ETERNAL VIGILANCE

U.S. Fed Up With Israeli Nukes

Is Double Standard on Israel’s Nuclear Program Ending?

By Christopher Bollyn
April 25, 2005, American Free Press

As Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pushes the Bush administration to take action against Iran’s nuclear program there are indications that the U.S. double standard regarding Israel’s extensive nuclear arsenal may be coming to an end. But is the policy change real? Or is it merely a feint?

When Sharon visited President George W. Bush at his Texas ranch on April 11, Iran’s nuclear program was the main subject of discussion, according to reports in the U.S. and Israeli press. Sharon urged Bush “to step up pressure on Iran to give up all elements of its nuclear program, according to senior American and Israeli officials,” according to U.S. press reports.

Sharon and his chief military aide, Brig. Gen. Yaakov Galant, reportedly presented Israeli intelligence and aerial photographs of Iranian nuclear sites. American officials said Sharon “was clearly pressuring Mr. Bush not to allow the European negotiations with Iran to drag on.” June has been set as the end point for the negotiations.

Iran is currently engaged in negotiations with Germany, France and Britain, in an effort to resolve the status of its nuclear program. Sharon argued that the European nations “were softening their position” with Iran and willing to allow it to hold on to technology to enrich uranium. Iran maintains that its nuclear program is to produce energy and is not a weapons program.

Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector in Iraq, said recently that Bush has approved plans to bomb Iranian nuclear sites in June if the European negotiators fail to obtain complete Iranian compliance with western demands.

“Our nuclear activities are transparent and under the supervision of the IAEA,” Hamid Reza Asefi, spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry said. “Iran seeks nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.” The International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, is the monitoring agency of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Sharon wants the United States to pressure the Europeans to move the Iranian case to the UN Security Council, which can impose sanctions on Iran. The Israeli position is that the Iranian nuclear program is on the cusp of a “point of no return.”

“This can’t be delayed much longer,” The New York Times reported a senior Israeli official in Sharon’s party as saying. “There is very little time until the point of no return is reached.”

The Times, whose motto is “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” avoided mentioning Israel’s extensive nuclear weapons or the fact that, unlike Iran, Israel is not a state party to the NPT.

Perhaps the fact that Israel, a non-member of the NPT, is trying to use the treaty to punish Iran, a member of the treaty, is a contradiction too difficult for the Times to finesse so it simply avoids mentioning it.

Only 4 nations are not members of the NPT: Cuba, India, Pakistan and Israel. As a member of the NPT, Iran’s nuclear facilities are open to inspection and monitoring by the IAEA, while Israel’s are not. This fundamental difference in the status of Iran’s and Israel’s nuclear programs is generally omitted from news reports in the controlled press.

The fact that Israel has been allowed to develop a nuclear weapons arsenal and stay out of the NPT without being sanctioned by the United States or the international community is the essence of the nuclear double-standard. With the world’s attention focused on Iran’s nuclear program, however, there are signs coming from the State Department that the days of the Israeli double-standard may be numbered.

The 187 member states of the NPT will hold a month long conference at the United Nations building in New York City in May to review the treaty and seek ways to strengthen its provisions.

Referring to upcoming NPT conference, Jackie Wolcott Sanders, the special representative of the president for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, wrote in the State Department’s electronic journal, that the goal of universal NPT adherence ought to be highlighted.

Sanders wrote that it should be “reaffirmed that India, Israel and Pakistan may join the NPT only as non-nuclear weapon states. . . . At the same time, we recognize that progress toward universal adherence is not likely in the foreseeable future.”

Another State Department official, Mark Fitzpatrick, made similar comments at a security conference of the Organization of American States (OAS) on March 17 in Washington.

“The conference should also reinforce the goal of universal NPT adherence and reaffirm that India, Israel and Pakistan may join the NPT only as non-nuclear-weapon states,” Fitzpatrick said. “Just as South Africa and Ukraine did in the early 1990s, these states should forswear nuclear weapons and accept IAEA safeguards on all nuclear activities.

“The rare use of these terms contradicts the custom of senior [U.S.] administration officials to avoid any possible confirming reference to Israeli nuclear weapons,” Haaretz wrote.

It should be noted that Sanders and Fitzpatrick are “non-senior” officials at the State Department and their comments did not explicitly call on Israel, India and Pakistan to renounce their nuclear weapons. Their comments did not call for action, as the Israelis are vigorously pushing for against Iran, nor did they mention a timetable, conditions or sanctions.

Are the comments of Sanders and Fitzpatrick mere posturing, or do they indicate a change in U.S. policy regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons?

The fact that Bush appointed Dr. Robert Joseph to replace John Bolton as the next Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security suggests that Israel will not be put under any pressure to join the NPT or give up its nuclear arsenal. Joseph, who was appointed on March 11, is a “neo-con” known for his pro-Israel sympathies.

