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Apartheid Apartheid

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136 Danish Foreign Minister Mogens Lykketoft to the effect that Gillon’s diplomatic immunity took precedence over the United Nations Convention on Torture. 250 Like apartheid South Africa, Israel denied making or possessing weapons of mass destruction, i.e. nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. An independent Japanese investigation, however, concludes that Israel is a de facto nuclear weapons state. 251 According to another report, Israel produced a clandestine nuclear weapons program already in the 1950s and has since then developed ‘hundreds’ of atomic bombs. In 1973, United States military intelligence said it detected the first signs of Israeli nuclear-related military objects, and it ‘believes’ that the country by now has many nuclear warheads. Since then, a near-consensus on the subject has developed, although the most powerful voices still insist on denying the obvious. In 1986 the Moroccan-born Israeli scientist Mordechai Vanunu blew the whistle on the activities at [the Israeli nuclear weapons research and development site] Dimona, claiming it had produced ‘over 200’ nuclear warheads. Five years later a US Strategic Air Command report said Israel had between 75 and 200 nuclear weapons. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) estimates Israel has ‘over 185’ nuclear weapons. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) estimates ‘over 100, but not significantly over 200’. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates 200. In 2000, Israeli MK Issam Mahoul broke the parliamentary taboo on discussing Israel’s official policy of ‘nuclear ambiguity’ and stated that Israel had 2-300 nuclear warheads. Jane’s Intelligence Review estimated in 1997 that Israel had over 400 thermonuclear and nuclear weapons. The Campaign to Free Vanunu estimates 500 nuclear warheads. 252 In September 2002, Reuters News Agency stated ‘Israel is reported to have some 200 nuclear warheads and has refused to allow international inspections of the kind the United Nations has demanded of Iraq.’ In spite of the overwhelming evidence and all of the unambiguous revelations and admissions being made, the USA and Britain still refuse to admit officially that Israel has nuclear weapons. Israel itself now neither denies nor confirms it has them. The USA has laws against supporting countries that possess unconventional weapons, yet Israel receives more military aid from the USA than any other country does or ever did. With regard to that, hypocrisy is an understatement. The UN, meanwhile, has done little, due to the undemocratic powers vested in the predominantly western nuclear giants, but in Security Council Resolution 487, of June 1981, it ‘calls upon Israel urgently to place its nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] safeguards,’ and Resolution 687 of April 1991 points out ‘the threat that all weapons of mass destruction pose to peace and security in the area and…the need to work towards the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East’. 253 250 Hockstader: Israeli’s Torture Remarks Cause Diplomatic Uproar, 2001; N.N.: Torture Complaint against Israeli Envoy Rejected, September 4, 2001 251 2 Saito (senior writer) 1999: 198 and 69, 75ff; Chomsky 1999: 464ff 252 Sammonds: Israeli WMD, 2002 253 Ibid; N.N.: Palestinian Delegation Attacks U.S. at U.N., September 17, 2002. See also Gur-Arieh: Mideast Nuclear War, 1998; N.N.: Israeli Nuclear Arsenal a Mystery to UN Watchdog, February 25, 2004; N.N.: LA Man Accused of Shipping Nuclear Parts to Israel, November 26, 2001. The second article describes a case in which criminal charges were launched against Richard Kelly Smyth, who faced 15 counts of violating the US Arms Export Control Act by illegally shipping nuclear triggering devices to Israel in 1980-82. He also faced 15 counts of making false statements to the US government. When asked about them, Israel said that the devices were not intended for nuclear weapons use, and that it returned ‘a substantial number’ of them after Smyth’s indictment. See also Williams: Leaks and Peeks Key to Israel’s Nuclear Ambiguity, 2003, in which Israel’s desire for increased international tension is implied by the Washington-based watchdog group, the Arms Control

