ISRAELI POSSESSION OF WMDs MAKES THE MIDEAST
REGION VERY DIFFICULT TO REACH A PERMANENT PEACE
by Syarif Hidayat
The Israeli possession of Weapons
of Mass Destruction (WMDs) has made the Middle East
region very difficult to reach a permanent peace and Palestinian independent
very far from being achieved. Possessing an overwhelming nuclear superiority
allows Israel
to act with impunity even in the face world wide opposition. Israel only wants Palestinian and Arab lands as
well as hegemony in the world, but not peace
with freedom and justice in the Middle East
region.
According to Dr. Israel Shahak, "The wish for peace, so often assumed as the Israeli aim, is not a principle of Israeli policy, while the wish to extend Israeli domination and influence is." and "Israel is preparing for a war, nuclear if need be, for the sake of averting domestic change not to its liking, if it occurs in some or any Middle Eastern states... Israel clearly prepares itself to seek overtly a hegemony over the entire Middle East..., without hesitating to use for the purpose all means available, including nuclear ones."
The Israeli nuclear arsenal has profound implications for the future of peace in the Middle East, and indeed, for the entire planet. It is clear from Israel Shahak that Israel has no interest in peace except that which is dictated on its own terms, and has absolutely no intention of negotiating in good faith to curtail its nuclear program or discuss seriously a nuclear-free Middle East.
Israel Shahak (Hebrew:
ישראל שחק; born Himmelstaub, April 28, 1933 – July
2, 2001) was a Polish-born
Holocaust
survivor and Israeli
professor of chemistry
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
known especially as a liberal political thinker, author, and civil rights
activist. Between 1970-1990, he was president of the Israeli League for Human and
Civil Rights and was an outspoken critic of the Israeli government.
Shahak's writings on Judaism have been a source of widespread controversy.
Shahak first became concerned about Israel’s direction because of David Ben-Gurion's statement during the 1956 Suez War that Israel was fighting for "the kingdom of David and Solomon." In the 1960s he became involved in the Israeli League Against Religious Coercion. In 1965, he began his political activism against “classical Judaism” and Zionism.
The infamous Zionist leaders quotes:
Ariel Sharon, demonstrating the Israeli
nuclear arsenal arrogance, says things like:
"We are much more important than (Americans) think. We can take the Middle East with us whenever we go" and "Arabs
may have the oil, but we have the matches."
“If I
were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is
normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how
could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti -
Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but
was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen
their country. Why would they accept that?” - David
Ben-Gurion, founding father of Israel.
"I don't mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal. What you don't understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it." - Former Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, speaking to Amos Oz, editor of Davar, on Dec. 17, 1982.
I think American leaders are
considering carefully Israel's
nuclear weapons and its threats to use them if the United
States ever withdraws its full backing or if Israel's
possession of its stolen Palestinian lands is ever seriously endangered.
Threats include retaliatory -- or even preemptive -- attacks on Muslim, Russian
and even European and the US
targets.
Any attack on Russia, of course, would quickly bring massive retaliation against Israel's greatest ally -- the United States.
Any attack on Russia, of course, would quickly bring massive retaliation against Israel's greatest ally -- the United States.
No
doubt this is a major reason U.S.
political leaders approach Israel
with fear and respect -- and rarely punish it for its violations of U.S. law,
United Nations Resolutions, the Geneva Convention and a variety of other
treaties. Israel has a
nuclear knife to America's
throat.
Israel's Arsenal of Mass
Destruction
Today, estimates of the Israeli
nuclear arsenal range from a minimum of 200 to a maximum of about 500. Whatever the number, there is little doubt
that Israeli nukes are among the world's most sophisticated, largely designed for
"war fighting" in the Middle East. A
staple of the Israeli nuclear arsenal are "neutron bombs,"
miniaturized thermonuclear bombs designed to maximize deadly gamma radiation
while minimizing blast effects and long term radiation- in essence designed to
kill people while leaving property intact.
Weapons include ballistic missiles
and bombers capable of reaching Moscow, cruise missiles, land mines(In the 1980s Israel planted nuclear land
mines along the Golan Heights), and artillery shells with a range of 45
miles. In June, 2000 an Israeli submarine launched a cruise missile which hit a
target 950 miles away, making Israel
only the third nation after the U.S.
and Russia
with that capability. Israel
will deploy 3 of these virtually impregnable submarines, each carrying 4 cruise
missiles.
The bombs themselves range in size
from "city busters" larger than the Hiroshima Bomb to tactical mini
nukes. The Israeli arsenal of weapons of mass destruction clearly dwarfs the
actual or potential arsenals of all other Middle Eastern states combined, and
is vastly greater than any conceivable need for "deterrence."
