Democratic Palestine : 25 (ص 32)
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- Democratic Palestine : 25 (ص 32)
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ensuing years, 56 Israeli nuclear scientists were trained in the
US, while 24 more visited nuclear installations there. The reac-
tor was installed at Nahal Soreq on the Mediterranean coast.
While it may not be used directly for developing weapons,
there is certainly a spill-over of expertise to the Dimona plant.
Moreover, in the sixties, the CIA transferred considerable
technical information to the Israeli nuclear program.
The US’s other contribution to Israeli nuclear capacity is
over two decades of deliberate official ‘oversight’. The US
administration usually rants and raves over any country
allegedly developing nuclear power without signing the non-
proliferation treaty, which ‘Israel’ has not done. Yet successive
US administrations have kept silent despite knowledge since
the sixties that ‘Israel’ had the bomb or at least all its com-
ponents. In this permissive environment, ‘Israel’ has engaged
in all the tricks of the trade - fraud, theft and international
piracy.
The Zionist state probably got the fuel needed for the first
charge of the Dimona reactor from France, South Africa and
Dead Sea phosphates. This being insufficient to continue, the
Mossad’s services were brought into play. One of the biggest
steals was the siphoning off to ‘Israel’ of 361 pounds of
nuclear-grade plutonium in the early sixties. The uranium had
been supplied by the US government to NUMEC, a firm in
Apollo, Pennsylvania, ostensibly researching how to preserve
foods by nuclear radiation. Under Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for
Peace’ program, NUMEC was to cooperate with Westinghouse
Corporation on the production of uranium oxide for US
nuclear submarines. In 1966, the US government granted
NUMEC the largest contract for plutonium processing ever
Vanunu’s photo: cutaway model of Israeli atomic bomb
given to a private firm. The owner of NUMEC was Zalman
Shapiro who, besides being a Zionist, had participated in the
US’s Manhattan project for developing the nuclear bomb
-hardly an unknown fact for the US government. The co-owner
of NUMEC was the Israeli government. Among the many
foreigners visiting the plant each year was Rafi Eitan, one-time
Mossad head of operations and more recently a major figure in
LEKEM (Liaison Bureau for Scientific Affairs), the technical
espionage unit of the Israeli Defense Department, which was
ostensibly broken up after the arrest of Jonathan Pollard as an
Israeli spy in 1985. There have been subsequent disappearances
of uranium from the US, but despite extensive investigations of
this nuclear smuggling, the US government never took any ac-
tion. Writing in the New Statesman of November 29, 1985,
32
Claudia Wright noted, «In the past few years, several men in-
vestigated by the FBI and indicted for various offences, in-
cluding the illegal export of nuclear materials and arms to
Israel, have been allowed out of jail on bail and have fled.»
Clearly, the Pollard case is the exception and not the rule for
the treatment the Zionist state receives from the US.
Another major act of nuclear piracy occurred in 1968, when
200 tons of stolen nuclear-grade uranium were smuggled by
ship on a diversionary route from Belgium to ‘Israel’. Some
estimate that by 1981, ‘Israel’ was producing sufficient
uranium from Negev phosphates to keep Dimona in operation,
but Israeli nuclear espionage continues apace. As an example,
it was revealed in 1985 that 800 krytons, nuclear triggering
devices,were illegally transferred from the US to ‘Israel’ from
1979 to 1983. ‘Israel’ was requested to return only part of them
retaining those that had been used.
NUCLEAR FORTRESS
Besides relying on imperialist support and permissiveness,
the Zionist state’s nuclear quest springs from its own nature as
a settler colony, implanted and expanded through violence, at
the expense of the indigenous people. All means of destruction
are considered necessary and justified. Two corollaries of this
make ‘Israel’? an ideal possessor of the bomb from
imperialism’s point of view. One is secrecy, and the other, lack
of internal dissent.
The Dimona plant was kept secret not only from the Israeli
public, but from the Knesset; even some members of. the
cabinet were kept ignorant of the exact details. Not until 1966
was the IAEC moved from the Defense Ministry to the prime
minister’s office, and there are reports that Defense Minister
Moshe Dayan ordered a continuation of the nuclear program
in the Defense Ministry, secretly and at an accelerated pace, in
1968. Maintaining such secrecy over so many years is only
possible in a ‘security’ state where true democracy, even for
Jewish citizens, is more facade than reality when it comes to
strategic military matters. This point is also emphasized by the
Mossad’s kidnapping of Vanunu, his isolation in a Mossad-
Shin Bet detention center, deprived of the rights usually ac-
corded Jewish prisoners, and the fact that he is being tried in
camera. When the Sunday Times broke Vanunu’s story, Prime
Minister Peres summoned major Israeli editors, urging them in
the «national interest» not to cover the story. (This was in any
case prevented by the censor.)
Internal dissent to the Israeli nuclear program has been
minimal, although it was probably the reason for the 1957
resignation of six out of seven government-appointed members
of the IAEC. In the sixties, debate was confined to the
political-military elite. Those who opposed the development of
the bomb did so for pragmatic not principle reasons. They
were convinced that conventional weaponry was sufficient and
feared the repercussions on the international standing of
‘Israel’. The de facto result of the debate was keeping up the
program, but still in secret. This Israeli policy was articulated
by Levi Eshkol, who was simultaneously defense and prime
minister in 1963-4, and is often billed as a ‘dove’: «Israel
would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the
Middle East, but neither would it be the second in the race.»
The success of the nuclear program was acknowledged by
Israeli President Ephraim Katzir in 1974: «It has been our in-
tention to provide the potential for nuclear development... We
now have that potential. We will defend this country with all
possible means at hand.» - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 25
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