Joseph played a primary role in the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and is associated with the National Institute for Public Policy, an organization that supports resumed nuclear testing. Joseph was also reportedly involved in negotiations with Libya to end its nuclear program.

As Sharon pressed U.S. government officials to take action against Iran, Israel’s most famous nuclear dissident and political prisoner, Mordecai Vanunu, faced prosecutors wielding a 22-count indictment against him in an Israeli court.

Vanunu is being charged with violating the restrictions imposed on him when he was released last April after 18 years in prison.

Vanunu, who converted to Christianity in 1986, spent the first 12 years in solitary confinement.

When Vanunu, who divulged information about Israel’s nuclear weapons program to the London Sunday Times in October 1986, was released from prison on April 21, 2004, a number of restrictions preventing him from speaking with foreigners or leaving Israel were imposed on him.

Upon release, Vanunu immediately defied the restrictions and spoke to the foreign press. He called for Israel to open its nuclear program to international inspections.

“It’s a shameful day for Israel’s democracy, that a man who served 18 years, a full sentence, is brought to court for exercising his freedom of speech,” Vanunu told the Associated Press after his court appearance on April 12. “I have no more secrets. Only Israel has secrets about its atomic program,” he added.

American Free Press spoke with Vanunu at the guesthouse at St. George’s Cathedral complex in Jerusalem on April 13 and asked him how things had gone in court.

The restrictions on his movement and speech, which were set to expire, were renewed for another year, he said. Vanunu, who is being held against his will in Israel, is still a prisoner of the state.

“I am continuing to break these restrictions,” Vanunu said about speaking to the foreign press.

Asked why he was being put on trial by Israel, Vanunu said, “My view is there are many reasons, but mainly they don’t want me to speak about Israel’s nuclear arsenal and bring attention to it. They want total silence.

“They don’t like my political opinions and they don’t want me to expose their cruelty and how they have treated me.”

Vanunu was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence agents in Italy in 1986.

“They don’t like a man like me who has become a Christian,” he added.

Vanunu told AFP that he did not know how Israel had tested its nuclear weapons in the 1960s, but that they had tested a weapon “in 1976 in South Africa.” Asked if Israeli weapons had been tested in another country, such as France, Vanunu said, “I have no idea. There are some secrets we don’t know about.”

Asked if he had a message he wanted to send Americans, Vanunu said: “I want them to know that my situation proves that Israel is not a democracy that respects human rights. People should not be afraid to challenge Israel’s illegal nuclear policies and its continued violations of human rights. Americans should write to their senators and representatives in Congress.”

Vanunu, who is ostracized by Israelis and Zionists, lives in mortal danger in Israel. He wants nothing more than to come to the United States and start a normal life.

He told AFP that he would like to meet and marry an American Christian woman between the ages of 25 to 35. He can be reached at the guesthouse of St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem.

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Editor's comment: It seems as if George Bush is doing something right, for a change.

After his consumate foul ups and demonstrated hubris in foreign affairs, and his spendthrift ways of wreckless abandon in regards to enriching the corporate elite and the military industrial complex, plus his most recent attempts to enrich the parasites of Wall Street with the privatization of Social Security (a Ponzi scheme), we find this a little hard to believe.

And, no doubt, Arik the Butcher, Ariel Sharon, is none too happy over this development. This policy of the Zionists is a classic case of "bait and switch" with Israel using its enemies to distract from her own misdeeds and lawlessness.

What is most atrocious, and never spoken of in the Zionist controlled main stream media, is the fact that Israel, a non-signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, is calling for attacks on Iran. Iran, of course, is most definitely a signatory to the NPT.

All in all, we see this as mere window dressing by Bush since Dr. Robert Joseph, another neocon, has replaced John Bolton as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. The government is infested with these dual loyalist traitors in positions of high authority.

All the while, Mordecai Vanunu faces continued persecution and harrassment from Israeli authorities. The fact that Vanunu is kept virtually incommunicado basically under house arrest and a gag order to not talk to the press, and forbidden to leave Israel makes the Zionists look ever more like the old communist regimes while they hide behind the façade of democracy.

Such greater hypocrisy I am not sure exists, unless you might consider BushCo mouthing their high and mighty spiels about democracy themselves.

This, of course, is a lie since they only seek to spread their fascism of supercapitalist hegemony via the transnational corporations, U.S. military might and the technosocialist, Trotskyite continual revolution of the neocons.

To maintain the prosperity of the failed fiat money system that requires more and ever increasing injections of debt to keep the system from collapse we suffer the ravages of perpetual war for perpetual peace.

One way to avoid the pitfalls of the fiat money system is to embrace the ultimate in alternate currencies, the Liberty Dollar.