarked massive tracts of land, comprising some 42 per cent of the West Bank, B'Tselem said.
And despite the outlawing by Israel of settlement expansion on private Palestinian land, settlers have seized 21 per cent of land that Israel recognises is privately-owned.
B'Tselem alleged that Israel had devised an extensive system of loopholes to requisition Palestinian land.
At the same time, Israel has built bypass roads, erected new checkpoints, and taken control of scarce water resources to the benefit of the settlers. The measures have effectively created Palestinian enclaves within the West Bank, the report said.
Under international law, any Jewish settlements built on occupied territory are illegal. These include all the settlements in the West Bank, and thousands of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, the Arab-dominated sector of the city annexed by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War. The international community still regards East Jerusalem as occupied territory. Despite firm commitments from successive Israeli governments to dismantle illegal outposts built after 2001 and to cease expansion of the settlements, Israel has provided millions of dollars worth of incentives to encourage poorer families to move into the West Bank. Some 300,000 settlers live in the West Bank.
Settlers immediately attacked the report, claiming it was timed as a spoiler to the Washington meeting.
In Washington, no concrete breakthroughs were announced but Mr Obama said that he believed the Israeli leader was ready to move towards direct talks with the Palestinians. Indirect talks began earlier this year, mediated by special US envoy George Mitchell.
Mr Netanyahu showed signs of responding to the pressure. "Peace is the best option for all of us and I think we have a unique opportunity to do it," he said. "If we work together with [Palestinian] President [Mahmoud] Abbas then we can bring a great message of hope to our peoples, to the region and to the world."
The Palestinians continue to refuse direct talks with Israel while new settlement construction is allowed. (Editor's bold emphasis throughout) Settlement activity continues in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians aim to include in a new state.
With US-Israel ties already frayed, Mr Netanyahu postponed a visit to the White House last month in the aftermath of Israel's deadly raid on a Turkish-led flotilla trying to deliver humanitarian goods to Gaza.
For Mr Obama, the danger is clear that any long-lasting record of animosity towards Israel could translate into lost votes at the mid-term elections.
Norman Finkelstein: Results, Not Rhetoric
By GRITtv
Laura Flanders
July 8, 2010
Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussing their countries' foreign relations resembles two lovers discussing their future together. Though they have squabbled in the past over trivial things (things like settlement expansion that most other countries deem flagrant violations of international law), their July 6th meeting at the White House showed that their "unbreakable bond" cannot be shaken... Obama has certainly given enough lip service to settlement moratoriums, proximity talks, and direct talks, but what are the results? Since the Oslo Accords in 1993, there are three times as many settlers and Israel has annexed 42% of Palestinian land for even more expansion. Though Obama waxes eloquently about "direct negotiations," there are no signs of Israel withdrawing to the 1967 borders that would only begin to indicate a successful peace process.
Norman Finkelstein joins us (Grit TV with Laura Flanders) in the studio to report that one should judge the alleged "peace process" with results, not rhetoric.
Editor's NOTE:
The Laura Flanders interview of Norman Finkelstein above is excellent! Professor Finkelstein made several key points:
1. Since the 1993 Oslo Accords and the so-called Peace Process, Israel has engaged in a "Colonizataion" process not a peace process in direct contravention of international law.
2. The Blockade of Gaza is illegal. Under international law, since Israel is a frequent violator of human rights, all weapons intended for Israel should be embargoed not just items which could be used in weapon-making which are headed for Gaza.
3. The Obama/Netanyahu meeting was essentially a charade as there is no evidence that Israel intends to abide by the 1967 boundaries or to cease settlement building in the West Bank ergo: the "peace process" is going nowhere!
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
"Christian-Zionism" Is Trouble for Israel and the USA
By Frank Schaeffer
July 08, 2010 "Huffington Post" - -Some of the nuttiest American religious leaders today (and in the past) have latched on to one form or another of Christian Zionism. These days Reverend John Hagee (pastor of a mega church with thousands of members in Houston) is a leading Far Right Evangelical and ardent fan of Israeli expansion into the disputed West Bank.
And the bestselling books of the Left Behind series of novels have fed the Evangelicals' fixation on End Times prophecy and the "imminent" return of Christ. To put it mildly, the Evangelical theological/biblical "reasons" have deformed US policy and made America act against its self interest. This has also harmed the state of Israel.
Here's a story in the New York Times that handily illustrates the price both America and Israel pay for allowing Evangelical mythology to inform, or should I say deform, US foreign policy.
According to the New York Times, "Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank" (July 6, 2010), evangelical fans of the Apocalypse are hock deep in aiding and abetting illegal settlements while our government looks the other way!
HAR BRACHA, West Bank -- Twice a year, American evangelicals show up at a winery in this Jewish settlement in the hills of ancient Samaria to play a direct role in biblical prophecy, picking grapes and pruning vines.
Believing that Christian help for Jewish winemakers here in the occupied West Bank foretells Christ's second coming, they are recruited by a Tennessee-based charity called HaYovel that invites volunteers "to labor side by side with the people of Israel" and "to share with them a passion for the soon coming jubilee in Yeshua, messiah."
...
"Israel exists because of a covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob 3,500 years ago -- and that covenant still stands," Mr. Hagee thundered. "World leaders do not have the authority to tell Israel and the Jewish people what they can and cannot do in the city of Jerusalem." (Rapture [Millenialist] Dispensationalist Evangelical's do not recognize that Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection fullfilled Old Testament biblical prophecy and that the Church which he started is the new Israel thereby replacing the old covenant. The modern state of Israel has nothing whatsoever to do with the ancient peoples to whom God made His covenant. The predominantly Zionist [nationalist/racist] Israeli Jews currently inhabiting Palestine have no "right" to it. The ancient Jews who did have a right to the land lost that right and were dispersed in the diaspora due to their failure to keep the tennets of the Abrahamic and Noetic Covenants--Editor).
Conflict, Armageddon and the "End Times" is the Christian-Zionist agenda, not helping a child in Tel Aviv or Gaza live happily, have a normal life and walk to school safely. The Evangelicals who "love" the state of Israel would rather see an innocent Jewish or Palestinian child blown up in a rocket attack as long as the "Promised Land" is "fully reclaimed" to fulfill their harebrained ideas of biblical prophecy. With "friends" like the Christian Zionists Israel needs no enemies. With "citizens" like the Evangelicals rooting for Armageddon, America needs no traitors.
Hold the emails! The state of Israel has every much as a right to exist as countries like the United States, New Zealand and Australia where the land was also (relatively recently) forcibly taken from the previous occupants (which is to say no moral "right" at all especially without making proper restitution to those from whom it was stolen--Editor). And yes, Israel suffers from slander from many hypocrites in the world (Arab and otherwise).
That said, American Evangelicals have an unhealthy affinity with the idea of religion-based states. A bedrock article of faith among American Evangelicals is that America had "Christian origins," and that today America must be "restored" to our "Christian heritage." The "Puritan heritage" of America is constantly cited as evidence for our need to "return" to our biblical roots. (In order to "fulfill Biblical prophecy," so-called "Dispensationalists" have been working to ensure that the world's Jews return to Israel and occupy all of Palestine. Dispensationalists have been leading "pilgrims" to Israel ever since since Pastor Jerry Falwell's first visit in order to win financial and political support for the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.)
(Dispensationalism is incompatible with the Church that Jesus Christ started, is a relatively recent invention of Protestant Evangelicalism and in fact is not Christian at all--Editor).
As I discuss in my book Crazy For God Puritans believed that they were carrying "authentic Christianity" to America, especially as written in the Old Testament. They said that they were on a divine mission, even called themselves; "the New Israel" and a "city set upon a hill." John Winthrop (governor of Massachusetts Bay) transferred the idea of "nationhood" in biblical Israel to the Massachusetts Bay Company. Puritans even said the Bible confirmed their status as the New Israel!
It is no coincidence that the self-consciously religious states of the Middle East are in perpetual conflict with other equally religion-based countries, for instance Islamic states like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (that postures as the keeper of Islam) and Iran are in perpetual conflict with Israel the Jewish homeland. And it's no coincidence that America has paid dearly in blood and treasure in one Middle Eastern-incited and/or actual military entanglement after another because of our theology-based relationship with the state of Israel as well as our meddling in the affairs of the Islamic states like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.
What would you expect but conflict when modernity tangles with Bronze Age tribalism that's been given a biblical Evangelical "End Times" twist?!
As the Times story illustrates, Evangelical hardliners have a "prophetic" agenda when pushing Israel to keep all the West Bank and to be "tough on the Palestinians" that has nothing to do with what might bring peace (let alone justice) to the actual Jews and actual Arabs who are fated to be neighbors. Gleeful -- shamefully tax-deductible -- war mongering in the name of Jesus and/or "protecting Israel" -- from a safe distance, say from Houston! -- has everything to do with Evangelicals' ideas about what will hasten the "return of Christ" and nothing to do with what is actually good for the Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs, let alone the rest of us who long for peace.
Obama administration: Israel has right to nuclear capability for deterrence purposes
By Barak Ravid
Published 00:54 08.07.10
Haaretz.com
NEW YORK - The Obama administration has revealed to the public, during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington, a series of understandings between the two countries on Israel's policy of "nuclear ambiguity" - which to date had been kept under wraps.
Benjamin Netanyahu meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Blair House in Washington, July 7, 2010.
At the center of these understandings lies an Israeli veto on the holding of an international conference for a nuclear-free Middle East, as well as an unprecedented American willingness to cooperate with Israel in the field of nuclear power for civil use.
The revelations come in the wake of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference held in May, which called on Israel to agree to international inspection of its nuclear installations, and to the holding of an international conference for a nuclear-free Middle East. The conference's final document was passed despite Israel's strong protests to the Americans.
In talks since the conference, the Americans made it clear that that decision had been a "mistake." In an effort to clarify the administration's stance on the Israeli nuclear question, it was determined that - in coordination with Israel - the full details of the high-level understandings between the two sides, reached during the 1960s, would finally be revealed.
The understandings have been updated over the years, including during this past year.
Washington's aim through these revelations was to clear the air and correct the impression given at the May conference that the United States did not back Israel.
Following their meeting at the White House Tuesday, a special announcement was made an hour later concerning assurances given to Netanyahu by U.S. President Barack Obama.
According to the announcement, "The president told the prime minister he recognizes that Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats, and that only Israel can determine its security needs. The president pledged to continue U.S. efforts to combat all international attempts to challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel."
"The president emphasized that the United States will continue its long standing practice to work closely with Israel to ensure that arms control initiatives and policies do not detract from Israel's security, and support our common efforts to strengthen international peace and stability," the statement continued.
In the event that the proposed conference on a nuclear-free Middle East is held, "the United States will insist that such a conference will be for discussion aimed at an exchange of views on a broad agenda, to include regional security issues, verification and compliance, and all categories of weapons of mass destruction and systems for their delivery."
"The president emphasized that the conference will only take place if all countries feel confident that they can attend, and that any efforts to single out Israel will make the prospects of convening such a conference unlikely. In this regard, the two leaders also agreed to work together to oppose efforts to single out Israel at the IAEA General Conference in September."
Meanwhile, prior to departing for New York, Netanyahu met with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and presented him with Israel's security needs as part of a permanent agreement for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Editor's NOTE:
As long as Israel continues to deny its terrorist beginnings and continued terrorist activity to date without having at least attempted a just compensation to the victims, it will never be recognized as a legitimate nation-state in much of the (Muslim/Arab/Persian world.
American President's and US administrations do not help Israel attain peace and security by cooperating with the Jewish state's denial of its trangressions. The latest statements by President Obama only serve to further complicate the problem. His lack of clarity and honesty on this issue is no doubt due to the power of the Zionist Lobby. Until its power is eclipsed, US foreign policy will remain counterproductive as far as the American people and those of Israel are concerned.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
An excellent Meeting
Published 00:54 08.07.10
Gideon Levy
Haaretz.com
Two statesmen met in Washington on Tuesday who are looking smaller and smaller, who are taking smaller and smaller steps.
By Gideon Levy It really was an excellent meeting: The chance that a binational state will be established has improved as a result; relations between Israel and the United States are indeed "marvelous." Israel can continue with the whims of its occupation. The president of the United States proved Tuesday that perhaps there has been change, but not as far as we are concerned.
If there remained any vestiges of hope in the Middle East from Barack Obama, they have dissipated; if some people still expected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lead a courageous move, they now know they made a mistake (and misled others ).
