CounterPunch
October
14, 2002
Flashback
Inspecting Nuclear Israel: Part One
by BOB FELDMAN
"In the near term, there is little
risk that Iraq's now dormant nuclear program could lead to the
production of nuclear arms or that Iraq could obtain nuclear
weapons material clandestinely, because such material does not
appear to be available for sale."
THE UNDECLARED BOMB by Leonard
Spector in 1988
"Israel has `hundreds' of tactical
and strategic nuclear weapons, including more than 100 nuclear
artillery shells, nuclear landmines in the Golan Heights and
hundreds of low-yield neutron warheads."
THE NEW YORK TIMES on Oct.
20, 1991
Like the transnational oil companies and the government
of Kuwait Inc., Nuclear Israel seems to have a special influence
in U.S. political life. One reason for Nuclear Israel's special
influence is because its political allies in the United States
are willing to spend a lot of money to fund the political campaigns
of influential members of the U.S. Congress.
According to the 1990 book, STEALTH PACS:
HOW ISRAEL'S AMERICAN LOBBY SEEKS TO CONTROL U.S. MIDDLE EAST
POLICY by Richard Curtis, "the ability to spend more on
elections than any other special interest in the United States
while remaining virtually invisible to the public, and to evade
with impunity the letter and the spirit of the law limiting
contributions to congressional candidates, are only two of
the `special' qualities of pro-Israel PACS [political action
committees]." Seventy-eight pro-Nuclear Israel PACS donated
more than $5.7 million to 477 candidates for the U.S. Congress,
for instance, during the 1988 U.S. election campaign.
Nuclear Israel produces nuclear bombs
on Middle East soil. At its Negev Nuclear Research Center in
Dimona, the Israeli government continues to increase the size
of its nuclear weapons arsenal. In his book, THE SAMSON OPTION:
ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR ARSENAL AND AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY, Seymour
Hersh estimates that the Israeli government possessed 300 nuclear
warheads in 1992.
THE DIMONA
NUCLEAR FACTORY
According to ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR ARSENAL
by Peter Pry, "Dimona's corner of the Negev is ideal for
hiding atomic bombs" because it is "protected from
Jordan by the Dead Sea and the rough country of the eastern
desert, and over 250 miles distant from the nearest Syrian military
bases."
At the Negev Nuclear Research Center,
the Israeli government's nuclear bombs are produced in "the
windowless, two-story concrete building" next to the Dimona
nuclear reactor, according to TRIPLE CROSS by Louis Toscano,
the former United Press International Jerusalem Bureau Chief.
The roof of the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory, which is called
Machon 2, is "topped with an elevator tower" and its
walls are "several feet thick," according to the same
book. Of the Negev Nuclear Research Center's 2,700 workers,
only 150 are allowed to enter the Holy Land's Machon 2 nuclear
bomb factory.
These 150 scientists and technicians
build their nuclear bombs "in laboratories and work shops
on six levels under the desert floor" and Machon 2 is "essentially
a giant reprocessing plant" where plutonioum is produced
and "then fashioned into nuclear weapons," according
to TRIPLE CROSS. After the Machon 2 work on the nuclear bombs
is completed, the bomb components are moved in convoys of unmarked
cars to "a secret military airfield near Haifa," where
the spheres are "fitted with triggering devices and other
technology needed to turn them into nuclear weapons," according
to the same book. Some of the Israeli government's nuclear warheads
are then used in nuclear-armed Jerich II missiles which are
deployed in hardened bunkers or silos by Nuclear Israel, according
to THE UNDECLARED BOMB by Leonard Spector, a senior associate
at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
SECRECY
AND THE DIMONA NUCLEAR BOMB FACTORY
Perhaps because most people in the world
believe that the Holy Land should be a nuclear-free zone, the
Israeli government set up its Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory operation
covertly and continues to be secretive about its nuclear war
preparations. According to the Oct. 20, 1991 issue of THE NEW
YORK TIMES, "journalists working in Israel are not allowed
to publish anything substantial on Israel's nuclear program."