137 Between 1987 and 2003, the IAEA appealed to Israel to sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty 13 times. All of these attempts were ignored by the Jewish state. 254 Moreover, under US influence the UN and the international community are pressuring countries such as Iran and North Korea to prove that they have no intentions of developing nuclear arms and to abandon their nuclear weapons program, respectively. The presumption of innocence, a basic right, has flown out the window in the case of Iran. But nothing is done to contain Israel’s gigantic nuclear war machine. According to several analysts referred to by Reuters, Israel is the world’s fifth largest nuclear weapons power. 255 In 1981, Israel became the first country in the world to break the unwritten global rule of not attacking nuclear power stations. In a totally unprovoked bombing raid, Israel reduced Osiraq/Tammuz-1, to rubble. It was an Iraqi power plant under construction with the aid of French scientists and under supervision by the UN body, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In marked contrast, all Israeli nuclear programs, civil and military, are in practice allowed by the UN to continue to expand without any sanctions or controls by the IAEA or by anyone else from the international community. Iraq, however, was attacked and invaded 22 years later by a coalition force led by the USA, unauthorized by the UN, officially because of US suspicions of Iraqi programs for the development of ‘weapons of mass destruction’, which ‘could’ become a threat to the USA and the UK, and due to US insistence on ‘liberating’ the country; unofficially, though, for a host of different, possible reasons, including US and UK corporate control over the country’s vast oil wealth and other rich resources, blind revenge for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the USA, a general anti-Muslim and anti-Arab policy, and, last but certainly not least, an end to Iraqi support for the Palestinian uprising against the favorite ally of the USA. It meant a hitherto unprecedented success for an apartheid state to export its apartheid violence. As far as I know, not a single Israeli has been killed in the Iraq War, although Israel is the main beneficiary of it, at least in military and political terms. 256 Three Iraqi people were killed in the 1981 attack by Israel on the Osiraq power plant. The USA unofficially blessed the attack, which was sold to the world as a ‘pre-emptive strike’, Newspeak for ‘retaliating in advance’, and to be used again in the following year’s Israeli invasion of Lebanon (see Chapter II.9.3). The UN General Assembly resolutions 487 and 36/27 strongly condemned the Israeli attack, which was carried out with US-supplied F- 16 bombers, as an ‘unprecedented act of aggression’ and Israel was requested by the international community to pay reparations to Iraq for the suffered damages. Israel never complied with the request. The UN General Assembly also called upon all states to stop Association, which says Israel’s ‘opacity’ with regard to its weapons of mass destruction is similar to that of the Soviet Union, which unnecessarily hastened US nuclear programs and made the world a less safe place. 254 N.N.: IAEA Chief Urges Israel to Scrap Nuclear Weapons, November 26, 2003 255 Giacomo: Arabs Say World Ignores Israel’s Nuclear Program, 2003; N.N.: Factbox: Facts and Fears on Israel’s Suspected Nuclear Arms, July 4, 2004. I am not in favor of any new country gaining nuclear military capabilities – and Ukraine and South Africa have proven that nuclear weapons can be uninvented – but proportionality must be observed here, too. Israel should not be protected from Iran by the ‘international community’, and then expect it to accept that Israel is exempt from the same rules with which Iran is being harnessed. In my opinion Israel should be expelled from the UN for its nuclear war program alone, and all the more so for its continued perpetration of apartheid. To punish Iran for (perhaps) developing nuclear weapons while Israel’s existing arsenal is ignored amounts to hypocrisy, and possibly also to racism and islamophobia. All of these traits are unfortunately to be expected from the USA today, but not necessarily from the United Nations. 256 Mearsheimer and Walt 2006; Harrer: Kriegs-Gründe: Versuch über den Irak-Krieg, 2003; Wise: Liberation or Libation? Media Images, State Propaganda and ‘Happy Iraqis’, 2003; Abu-Jamal: The War for Empire, 2003; Shalom: Iraq: War and Democracy, 2003. See also Leaper, Löwstedt & Madhoun: Caught in the Crossfire: The Iraq War and the Media – A Diary of Claims and Counterclaims, 2003. One could perhaps argue that the Congolese civil war in the 1960s was a similarly profitable war for South Africa, but the western powers obviously perceived themselves as winners here, too, and they were probably more active than the remote apartheid power in the earlier case.