The masked ball is at its peak: Preening each other, Obama and Netanyahu have proved that even their heavy layer of makeup can no longer hide the wrinkles. The worn-out, wizened old face of the longest "peace process" in history has been awarded another surprising and incomprehensible extention. It's on its way nowhere.
The "warm" and "sympathetic" reception, albeit a little forced, including the presidential dog, Bo, the meeting of the wives, with the U.S. president accompanying the Israeli prime minister to the car in an "unprecedented" way, as the press enthused, cannot obscure reality. The reality is that Israel has again managed to fool not only America, but even its most promising president in years.
It was enough to listen to the joint press conference to understand, or better yet, not understand, where we are headed. Will the freeze continue? Obama and Netanyahu squirmed, formulated and obfuscated, and no clear answer was forthcoming. If there was a time when people marveled at Henry Kissinger's "constructive ambiguity," now we have destructive ambiguity. Even when it came to the minimum move of a construction freeze, without which there is no proof of serious intent on Israel's part, the two leaders threw up a smoke screen. A cowardly yes-and-no by both.
More than anything, the meeting proved that the criminal waste of time will go on. A year and a half has passed since the two took office, and almost nothing has changed except lip service to the freeze. A few lifted roadblocks here, a little less blockade of Gaza there - all relatively marginal matters, a bogus substitute for a bold jump over the abyss, without which nothing will move.
When direct talks become a goal, without anyone having a clue what Israel's position is - a strange negotiation in which everyone knows what the Palestinians want and no one knows for sure what Israel wants - the wheel not only does not go forward, it goes backward. There are plenty of excuses and explanations: Obama has the congressional elections ahead of him, so he mustn't make Netanyahu angry.
After that, the footfalls of the presidential elections can be heard, and then he certainly must not anger the Jews. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is pressuring Netanyahu now; tomorrow it might be Likud MK Danny Danon, and after all, you can't expect Netanyahu to commit political suicide. And there you have it, his term in office is over, with no achievements. Good for you, Obama; bravo Netanyahu. You managed to make a mockery of each other, and together, of us all.
Netanyahu will be coming back to Israel over the weekend, adorned with false accomplishments. The settlers will mark a major achievement. Even if they don't not admit it - they are never satisfied, after all - they can rejoice secretly. Their project will continue to prosper. If they have doubled their numbers since the Oslo Accords, now they can triple them.
And then what? Here then is a question for Obama and Netanyahu: Where to? No playing for time can blur the question. Where are they headed? What will improve in another year? What will be more promising in another two years? The Syrian president is knocking at the door begging for peace with Israel, and the two leaders are ignoring him. Will he still be knocking in two years? The Arab League's initiative is still valid; terror has almost ceased. What will the situation be after they have finished compromising over the freeze in construction of balconies and ritual baths?
Two statesmen met in Washington on Tuesday who are looking smaller and smaller, who are taking smaller and smaller steps. They have decided not to decide, which in itself is a decision. When the chance of a two-state solution has long since entered injury time, they have decided on more extra time. Get ready for the binational state, or the next round of bloodletting.
As President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet, a report reveals 42 per cent of territory is controlled by settlers
By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem and David Usborne
July 08, 2010 "The Independent" -- Jewish settlers, who claim a divine right to the whole of Israel, now control more than 42 per cent of the occupied West Bank, representing a powerful obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state, a new report has revealed.
The jurisdiction of some 200 settlements, illegal under international law, cover much more of the occupied Palestinian territory than previously thought. And a large section of the land has been seized from private Palestinian landowners in defiance even of an Israeli supreme court ruling, the report said, a finding which sits uncomfortably with Israeli claims that it builds only on state land.
Drawing on official Israeli military maps and population statistics, the leading Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, compiled the new findings, which were released just as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, arrived in Washington to try to heal a gaping rift with US President Barack Obama over the issue of settlements.
"The settlement enterprise has been characterised, since its inception, by an instrumental, cynical, and even criminal approach to international law, local legislation, Israeli military orders, and Israeli law, which has enabled the continuous pilfering of land from Palestinians in the West Bank," the report concluded.
Mr Obama's demand for a freeze on illegal building has caused months of friction between his administration and the Israeli government. But the US president, facing mid-term elections in November, appeared eager to end the dispute with Israel yesterday.
He said the country was making "real progress" on improving conditions in the Gaza Strip and was serious about achieving peace.
The two men made a joint public appearance, carefully choreographed to convey mutual ease and friendship.
When Mr Netanyahu last visited the White House, in March, US anger at his refusal to end construction meant the Israeli premier was denied a joint appearance with Mr Obama before the cameras. This time the photo-op was granted and the two men afterwards shared a meal – although not a state dinner but a working lunch.
"Reports about the demise of the special US-Israel relationship aren't premature, they are just flat wrong," Mr Netanyahu said, in response to a reporter's question about the perceived tensions. Playing to the same script, Mr Obama said that the "bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable".
But the revelations in the B'Tselem report suggest that despite Mr Netanyahu's stated desire for peace, his policy on settlements remains a dangerous obstacle to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and therefore to a durable peace.
They cast an uncompromising spotlight on Israeli practices in the Palestinian territories that have long drawn international criticism for establishing "facts on the ground" hampering the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
While most of the Jewish settlement activity is concentrated in 1 per cent of the West Bank, settler councils have in fact fenced off or earmarked massive tracts of land, comprising some 42 per cent of the West Bank, B'Tselem said.
And despite the outlawing by Israel of settlement expansion on private Palestinian land, settlers have seized 21 per cent of land that Israel recognises is privately-owned.
B'Tselem alleged that Israel had devised an extensive system of loopholes to requisition Palestinian land.
At the same time, Israel has built bypass roads, erected new checkpoints, and taken control of scarce water resources to the benefit of the settlers. The measures have effectively created Palestinian enclaves within the West Bank, the report said.
Under international law, any Jewish settlements built on occupied territory are illegal. These include all the settlements in the West Bank, and thousands of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, the Arab-dominated sector of the city annexed by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War. The international community still regards East Jerusalem as occupied territory. Despite firm commitments from successive Israeli governments to dismantle illegal outposts built after 2001 and to cease expansion of the settlements, Israel has provided millions of dollars worth of incentives to encourage poorer families to move into the West Bank. Some 300,000 settlers live in the West Bank.
Settlers immediately attacked the report, claiming it was timed as a spoiler to the Washington meeting.
In Washington, no concrete breakthroughs were announced but Mr Obama said that he believed the Israeli leader was ready to move towards direct talks with the Palestinians. Indirect talks began earlier this year, mediated by special US envoy George Mitchell.
Mr Netanyahu showed signs of responding to the pressure. "Peace is the best option for all of us and I think we have a unique opportunity to do it," he said. "If we work together with [Palestinian] President [Mahmoud] Abbas then we can bring a great message of hope to our peoples, to the region and to the world."
The Palestinians continue to refuse direct talks with Israel while new settlement construction is allowed. (Editor's bold emphasis throughout) Settlement activity continues in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians aim to include in a new state.
With US-Israel ties already frayed, Mr Netanyahu postponed a visit to the White House last month in the aftermath of Israel's deadly raid on a Turkish-led flotilla trying to deliver humanitarian goods to Gaza.
For Mr Obama, the danger is clear that any long-lasting record of animosity towards Israel could translate into lost votes at the mid-term elections.
Norman Finkelstein: Results, Not Rhetoric
By GRITtv
Laura Flanders
July 8, 2010
Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussing their countries' foreign relations resembles two lovers discussing their future together. Though they have squabbled in the past over trivial things (things like settlement expansion that most other countries deem flagrant violations of international law), their July 6th meeting at the White House showed that their "unbreakable bond" cannot be shaken... Obama has certainly given enough lip service to settlement moratoriums, proximity talks, and direct talks, but what are the results? Since the Oslo Accords in 1993, there are three times as many settlers and Israel has annexed 42% of Palestinian land for even more expansion. Though Obama waxes eloquently about "direct negotiations," there are no signs of Israel withdrawing to the 1967 borders that would only begin to indicate a successful peace process.
Norman Finkelstein joins us (Grit TV with Laura Flanders) in the studio to report that one should judge the alleged "peace process" with results, not rhetoric.
Editor's NOTE:
The Laura Flanders interview of Norman Finkelstein above is excellent! Professor Finkelstein made several key points:
1. Since the 1993 Oslo Accords and the so-called Peace Process, Israel has engaged in a "Colonizataion" process not a peace process in direct contravention of international law.
2. The Blockade of Gaza is illegal. Under international law, since Israel is a frequent violator of human rights, all weapons intended for Israel should be embargoed not just items which could be used in weapon-making which are headed for Gaza.
3. The Obama/Netanyahu meeting was essentially a charade as there is no evidence that Israel intends to abide by the 1967 boundaries or to cease settlement building in the West Bank ergo: the "peace process" is going nowhere!
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
"Christian-Zionism" Is Trouble for Israel and the USA
By Frank Schaeffer
July 08, 2010 "Huffington Post" - -Some of the nuttiest American religious leaders today (and in the past) have latched on to one form or another of Christian Zionism. These days Reverend John Hagee (pastor of a mega church with thousands of members in Houston) is a leading Far Right Evangelical and ardent fan of Israeli expansion into the disputed West Bank.
And the bestselling books of the Left Behind series of novels have fed the Evangelicals' fixation on End Times prophecy and the "imminent" return of Christ. To put it mildly, the Evangelical theological/biblical "reasons" have deformed US policy and made America act against its self interest. This has also harmed the state of Israel.
Here's a story in the New York Times that handily illustrates the price both America and Israel pay for allowing Evangelical mythology to inform, or should I say deform, US foreign policy.
According to the New York Times, "Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank" (July 6, 2010), evangelical fans of the Apocalypse are hock deep in aiding and abetting illegal settlements while our government looks the other way!
HAR BRACHA, West Bank -- Twice a year, American evangelicals show up at a winery in this Jewish settlement in the hills of ancient Samaria to play a direct role in biblical prophecy, picking grapes and pruning vines.
Believing that Christian help for Jewish winemakers here in the occupied West Bank foretells Christ's second coming, they are recruited by a Tennessee-based charity called HaYovel that invites volunteers "to labor side by side with the people of Israel" and "to share with them a passion for the soon coming jubilee in Yeshua, messiah."
...
"Israel exists because of a covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob 3,500 years ago -- and that covenant still stands," Mr. Hagee thundered. "World leaders do not have the authority to tell Israel and the Jewish people what they can and cannot do in the city of Jerusalem." (Rapture [Millenialist] Dispensationalist Evangelical's do not recognize that Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection fullfilled Old Testament biblical prophecy and that the Church which he started is the new Israel thereby replacing the old covenant. The modern state of Israel has nothing whatsoever to do with the ancient peoples to whom God made His covenant. The predominantly Zionist [nationalist/racist] Israeli Jews currently inhabiting Palestine have no "right" to it. The ancient Jews who did have a right to the land lost that right and were dispersed in the diaspora due to their failure to keep the tennets of the Abrahamic and Noetic Covenants--Editor).
Conflict, Armageddon and the "End Times" is the Christian-Zionist agenda, not helping a child in Tel Aviv or Gaza live happily, have a normal life and walk to school safely. The Evangelicals who "love" the state of Israel would rather see an innocent Jewish or Palestinian child blown up in a rocket attack as long as the "Promised Land" is "fully reclaimed" to fulfill their harebrained ideas of biblical prophecy. With "friends" like the Christian Zionists Israel needs no enemies. With "citizens" like the Evangelicals rooting for Armageddon, America needs no traitors.
Hold the emails! The state of Israel has every much as a right to exist as countries like the United States, New Zealand and Australia where the land was also (relatively recently) forcibly taken from the previous occupants (which is to say no moral "right" at all especially without making proper restitution to those from whom it was stolen--Editor). And yes, Israel suffers from slander from many hypocrites in the world (Arab and otherwise).
That said, American Evangelicals have an unhealthy affinity with the idea of religion-based states. A bedrock article of faith among American Evangelicals is that America had "Christian origins," and that today America must be "restored" to our "Christian heritage." The "Puritan heritage" of America is constantly cited as evidence for our need to "return" to our biblical roots. (In order to "fulfill Biblical prophecy," so-called "Dispensationalists" have been working to ensure that the world's Jews return to Israel and occupy all of Palestine. Dispensationalists have been leading "pilgrims" to Israel ever since since Pastor Jerry Falwell's first visit in order to win financial and political support for the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.)