Israel also possesses a comprehensive arsenal of
chemical and biological weapons. According to the Sunday Times, Israel has
produced both chemical and biological weapons with a sophisticated delivery
system, quoting a senior Israeli intelligence official, "There is hardly a single known or unknown form of chemical or
biological weapon . . .which is not manufactured at the Nes Tziyona Biological
Institute."
The same report described F-16
fighter jets specially designed for chemical and biological payloads, with
crews trained to load the weapons on a moments notice.
Israeli “Ethno Bomb” - The Real Ethnic Cleansing Bomb
In 1998, the Sunday Times reported that Israel, using research obtained
from South Africa, was developing an "ethno bomb; "In developing their "ethno-bomb", Israeli scientists
are trying to exploit medical advances by identifying distinctive a gene
carried by some Arabs, then create a genetically modified bacterium or virus...
The scientists are trying to engineer deadly micro-organisms that attack only
those bearing the distinctive genes." Dedi Zucker, a leftist Member of Knesset, the Israeli parliament,
denounced the research saying, "Morally,
based on our history, and our tradition and our experience, such a weapon is
monstrous and should be denied."
Israeli Nuclear Strategy
In popular imagination, the Israeli
bomb is a "weapon of last resort," to be used only at the last minute
to avoid annihilation, and many well intentioned but misled supporters of Israel
still believe that to be the case. Whatever truth this formulation may have had
in the minds of the early Israeli nuclear strategists, today the Israeli
nuclear arsenal is inextricably linked to and integrated with overall Israeli
military and political strategy. As Seymour
Hersh says in classic understatement ; "The Samson Option is no longer the
only nuclear option available to Israel."
Israel has made countless veiled nuclear threats against the Arab
nations and against the Soviet Union(and by extension Russia since the end of
the Cold War) One chilling example comes from Ariel Sharon, the current Israeli
Prime Minister "Arabs may have the
oil, but we have the matches."
(In
1983 Sharon also proposed to India that it join with Israel to attack Pakistani
nuclear facilities; in the late 70s he proposed sending Israeli paratroopers to
Tehran to prop up the Shah; and in 1982 he called for expanding Israel's
security influence to stretch from "Mauritania to Afghanistan.") In another example, Israeli nuclear expert Oded Brosh said in 1992, "...we
need not be ashamed that the nuclear option is a major instrumentality of our
defense as a deterrent against those who attack us."
Possessing chemical and biological
weapons, an extremely sophisticated nuclear arsenal, and an aggressive strategy
for their ACTUAL USE, Israel
provides the major regional impetus for the development of weapons of mass
destruction and represents an acute threat to security, peace and stability in
the Middle East and the world.
According to Israel Shahak, "The
wish for peace, so often assumed as the Israeli aim, is not in my view a
principle of Israeli policy, while the wish to extend Israeli domination and
influence is." and "Israel is preparing for a war, nuclear if need
be, for the sake of averting domestic change not to its liking, if it occurs in
some or any Middle Eastern states.... Israel
clearly prepares itself to seek overtly a hegemony over the entire Middle East..., without hesitating to use for the purpose
all means available, including nuclear ones."
Israel uses its nuclear arsenal not
just in the context of deterrence" or of direct war fighting, but in other
more subtle but no less important ways. For example, the possession of weapons
of mass destruction can be a powerful lever to maintain the status quo, or to
influence events to Israel's
perceived advantage, such as to protect the so called moderate Arab states from
internal insurrection, or to intervene in inter-Arab warfare.
In Israeli strategic jargon this
concept is called "nonconventional
compellence" and is exemplified by a quote from Shimon Peres;
"acquiring a superior weapons system(read nuclear) would mean the
possibility of using it for compellent purposes- that is forcing the other side
to accept Israeli political demands, which presumably include a demand that the
traditional status quo be accepted and a peace treaty signed."From a
slightly different perspective, Robert Tuckerr asked in a Commentary magazine
article in defense of Israeli nukes, "What would prevent Israel... from pursuing a hawkish
policy employing a nuclear deterrent to freeze the status quo?"
Israel can act with impunity
Possessing an overwhelming nuclear superiority allows Israel to act with impunity even in
the face world wide opposition. A case in point might be the invasion of Lebanon and destruction of Beirut
in 1982, led by Ariel Sharon,
which resulted in 20,000 deaths, most civilian. Despite the annihilation of a
neighboring Arab state, not to mention the utter destruction of the Syrian Air Force, Israel
was able to carry out the war for months at least partially due to its nuclear
threat.
