Tag Archives: Mordechai Vanunu

“Drop a Nuclear Bomb on Gaza”: Israeli Minister Says Using Nukes on Gaza an Option

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

Amichai Eliyahu, an Israeli Heritage Minister has admitted to the world that Israel has nuclear weapons ready to be used on the Palestinians.  The Times of Israel reported that “Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said Sunday that one of Israel’s options in the war against Hamas was to drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip, in comments that were quickly disavowed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also suspended the minister from cabinet meetings.” 

Surely, Netanyahu is angry with Eliyahu’s comments since the Israeli government never confirmed nor denied that they have nuclear weapons, so Eliyahu got himself suspended.

Eliyahu was asked in an interview with Radio Kol Berama “whether an atomic bomb should be dropped on the enclave” and he responded with “This is one of the possibilities.”

Eliyahu is a far-right politician who rejects humanitarian aid into Gaza by saying that “we wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid,” and that “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza.”  He also advocates efforts to retake the Gaza Strip and rebuild Israeli settlements before his government decided to unilaterally withdrew in 2005. Eliyahu was also asked about what would happen to the Palestinian population in the aftermath and he said that “They can go to Ireland or deserts; the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves.”

Whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, a Moroccan-born Israeli citizen, a former nuclear technician exposed Israel’s nuclear weapons factory located in the Negev Desert, not far from the city of Dimona to The Sunday Times of London in 1986.  Vanunu was drugged and kidnapped by Mossad agents while in Rome and spent more than 11 years out of 18-year prison sentence in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison.

In 2005, The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) published ‘The Release of Mordechai Vanunu and U.S. Complicity in the Development of Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal’ which revealed an important fact that Vanunu’s revelations about how Israel’s nuclear program is “offensive in nature”:

A former strategic analyst at the Rand Corporation observed that Vanunu’s revelations about Israel ’s nuclear program demonstrated that: “Its scale and nature was clearly designed for threatening and if necessary, launching first-use of nuclear weapons against conventional forces.” Prior to Vanunu’s revelations, many suspected that Israel ’s nuclear program was limited to tactical nuclear artillery and naval shells

Mordechai Vanunu exposed Israel’s nuclear weapons program so he is considered a traitor but to Vanunu’s own observation, he sees it differently, “Five million Jews are regarding me as a traitor, but six billion people around the world think me as a hero and a good man who bring the message to all the human beings that we should survive and prevent the use of nuclear weapons and to prevent the nuclear preparations and to prevent nuclear war in the future.” 

Israel says that Iran is building a nuclear weapons program which Tehran has repeatedly denied, but it is Israel who has been exposed for having an arsenal of nuclear weapons ready to be used against the Muslim world. 

The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Seymour M. Hersch wrote, ‘The Sampson Option; Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and America’s Foreign Policy’ and concluded that “America’s policy toward the Israeli arsenal, as we have seen in this book, was not just one of benign neglect: it was a conscious policy of ignoring reality.”   Hersch warned about Israel’s nuclear capabilities including the production of low-yield neutron warheads to exporting nuclear technology:

By the mid-1980s, the technicians at Dimona had manufactured hundreds of low-yield neutron warheads capable of destroying large numbers of enemy troops with minimal property damage. The size and sophistication of Israel’s arsenal allows men such as Ariel Sharon to dream of redrawing the map of the Middle East aided by the implicit threat of nuclear force. Israel also has been an exporter of nuclear technology and has collaborated on nuclear weapons research with other nations, including South Africa.

In September 1988, Israel launched its first satellite into orbit, bringing it a huge step closer to intercontinental missiles and a satellite intelligence capability—no more Jonathan Pollards would be needed to steal America’s secrets. Scientists at Z Division concluded that the rocket booster that launched the Israeli satellite produced enough thrust to deliver a small nuclear war- head to a target more than six thousand miles away.  Israeli physicists are still at the cutting edge in weapons technology and involved, as are their American and Soviet counterparts, in intensive research into nuclear bomb-pumped X-ray lasers, hydrodynamics, and radiation transport—the next generation of weaponry.

None of this has ever been discussed in the open in Israel, or in the Knesset. Meanwhile, Israeli field commanders have accepted nuclear artillery shells and land mines as battlefield necessities: another means to an end

So, would the Israelis be willing to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran? There is no doubt that Russia and other world powers including China would not allow Israel to hit Iran with a nuclear bomb.  