(Dispensationalism is incompatible with the Church that Jesus Christ started, is a relatively recent invention of Protestant Evangelicalism and in fact is not Christian at all--Editor).
As I discuss in my book Crazy For God Puritans believed that they were carrying "authentic Christianity" to America, especially as written in the Old Testament. They said that they were on a divine mission, even called themselves; "the New Israel" and a "city set upon a hill." John Winthrop (governor of Massachusetts Bay) transferred the idea of "nationhood" in biblical Israel to the Massachusetts Bay Company. Puritans even said the Bible confirmed their status as the New Israel!
It is no coincidence that the self-consciously religious states of the Middle East are in perpetual conflict with other equally religion-based countries, for instance Islamic states like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (that postures as the keeper of Islam) and Iran are in perpetual conflict with Israel the Jewish homeland. And it's no coincidence that America has paid dearly in blood and treasure in one Middle Eastern-incited and/or actual military entanglement after another because of our theology-based relationship with the state of Israel as well as our meddling in the affairs of the Islamic states like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.
What would you expect but conflict when modernity tangles with Bronze Age tribalism that's been given a biblical Evangelical "End Times" twist?!
As the Times story illustrates, Evangelical hardliners have a "prophetic" agenda when pushing Israel to keep all the West Bank and to be "tough on the Palestinians" that has nothing to do with what might bring peace (let alone justice) to the actual Jews and actual Arabs who are fated to be neighbors. Gleeful -- shamefully tax-deductible -- war mongering in the name of Jesus and/or "protecting Israel" -- from a safe distance, say from Houston! -- has everything to do with Evangelicals' ideas about what will hasten the "return of Christ" and nothing to do with what is actually good for the Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs, let alone the rest of us who long for peace.
Obama administration: Israel has right to nuclear capability for deterrence purposes
By Barak Ravid
Published 00:54 08.07.10
Haaretz.com
NEW YORK - The Obama administration has revealed to the public, during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington, a series of understandings between the two countries on Israel's policy of "nuclear ambiguity" - which to date had been kept under wraps.
Benjamin Netanyahu meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Blair House in Washington, July 7, 2010.
At the center of these understandings lies an Israeli veto on the holding of an international conference for a nuclear-free Middle East, as well as an unprecedented American willingness to cooperate with Israel in the field of nuclear power for civil use.
The revelations come in the wake of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference held in May, which called on Israel to agree to international inspection of its nuclear installations, and to the holding of an international conference for a nuclear-free Middle East. The conference's final document was passed despite Israel's strong protests to the Americans.
In talks since the conference, the Americans made it clear that that decision had been a "mistake." In an effort to clarify the administration's stance on the Israeli nuclear question, it was determined that - in coordination with Israel - the full details of the high-level understandings between the two sides, reached during the 1960s, would finally be revealed.
The understandings have been updated over the years, including during this past year.
Washington's aim through these revelations was to clear the air and correct the impression given at the May conference that the United States did not back Israel.
Following their meeting at the White House Tuesday, a special announcement was made an hour later concerning assurances given to Netanyahu by U.S. President Barack Obama.
According to the announcement, "The president told the prime minister he recognizes that Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats, and that only Israel can determine its security needs. The president pledged to continue U.S. efforts to combat all international attempts to challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel."
"The president emphasized that the United States will continue its long standing practice to work closely with Israel to ensure that arms control initiatives and policies do not detract from Israel's security, and support our common efforts to strengthen international peace and stability," the statement continued.
In the event that the proposed conference on a nuclear-free Middle East is held, "the United States will insist that such a conference will be for discussion aimed at an exchange of views on a broad agenda, to include regional security issues, verification and compliance, and all categories of weapons of mass destruction and systems for their delivery."
"The president emphasized that the conference will only take place if all countries feel confident that they can attend, and that any efforts to single out Israel will make the prospects of convening such a conference unlikely. In this regard, the two leaders also agreed to work together to oppose efforts to single out Israel at the IAEA General Conference in September."
Meanwhile, prior to departing for New York, Netanyahu met with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and presented him with Israel's security needs as part of a permanent agreement for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Editor's NOTE:
As long as Israel continues to deny its terrorist beginnings and continued terrorist activity to date without having at least attempted a just compensation to the victims, it will never be recognized as a legitimate nation-state in much of the (Muslim/Arab/Persian world.
American President's and US administrations do not help Israel attain peace and security by cooperating with the Jewish state's denial of its trangressions. The latest statements by President Obama only serve to further complicate the problem. His lack of clarity and honesty on this issue is no doubt due to the power of the Zionist Lobby. Until its power is eclipsed, US foreign policy will remain counterproductive as far as the American people and those of Israel are concerned.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
An excellent Meeting
Published 00:54 08.07.10
Gideon Levy
Haaretz.com
Two statesmen met in Washington on Tuesday who are looking smaller and smaller, who are taking smaller and smaller steps.
By Gideon Levy It really was an excellent meeting: The chance that a binational state will be established has improved as a result; relations between Israel and the United States are indeed "marvelous." Israel can continue with the whims of its occupation. The president of the United States proved Tuesday that perhaps there has been change, but not as far as we are concerned.
If there remained any vestiges of hope in the Middle East from Barack Obama, they have dissipated; if some people still expected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lead a courageous move, they now know they made a mistake (and misled others ).
The masked ball is at its peak: Preening each other, Obama and Netanyahu have proved that even their heavy layer of makeup can no longer hide the wrinkles. The worn-out, wizened old face of the longest "peace process" in history has been awarded another surprising and incomprehensible extention. It's on its way nowhere.
The "warm" and "sympathetic" reception, albeit a little forced, including the presidential dog, Bo, the meeting of the wives, with the U.S. president accompanying the Israeli prime minister to the car in an "unprecedented" way, as the press enthused, cannot obscure reality. The reality is that Israel has again managed to fool not only America, but even its most promising president in years.
It was enough to listen to the joint press conference to understand, or better yet, not understand, where we are headed. Will the freeze continue? Obama and Netanyahu squirmed, formulated and obfuscated, and no clear answer was forthcoming. If there was a time when people marveled at Henry Kissinger's "constructive ambiguity," now we have destructive ambiguity. Even when it came to the minimum move of a construction freeze, without which there is no proof of serious intent on Israel's part, the two leaders threw up a smoke screen. A cowardly yes-and-no by both.
More than anything, the meeting proved that the criminal waste of time will go on. A year and a half has passed since the two took office, and almost nothing has changed except lip service to the freeze. A few lifted roadblocks here, a little less blockade of Gaza there - all relatively marginal matters, a bogus substitute for a bold jump over the abyss, without which nothing will move.
When direct talks become a goal, without anyone having a clue what Israel's position is - a strange negotiation in which everyone knows what the Palestinians want and no one knows for sure what Israel wants - the wheel not only does not go forward, it goes backward. There are plenty of excuses and explanations: Obama has the congressional elections ahead of him, so he mustn't make Netanyahu angry.
After that, the footfalls of the presidential elections can be heard, and then he certainly must not anger the Jews. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is pressuring Netanyahu now; tomorrow it might be Likud MK Danny Danon, and after all, you can't expect Netanyahu to commit political suicide. And there you have it, his term in office is over, with no achievements. Good for you, Obama; bravo Netanyahu. You managed to make a mockery of each other, and together, of us all.
Netanyahu will be coming back to Israel over the weekend, adorned with false accomplishments. The settlers will mark a major achievement. Even if they don't not admit it - they are never satisfied, after all - they can rejoice secretly. Their project will continue to prosper. If they have doubled their numbers since the Oslo Accords, now they can triple them.
And then what? Here then is a question for Obama and Netanyahu: Where to? No playing for time can blur the question. Where are they headed? What will improve in another year? What will be more promising in another two years? The Syrian president is knocking at the door begging for peace with Israel, and the two leaders are ignoring him. Will he still be knocking in two years? The Arab League's initiative is still valid; terror has almost ceased. What will the situation be after they have finished compromising over the freeze in construction of balconies and ritual baths?
Two statesmen met in Washington on Tuesday who are looking smaller and smaller, who are taking smaller and smaller steps. They have decided not to decide, which in itself is a decision. When the chance of a two-state solution has long since entered injury time, they have decided on more extra time. Get ready for the binational state, or the next round of bloodletting.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Update on Israeli Nuclear Weapons
JFK Tried to Prevent Israel from Obtaining Nuclear Weapons
Smith estabishes that John F. Kennedy saw the risk represented by Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons and tried to prevent it. Robert F. Kennedy through his leadership of the US Department of Justice attempted to have the Israel Lobby registered as a foreign (hostile) entity --Editor
Professor John J. Mearsheimer on Israel’s Nukes, Espionage and its Impact on the U.S.
Mearsheimer argues among other things that having a nuclear weapons capability no longer benefits Israel--Editor
Grant F. Smith: JFK Tried to Stop Israel from Developing Nukes! from William Hughes on Vimeo.
Smith estabishes that John F. Kennedy saw the risk represented by Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons and tried to prevent it. Robert F. Kennedy through his leadership of the US Department of Justice attempted to have the Israel Lobby registered as a foreign (hostile) entity --Editor
Professor John J. Mearsheimer on Israel’s Nukes, Espionage and its Impact on the U.S.
Professor John J. Mearsheimer on Israel’s Nukes, Espionage and its Impact on the U.S. from William Hughes on Vimeo.
Mearsheimer argues among other things that having a nuclear weapons capability no longer benefits Israel--Editor
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Armada of U.S. and Israeli Warships Head for Iran
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
June 19, 2010
More than twelve U.S. and Israeli warships, including an aircraft carrier, passed through the Suez Canal on Friday and are headed for the Red Sea. “According to eyewitnesses, the U.S. battleships were the largest to have crossed the Canal in many years,” reported the London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi on Saturday.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Egyptian opposition HERE...members criticized the government for cooperating with the U.S. and Israeli forces and allowing the passage of the ships through Egyptian territorial waters. The Red Sea is the most direct route to the Persian Gulf from the Mediterranean.
Retired Egyptian General Amin Radi, chairman of the national security affairs committee, told the paper that “the decision to declare war on Iran is not easy, and Israel, due to its wild nature, may start a war just to remain the sole nuclear power in the region,” according to Yedioth Internet HERE..., an Israeli news site.
The passage of a warship armada through the Suez Canal and headed for the Persian Gulf and Iran is apparently not deemed important enough to be reported by the corporate media in the United States.
Egypt recently rejected an Israeli request to prevent Gaza aid ships from passing through the Suez Canal. According to a report by al-Jazeera, HERE... Israel appealed to Egyptians asking them to prevent the passage of Iranian ships through the Suez Canal. The Egyptians responded that due to international agreements on movement through the Suez Canal, Egypt cannot prevent ships from passing through the canal unless a ship belongs to a state that is at war with Egypt. Iran and Egypt are not at war.
The United States and Israel, the sole nuclear-armed power in the Middle East, have not ruled out a military strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.
A number of Israeli politicians and scholars have admitted Israel has used its nuclear weapons for “compellent purposes,” in short forcing others to accept Israeli political demands HERE....
Israel’s threats to use nuclear weapons have increased significantly since it was discovered in 2002 that Iran was building uranium enrichment facilities. Israel’s former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon “called on the international community to target Iran as soon as the imminent conflict with Iraq is complete,” the Sunday Times HERE...reported on November 5, 2002. The United States invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003.
Earlier this month Israel leaked to the press that they had permission from Saudi Arabia to use their air space to attack Iran. “In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran,” the Sunday Times reported on June 12. On June 14, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to UK Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf issued a categorical denial of the report.
On June 17, Iran’s parliament warned it will respond in kind to inspection of its ships under a fourth round of sanctions imposed on the country by the UN Security Council. “Even if one Iranian ship is stopped for security-check, we will act likewise and thoroughly inspect any (western) ship passing through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Hossein Ebrahimi said.
Also on Saturday, Iran accused the United States of “deception” and insisted its missile program is for self-defense after a top U.S. official claimed that Iran had the capacity to attack Europe. “The Islamic Republic’s missile capability has been designed and implemented to defend against any military aggression and it does not threaten any nation,” Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi HERE...said in a statement carried by state media.
Vahidi announced on April 10 that Iran will use all available options to defend itself if the country comes under a military attack. “Americans have said they will use all options against Iran, we announce that we will use all options to defend ourselves,” Vahidi told the Tehran Times HERE....