Another major use of the Israeli bomb is to compel the U.S. to act in Israel's favor, even when it runs
counter to its own strategic interests. As early as 1956 Francis Perrin, head
of the French A-bomb project wrote "We
thought the Israeli Bomb was aimed at the Americans, not to launch it at the
Americans, but to say, 'If you don't want to help us in a critical situation we
will require you to help us; otherwise we will use our nuclear bombs.'"
During the 1973 war, Israel
used nuclear blackmail to force Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon to airlift
massive amounts of military hardware to Israel. The Israeli Ambassador,
Simha Dinitz, is quoted as saying, at the time, "If a massive airlift to Israel
does not start immediately, then I will know that the U.S. is
reneging on its promises and...we will have to draw very serious
conclusions..." Just one example of this strategy was spelled out in
1987 by Amos Rubin, economic adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who said
"If left to its own Israel will
have no choice but to fall back on a riskier defense which will endanger itself
and the world at large... To enable Israel
to abstain from dependence on nuclear arms calls for $2 to 3 billion per year
in U.S.
aid." Since then Israel's
nuclear arsenal has expanded exponentially, both quantitatively and
qualitatively, while the U.S.
money spigots remain wide open.
Regional and International
Implications
Largely unknown to the world, the Middle East nearly exploded in all out war on February
22, 2001. According to the London Sunday Times and DEBKAfile, Israel went on
high missile alert after receiving news from the U.S. of movement by 6 Iraqi
armored divisions stationed along the Syrian border, and of launch preparations
of surface to surface missiles. DEBKAfile, an Israeli based
"counter-terrorism" information service, claims that the Iraqi missiles
were deliberately taken to the highest alert level in order to test the U.S. and
Israeli response. Despite an immediate attack by 42 U.S. and British war planes, the
Iraqis suffered little apparent damage. The Israelis have warned Iraq that they
are prepared to use neutron bombs in a preemptive attack against Iraqi
missiles.
The Israeli nuclear arsenal has profound implications for the future of
peace in the Middle East, and indeed, for the entire planet. It is clear from Dr. Israel Shahak that
Israel has no interest in peace except that which is dictated on its own terms,
and has absolutely no intention of negotiating in good faith to curtail its
nuclear program or discuss seriously a nuclear-free Middle East,"Israel's insistence on the
independent use of its nuclear weapons can be seen as the foundation on which
Israeli grand strategy rests."
According
to Seymour Hersh, "the size and sophistication of Israel's
nuclear 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." General Amnon Shahak-Lipkin, former Israeli
Chief of Staff is quoted " It is
never possible to talk to Iran
about no matter what. Certainly about nuclearization. With Syria we cannot really talk
either."Ze'ev Shiff, an Israeli military expert writing in Haaretz
said, "Whoever believes that Israel
will ever sign the UN Convention prohibiting the proliferation of nuclear
weapons... is day dreaming,"and Munya Mardoch, Director of the Israeli Institute for the Development of
Weaponry, said in 1994, "The moral and political meaning of
nuclear weapons is that states which renounce their use are acquiescing to the
status of Vassal states. All those states which feel satisfied with possessing
conventional weapons alone are fated to become vassal states."
As Israeli society becomes more and
more polarized, the influence of the radical right becomes stronger. According to Shahak, "The
prospect of Gush Emunim, or some secular right-wing Israeli fanatics, or some
some of the delerious Israeli Army generals, seizing control of Israeli nuclear
weapons...cannot be precluded. ...while israeli jewish society undergoes a
steady polarization, the Israeli security system increasingly relies on the
recruitment of cohorts from the ranks of the extreme right."
The Arab states, long aware of Israel's
nuclear program, bitterly resent its coercive intent, and perceive its
existence as the paramount threat to peace in the region, requiring their own
weapons of mass destruction. During a future Middle Eastern war (a distinct
possibility given the ascension of Ariel Sharon, an unindicted war criminal
with a bloody record stretching from the massacre of Palestinian civilians at
Quibya in 1953, to the massacre of Palestinian civilians at Sabra and Shatila
in 1982 and beyond) the possible Israeli use of nuclear weapons should not be
discounted. According to Shahak, "In Israeli terminology, the
launching of missiles on to Israeli territory is regarded as 'nonconventional'
regardless of whether they are equipped with explosives or poison gas."
(Which requires a "non-conventional" response, a perhaps unique
exception being the Iraqi SCUD attacks during the Gulf War.)
