Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons

[shaayecanaan]

Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons.

The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes". The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.

***

Small, medium and large, I presume?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-weapons

[aquart]

1. Anyone ever see tall, grande, or venti?

You can promise them anything but still give them Arpege.

However, if you're willing to believe everything you read.....go for it.

[shaayecanaan]

2. Chocolate, strawberry and vanilla?

I like the bit where Shimon Peres says that apartheid South Africa and Israel share a "common hatred of injustice":-

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2010/05/23/Peres-letter.pdf

[shira]

3. Guardian: To Vilify Israel, the Truth can Go Hang!

On Monday the Guardian’s front page story said that in the 1970s Israel tried to sell South Africa nuclear weapons. The story was based on a new book by Sasha Polakow-Suransky (“The Unspoken Alliance”).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-...

Chris McGreal (who wrote the article) claimed “secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime. South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes".”

How do we know this meant that nuclear – as opposed to conventional - weapons were offered by Peres? Because McGreal and Polakow-Suransky know the codewords, of course:

"Minister Botha expressed interest in a limited number of units of Chalet subject to the correct payload being available. ….. Minister Peres said the correct payload was available in three sizes. Minister Botha expressed his appreciation and said that he would ask for advice."

The "three sizes" – writes McGreal - are “believed to” refer to the conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons. Not to the size of the conventional weapon, of course. Obvious - isn’t it.

more...
http://www.thejc.com/blogpost/guardian-to-vilify-israel-truth-can-go-hang

[oberliner]

4. The headline, sub-headline, and lede of Chris McGreal’s story are erroneous and misleading.

Nothing in the documents suggests there was an actual offer by Israel to sell nuclear weapons to the regime in Pretoria. To the contrary, the conversation amounted to a probe by the South Africans, which ultimately went nowhere.

http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2745/avner-cohen-on-israel-and-south-africa

Avner Cohen:

Dr. Avner Cohen, the author of Israel and the Bomb, is Senior Research Fellow at the National Security Archive. Formerly, Dr. Cohen was co-director of the Project on Nuclear Arms Control in the Middle East at the Security Studies program at MIT (1990-95). In 1997-98 he was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), where he was working on issues related to arms control and the peace process in the Middle East.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/israel/bio.htm

[shira]

5. Apartheid Nukes: The Day After

One day after The Guardian's sensationalized report that Israel offered nuclear weapons to South Africa's apartheid regime, I'm seeing more indications -- some from South Africa -- that the allegations don't hold water.

I'll start off with the South African Press Association, which quoted former foreign minister Pik Botha:
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Pik-Botha-denies-Israeli-nuclear-deal-20100524

"I doubt it very much," he said. "I doubt whether such an offer was ever made. I think I would have known about it." . . . .

But as minister of foreign affairs from April 1977, and, towards the end of his term, as negotiator with the US on the signing of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, he had known "what was going on."

"I was very closely connected with our Atomic Energy Board and later Corporation. I would have known about it," he said.

And Reuters reports:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64N1YY20100524

Waldo Stumpf, the former head of South Africa's Nuclear Energy Corporation, who led the project to dismantle the country's nuclear weapons program, said he doubted Israel or South Africa would have contemplated a deal seriously.

"To even consider the possible international transfer of nuclear devices . . . in the political climate post the 1974 Indian 'peaceful' explosion, would have had very serious international complications," he said, referring to India's first nuclear test blast.
http://backspin.typepad.com/

[shaayecanaan]

6. Israel's most illicit affair

From the start, spokesmen for American Jewish organizations acted as apologists or dupes for Israel's arms sales. Moshe Decter, a respected director of research for the American Jewish Committee, wrote in the New York Times in 1976 that Israel's arms trade with South Africa was "dwarfed into insignificance" compared to that of other countries and said that to claim otherwise was "rank cynicism, rampant hypocrisy and anti-Semitic prejudice." In a March 1986 debate televised on PBS, Rabbi David Saperstein, a leader of the Reform Jewish movement and outspoken opponent of apartheid, claimed Israeli involvement with South Africa was negligible. He conceded that there may have been arms sales during the rightist Likud years in power from 1977 to 1984, but stated that under Shimon Peres, who served as prime minister between 1984 and 1986, "there have been no new arms sales." In fact, some of the biggest military contracts and cooperative ventures were signed during Peres's watch.

The Anti-Defamation League participated in a blatant propaganda campaign against Nelson Mandela and the ANC in the mid 1980s and employed an alleged "fact-finder" named Roy Bullock to spy on the anti-apartheid campaign in the United States -- a service he was simultaneously performing for the South African government. The ADL defended the white regime's purported constitutional reforms while denouncing the ANC as "totalitarian, anti-humane, anti-democratic, anti-Israel, and anti-American." (In fairness, the ADL later changed its tune. After his release in 1990, Mandela met in Geneva with a number of American Jewish leaders, including ADL president Abe Foxman, who emerged to call the ANC leader "a great hero of freedom.")

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/24/israels_most_illicit_affair?page=0,2

[shira]

7. This doesn't take away from the fact that the OP about Israel/SA nukes is complete crap.

[shaayecanaan]

8. I'd say its in the "maybe" category

South African notes of the meeting say that the “correct payload was available in three sizes.”

The alternative interpretation being offered is that the Jericho ballistic missiles were being offered in different sizes. However the memo says that the payloads were available in three sizes.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0524/Did-Israel-offer-to-sell-South-Africa-nuclear-weapons

[shira]

9. Real journalists and editors actually wait until facts are verified and at worst...

...they retract false reports immediately.

Looks like the Guardian, The Independent, etc... have the same journalistic standards as Debka, Arutz Sheva, and World Nut Daily.

I'm certain you believe World Nut Daily, Debka, and Arutz Sheva to be reputable, honest, and accurate anti-racist news sources.

Their claims are probably in the "maybe" category too.

:eyes:

[Dick Dastardly]

10. There are different payloads used depending upon the range that is needed.

Obviously the larger the payload the shorter the range of the missile.

[shaayecanaan]

11. No...

the only ballistic missile that Israel had at the time was the Jericho I. The Jericho II was not introduced until the late 80s.

Jericho 1 weighed 6 tonnes and carried a payload of 400kg, although admittedly its throw-weight was probably less than half of that. Regardless, reducing that payload to 200 kg (say) would only reduce the weight of the missile by about 3%, and maybe its effective weight by 6%.

Even then, that might not necessarily increase range as it is the overall ballistic performance of the missile that determines range, not the weight, and the missile is more or less designed to carry a payload of 400kg. Putting helium in a football instead of air reduces its weight, but doesn't mean you can kick it any further.

[Ken Burch]

12. And, of course, how many innocent black people the apartheid government wanted to vaporize

We can assume they weren't going to fire the nukes at any targets other than African ones.

[Ken Burch]

13. Would you agree, Dick, that ANY Israeli support of South Africa was a betrayal

of what the values of Zionism were supposed to be?

[shira]

14. Brits supported SA far more than Israel....where's your outrage? (nt)

[Donald Ian Rankin]

15. Um... take a look at the British left's attitude to Thatcher...

There, that's where. Not here, because this isn't the "Margaret Thatcher forum", and because she left power 20 years ago, thankfully, whereas Peres is currently president of Israel...