Infowars.com
June 19, 2010
More than twelve U.S. and Israeli warships, including an aircraft carrier, passed through the Suez Canal on Friday and are headed for the Red Sea. “According to eyewitnesses, the U.S. battleships were the largest to have crossed the Canal in many years,” reported the London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi on Saturday.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Egyptian opposition HERE...members criticized the government for cooperating with the U.S. and Israeli forces and allowing the passage of the ships through Egyptian territorial waters. The Red Sea is the most direct route to the Persian Gulf from the Mediterranean.
Retired Egyptian General Amin Radi, chairman of the national security affairs committee, told the paper that “the decision to declare war on Iran is not easy, and Israel, due to its wild nature, may start a war just to remain the sole nuclear power in the region,” according to Yedioth Internet HERE..., an Israeli news site.
The passage of a warship armada through the Suez Canal and headed for the Persian Gulf and Iran is apparently not deemed important enough to be reported by the corporate media in the United States.
Egypt recently rejected an Israeli request to prevent Gaza aid ships from passing through the Suez Canal. According to a report by al-Jazeera, HERE... Israel appealed to Egyptians asking them to prevent the passage of Iranian ships through the Suez Canal. The Egyptians responded that due to international agreements on movement through the Suez Canal, Egypt cannot prevent ships from passing through the canal unless a ship belongs to a state that is at war with Egypt. Iran and Egypt are not at war.
The United States and Israel, the sole nuclear-armed power in the Middle East, have not ruled out a military strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.
A number of Israeli politicians and scholars have admitted Israel has used its nuclear weapons for “compellent purposes,” in short forcing others to accept Israeli political demands HERE....
Israel’s threats to use nuclear weapons have increased significantly since it was discovered in 2002 that Iran was building uranium enrichment facilities. Israel’s former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon “called on the international community to target Iran as soon as the imminent conflict with Iraq is complete,” the Sunday Times HERE...reported on November 5, 2002. The United States invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003.
Earlier this month Israel leaked to the press that they had permission from Saudi Arabia to use their air space to attack Iran. “In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran,” the Sunday Times reported on June 12. On June 14, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to UK Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf issued a categorical denial of the report.
On June 17, Iran’s parliament warned it will respond in kind to inspection of its ships under a fourth round of sanctions imposed on the country by the UN Security Council. “Even if one Iranian ship is stopped for security-check, we will act likewise and thoroughly inspect any (western) ship passing through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Hossein Ebrahimi said.
Also on Saturday, Iran accused the United States of “deception” and insisted its missile program is for self-defense after a top U.S. official claimed that Iran had the capacity to attack Europe. “The Islamic Republic’s missile capability has been designed and implemented to defend against any military aggression and it does not threaten any nation,” Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi HERE...said in a statement carried by state media.
Vahidi announced on April 10 that Iran will use all available options to defend itself if the country comes under a military attack. “Americans have said they will use all options against Iran, we announce that we will use all options to defend ourselves,” Vahidi told the Tehran Times HERE....
Analysts: Israel viewed as world's 6th nuclear power
After PM Netanyahu withdraws from upcoming nuclear summit in Washington, analysts at Jane's Defense Weekly estimate Jewish state has between 100 and 300 nuclear warheads, adding that weapons can be fully functional 'in a matter of days'
AFP
Published: 04.10.10, 10:10 / Israel News
Israel, whose prime minister withdrew Friday from next week's US-hosted nuclear summit, is viewed as the sixth country to have acquired nuclear weapons -- a title it has neither denied nor confirmed.
The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) estimates Israel has "up to 200" warheads delivered on land-based short-range Jericho 1 and medium-range Jericho 2 missiles.
The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a US advocacy group co-created by Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, puts the figure at 100 to 200.
Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East with a program dating back to the 1950s under Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion.
It was developed with the help of France and is centered on the Dimona reactor in the southern Negev desert.
According to Jane's, the Israeli strategic force could be deployed by the Jericho 2 missile, which has a range of up to 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles), or the five-year-old Jericho 3, which reaches up to 7,800 kilometers.
It is also believed to be able to deploy by air, using F-16 fighter jets, and even by sea through its submarine fleet, providing an opportunity for a second strike if its land systems are attacked.
Israel acquired three diesel-powered Dolphin-class submarines in 1999-2000 which are capable of launching adapted Harpoon cruise missiles fitted with nuclear warheads.
In addition, Jane's says some observers believe Jerusalem has developed tactical nuclear weapons such as landmines and artillery shells.
"Some analysts believe that Israel probably keeps most, if not all, of its nuclear arsenal in an unassembled mode," the latest Jane's briefing says, adding that "fully functional weapons could be completed in a matter of days".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly withdrew Friday from next week's nuclear summit in Washington, underscoring Israeli reluctance to expose its own nuclear program to scrutiny.
AFP
Published: 04.10.10, 10:10 / Israel News
Israel, whose prime minister withdrew Friday from next week's US-hosted nuclear summit, is viewed as the sixth country to have acquired nuclear weapons -- a title it has neither denied nor confirmed.
The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) estimates Israel has "up to 200" warheads delivered on land-based short-range Jericho 1 and medium-range Jericho 2 missiles.
The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a US advocacy group co-created by Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, puts the figure at 100 to 200.
Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East with a program dating back to the 1950s under Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion.
It was developed with the help of France and is centered on the Dimona reactor in the southern Negev desert.
According to Jane's, the Israeli strategic force could be deployed by the Jericho 2 missile, which has a range of up to 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles), or the five-year-old Jericho 3, which reaches up to 7,800 kilometers.
It is also believed to be able to deploy by air, using F-16 fighter jets, and even by sea through its submarine fleet, providing an opportunity for a second strike if its land systems are attacked.
Israel acquired three diesel-powered Dolphin-class submarines in 1999-2000 which are capable of launching adapted Harpoon cruise missiles fitted with nuclear warheads.
In addition, Jane's says some observers believe Jerusalem has developed tactical nuclear weapons such as landmines and artillery shells.
"Some analysts believe that Israel probably keeps most, if not all, of its nuclear arsenal in an unassembled mode," the latest Jane's briefing says, adding that "fully functional weapons could be completed in a matter of days".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly withdrew Friday from next week's nuclear summit in Washington, underscoring Israeli reluctance to expose its own nuclear program to scrutiny.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Israeli Butchery at Sea An institutional failure of a morbid society
By Gilad Atzmon
May 31, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- As I write this piece the scale of the Israeli lethal slaughter at sea is yet to be clear. However we already know that at around 4am Gaza time, hundreds of IDF commandos stormed the Free Gaza international humanitarian fleet. We learn from the Arab press that at least 16 peace activists have been murdered and more than 50 were injured. Once again it is devastatingly obvious that Israel is not trying to hide its true nature: an inhuman murderous collective fueled by a psychosis and driven by paranoia.
For days the Israeli government prepared the Israeli society for the massacre at sea. It said that the Flotilla carried weapons, it had ‘terrorists’ on board. Only yesterday evening it occurred to me that this Israeli malicious media spin was there to prepare the Israeli public for a full scale Israeli deadly military operation in international waters. Make no mistake. If I knew exactly where Israel was heading and the possible
consequences, the Israeli cabinet and military elite were fully aware of it all the way along. What happened yesterday wasn’t just a pirate terrorist attack. It was actually murder in broad day light even though it happened in the dark.
Yesterday at 10 pm I contacted Free Gaza and shared with them everything I knew. I obviously grasped that hundreds of peace activists most of them elders, had very little chance against the Israeli killing machine. I was praying all night for our brothers and sisters. At 5am GMT the news broke to the world. In international waters Israel raided an innocent international convoy of boats carrying cement, paper and medical aid to the besieged Gazans. The Israelis were using live ammunition murdering and injuring everything around them.
Today we will see demonstrations around the world, we will see many events mourning our dead. We may even see some of Israel’s friends ‘posturing’ against the slaughter. Clearly this is not enough.
The massacre that took place yesterday was a premeditated Israeli operation. Israel wanted blood because it believes that its ‘power of deterrence’ expands with the more dead it leaves behind. The Israeli decision to use hundreds of commando soldiers against civilians was taken by the Israeli cabinet together with the Israeli top military commanders. What we saw yesterday wasn’t just a failure on the ground. It was actually an institutional failure of a morbid society that a long time ago lost touch with humanity.
It is no secret that Palestinians are living in a siege for years. But it is now down to the nations to move on and mount the ultimate pressure on Israel and its citizens. Since the massacre yesterday was committed by a popular army that followed instructions given by a ‘democratically elected’ government, from now on, every Israeli should be considered as a suspicious war criminal unless proved different.
Considering the fact that Israel stormed naval vessels sailing under Irish, Turkish and Greek flags. Both NATO members and EU countries must immediately cease their relationships with Israel and close their airspace to Israeli airplanes.
Considering yesterday’s news about Israeli nuclear submarines being stationed in the Gulf, the world must react quickly and severely. Israel is now officially mad and deadly. (Editor's bold emphasis throughout) The Jewish State is not just careless about human life, as we have been following the Israeli press campaign leading to the slaughter, Israel actually seeks pleasure in inflicting pain and devastation on others.
May 31, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- As I write this piece the scale of the Israeli lethal slaughter at sea is yet to be clear. However we already know that at around 4am Gaza time, hundreds of IDF commandos stormed the Free Gaza international humanitarian fleet. We learn from the Arab press that at least 16 peace activists have been murdered and more than 50 were injured. Once again it is devastatingly obvious that Israel is not trying to hide its true nature: an inhuman murderous collective fueled by a psychosis and driven by paranoia.
For days the Israeli government prepared the Israeli society for the massacre at sea. It said that the Flotilla carried weapons, it had ‘terrorists’ on board. Only yesterday evening it occurred to me that this Israeli malicious media spin was there to prepare the Israeli public for a full scale Israeli deadly military operation in international waters. Make no mistake. If I knew exactly where Israel was heading and the possible
consequences, the Israeli cabinet and military elite were fully aware of it all the way along. What happened yesterday wasn’t just a pirate terrorist attack. It was actually murder in broad day light even though it happened in the dark.
Yesterday at 10 pm I contacted Free Gaza and shared with them everything I knew. I obviously grasped that hundreds of peace activists most of them elders, had very little chance against the Israeli killing machine. I was praying all night for our brothers and sisters. At 5am GMT the news broke to the world. In international waters Israel raided an innocent international convoy of boats carrying cement, paper and medical aid to the besieged Gazans. The Israelis were using live ammunition murdering and injuring everything around them.
Today we will see demonstrations around the world, we will see many events mourning our dead. We may even see some of Israel’s friends ‘posturing’ against the slaughter. Clearly this is not enough.
The massacre that took place yesterday was a premeditated Israeli operation. Israel wanted blood because it believes that its ‘power of deterrence’ expands with the more dead it leaves behind. The Israeli decision to use hundreds of commando soldiers against civilians was taken by the Israeli cabinet together with the Israeli top military commanders. What we saw yesterday wasn’t just a failure on the ground. It was actually an institutional failure of a morbid society that a long time ago lost touch with humanity.
It is no secret that Palestinians are living in a siege for years. But it is now down to the nations to move on and mount the ultimate pressure on Israel and its citizens. Since the massacre yesterday was committed by a popular army that followed instructions given by a ‘democratically elected’ government, from now on, every Israeli should be considered as a suspicious war criminal unless proved different.
Considering the fact that Israel stormed naval vessels sailing under Irish, Turkish and Greek flags. Both NATO members and EU countries must immediately cease their relationships with Israel and close their airspace to Israeli airplanes.
Considering yesterday’s news about Israeli nuclear submarines being stationed in the Gulf, the world must react quickly and severely. Israel is now officially mad and deadly. (Editor's bold emphasis throughout) The Jewish State is not just careless about human life, as we have been following the Israeli press campaign leading to the slaughter, Israel actually seeks pleasure in inflicting pain and devastation on others.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower says Mossad involved in JFK Assassination
VANUNU SPEAKS: Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower Risks Jail to Talk Exclusively to AFP
By Christopher Bollyn
American Free Press
July 31, 2004
Mordechai Vanunu, Israel’s most famous dissident free after 18 years in prison, is ready to defy the severe restrictions imposed upon him by the Israeli military and tell the western media everything he knows about the Middle East’s largest secret arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. However, because the hidden stockpiles belong to Israel, no American news outlet is interested in discussing this, except American Free Press.
“I have sacrificed my freedom and risked my life in order to expose the danger of nuclear weapons, which threaten this whole region,” Vanunu said in an exclusive interview with American Free Press on July 28.
