One person possessing the courage to admit guilt for his role in producing the bomb was Albert Einstein. Some five months before his death in late 1954, Einstein declared: "I made one great mistake in my life, when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made, but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them." [Karpin, pp. 358-59]
Another person, David Ben-Gurion, reached just the opposite conclusion about the bomb. Notwithstanding the role that Zionist settlers played in stirring up Arab hatred in Palestine, in the wake of the Arab attacks on Jews in Jerusalem in August 1929 and the "Arab Revolt" of 1936, Ben-Gurion told friends in Jerusalem, "The danger we face is not rioting, but extermination. The attackers will not only be the Arabs of Palestine, but also the Iraqis and Saudi Arabians, and they have warplanes and artillery. We have to prepare seriously to constitute a substantial force in this country, capable of standing up to a massive offensive." [Karpin, p, 20]
But, if the events of 1929 and 1936 had Ben-Gurion thinking about extermination by Arabs, one should try to imagine the trauma he experienced upon visiting Germany's Dachau concentration camp and the extermination camp at Bergen Belsen in October 1945. According to Israeli journalist, Michael Karpin, writing in his book The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear and What that Means for the World, it was precisely in October 1945 -- just two months after the United States dropped its hideous atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but almost three years before Israel became a state -- that Israel's future Prime Minister and Defense Minister decided that Israel must have the bomb.
As Karpin also makes clear, it was largely under Ben-Gurion's leadership that Israel engaged in a campaign of lies and deceit -- much like Iran over the past two decades -- in order to obtain "the nuclear option." According to Karpin, not only did Prime Minister/Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion distinguish between ethics and national security, [p. 234] "Israeli public opinion had always drawn a clear distinction between morality and ethics on the one hand and the country's security on the other." [p. 291] (And, thus, how could Israel's leaders today possibly believe that Iran's current leaders are behaving less dishonorably than Ben-Gurion did, when it comes to getting the bomb?)
It began when Israel traded its intelligence about Egypt's role in the terrorism gripping French-occupied Algeria for the secret sale of French jet fighters and armored cars -- in violation of a Middle East arms embargo. Israel then leveraged its tie to France to pull off an even bigger secret deal. It would receive a nuclear reactor from France that was capable of producing plutonium for Ben-Gurion's bomb. In return, Israel would attack Egypt and, thus, provide France and Great Britain with a pretext for intervening to reestablish the peace and, coincidentally, forcibly reopen the Suez Canal -- their real objective.
And although both the United States and Soviet Union subsequently intervened to foil the French/British scheme, Israel lived up to its side of the dishonorable bargain -- by launching an assault on Egypt on October 29, 1956. And, for that, France honored its promise to help build the Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev. The first French technicians arrived in late 1957, construction was completed in 1962, and Israel produced its first two bombs in mid-1967.
According to Karpin, "For years experts have been busy estimating or guessing the actual capacity, and a consensus of a sort has emerged that the reactor was originally built with a 40-megawatt capacity and was upgraded in the 1970s. This meant it could produce 15-20 kilograms of plutonium and four to five bombs a year." [p. 109] Information subsequently supplied by Mordechai Vanunu indicates that "Israel's annual plutonium output is some 40 kilos, and that it manufactures ten bombs a year." [Ibid] Today, Israel is thought to possess as many as 200 atomic warheads.
Judging by Michael Karpin's book, Israel paid no price for its lies and deceit surrounding its nuclear program, because: (1) the U.S. has always tilted toward Israel (or as Harry Truman observed: "I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs in my constituents." (2) Israel was able to deceive the U.S. until Dimona became a fait accompli, (3) American presidents, especially Lyndon Johnson, turned a blind eye to the emerging evidence that Israel was pursuing the bomb until (4) President Nixon and Henry Kissinger finally acknowledged it, but also embraced it as being in America's national interest.
As Karpin acknowledges, although it was U.S. policy to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, Israel "was a special case. The influence of the Jewish vote and the pro-Israel lobby in the United States was growing, and at least three presidents - Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon - set their policy toward Israel's nuclear program with one eye on the Jewish electorate." [p. 181]
Special case, indeed! Consider, for example, Abe Feinberg's role in financing Israel's nuclear program during late-1958 to late-1960. Feinberg was President Truman's "close friend," [p. 135] "who had been bequeathed to Kennedy by Eisenhower, who had in turn inherited him from Truman." [p. 185] He also was "Ben-Gurion's representative in charge of obtaining donations from the wealthiest Jews in the world" [p. 136] During late-1958 to late-1960, Feinberg led a secret and successful fund raising campaign to finance Israel's nuclear program.
Thanks to Feinberg's "Dimona campaign" [p. 136], which was bolstered by the contributions of the Sonneborn Institute ("the group formed by the eighteen richest Jews in North America"), "some twenty-five millionaires contributed a total of about $40 million dollars" to finance Israel's nuclear program. Today that $40 million would equal $250 million. [Ibid]
Feinberg's secret fund raising campaign commenced some six months before American intelligence channels first learned of "the building site in the Negev." [p. 154] And it continued, even after an American reconnaissance satellite photographed Dimona in September 1960. [p. 155] President Eisenhower was especially concerned about the source of the funding: "We do not know where they obtained the funds, but have a proper interest in this because of the aid we are giving them." [p. 159]
The fund raising campaign succeeded, notwithstanding the fact that it was official U. S. policy to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And, it succeeded, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. already had supplied Israel with a low-power nuclear reactor, one that became operational in 1960. That reactor, however, could not produce the plutonium necessary for bombs.
Thus, it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the contributors to the Dimona campaign knew precisely what they were supporting. That being the case, just imagine the national outcry - highlighting America's pro-Israel bias -- were it to be revealed that U.S. citizens of Iranian descent had been making secret contributions to finance Iran's nuclear program!
In December 1960, after the American news media got wind of Dimona and suggested that that Israel might be "developing a nuclear option," [pp. 156-57] Ben-Gurion spoke to the Knesset and lied about the allegations. He lied when he asserted: "This reactor...is meant to be used only for peaceful purposes, and is being built under the direction of Israeli experts." [p. 161]
Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).
Israel has had the bomb all this time and not used it? I wonder if the radical Mullah take of Iran from the college students had resulted in Iran obtaining the bomb in 1980, I wonder if they would they have used it on Israel by now or given it to Hamas or Hezbollah or one of the numerous organizations who would use it faster than you could blink an eye. Of course, Israel's nuclear retaliation would be massive on every country that has loaned support to the terrorist organizations. It would be lights out for Damascus, Tehran, Mecca, Medina and anyone could guess who else.
Israel has the bomb, and like any other country will use it if imminent defeat is a foregone conclusion. We would use it if we saw another country or "ism" about to conquer us, as would India, Pakistan, France, England, China and anyone else having it.
If an "ism" were about to conquer the US, I think I would hope we would use it. I had rather be a nuclear cinder than lose my freedom. It is just the same spirit of Nathan Hale and Patrick Henry, especially Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death." Life is just not that precious to me without freedom. How many people feel as I do? I have no idea at all.
Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia and probably a dozen other countries will most likely get the bomb in the next decade or two. There will be nuclear war. It is like giving a kid on the farm a BB gun and saying, "Now son, you have a BB gun and you have a lot of BB's, but please do not shoot it." The BB gun was made for shooting. The N bomb was made for exploding on mass populations. Pandora's Box was made for opening. I see it as a matter of "when" and not "if."
Human beings are a tragedy and a contradiction. I do not believe nuclear war would end mankind, but it would be the tragedy of tragedies.
by
pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 948 comments)
on Friday, February 9, 2007 at 3:34:29 PM