If Israel decided to use a nuclear weapon anywhere in the Middle East, it would unite all Muslims against Israel and that is something Tel Aviv and Washington is not prepared for.      

Hersch concluded that “the basic target of Israel’s nuclear arsenal has been and will continue to be its Arab neighbors. Should war break out in the Middle East again and should the Syrians and the Egyptians break through again as they did in 1973 or should any Arab nation fire missiles again at Israel, as Iraq did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability. Never again. The Samson Option is no longer the only nuclear option available to Israel.” 

Pentagon Admits that Israel is a Nuclear Power

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By Vladimir Platov

Source: Land Destroyer

In early February, the Pentagon declassified reports on Israel’s nuclear weapons program which was carried out until 1987. According to these documents, Israeli scientists were capable of producing a hydrogen bomb by that time. Although these facts were largely ignored by the Western media, some analysts have noticed that the declassification of these secret reports suspiciously coincided with the recent, rapidly deteriorating relationship between the US and Israel. As Tel Aviv started a massive campaign of criticism aimed at the Obama administration, both in the US media and worldwide, the Pentagon’s revelations were quick to follow. It is also noteworthy that only the facts on the Israeli nuclear weapons program were declassified, while information regarding similar activities of NATO allies (in particular Italy, France, and West Germany) remained locked up.

The 386 page report “Сritical technology assessment in Israel and Nato nations,” was prepared in 1987 by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) and examined the capabilities Israel had already had at that time to produce nuclear weapons. In particular, the study underlines the fact that Israel’s secret laboratories, engaged in the development of an atomic bomb, were on par with the key research nuclear arsenals of the US: Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

According to this report, by the mid-80s Israeli experts were at the same stage of research and development of various nuclear weapons the hydrogen bomb in particular, reached by American scientists between 1955-1960. IDA experts were courageous enough to recognize that in certain areas the Israelis have even surpassed their American colleagues of the time, in particular those working in the “Raphael” Israeli secret lab, who had managed to propose unconventional ways of achieving nuclear fission that would have allowed them to create their own version of the hydrogen bomb.

Under these conditions, one should revisit The Sunday Times article “Revealed: The Secrets of Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal” that was published on October 5, 1986. This article was based on the revelations of an Israeli nuclear scientist – Mordechai Vanunu – who disclosed the secrets of the Israeli nuclear program.

This 31 year-old Israeli expert on nuclear weapons had, by 1986, already been working for 10 years in a secret atomic center, Machon 2, that was built under the Negev desert and from the mid-60s had already been producing nuclear weapons. Then, facts and pictures that were presented by Mordechai to international experts caught them by surprise. They had to admit that by the mid-80s Israel became the sixth nuclear power after the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, France and China, although it did its best to conceal this information. Even by that time the Israeli nuclear potential was much higher than that of India, Pakistan and South Africa, which were also suspected of developing nuclear weapons.

According to this whistle-blowing Israeli scientist, by the mid-80s the Jewish state had secret capabilities of plutonium production for more than 20 years, which would eventually reach over the years to the level of 40 kilograms annually, which is enough to produce 10 nuclear bombs. During the 80s, Israel also came into possession of equipment necessary for the production of thermonuclear devices. In particular, a French built reactor with a capacity of 26 megawatts was upgraded by Israeli scientists to reach a capacity of 150 megawatts, which allowed Israel to engage in the production of plutonium.

Nuclear specialists, which were commenting on this article in the The Sunday Times, confirmed that by 1986 Israel could have had 100-200 nuclear bombs.

This information provides a reasonable understanding of Israel’s commitment to maintaining a nuclear monopoly in the Middle East at whatever cost by blocking their potential adversaries from acquiring nuclear weapons. In particular, Tel Aviv recklessly launched air strikes on the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq on June 7, 1981, and is now followed by a likewise negative approach toward the Iranian nuclear program.

In light of these publications and official US recognition of Israel as a nuclear power that has been in possession of nuclear devices for more than half a century, it is imperative for international players to begin a discussion of this issue in the UN, forcing Israel to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and taking the shipment of such weapons in and out Tel Aviv under rigid international control.