Vanunu spent 18 years in an Israeli prison—11 and a half of them in solitary confinement—for providing evidence of Israel’s nuclear arsenal to a British newspaper in 1986. “I acted on behalf of all citizens and all of humanity,” said Vanunu.
In October 1986, Vanunu, a nuclear technician who had worked at the Dimona Nuclear Power Plant in the Negev Desert for 10 years, traveled to London and gave photographic evidence to The Sunday Times that Israel was secretly developing nuclear weapons. Two months earlier he had converted to Christianity while traveling in Australia.
After having learned about the secret production of plutonium for nuclear weapons at Dimona, in 1985 Vanunu believed it was his responsibility to inform the citizens of the world that an arsenal of nuclear weapons was being created in Israel.
Vanunu provided evidence and described how Israel had built an arsenal of over 200 nuclear bombs and neutron bombs. Before The Times’s story was even published, however, Vanunu had been lured to Rome and kidnapped by Israeli secret service agents. A secret trial followed, and Vanunu was locked in a tiny, windowless cell for more than a decade.
When Vanunu was released from an Israeli prison on April 21, the Israeli military authorities imposed severe restrictions on his freedom. He is banned from leaving the country, confined to an assigned residence and denied the right to be in contact with journalists or foreigners.
The human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) protested the restrictions imposed on Vanunu saying on April 19: “Vanunu must not be subject to arbitrary restrictions and violations of his fundamental rights on the basis of pretexts or suspicions about what he may do in the future.”
The restrictions on Vanunu’s movement, speech and association violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Israel has ratified and is obliged to uphold, according to AI.
While Israeli officials contend the restrictions are to prevent Vanunu from divulging information about Israel’s nuclear arsenal, AI sees it differently:
“Israel’s determination to curtail Vanunu’s freedom and contact with the outside world seem to be intended to prevent him from revealing details of his abduction by Israeli secret service agents 18 years ago in Rome in what was clearly an unlawful act,” AI said.
According to Jonathan Cook of The Guardian in Britain, Vanunu’s brother, Meir, who lives with him at St. George’s, says there is another motive for the restrictions and confinement of Israel’s most famous dissident: Vanunu’s release brings attention to Israel’s nuclear arsenal at precisely the moment when the justification for attacking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq—his possession of weapons of mass destruction—is shown to have been hollow.
“If Vanunu were free to talk, he might remind the world that the greatest threat to Middle East peace comes not from Baghdad but from Tel Aviv,” Cook wrote. “That is a message neither America nor Britain wants to hear right now.”
The same controlled U.S. media networks that sent embedded reporters into combat in Iraq and published false reports about that nation’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, are seemingly afraid to go to St. George’s Cathedral in East Jerusalem and interview Vanunu, Israel’s most famous dissident and peace activist, for fear of crossing a line drawn by the Israeli military.
American Free Press, however, and the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al Hayat have interviewed Vanunu recently from St. George’s, where he has sought asylum in the Anglican church compound a short distance from the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem.
BEHIND THE JFK ASSASSINATION (Editor's bold emphasis throughout)
Comments made by Vanunu during an interview with Al Hayat’s weekly magazine Al Wassat, published on July 25, made headlines around the world but were completely ignored in the United States, where they could have caused immense political damage to Israel. As The Jerusalem Post’s article headline read, “Vanunu: Israel behind JFK assassination.”
Russia’s Pravda article of July 27 began: “Israel may be implicated in the biggest crime of the past century, which took place in Dallas in 1963.”
Iran’s Tehran Times, writing from Jerusalem, said: “In a startling accusation, nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu has alleged that Jerusalem was behind the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who was exerting pressure on the then Israeli head of state to shed light on the Dimona nuclear plant.”
Similar articles appeared in newspapers around the world, but in the United States this explosive news was only reported by wire services and in Jewish newspapers.
Vanunu’s comments that there are “near-certain indications” that Israel was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy support the thesis of Michael Collins Piper, presented in his book Final Judgment, that Israeli agents played a key role in the murder.
AFP asked Vanunu to explain his comments about Israeli involvement in the murder of President Kennedy.
“My view is that Kennedy was assassinated because of his strong opposition to [Israeli prime minister] Ben Gurion,” Vanunu said.
At the time, Ben Gurion was working to create a nuclear arsenal for Israel.
The group that was involved with Ben Gurion in developing and protecting Israel’s nuclear arsenal “was behind the assassination of Kennedy,” Vanunu said.
As Piper documents in Final Judgment, Kennedy’s resistance to Israel becoming a nuclear-armed state led to increasing hostility between the two leaders until Ben Gurion resigned in June 1963. Kennedy had realized that the Israelis were producing illegal nuclear weapons from the nuclear reactor given to Israel in 1959 under the “Atoms for Peace” program.
In the Al Wassat interview, Vanunu said: “Israel possesses between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons, including a neutron bomb and hydrogen bombs, which are tenfold in their effect. If an atomic bomb can kill 100,000 people then the hydrogen bomb can kill a million."
“We do not know which irresponsible Israeli prime minister will take office and decide to use nuclear weapons in the struggle against neighboring Arab countries,” The Jerusalem Post reported Vanunu having said. “What has already been exposed about the weapons Israel is holding [is that they] can destroy the region and kill millions.”
A ‘SECOND CHERNOBYL’
Vanunu also warned of the environmental dangers of nuclear leaks at Israel’s antiquated nuclear facility at Dimona. An earthquake or nuclear accident at Dimona could result in the “leaking of nuclear radiation, threatening millions of people in neighboring countries,” Vanunu said.
Jordan, in particular, was mentioned as being in danger of nuclear contamination. “Dimona’s chimneys do not operate unless the winds blow in the direction of Jordan,” Vanunu said.
A Jordanian government spokesman, Asma Khader, responded promptly to Vanunu’s claim, saying, “The kingdom is free of radiation.”
Vanunu also criticized the recent visit to Israel of Mohamed El Baradei, head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“I am very disappointed by Mr. El Baradei because I expected him to go and inspect the Dimona reactor,” Vanunu said. “The job of Mr. Baradei is to go and see if what I said . . . if it’s true.”
Vanunu stressed to AFP his strong desire to speak with the media despite the restrictions, and provide them with information and his views on the need for peace—and a nuclear-free Middle East.
Asked if the U.S. media was interested in meeting him, Vanunu said “not one” American or British newspaper or television network had visited him at St. George’s since his release from prison.
“Why are they in silence?” Vanunu asked AFP about the U.S. media. “Why is the press not coming to see me? The media should bring my case to the people and the politicians. This case must be heard.”
Linda Rothstein, editor of the Chicago-based Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, however, showed little interest in Vanunu’s story, saying that Vanunu has his supporters and that the Bulletin is not an advocacy group.
Likewise, Kay Seok of Human Rights Watch said that there was nothing they could do. “Nobody at HRW is working on Israel right now,” she said.
WANTS OUT OF ISRAEL
Vanunu desperately wants to leave Israel, where he is viewed as a traitor, and seek political asylum in the United States. Nick and Mary Eoloff of St. Paul, Minnesota, have formally adopted Vanunu and are ready to provide him sanctuary.
Mrs. Eoloff told AFP that Vanunu’s life is in danger in Israel.
“I want to go abroad and start my life as a free man,” Vanunu said after Israel’s high court upheld the military’s restrictions on his movement and freedom. “If Israel is a democracy, it should allow me to do it.”
Asked if he had been tortured during his 18 years in prison, Vanunu said, “Of course.”
He said he had been subjected to “mental and psychological torture” that was “cruel and barbaric.”
Because he had converted to Christianity he had received worse treatment than Jewish prisoners, he said. Vanunu said he had been treated like a Palestinian and that his captors had tried to “destroy” him.
“I am a symbol of the will of freedom,” he said. “You cannot break the human spirit.”
Asked about his supporters in the United States, Vanunu said: “I need their support to get me out. Americans should raise their voices with their congressmen and ask them in a loud voice to visit me and bring attention to my case."
“My country is not Israel,” Vanunu said. “I want to be free and to leave Israel.”
“Israel does not respect my basic human rights,” Vanunu said. “I am denied the freedom of movement and freedom of speech—like all Palestinians. I want peace and freedom from all nuclear weapons in the Middle East.”
For further background, read the following related article:
THE MOSSAD AND THE JFK ASSASSINATION
circa 2003,
original on-line version HERE...
"Israel need not apologize for the assassination
or destruction of those who seek to destroy it.
The first order of business for any country
is the protection of its people."
Washington Jewish Week, October 9, 1997
In March, 1992, Illinois Representative Paul Findley said in The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, "It is interesting - but not surprising - to note that in all the words written and uttered about the Kennedy assassination, Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, has never been mentioned."
Considering that the Mossad is quite possibly the most ruthless and efficient intelligence agency in the world, it is peculiar that they have never been scrutinized in relation to the Kennedy assassination, especially when practically every other entity in the world (short of Elvis impersonators) has been implicated. But that all changed in January, 1994 with the release of Michael Collins Piper's Final Judgment. In this book, Piper says, "Israel's Mossad was a primary (and critical) behind the scenes player in the conspiracy that ended the life of JFK. Through its own vast resources and through its international contacts in the intelligence community and in organized crime, Israel had the means, it had the opportunity, and it had the motive to play a major frontline role in the crime of the century - and it did."
Their motive? Israel's much touted Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who ruled that country from its inception in 1948 until he resigned on June 16, 1963, was so enraged at John F. Kennedy for not allowing Israel to become a nuclear power that, Collins asserts, in his final days in office he commanded the Mossad to become involved in a plot to kill America's president.
Ben-Gurion was so convinced that Israel's very survival was in dire jeopardy that in one of his final letters to JFK he said, "Mr. President, my people have the right to exist, and this existence is in danger."
In the days leading up to Ben-Gurion's resignation from office, he and JFK had been involved in an unpublicized, contentious debate over the possibility of Israel getting nuclear capabilities. Their disagreement eventually escalated into a full-fledged war of words that was virtually ignored in the press. Ethan Bronner wrote about this secret battle between JFK and Ben-Gurion years later in a New York Times article on October 31, 1998, calling it a "fiercely hidden subject." In fact, the Kennedy/Ben-Gurion conversations are still classified by the United States Government. Maybe this is the case because Ben-Gurion's rage and frustration became so intense - and his power so great within Israel - that Piper contends it was at the center of the conspiracy to kill John Kennedy. This stance is supported by New York banker Abe Feinberg, who describes the situation as such: "Ben-Gurion could be vicious, and he had such a hatred of the old man [Joe Kennedy, Sr., JFK's father]." Ben-Gurion despised Joe Kennedy because he felt that not only was he an anti-Semite, but that he had also sided with Hitler during the 1930's and 40's. [We will touch upon this aspect of the story in an upcoming article entitled The CIA and Organized Crime: Two Sides of the Same Coin].
Anyway, Ben-Gurion was convinced that Israel needed nuclear weapons to insure its survival, while Kennedy was dead-set against it. This inability to reach an agreement caused obvious problems. One of them revolved around Kennedy's decision that he would make America his top priority in regard to foreign policy, and not Israel! Kennedy planned to honor the 1950 Tripartite Declaration which said that the United States would retaliate against any nation in the Middle East that attacked any other country. Ben-Gurion, on the other hand, wanted the Kennedy Administration to sell them offensive weapons, particularly Hawk missiles.
The two leaders thus engaged in a brutal letter exchange, but Kennedy wouldn't budge. Ben-Gurion, obsessed by this issue, slipped into total paranoia, feeling that Kennedy's abstinence was a blatant threat to the very existence of Israel as a nation. Piper writes, "Ben-Gurion had devoted a lifetime creating a Jewish State and guiding it into the world arena. And, in Ben-Gurion's eyes, John F. Kennedy was an enemy of the Jewish people and his beloved state of Israel." He continues, "The 'nuclear option' was not only at the very core of Ben-Gurion's personal world view, but the very foundation of Israel's national security policy."
Ben-Gurion was so preoccupied with obtaining nuclear weapons that on June 27, 1963, eleven days after resigning from office, he announced, "I do not know of any other nation whose neighbors declare that they wish to terminate it, and not only declare, but prepare for it by all means available to them. We must have no illusions that what is declared every day in Cairo, Damascus, and Iraq are just words. This is the thought that guides the Arab leaders … I am confident … that science is able to provide us with the weapons that will serve the peace and deter our enemies."
