The world's best-known and most efficient 'secret' manufacturer of WMD is............

[Thinkerman]

Israel: Germs, gas and A-bombs Fingers on all

the buttons

 

 

The world's best-known and most efficient 'secret' manufacturer of weapons of mass destruction is not Iraq, not even North Korea, but Israel. Neil Sammonds looks at a nuclear, biological and chemical warfare programme that even the Israeli Knesset cannot get access to, let alone the United Nations.

In September 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at Israel's Dimona nuclear site, revealed to the Sunday Times that the nuclear military programme based there had produced 'over 200' nuclear warheads.

 

Days later he was tricked into flying to Rome where he was abducted by Mossad agents and secretly transported to Israel. In November 1986, he was tried in camera and sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment, 14 of which were spent in solitary confinement.

 

In 1999, in response to a petition from Yediot Ahronot newspaper, the government released about 40 per cent of the trial documents.

 

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimates that Israel has the world's fifth largest stockpile of nuclear warheads (more than Britain, which it believes has 185).

 

In February 2000, Knesset member Issam Mahoul said Israel had '200 to 300' nuclear weapons; in August of that year, the Federation of American Scientists said that Israel could have produced 'at least 100 nuclear weapons, but probably not significantly more than 200'; the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates 200.

 

Other sources, including Jane's Intelligence Review, estimate between 400 and 500 thermonuclear and nuclear weapons.

 

What Dimona is to Israel's nuclear programme, the Israeli Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) at Nes Ziona is to its chemical and biological warfare (CBW) programme. The high-security facility is absent from aerial survey photographs and maps, on which it has been replaced by orange groves.

 

Except for token visits to Dimona by a Norwegian team in 1961 and a US team in 1969, there has been no international scrutiny. Even the Knesset is denied access.

 

However, the 1993 report by the Office of Technology Assessment for the US Congress states that Israel has 'undeclared offensive chemical warfare capabilities' and is 'generally reported as having an undeclared offensive biological warfare programme'.

 

Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies states that Israel has conducted extensive research into gas warfare and is ready to produce biological weapons.

 

According to an exhaustive study by Karel Knip, a Dutch journalist, the IIBR's work has included the synthesis of nerve gases such as tabun, sarin and VX.

 

The October 1992 crash an of El Al cargo plane in Amsterdam that caused at least 47 deaths and caused hundreds of immediate and subsequent mysterious illnesses led to the disclosure in 1998 that flight LY1862 was carrying chemicals including 50 gallons of dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP) - enough to produce 594 pounds of sarin. The DMMP was supplied by Solkatronic Chemicals Inc of Morrisville, Pennsylvania, and was destined for the IIBR.

 

Avner Cohen has catalogued reported uses of biological weapons by Jewish forces during the 1948 war in Palestine. The Israeli historian Uri Milstein alleged that 'in many conquered Arab villages, the water supply was poisoned to prevent the inhabitants from coming back.' Milstein states that one of the largest of such covert operations caused the typhoid outbreak in Acre in May 1948.

 

The Palestinian Arab Higher Committee reported in July 1948 that there was some evidence that Jewish forces were responsible for a cholera outbreak in Egypt in November 1947 and in Syrian villages near the Palestinian-Syrian border in February 1948.

 

In May 1948, the Egyptian ministry of defence stated that four 'zionists' had been captured while trying to contaminate artesian wells in Gaza with 'a liquid which was discovered to contain germs of dysentery and typhoid'.

 

In 1954, it was widely reported that defence minister Pinchas Lavon had proposed using BW for special operations. Cohen says: 'Israel has presumably employed biological or toxin weapons for special operations.'

 

In 1955, Prime Minister Ben Gurion ordered the weaponisation and stockpiling of chemical weapons in case of a war with Egypt. Former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky claims that lethal tests have been performed on Arab prisoners at the IIBR.

 

There are allegations that Israel has used CBW on numerous occasions:

 

Chemical defoliants used by the army against Palestinian lands, including Ain el-Beida in 1968, Araqba in 1972 and Mejdel Beni Fadil in 1978;

Armed nuclear missiles in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars;

Chemical weapons in the 1982 war on Lebanon, including hydrogen cyanide, nerve gas and phosphorus shells;

In the 1980s lethal gases against Palestinian civilians and Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli Jewish prisoners.

 

Discussing delivery systems, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists states that Israel's F-16 squadrons based at Nevatim and Ramon are the most likely carriers of nuclear warheads and that a small group of pilots has been trained for nuclear strikes.

 

According to the Sunday Times, F-16s crews are also 'trained to fit an active chemical or biological weapon within minutes of receiving the command to attack'. Israel's F-4s, F-15s and Jaguars are also nuclear-capable.

 

Israel's Jericho I (with a range of 660km) and Jericho II (1,500km) missiles are nuclear-capable. The Shavit satellite launch vehicle is convertible into an intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of 7,800km.

 

Israel also has three Dolphin-class submarines, the Dolphin, the Leviathan and the Tekuma, which are reportedly modified to carry nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

 

It is widely believed to possess a tactical nuclear capability, including small nuclear landmines, and strategic nuclear warheads that it can fire from cannons.