Israeli possession of WMDs could trigger a world conflagration
Meanwhile, the existence of an
arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in turn has serious
implications for future arms control and disarmament negotiations, and even the
threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh
warns, "Should war break out in the
Middle East again,... or should any Arab nation fire missiles against Israel,
as the Iraqis did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last
resort, would now be a strong probability." and Ezar Weissman, Israel's former
President said "The nuclear issue is gaining momentum(and the) next war will not
be conventional."
Russia
and before it the Soviet Union has long been a
major (if not the major) target of Israeli nukes. It is widely reported that
the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish
satellite images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to
U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (Since launching its own satellite in 1988,
Israel no longer needs U.S. spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian
heartland seriously complicate disarmament and arms control negotiations and,
at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is
enormously destabilizing, and dramatically lowers the threshold for their
actual use, if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of Mark
Gaffney, "... if the familiar pattern (Israel refining its
weapons of mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed soon- for
whatever reason- the deepening Middle East conflict could trigger a world
conflagration."
The
actual Nuclear World War could be easily triggered by the illicit agreement
between the crazy American President and the deranged and adventurous Israeli
Prime Minister.
Please
take a close look at the example of the actual Israeli nuclear threats to the
world security: In 2002, while the United States
was building for the 2003 invasion of Iraq,
then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon threatened that if Israel was attacked “Israel
will react. Is it clear?”
Israeli defense analyst Zeev Schiff
explained: “Israel could
respond with a nuclear retaliation that would eradicate Iraq as a country.” It is believed President George W. Bush gave
Sharon the “Green-Light” to attack Baghdad in retaliation, including with
Nuclear Weapons, but only if attacks came before the American military
invasion.
The Middle East and World Peace
Activists
Many Middle East Peace activists
have been reluctant to discuss, let alone challenge, the Israeli monopoly on
nuclear weapons in the region, often leading to incomplete and uninformed
analyses and flawed action strategies. Placing
the issue of Israeli weapons of mass destruction directly and honestly on the
table and action agenda would have several salutary effects:
- First, it would expose a primary destabilizing dynamic driving the Middle East arms race and compelling the region's states to each seek their own "deterrent."
-
Second, it would expose the grotesque double standard which sees the U.S. and
Europe on the one hand condemning Iraq, Iran and Syria for developing weapons
of mass destruction, while simultaneously protecting and enabling the principal
culprit.
-
Third, exposing Israel's
nuclear strategy would focus international public attention, resulting in
increased pressure to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction and negotiate a
just peace in good faith.
-
Finally, a nuclear free Israel
would make a Nuclear Free Middle East and a
comprehensive regional peace agreement much more likely. Unless and until the
world community confronts Israel over its covert nuclear program it is unlikely
that there will be any meaningful resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict, a
fact that Israel may be counting on as the Sharon era dawns.
PEACEFUL END or HORRIBLE
END!!
I think the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict would and could end, if : ...
1. The Zionists have become PEACE loving humans (peaceful end).
2. All Arab countries have nuclear weapons backed up by the sophisticated delivery systems (it could be horrible end (if one of the opposing sides pushes the button) or peaceful end (if the nuclear weapons are used for deterrent force only!)
3. God (Allah SWT)
intervenes. The Creator has unlimited power, ways and means to intervene in
worldly problems effectively like He did on Sodom
and Gomorrah
case. Allah SWT could applies the same solution against the intransigent Israel.
The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
Lut or Lot (Arabic:
لوط) (circa 1900 BC?),
the Biblical Lot, is a messenger and an Islamic
prophet mentioned in the Qur'an. He also appears in the Bible, but the
Biblical stories of Lot are not entirely
accepted within Islam. Lot is one of the few Old
Testament figures who is venerated as a prophet in Islam but not in Judaism or Christianity.
According to Islamic tradition,
Lut lived in Ur and was
a nephew of Ibrahim (Abraham). He
migrated with Abraham to Canaan in Palestine. He was commissioned as a prophet to the cities
of Sodom and Gomorrah. His story is used as a
reference by Muslims
to demonstrate Islam's strong disapproval of homosexuality. He was commanded by God
to go to the land of Sodom and Gomorrah
to preach to his people on monotheism and to stop them from their lustful and violent
acts. According to both the Qur'an and the Bible, Lot's messages were ignored
by the inhabitants and Sodom and Gomorrah were subsequently
destroyed.
One major difference between the
story of Lot in the Qur'an and the story of
Lot in the Bible is that the Biblical version has Lot's
wife leave the city with her husband, yet she turns back in curiosity and is
turned into a pillar of salt. In the Qur'an, Lot's
wife stays behind in the city and is destroyed. The Hebrew text also includes
the subsequent story of Lot being induced to incestuous
relations with his own daughters. The Qur'an says that Lot
is a prophet, and holds that all prophets were examples of moral and spiritual
rectitude. Though it is not altogether clear in the Bible story that Lot consented to his action, in Islam these stories of
incest are considered to be false.