Avner Cohen, in Israel and the Bomb, published by Columbia University Press, reinforces this sense of urgency by writing, "Imbued with lessons of the Holocaust, Ben-Gurion was consumed by fears of security … Anxiety about the Holocaust reached beyond Ben-Gurion to infuse Israel's military thinking." He further adds fuel to this point by pointing out, "Ben-Gurion had no qualms about Israel's need for weapons of mass destruction," and "Ben-Gurion's world view and his decisive governing style shaped his critical role in instigating Israel's nuclear progress."
Kennedy, on the other hand, was adamant in his refusal to promote Israel's ascension to the nuclear stage. Avener Cohen, in Israel and the Bomb, stresses, "No American president was more concerned with the danger of nuclear proliferation than John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He was convinced that the spread of nuclear weapons would make the world more dangerous and undermine U.S. interests." Cohen continues at the end of this passage, "The only example Kennedy used to make this point was Israel."
Realizing that Kennedy would not change his mind, Ben-Gurion decided to join forces with Communist China. Both countries were greatly interested in creating nuclear programs, and so began their secret joint dealings. Working in unison through intermediary Shaul Eisenberg, who was a partner of Mossad gun-runner and accountant Tibor Rosenbaum, Israel and China proceeded to develop their own nuclear capabilities without the knowledge of the United States.
If you find this scenario improbable, I strongly urge you to read Gordon Thomas' excellent book, Seeds of Fire, where he exposes how the Mossad and CSIS (Chinese secret service) have conspired on many occasions to not only steal American military secrets, but to also doctor U.S. intelligence programs such as the Justice Department's PROMISE software. This instance, I am afraid to say, is but the first where echoes of the JFK assassination can still be felt today reverberating through our post 9-11 world. The danger of Israel developing the Bomb in unison with China became a highly volatile situation, and was closely monitored by the CIA.
Intent on pursuing this path, the Israeli's constructed a nuclear facility at Dimona. When Kennedy demanded that the U.S. inspect this plant, Ben-Gurion was so incensed that he erected another PHONY facility that held no evidence of nuclear research and development. (Does this scenario sound eerily familiar to the game we're playing with Saddam Hussein in Iraq right now?) Fully aware of their shenanigans, though, JFK told Charles Bartlett, "The sons of bitches lie to me constantly about their nuclear capability."
Avner Cohen, in Israel and the Bomb, reiterates this claim by saying that Ben-Gurion had taken the nuclear issue so closely to heart that he, "concluded that he could not tell the truth about Dimona to American leaders, not even in private."
Dr. Gerald M. Steinberg, political science professor at Bar-Ilan University's BESA Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, weighs in by saying, "Between 1961 and 1963, the Kennedy administration placed a great deal of pressure on Ben-Gurion in the effort to pressure for acceptance of international inspection of Dimona and Israeli abdication of their nuclear weapons. This pressure apparently did not alter Israeli policy, but it was a contributing factor to Ben-Gurion's resignation in 1963."
To convey how serious this situation had become in modern terms, look at what is happening in Iraq with United Nations security teams inspecting the royal palaces and bunkers for nuclear weapons and materials. This matter is so urgent that our nation is on the verge of war. Forty years earlier, the heat that JFK was placing on Ben-Gurion was equally as strong as what George Bush is laying on Saddam Hussein today.
In Israel and the Bomb, Avner Cohen reinforces this point. "To force Ben-Gurion to accept the conditions, Kennedy exerted the most useful leverage available to an American president in dealing with Israel: a threat that an unsatisfactory solution would jeopardize the U.S. government's commitment to, and support of, Israel."
The pressure on Ben-Gurion was so immense that he ended up leaving office. But Kennedy, in true pit-bull style, didn't let up on Ben-Gurion's successor, Levi Eshkol, as Avner Cohen reports. "Kennedy told Eshkol that the U.S. commitment and support of Israel 'could be seriously jeopardized' if Israel did not let the U.S. obtain 'reliable information' about its efforts in the nuclear field. Kennedy's demands were unprecedented. They amounted, in effect, to an ultimatum." Cohen concludes this thought by asserting, "Kennedy's letter precipitated a near-crisis situation in Eshkol's office."
In the end, as we're all aware, Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963; but less known is that China conducted its first nuclear test in October, 1964. What makes this event more profound is Piper's claim that even though Israel said its first nuclear tests took place in 1979, they actually occurred in October, 1964 along with the Chinese! If this is true, other than August, 1945 when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, October 1964 may possibly be the most dangerous month in 20th century history.
Let's return, though, to JFK's assassination and the direct results of it in regard to the Jewish lobby, American foreign policy, and the militarization of Israel. To understand how powerful the Israeli lobby is in this country, venerable Senator J. William Fulbright told CBS Face the Nation on April 15, 1973, "Israel controls the U.S. Senate. The Senate is subservient, much too much; we should be more concerned about U.S. interests rather than doing the bidding of Israel. The great majority of the Senate of the U.S. - somewhere around 80% - is completely in support of Israel; anything Israel wants; Israel gets. This has been demonstrated time and again, and this has made [foreign policy] difficult for our government."
Do you hear what Senator Fulbright said? This isn't a crazy conspiracy theorist or a KKK anti-Semite. It's a much-respected U.S. Senator saying that about 80% of the Senate is in Israel's hip pocket. Adding clout to this argument is Rep. Paul Findley, who was quoted in The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs in March, 1992, "During John Kennedy's campaign for the presidency, a group of New York Jews had privately offered to meet his campaign expenses if he would let them set his Middle East policy. He did not agree … As the president, he provided only limited support of Israel."
To understand how important Kennedy's decisions were during his short-lived presidency, we need to look at the issue of campaign finance. Considering how influential the Israeli lobby is in the U.S. Senate (hearkening back to the words of Senator Fulbright), they had to have been enraged when President Kennedy genuinely wanted to cut the knees out from under the current campaign finance methods because it made politicians so reliant upon the huge cash inlays of special-interest groups. Regrettably, Kennedy did not have the time to implement this program, and to this day our political system is still monopolized by lobbyists from the very same special-interest groups. One can only imagine what changes would have occurred in regard to our foreign policy had Kennedy eradicated these vipers and blood-suckers from the halls of Congress.
Tragically, Kennedy's ideas never came to fruition, and his heated battle with Prime Minister Ben-Gurion over whether Israel should be allowed to develop a nuclear program was ultimately lost. The reason why is that Lyndon Baines Johnson, who Kennedy intended to drop from his ticket in 1964 due to his extreme dislike for, had a complete reversal in foreign policy. As you will see, not only did Israel's nuclear program move ahead unchecked; they also became the primary beneficiary of our foreign aid.
But this absolute turnaround would not have occurred if Kennedy would not have been assassinated. Up until LBJ became president, Kennedy dealt with the Middle East in a way that most benefited the U.S. His primary goal - and one which would most keep the peace - was a balance of power in the Middle East so that each and every nation would be secure. This decision adhered to the Tripartite Declaration which the U.S. signed in 1950. But under the Johnson administration, this fragile balance was overturned, and by 1967 - only four years after Kennedy's assassination - the U.S. was Israel's main weapons supplier, and OUR best interests were put well behind those of Israel!
As Michael Collins Piper writes: "The bottom line is this: JFK was adamantly determined to stop Israel from building the nuclear bomb. LBJ simply looked the other way. JFK's death did indeed prove beneficial to Israel's nuclear ambitions and the evidence proves it."
Reuven Pedatzer, in a review of Avner Cohen's Israel and the Bomb, in the Israeli Newspaper Ha'aretz on February 5, 1999 wrote, "The murder of American president John F. Kennedy brought to an abrupt end the massive pressure being applied by the U.S. administration on the government of Israel to discontinue their nuclear program." He continues, "Kennedy made it quite clear to the Israeli Prime Minister that he would not under any circumstances agree to Israel becoming a nuclear state." Pedatzer concludes, "Had Kennedy remained alive, it is doubtful whether Israel would today have a nuclear option," and that, "Ben-Gurion's decision to resign in 1963 was taken to a large extent against the background of the tremendous pressure that Kennedy was applying on him concerning the nuclear issue."
If you're still not convinced; how about some numbers? In Kennedy's last fiscal budget year of 1964, Israeli aid was $40 million. In LBJ's first budget of 1965, it soared to $71 million, and in 1966 more than tripled from two years earlier to $130 million! Plus, during Kennedy's administration, almost none of our aid to Israel was military in nature. Instead, it was split equally between development loans and food assistance under the PL480 Program. Yet in 1965 under the Johnson administration, 20% of our aid to Israel was for the military, while in 1966, 71% was used for war-related materials.
Continuing in this same vein, in 1963 the Kennedy administration sold 5 Hawk missiles to Israel as part of an air-defense system. In 1965-66, though, LBJ laid 250 tanks on Israel, 48 Skyhawk attack aircrafts, plus guns and artillery which were all offensive in nature. If you ever wondered when the Israeli War Machine was created, this is it! LBJ was its father.
According to Stephen Green in Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel, "The $92 million in military assistance provided in fiscal year 1966 was greater than the total of all official military aid provided to Israel cumulatively in all the years going back to the foundation of that nation in 1948."
Green continues, "70% of all U.S. official assistance to Israel has been military. America has given Israel over $17 billion in military aid since 1946, virtually all of which - over 99% - has been provided since 1965."
Can you see what's happening here? Within two years of JFK's assassination, Israel went from being a weak, outmatched member of the volatile Middle Eastern community that was not allowed to develop nuclear weapons to one that was well on its way to becoming a undeniable military force on the world stage. John Kennedy adamantly put his foot down and refused to allow Israel to develop a nuclear program, while LBJ bent over backward to facilitate and bolster them. Or, as Seymour Hersh wrote in The Samson Option, "By 1968, the president had no intention of doing anything to stop the Israeli bomb."
The result of this shift in focus from the Kennedy to Johnson administration is, in my opinion, the PRIMARY reason behind our current troubles in the Middle East which culminated in the 9-11 attacks and our upcoming war with Iraq (and beyond). I have a great deal of confidence in this statement, for as Michael Collins Piper points out, here are the results of John F. Kennedy's assassination:
1) Our foreign and military aid to Israel increased dramatically once LBJ became president.
2) Rather than trying to maintain a BALANCE in the Middle East, Israel suddenly emerged as the dominant force.
3) Since the LBJ administration, Israel has always had weaponry that was superior to any of its direct neighbors.
4) Due to this undeniable and obvious increase in Israel's War Machine, a constant struggle has been perpetuated in the Middle East.
5) LBJ also allowed Israel to proceed with its nuclear development, resulting in them becoming the 6th largest nuclear force in the world.
6) Finally, our huge outlays of foreign aid to Israel (approximately $10 billion/year when all is said and done) has created a situation of never-ending attacks and retaliation in the Middle East, plus outright scorn and enmity against the U.S. for playing the role of Israel's military enabler. (Editor's bold emphasis throughout)
In Israel's, and especially David Ben-Gurion's eyes then, what were their alternatives - to remain weakened (or at least balanced) in relation to their neighbors and handcuffed by JFK's refusal to bow to their will, or KILL the one man standing in their way to becoming dominant in the Middle East, the recipient of huge amounts of military aid, and one of the premier nuclear forces in the world? It's something to think about. Also, while these thoughts are running through your head, ask yourself this question. If Kennedy, LBJ, and all subsequent administrations would have adhered to the 1950 Tripartite Declaration and did everything in their power to maintain balance in the Middle East instead of pushing Israel to the forefront, would our Towers have been attacked on 9-11, 2001, and would we be on the verge of a possibly catastrophic war today? It's certainly something to ponder.
Editor's NOTE:
While I am convinced (to a metaphysical certainty) that JFK was murdered by his National Security State (participants in the actual conspiratorial deed were members of the CIA, the US Secret Service, elements of the US military command structure, certain anti-Cuban exiles and members of organized crime) I am not sure beyond reasonable doubt (BRD) that the Israeli Mossad participated in the JFK Assassination despite the fact that right wing elements in Israel were incensed at Kennedy's opposition to Israel's nuclear weapons development program.
In my opinion a possible Mossad role (logistical or participatory) in the JFK Assassination is suggested but not highly probable based on current evidence and the question/hypothesis requires significant further research.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
By Christopher Bollyn
American Free Press
July 31, 2004
Mordechai Vanunu, Israel’s most famous dissident free after 18 years in prison, is ready to defy the severe restrictions imposed upon him by the Israeli military and tell the western media everything he knows about the Middle East’s largest secret arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. However, because the hidden stockpiles belong to Israel, no American news outlet is interested in discussing this, except American Free Press.