136<br />

Danish Foreign Minister Mogens Lykketoft to the effect that Gillon’s diplomatic immunity<br />

took precedence over the United Nations Convention on Torture. 250<br />

Like apartheid South Africa, Israel denied making or possessing weapons of mass<br />

destruction, i.e. nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. An independent Japanese<br />

investigation, however, concludes that Israel is a de facto nuclear weapons state. 251 According<br />

to another report, Israel produced a clandestine nuclear weapons program already in the 1950s<br />

and has since then developed ‘hundreds’ of atomic bombs. In 1973, United States military<br />

intelligence said it detected the first signs of Israeli nuclear-related military objects, and it<br />

‘believes’ that the country by now has many nuclear warheads. Since then, a near-consensus<br />

on the subject has developed, although the most powerful voices still insist on denying the<br />

obvious.<br />

In 1986 the Moroccan-born Israeli scientist Mordechai Vanunu blew<br />

the whistle on the activities at [the Israeli nuclear weapons research<br />

and development site] Dimona, claiming it had produced ‘over 200’<br />

nuclear warheads. Five years later a US Strategic Air Command<br />

report said Israel had between 75 and 200 nuclear weapons. The<br />

Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS) estimates Israel has ‘over 185’<br />

nuclear weapons. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS)<br />

estimates ‘over 100, but not significantly over 200’. The Stockholm<br />

International Peace Research Institute estimates 200. In 2000, Israeli<br />

MK Issam Mahoul broke the parliamentary taboo on discussing<br />

Israel’s official policy of ‘nuclear ambiguity’ and stated that Israel<br />

had 2-300 nuclear warheads. Jane’s Intelligence Review estimated in<br />

1997 that Israel had over 400 thermonuclear and nuclear weapons.<br />

The Campaign to Free Vanunu estimates 500 nuclear warheads. 252<br />

In September 2002, Reuters News Agency stated ‘Israel is reported to have some 200<br />

nuclear warheads and has refused to allow international inspections of the kind the United<br />

Nations has demanded of Iraq.’ In spite of the overwhelming evidence and all of the<br />

unambiguous revelations and admissions being made, the USA and Britain still refuse to<br />

admit officially that Israel has nuclear weapons. Israel itself now neither denies nor confirms<br />

it has them. The USA has laws against supporting countries that possess unconventional<br />

weapons, yet Israel receives more military aid from the USA than any other country does or<br />

ever did. With regard to that, hypocrisy is an understatement. The UN, meanwhile, has done<br />

little, due to the undemocratic powers vested in the predominantly western nuclear giants, but<br />

in Security Council Resolution 487, of June 1981, it ‘calls upon Israel urgently to place its<br />

nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] safeguards,’ and<br />

Resolution 687 of April 1991 points out ‘the threat that all weapons of mass destruction pose<br />

to peace and security in the area and…the need to work towards the establishment of a nuclear<br />

weapons-free zone in the Middle East’. 253<br />

250<br />

Hockstader: Israeli’s Torture Remarks Cause Diplomatic Uproar, 2001; N.N.: Torture Complaint against<br />

Israeli Envoy Rejected, September 4, 2001<br />

251 2<br />

Saito (senior writer) 1999: 198 and 69, 75ff; Chomsky 1999: 464ff<br />

252<br />

Sammonds: Israeli WMD, 2002<br />

253<br />

Ibid; N.N.: Palestinian Delegation Attacks U.S. at U.N., September 17, 2002. See also Gur-Arieh: Mideast<br />

Nuclear War, 1998; N.N.: Israeli Nuclear Arsenal a Mystery to UN Watchdog, February 25, 2004; N.N.: LA<br />

Man Accused of Shipping Nuclear Parts to Israel, November 26, 2001. The second article describes a case in<br />

which criminal charges were launched against Richard Kelly Smyth, who faced 15 counts of violating the US<br />

Arms Export Control Act by illegally shipping nuclear triggering devices to Israel in 1980-82. He also faced 15<br />

counts of making false statements to the US government. When asked about them, Israel said that the devices<br />

were not intended for nuclear weapons use, and that it returned ‘a substantial number’ of them after Smyth’s<br />

indictment. See also Williams: Leaks and Peeks Key to Israel’s Nuclear Ambiguity, 2003, in which Israel’s<br />

desire for increased international tension is implied by the Washington-based watchdog group, the Arms Control

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