The story of Lot according to Al Qur’an
According to the Qur'an, Lot was a prophet and a nephew of Prophet Abraham PBUH. A group of angels visited Prophet
Abraham PBUH as guests and gave him glad tidings of a son "endowed with
wisdom", they told him that they had been sent by God to the "guilty
people" of Lot to destroy them with "a shower of stones of clay (brimstone)" and deliver Lot and those who
believed in him, except his wife saying "she is of those who lag
behind". The Qur'an also draws upon Lut's wife as an "example for the
Unbelievers" as she was married to a righteous man but cheated him by not
believing in his words and was thus condemned to Hellfire.
The people of Sodom
and Gomorrah,
the twin cities which Lut was sent to with God's message, transgressed
consciously against the bounds of God. Their avarice led to inhospitality and
robbery, which in turn led to the humiliation of strangers by mistreatment and
rape. It was their abominable sin of homosexuality which was seen
as symptomatic of their attitudes, and upon Lut's exhorting them to abandon
their transgression against God, they ridiculed him, threatening with dire
consequences; Lut only prayed to God to be saved from doing as they did. With
reference to this event an Arabic
expression for homosexuals is derived from the name for the people of Lot or Lut (in Arabic), i.e. Luti.
Angels appear to Lot
Then three angels in the disguise
of handsome young boys came to Lot, who became
distressed knowing the character of the people, and feeling himself powerless
to protect the visitors; he said: "This is a distressful day." When
the people - overjoyed at the news of new young boys in the village - came to
snatch them away from Lot, he tried to convince them to refrain from practising
their lusts on the visitors, and offered his own daughters to them in return
for the boys' free release, but they were unrelenting and replied "we
have no need of your daughters: indeed you know quite well what we want!"
The Qur'an remarks "... they moved blindly in the frenzy of approaching
death".
Lot was
powerless to protect the boys, but they revealed to him that they were indeed angels sent by God to punish the people for
their transgressions. They advised Lot to leave the place during the night and
not look back, informing him that his wife would be left behind on account of
her sinful nature and that they "...were about to bring down upon the
folk of this township a fury from the sky because they are evil-doers".
Keeping his faith in God, Lot left his home
and the cities during the night with his family and others who believed in him,
and only his wife stayed behind.
When morning came, God turned the
cities upside down, and rained down on them brimstones hard as baked clay,
spread, layer on layer' putting an end to the lives of the people and
describing it as "So taste ye My Wrath and My Warning!" in the Qur'an.
The Qur'an refers to the sites of Sodom and Gomorrah as 'signs for
those who understand by example', those who 'care to understand' and those who
'fear a grievous penalty or a painful doom'. The Qur'an also uses the story as
an example stating "And most surely you pass by them (the cities) by the
day, and at night; do you not then understand?"
Burial place
Bani Na'im
houses the tomb of the patriarch/prophet Lot in the center of
the town. The tomb is located within a rectangular mosque with an inner court
and minaret. Lot's tomb is first mentioned by
catholic scholar Saint Jerome of Jerusalem in
the 4th century CE. The tomb of his daughters are on an opposite hill nearby.
To the southeast of Bani Na'im is a shrine dedicated to Lot,
known as Maqam an-Nabi Yatin ("Shrine of the Truthful
Prophet"). Local legend claims Lot prayed
at the site and imprints of his feet in a rock there are visible. According to
Muslim legend and Catholic tradition, Bani Na'im is the place where the
patriarch/prophet Abraham,
after the departure of the angels, saw the smoke of Sodom and Gomorrah rising as the smoke of a
furnace.
The World citizens who are concerned about sanctions against Iran,
Peace with Freedom and Justice in the Middle East and The World Stability as
well as The Nuclear Disarmament in the world, have an obligation to speak out
forcefully against the Israeli weapons of mass destruction programs. (HSH)
Bibliotheque:
1. “Israel Shahak” from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. “Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction: a Threat to Peace” by John SteinbachCentre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca, 3 March 2002
3. Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option: “Israel's
Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy,” New York,1991, Random House, p. 319 (A
brilliant and prophetic work with much original research)
4. Mark Gaffney, Dimona, The Third Temple:The Story Behind
the Vanunu Revelation, Brattleboro,
VT, 1989, Amana Books, p. 165
(Excellent progressive analysis of the Israeli nuclear program)
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