The book NONE WILL SURVIVE US: THE STORY
OF THE ISRAELI A-BOMB by Ami Dor-On and Eli Teicher, for instance,
which was scheduled to be published in 1980 by the two Israeli
journalists, "was banned from publication by Israeli government
censors" and Dor-On and Teicher were "allegedly threatened
with prison sentences of 15 years to life if they defy the ban,"
according to ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR ARSENAL.
In 1952, the Ben-Gurion government of
Israel "secretly founded the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission
[IAEC] and placed it under the supervision of the Defense Ministry,"
according to ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR ARSENAL. "The architect of
both the bomb factory at Dimona and the 30-year effort to keep
it secret," former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres,
was then director-general of the Israeli Defense Ministry and
he persuaded the then-Prime Minister Ben-Gurioon "to pursue
the nuclear option," according to Louis Toscano's TRIPLE
CROSS book.
In the Fall of 1956, according to THE
UNDECLARED BOMB, "France secretly agreed to supply Israel
with a sizeable plutonium-producing reactor to be built at Dimona."
The agreement between the French and Israeli government to
construct the Dimona nuclear reactor was signed on Sept. 17,
1956; on Oct. 10, 1956, "further details" were "set
forth in a classified accord," and in November 1956, the
French government made a "secret pledge to help Israel
develop nuclear arms," according to THE UNDECLARED BOMB.
Following the secret French-Israeli government
agreements of 1956, "hundreds of French technicians flooded
the Negev to construct the facility, including a plutonium processing
plant underground to elude American and Soviet spy satellites,"
and "by 1967 Israel had enough plutonium on hand to build
its first bomb," according to TRIPLE CROSS. The same book
also notes that "to explain the feverish construction activity
in the Negev, Ben-Gurion announced Israel was building a textile
plant" and after the U.S. government discovered that what
was actually being built at Dimona was a nuclear reactor, "Peres
claimed the power produced at Dimona would be used to desalinate
billions of gallons of sea water for the irrigation of the Negev."
On Dec. 21, 1960, when Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion publicly
acknowledged that a nuclear reactor--not a textile factory--was
being built at Dimona, he had also "declared that the facility
would be used exclusively for peaceful research and training,"
according to THE UNDECLARED BOMB.
Within Nuclear Israel, there was some
internal opposition to the Israeli government's decision to
produce weapons of mass destruction in the Holy Land. According
to TRIPLE CROSS, "seven of the eight members of the Israeli
Atomic Energy Commission resigned in protest over the decision
to build weapons, but the reasons were never made public."
And in 1961, two of these former IAEC members helped form the
Committee for the De-Nuclearization of the Israeli-Arab Conflict,
which was opposed to Israel developing nuclear weapons.
To assure the U.S. government that no
nuclear bombs were being produced at the Israeli government's
Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory, israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion
"agreed to permit regular inspections of the plant by American
experts, but he secretly ordered severe restrictions on the
inspectors' access," according to TRIPLE CROSS. The ISRAEL'S
NUCLEAR ARSENAL book notes that the 1969 U.S. inspection team
"complained in writing that because the Israelis made their
earlier inspection hurried and limited and did not permit them
to move freely, they could not guarantee that there was no weapons-related
work being done at Dimona." And according to TRIPLE CROSS,
on one second-floor corridor at the Machon 2 nuclear bomb factory
are two elevators "that dropped into the heart of the weapons
plant," but the entrance to the corridor where the elevator
doors are located "had been routinely bricked up when American
inspectors were shown the building."
After 1969, even the previously limited
U.S. inspections of the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory were no
longer allowed by the Israeli government. And in November, 1976,
thirteen U.S. Senators who were on a Middle East fact-finding
tour were not allowed to examine the Dimona Nuclear Bomb Factory.
According to TRIPLE CROSS, taped to a wall in Machon 2 in 1977
was "a newspaper clipping about the senators' attempted
visit and the government's denial that any weapons were being
built at Dimona."
Bob Feldman
lives in New York. This article originally appeared in Downtown
magazine in 1992. Feldman can be reached at: bob_jan@xensei.com
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