“I have sacrificed my freedom and risked my life in order to expose the danger of nuclear weapons, which threaten this whole region,” Vanunu said in an exclusive interview with American Free Press on July 28.
Vanunu spent 18 years in an Israeli prison—11 and a half of them in solitary confinement—for providing evidence of Israel’s nuclear arsenal to a British newspaper in 1986. “I acted on behalf of all citizens and all of humanity,” said Vanunu.
In October 1986, Vanunu, a nuclear technician who had worked at the Dimona Nuclear Power Plant in the Negev Desert for 10 years, traveled to London and gave photographic evidence to The Sunday Times that Israel was secretly developing nuclear weapons. Two months earlier he had converted to Christianity while traveling in Australia.
After having learned about the secret production of plutonium for nuclear weapons at Dimona, in 1985 Vanunu believed it was his responsibility to inform the citizens of the world that an arsenal of nuclear weapons was being created in Israel.
Vanunu provided evidence and described how Israel had built an arsenal of over 200 nuclear bombs and neutron bombs. Before The Times’s story was even published, however, Vanunu had been lured to Rome and kidnapped by Israeli secret service agents. A secret trial followed, and Vanunu was locked in a tiny, windowless cell for more than a decade.
When Vanunu was released from an Israeli prison on April 21, the Israeli military authorities imposed severe restrictions on his freedom. He is banned from leaving the country, confined to an assigned residence and denied the right to be in contact with journalists or foreigners.
The human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) protested the restrictions imposed on Vanunu saying on April 19: “Vanunu must not be subject to arbitrary restrictions and violations of his fundamental rights on the basis of pretexts or suspicions about what he may do in the future.”
The restrictions on Vanunu’s movement, speech and association violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Israel has ratified and is obliged to uphold, according to AI.
While Israeli officials contend the restrictions are to prevent Vanunu from divulging information about Israel’s nuclear arsenal, AI sees it differently:
“Israel’s determination to curtail Vanunu’s freedom and contact with the outside world seem to be intended to prevent him from revealing details of his abduction by Israeli secret service agents 18 years ago in Rome in what was clearly an unlawful act,” AI said.
According to Jonathan Cook of The Guardian in Britain, Vanunu’s brother, Meir, who lives with him at St. George’s, says there is another motive for the restrictions and confinement of Israel’s most famous dissident: Vanunu’s release brings attention to Israel’s nuclear arsenal at precisely the moment when the justification for attacking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq—his possession of weapons of mass destruction—is shown to have been hollow.
“If Vanunu were free to talk, he might remind the world that the greatest threat to Middle East peace comes not from Baghdad but from Tel Aviv,” Cook wrote. “That is a message neither America nor Britain wants to hear right now.”
The same controlled U.S. media networks that sent embedded reporters into combat in Iraq and published false reports about that nation’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, are seemingly afraid to go to St. George’s Cathedral in East Jerusalem and interview Vanunu, Israel’s most famous dissident and peace activist, for fear of crossing a line drawn by the Israeli military.
American Free Press, however, and the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al Hayat have interviewed Vanunu recently from St. George’s, where he has sought asylum in the Anglican church compound a short distance from the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem.
BEHIND THE JFK ASSASSINATION (Editor's bold emphasis throughout)
Comments made by Vanunu during an interview with Al Hayat’s weekly magazine Al Wassat, published on July 25, made headlines around the world but were completely ignored in the United States, where they could have caused immense political damage to Israel. As The Jerusalem Post’s article headline read, “Vanunu: Israel behind JFK assassination.”
Russia’s Pravda article of July 27 began: “Israel may be implicated in the biggest crime of the past century, which took place in Dallas in 1963.”
Iran’s Tehran Times, writing from Jerusalem, said: “In a startling accusation, nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu has alleged that Jerusalem was behind the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who was exerting pressure on the then Israeli head of state to shed light on the Dimona nuclear plant.”
Similar articles appeared in newspapers around the world, but in the United States this explosive news was only reported by wire services and in Jewish newspapers.
Vanunu’s comments that there are “near-certain indications” that Israel was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy support the thesis of Michael Collins Piper, presented in his book Final Judgment, that Israeli agents played a key role in the murder.
AFP asked Vanunu to explain his comments about Israeli involvement in the murder of President Kennedy.
“My view is that Kennedy was assassinated because of his strong opposition to [Israeli prime minister] Ben Gurion,” Vanunu said.
At the time, Ben Gurion was working to create a nuclear arsenal for Israel.
The group that was involved with Ben Gurion in developing and protecting Israel’s nuclear arsenal “was behind the assassination of Kennedy,” Vanunu said.
As Piper documents in Final Judgment, Kennedy’s resistance to Israel becoming a nuclear-armed state led to increasing hostility between the two leaders until Ben Gurion resigned in June 1963. Kennedy had realized that the Israelis were producing illegal nuclear weapons from the nuclear reactor given to Israel in 1959 under the “Atoms for Peace” program.
In the Al Wassat interview, Vanunu said: “Israel possesses between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons, including a neutron bomb and hydrogen bombs, which are tenfold in their effect. If an atomic bomb can kill 100,000 people then the hydrogen bomb can kill a million."
“We do not know which irresponsible Israeli prime minister will take office and decide to use nuclear weapons in the struggle against neighboring Arab countries,” The Jerusalem Post reported Vanunu having said. “What has already been exposed about the weapons Israel is holding [is that they] can destroy the region and kill millions.”
A ‘SECOND CHERNOBYL’
Vanunu also warned of the environmental dangers of nuclear leaks at Israel’s antiquated nuclear facility at Dimona. An earthquake or nuclear accident at Dimona could result in the “leaking of nuclear radiation, threatening millions of people in neighboring countries,” Vanunu said.
Jordan, in particular, was mentioned as being in danger of nuclear contamination. “Dimona’s chimneys do not operate unless the winds blow in the direction of Jordan,” Vanunu said.
A Jordanian government spokesman, Asma Khader, responded promptly to Vanunu’s claim, saying, “The kingdom is free of radiation.”
Vanunu also criticized the recent visit to Israel of Mohamed El Baradei, head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“I am very disappointed by Mr. El Baradei because I expected him to go and inspect the Dimona reactor,” Vanunu said. “The job of Mr. Baradei is to go and see if what I said . . . if it’s true.”
Vanunu stressed to AFP his strong desire to speak with the media despite the restrictions, and provide them with information and his views on the need for peace—and a nuclear-free Middle East.
Asked if the U.S. media was interested in meeting him, Vanunu said “not one” American or British newspaper or television network had visited him at St. George’s since his release from prison.
“Why are they in silence?” Vanunu asked AFP about the U.S. media. “Why is the press not coming to see me? The media should bring my case to the people and the politicians. This case must be heard.”
Linda Rothstein, editor of the Chicago-based Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, however, showed little interest in Vanunu’s story, saying that Vanunu has his supporters and that the Bulletin is not an advocacy group.
Likewise, Kay Seok of Human Rights Watch said that there was nothing they could do. “Nobody at HRW is working on Israel right now,” she said.
WANTS OUT OF ISRAEL
Vanunu desperately wants to leave Israel, where he is viewed as a traitor, and seek political asylum in the United States. Nick and Mary Eoloff of St. Paul, Minnesota, have formally adopted Vanunu and are ready to provide him sanctuary.
Mrs. Eoloff told AFP that Vanunu’s life is in danger in Israel.
“I want to go abroad and start my life as a free man,” Vanunu said after Israel’s high court upheld the military’s restrictions on his movement and freedom. “If Israel is a democracy, it should allow me to do it.”
Asked if he had been tortured during his 18 years in prison, Vanunu said, “Of course.”
He said he had been subjected to “mental and psychological torture” that was “cruel and barbaric.”
Because he had converted to Christianity he had received worse treatment than Jewish prisoners, he said. Vanunu said he had been treated like a Palestinian and that his captors had tried to “destroy” him.
“I am a symbol of the will of freedom,” he said. “You cannot break the human spirit.”
Asked about his supporters in the United States, Vanunu said: “I need their support to get me out. Americans should raise their voices with their congressmen and ask them in a loud voice to visit me and bring attention to my case."
“My country is not Israel,” Vanunu said. “I want to be free and to leave Israel.”
“Israel does not respect my basic human rights,” Vanunu said. “I am denied the freedom of movement and freedom of speech—like all Palestinians. I want peace and freedom from all nuclear weapons in the Middle East.”
For further background, read the following related article:
THE MOSSAD AND THE JFK ASSASSINATION
circa 2003,
original on-line version HERE...
"Israel need not apologize for the assassination
or destruction of those who seek to destroy it.
The first order of business for any country
is the protection of its people."
Washington Jewish Week, October 9, 1997
In March, 1992, Illinois Representative Paul Findley said in The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, "It is interesting - but not surprising - to note that in all the words written and uttered about the Kennedy assassination, Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, has never been mentioned."
Considering that the Mossad is quite possibly the most ruthless and efficient intelligence agency in the world, it is peculiar that they have never been scrutinized in relation to the Kennedy assassination, especially when practically every other entity in the world (short of Elvis impersonators) has been implicated. But that all changed in January, 1994 with the release of Michael Collins Piper's Final Judgment. In this book, Piper says, "Israel's Mossad was a primary (and critical) behind the scenes player in the conspiracy that ended the life of JFK. Through its own vast resources and through its international contacts in the intelligence community and in organized crime, Israel had the means, it had the opportunity, and it had the motive to play a major frontline role in the crime of the century - and it did."
Their motive? Israel's much touted Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who ruled that country from its inception in 1948 until he resigned on June 16, 1963, was so enraged at John F. Kennedy for not allowing Israel to become a nuclear power that, Collins asserts, in his final days in office he commanded the Mossad to become involved in a plot to kill America's president.
Ben-Gurion was so convinced that Israel's very survival was in dire jeopardy that in one of his final letters to JFK he said, "Mr. President, my people have the right to exist, and this existence is in danger."
In the days leading up to Ben-Gurion's resignation from office, he and JFK had been involved in an unpublicized, contentious debate over the possibility of Israel getting nuclear capabilities. Their disagreement eventually escalated into a full-fledged war of words that was virtually ignored in the press. Ethan Bronner wrote about this secret battle between JFK and Ben-Gurion years later in a New York Times article on October 31, 1998, calling it a "fiercely hidden subject." In fact, the Kennedy/Ben-Gurion conversations are still classified by the United States Government. Maybe this is the case because Ben-Gurion's rage and frustration became so intense - and his power so great within Israel - that Piper contends it was at the center of the conspiracy to kill John Kennedy. This stance is supported by New York banker Abe Feinberg, who describes the situation as such: "Ben-Gurion could be vicious, and he had such a hatred of the old man [Joe Kennedy, Sr., JFK's father]." Ben-Gurion despised Joe Kennedy because he felt that not only was he an anti-Semite, but that he had also sided with Hitler during the 1930's and 40's. [We will touch upon this aspect of the story in an upcoming article entitled The CIA and Organized Crime: Two Sides of the Same Coin].
Anyway, Ben-Gurion was convinced that Israel needed nuclear weapons to insure its survival, while Kennedy was dead-set against it. This inability to reach an agreement caused obvious problems. One of them revolved around Kennedy's decision that he would make America his top priority in regard to foreign policy, and not Israel! Kennedy planned to honor the 1950 Tripartite Declaration which said that the United States would retaliate against any nation in the Middle East that attacked any other country. Ben-Gurion, on the other hand, wanted the Kennedy Administration to sell them offensive weapons, particularly Hawk missiles.
The two leaders thus engaged in a brutal letter exchange, but Kennedy wouldn't budge. Ben-Gurion, obsessed by this issue, slipped into total paranoia, feeling that Kennedy's abstinence was a blatant threat to the very existence of Israel as a nation. Piper writes, "Ben-Gurion had devoted a lifetime creating a Jewish State and guiding it into the world arena. And, in Ben-Gurion's eyes, John F. Kennedy was an enemy of the Jewish people and his beloved state of Israel." He continues, "The 'nuclear option' was not only at the very core of Ben-Gurion's personal world view, but the very foundation of Israel's national security policy."
Ben-Gurion was so preoccupied with obtaining nuclear weapons that on June 27, 1963, eleven days after resigning from office, he announced, "I do not know of any other nation whose neighbors declare that they wish to terminate it, and not only declare, but prepare for it by all means available to them. We must have no illusions that what is declared every day in Cairo, Damascus, and Iraq are just words. This is the thought that guides the Arab leaders … I am confident … that science is able to provide us with the weapons that will serve the peace and deter our enemies."