 

The UN Security Council regularly calls on Israel 'urgently to place its nuclear facilities under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency.'

 

Israel has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, but is one of only four countries in the world - with Cuba, India and Pakistan - not to have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty .

 

This article first appeared in issue 1/03 of Index on Censorship: Inside the Axis of Evil.

[Thinkerman]

Israel's Secret Weapon

 

 

Israel has enforced Vanunu's silence for 16 years

 

Owing to the extended coverage of the Azores Summit meeting between the US President George W. Bush, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, Israel's Secret Weapon has been re-scheduled to be broadcast on BBC Two on Monday, 17 March, 2003 at 2320 GMT. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

Read your comments here

 

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The United States and Britain are preparing to wage war on Iraq, for its undisclosed weapons of mass destruction.

Israel's nuclear, biological and chemical capabilities have remained un-inspected.

 

Meanwhile Mordechai Vanunu has been imprisoned for 16 years for exposing Israel's secret nuclear bomb factory to the world.

 

Vanunu is seen as a traitor in his own country.

 

He has been abandoned by most of his family and has spent 11 years in solitary confinement.

 

Today only an American couple, who have legally adopted him, are among the few visitors he is permitted.

 

This film is the story of the bomb, Vanunu and Israel's wall of silence.

 

Producer: Giselle Portenier

Reporter: Olenka Frenkiel

Executive Producers: Karen O'Connor

Deputy Editor: David Belton

Online Producer: Andrew Jeffrey

[Thinkerman]

Did anyone watch that BBC2 Correspondant programme that has just fin now. Man did they Israel's, and american Zoinist Jews got exposed today.

 

The researchers must be commended for the objectivity in searching for the truth just blew a huge gaping whole into the disarmament argument, and showed the historical double standards applyed towards israel and the other middle eastern countries

[Baaniyal]

it is quite unfortunate that i missed that program, but what do u expect from a zionist controlled media here. It's an automatic blackout to anything that says something negative about Israel and they label you as an anti-semite just for expressing your honest opinion! A paranoia shared by many jews!

[Valenteenah.]

Originally posted by Shujui-1:

There are allegations that Israel has used CBW on numerous occasions:

 

Chemical defoliants used by the army against Palestinian lands, including Ain el-Beida in 1968, Araqba in 1972 and Mejdel Beni Fadil in 1978;

Armed nuclear missiles in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars;

Chemical weapons in the 1982 war on Lebanon, including hydrogen cyanide, nerve gas and phosphorus shells;

In the 1980s lethal gases against Palestinian civilians and Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli Jewish prisoners.

The programme also alluded to the use of a "new" gas by the Israelis against the Palestinians in the Gazza Strip very recently (I missed the year...2001 or 2002?...since the second intifada begun anyways). The jews said it was tear gas...but the doctors dealing with the affected patients said it wasn't...different/unknown symptoms. The Jews still haven't identified what they used.

 

Scary, innit?

[Thinkerman]

The jews said it was tear gas...but the doctors dealing with the affected patients said it wasn't...different/unknown symptoms. The Jews still haven't identified what they used.

 

Scary, innit?

walaahi very worrying. I feel for those Palestinans on the Front line of this, coz these jews keep demonstarting that they have no respect for palestinan lives.

[Thinkerman]

This is americas contribution towards peace

 

 

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U.S. to give Israel $9B in loan guarantees, $1B

in military aid

 

By Aluf Benn, Nathan Guttman (Washington) and Moti Bassok, Haaretz Correspondents

 

 

 

 

The United States will give Israel $9 billion in loan guarantees over four years and $1 billion in military aid, the American administration decided Wednesday. The aid package still requires congressional approval.

 

Israeli officials expressed disappointement with the $1 billion in military aid, as Israel had requested $4 billion, Israel Radio reported.

 

U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice telephoned Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to inform him of the decision. Netanyahu expressed to Rice his thanks and that of the Israeli people.

 

The administration decided to grant Israel $1 billion more in loan guarantees that originally requested ($8 billion), because of the positive impression the U.S. had of the Finance Ministry's emergency economic plan intended to revive the economy, which was presented to the White House as a precondition for receiving the loan guarantees. In return for receiving the loan guarantees, the U.S. is demanding that Israel adopt a series of economic reforms.

 

The leaders of both houses of Congress this week sent a letter to President George W. Bush, asking him to approve the special aid package that Israel has been seeking.

 

Pro-Israel lobbyists in Washington managed to muster the support of leaders of both parties in Congress for the aid request. A joint letter written by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle stated that Israel is facing severe challenges in both the economic and security spheres, and that, given the decline in the Israeli economy over recent years, the United States should provide support.

 

The letter stated, "We are concerned that, if not addressed soon… Israel is in danger of mortgaging its future qualitative military edge. We cannot allow this to happen." The letter also stressed that the Israeli economy must undergo far-reaching reforms in order to extricate itself from its current malaise.

 

Similar letters have been sent to Bush by the Speaker of the House Rep. Dennis Hastertt (R-Ill.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). The fact that senior figures from both parties are signatories on these letters will certainly smooth the passage of the request through Congress.