Avner Cohen, in Israel and the Bomb, published by Columbia University Press, reinforces this sense of urgency by writing, "Imbued with lessons of the Holocaust, Ben-Gurion was consumed by fears of security … Anxiety about the Holocaust reached beyond Ben-Gurion to infuse Israel's military thinking." He further adds fuel to this point by pointing out, "Ben-Gurion had no qualms about Israel's need for weapons of mass destruction," and "Ben-Gurion's world view and his decisive governing style shaped his critical role in instigating Israel's nuclear progress."
Kennedy, on the other hand, was adamant in his refusal to promote Israel's ascension to the nuclear stage. Avener Cohen, in Israel and the Bomb, stresses, "No American president was more concerned with the danger of nuclear proliferation than John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He was convinced that the spread of nuclear weapons would make the world more dangerous and undermine U.S. interests." Cohen continues at the end of this passage, "The only example Kennedy used to make this point was Israel."
Realizing that Kennedy would not change his mind, Ben-Gurion decided to join forces with Communist China. Both countries were greatly interested in creating nuclear programs, and so began their secret joint dealings. Working in unison through intermediary Shaul Eisenberg, who was a partner of Mossad gun-runner and accountant Tibor Rosenbaum, Israel and China proceeded to develop their own nuclear capabilities without the knowledge of the United States.
If you find this scenario improbable, I strongly urge you to read Gordon Thomas' excellent book, Seeds of Fire, where he exposes how the Mossad and CSIS (Chinese secret service) have conspired on many occasions to not only steal American military secrets, but to also doctor U.S. intelligence programs such as the Justice Department's PROMISE software. This instance, I am afraid to say, is but the first where echoes of the JFK assassination can still be felt today reverberating through our post 9-11 world. The danger of Israel developing the Bomb in unison with China became a highly volatile situation, and was closely monitored by the CIA.
Intent on pursuing this path, the Israeli's constructed a nuclear facility at Dimona. When Kennedy demanded that the U.S. inspect this plant, Ben-Gurion was so incensed that he erected another PHONY facility that held no evidence of nuclear research and development. (Does this scenario sound eerily familiar to the game we're playing with Saddam Hussein in Iraq right now?) Fully aware of their shenanigans, though, JFK told Charles Bartlett, "The sons of bitches lie to me constantly about their nuclear capability."
Avner Cohen, in Israel and the Bomb, reiterates this claim by saying that Ben-Gurion had taken the nuclear issue so closely to heart that he, "concluded that he could not tell the truth about Dimona to American leaders, not even in private."
Dr. Gerald M. Steinberg, political science professor at Bar-Ilan University's BESA Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, weighs in by saying, "Between 1961 and 1963, the Kennedy administration placed a great deal of pressure on Ben-Gurion in the effort to pressure for acceptance of international inspection of Dimona and Israeli abdication of their nuclear weapons. This pressure apparently did not alter Israeli policy, but it was a contributing factor to Ben-Gurion's resignation in 1963."
To convey how serious this situation had become in modern terms, look at what is happening in Iraq with United Nations security teams inspecting the royal palaces and bunkers for nuclear weapons and materials. This matter is so urgent that our nation is on the verge of war. Forty years earlier, the heat that JFK was placing on Ben-Gurion was equally as strong as what George Bush is laying on Saddam Hussein today.
In Israel and the Bomb, Avner Cohen reinforces this point. "To force Ben-Gurion to accept the conditions, Kennedy exerted the most useful leverage available to an American president in dealing with Israel: a threat that an unsatisfactory solution would jeopardize the U.S. government's commitment to, and support of, Israel."
The pressure on Ben-Gurion was so immense that he ended up leaving office. But Kennedy, in true pit-bull style, didn't let up on Ben-Gurion's successor, Levi Eshkol, as Avner Cohen reports. "Kennedy told Eshkol that the U.S. commitment and support of Israel 'could be seriously jeopardized' if Israel did not let the U.S. obtain 'reliable information' about its efforts in the nuclear field. Kennedy's demands were unprecedented. They amounted, in effect, to an ultimatum." Cohen concludes this thought by asserting, "Kennedy's letter precipitated a near-crisis situation in Eshkol's office."
In the end, as we're all aware, Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963; but less known is that China conducted its first nuclear test in October, 1964. What makes this event more profound is Piper's claim that even though Israel said its first nuclear tests took place in 1979, they actually occurred in October, 1964 along with the Chinese! If this is true, other than August, 1945 when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, October 1964 may possibly be the most dangerous month in 20th century history.
Let's return, though, to JFK's assassination and the direct results of it in regard to the Jewish lobby, American foreign policy, and the militarization of Israel. To understand how powerful the Israeli lobby is in this country, venerable Senator J. William Fulbright told CBS Face the Nation on April 15, 1973, "Israel controls the U.S. Senate. The Senate is subservient, much too much; we should be more concerned about U.S. interests rather than doing the bidding of Israel. The great majority of the Senate of the U.S. - somewhere around 80% - is completely in support of Israel; anything Israel wants; Israel gets. This has been demonstrated time and again, and this has made [foreign policy] difficult for our government."
Do you hear what Senator Fulbright said? This isn't a crazy conspiracy theorist or a KKK anti-Semite. It's a much-respected U.S. Senator saying that about 80% of the Senate is in Israel's hip pocket. Adding clout to this argument is Rep. Paul Findley, who was quoted in The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs in March, 1992, "During John Kennedy's campaign for the presidency, a group of New York Jews had privately offered to meet his campaign expenses if he would let them set his Middle East policy. He did not agree … As the president, he provided only limited support of Israel."
To understand how important Kennedy's decisions were during his short-lived presidency, we need to look at the issue of campaign finance. Considering how influential the Israeli lobby is in the U.S. Senate (hearkening back to the words of Senator Fulbright), they had to have been enraged when President Kennedy genuinely wanted to cut the knees out from under the current campaign finance methods because it made politicians so reliant upon the huge cash inlays of special-interest groups. Regrettably, Kennedy did not have the time to implement this program, and to this day our political system is still monopolized by lobbyists from the very same special-interest groups. One can only imagine what changes would have occurred in regard to our foreign policy had Kennedy eradicated these vipers and blood-suckers from the halls of Congress.
Tragically, Kennedy's ideas never came to fruition, and his heated battle with Prime Minister Ben-Gurion over whether Israel should be allowed to develop a nuclear program was ultimately lost. The reason why is that Lyndon Baines Johnson, who Kennedy intended to drop from his ticket in 1964 due to his extreme dislike for, had a complete reversal in foreign policy. As you will see, not only did Israel's nuclear program move ahead unchecked; they also became the primary beneficiary of our foreign aid.
But this absolute turnaround would not have occurred if Kennedy would not have been assassinated. Up until LBJ became president, Kennedy dealt with the Middle East in a way that most benefited the U.S. His primary goal - and one which would most keep the peace - was a balance of power in the Middle East so that each and every nation would be secure. This decision adhered to the Tripartite Declaration which the U.S. signed in 1950. But under the Johnson administration, this fragile balance was overturned, and by 1967 - only four years after Kennedy's assassination - the U.S. was Israel's main weapons supplier, and OUR best interests were put well behind those of Israel!
As Michael Collins Piper writes: "The bottom line is this: JFK was adamantly determined to stop Israel from building the nuclear bomb. LBJ simply looked the other way. JFK's death did indeed prove beneficial to Israel's nuclear ambitions and the evidence proves it."
Reuven Pedatzer, in a review of Avner Cohen's Israel and the Bomb, in the Israeli Newspaper Ha'aretz on February 5, 1999 wrote, "The murder of American president John F. Kennedy brought to an abrupt end the massive pressure being applied by the U.S. administration on the government of Israel to discontinue their nuclear program." He continues, "Kennedy made it quite clear to the Israeli Prime Minister that he would not under any circumstances agree to Israel becoming a nuclear state." Pedatzer concludes, "Had Kennedy remained alive, it is doubtful whether Israel would today have a nuclear option," and that, "Ben-Gurion's decision to resign in 1963 was taken to a large extent against the background of the tremendous pressure that Kennedy was applying on him concerning the nuclear issue."
If you're still not convinced; how about some numbers? In Kennedy's last fiscal budget year of 1964, Israeli aid was $40 million. In LBJ's first budget of 1965, it soared to $71 million, and in 1966 more than tripled from two years earlier to $130 million! Plus, during Kennedy's administration, almost none of our aid to Israel was military in nature. Instead, it was split equally between development loans and food assistance under the PL480 Program. Yet in 1965 under the Johnson administration, 20% of our aid to Israel was for the military, while in 1966, 71% was used for war-related materials.
Continuing in this same vein, in 1963 the Kennedy administration sold 5 Hawk missiles to Israel as part of an air-defense system. In 1965-66, though, LBJ laid 250 tanks on Israel, 48 Skyhawk attack aircrafts, plus guns and artillery which were all offensive in nature. If you ever wondered when the Israeli War Machine was created, this is it! LBJ was its father.
According to Stephen Green in Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel, "The $92 million in military assistance provided in fiscal year 1966 was greater than the total of all official military aid provided to Israel cumulatively in all the years going back to the foundation of that nation in 1948."
Green continues, "70% of all U.S. official assistance to Israel has been military. America has given Israel over $17 billion in military aid since 1946, virtually all of which - over 99% - has been provided since 1965."
Can you see what's happening here? Within two years of JFK's assassination, Israel went from being a weak, outmatched member of the volatile Middle Eastern community that was not allowed to develop nuclear weapons to one that was well on its way to becoming a undeniable military force on the world stage. John Kennedy adamantly put his foot down and refused to allow Israel to develop a nuclear program, while LBJ bent over backward to facilitate and bolster them. Or, as Seymour Hersh wrote in The Samson Option, "By 1968, the president had no intention of doing anything to stop the Israeli bomb."
The result of this shift in focus from the Kennedy to Johnson administration is, in my opinion, the PRIMARY reason behind our current troubles in the Middle East which culminated in the 9-11 attacks and our upcoming war with Iraq (and beyond). I have a great deal of confidence in this statement, for as Michael Collins Piper points out, here are the results of John F. Kennedy's assassination:
1) Our foreign and military aid to Israel increased dramatically once LBJ became president.
2) Rather than trying to maintain a BALANCE in the Middle East, Israel suddenly emerged as the dominant force.
3) Since the LBJ administration, Israel has always had weaponry that was superior to any of its direct neighbors.
4) Due to this undeniable and obvious increase in Israel's War Machine, a constant struggle has been perpetuated in the Middle East.
5) LBJ also allowed Israel to proceed with its nuclear development, resulting in them becoming the 6th largest nuclear force in the world.
6) Finally, our huge outlays of foreign aid to Israel (approximately $10 billion/year when all is said and done) has created a situation of never-ending attacks and retaliation in the Middle East, plus outright scorn and enmity against the U.S. for playing the role of Israel's military enabler. (Editor's bold emphasis throughout)
In Israel's, and especially David Ben-Gurion's eyes then, what were their alternatives - to remain weakened (or at least balanced) in relation to their neighbors and handcuffed by JFK's refusal to bow to their will, or KILL the one man standing in their way to becoming dominant in the Middle East, the recipient of huge amounts of military aid, and one of the premier nuclear forces in the world? It's something to think about. Also, while these thoughts are running through your head, ask yourself this question. If Kennedy, LBJ, and all subsequent administrations would have adhered to the 1950 Tripartite Declaration and did everything in their power to maintain balance in the Middle East instead of pushing Israel to the forefront, would our Towers have been attacked on 9-11, 2001, and would we be on the verge of a possibly catastrophic war today? It's certainly something to ponder.
Editor's NOTE:
While I am convinced (to a metaphysical certainty) that JFK was murdered by his National Security State (participants in the actual conspiratorial deed were members of the CIA, the US Secret Service, elements of the US military command structure, certain anti-Cuban exiles and members of organized crime) I am not sure beyond reasonable doubt (BRD) that the Israeli Mossad participated in the JFK Assassination despite the fact that right wing elements in Israel were incensed at Kennedy's opposition to Israel's nuclear weapons development program.
In my opinion a possible Mossad role (logistical or participatory) in the JFK Assassination is suggested but not highly probable based on current evidence and the question/hypothesis requires significant further research.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
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