Israel has had WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) for decades

[whistle]

...and they will use them if provoked or desperate.

<snip>
Nuclear Weapons

The Israeli nuclear weapons program grew out of the conviction that the Holocaust justified any measures Israel took to ensure its survival. Consequently, Israel has been actively investigating the nuclear option from its earliest days. In 1949, HEMED GIMMEL a special unit of the IDF's Science Corps, began a two-year geological survey of the Negev desert with an eye toward the discovery of uranium reserves. Although no significant sources of uranium were found, recoverable amounts were located in phosphate deposits.
The program took another step forward with the creation of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) in 1952. Its chairman, Ernst David Bergmann, had long advocated an Israeli bomb as the best way to ensure "that we shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter." Bergmann was also head of the Ministry of Defense's Research and Infrastructure Division (known by its Hebrew acronym, EMET), which had taken over the HEMED research centers (HEMED GIMMEL among them, now renamed Machon 4) as part of a reorganization. Under Bergmann, the line between the IAEC and EMET blurred to the point that Machon 4 functioned essentially as the chief laboratory for the IAEC. By 1953, Machon 4 had not only perfected a process for extracting the uranium found in the Negev, but had also developed a new method of producing heavy water, providing Israel with an indigenous capability to produce some of the most important nuclear materials.

For reactor design and construction, Israel sought the assistance of France. Nuclear cooperation between the two nations dates back as far as early 1950's, when construction began on France's 40MWt heavy water reactor and a chemical reprocessing plant at Marcoule. France was a natural partner for Israel and both governments saw an independent nuclear option as a means by which they could maintain a degree of autonomy in the bipolar environment of the cold war.

In the fall of 1956, France agreed to provide Israel with an 18 MWt research reactor. However, the onset of the Suez Crisis a few weeks later changed the situation dramatically. Following Egypt's closure of the Suez Canal in July, France and Britain had agreed with Israel that the latter should provoke a war with Egypt to provide the European nations with the pretext to send in their troops as peacekeepers to occupy and reopen the canal zone. In the wake of the Suez Crisis, the Soviet Union made a thinly veiled threat against the three nations. This episode not only enhanced the Israeli view that an independent nuclear capability was needed to prevent reliance on potentially unreliable allies, but also led to a sense of debt among French leaders that they had failed to fulfill commitments made to a partner. French premier Guy Mollet is even quoted as saying privately that France "owed" the bomb to Israel.
<more>
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/

[nashville_brook]

1. yeah, but they are the good guys. they wouldn't do anything

*wrong* with THEIR weapons of mass destruction. those other middle easterners -- wooboy. wouldn't want to see things get imbalenced over there, you know.

[davidinalameda]

2. when you have all or most of your neighbors calling for your destruction

I think that it's justified

[Poll_Blind]

3. Certainly an arguable point but it's equally arguable that...

...ownership of such weapons only incites countries in the area to race to procure them, themselves. Which, in an epic understatement, is likely to cause "problems".

PB

[DYouth]

5. So if people use hateful rhetoric against you

Then you can create illegal weapons and hoard them, threatening to use them against your neighbors (as they have in the past)?

Suddenly I think North Korea must be completely justified with its own WMD programs!

[MidwestTransplant]

6. I think Israel has experienced a bit more than "hateful rehetoric"

from it's neighbors. Think 1948, 56, 67 and 73.

[DYouth]

8. Wars it started and blew the heck out of the Arabs in

Yes they certainly need nukes

[MidwestTransplant]

11. Go back to history 101.

[davidinalameda]

9. what makes their weapons illegal?

it's called self-defense

[DYouth]

10. Nuclear Weapons are not called self-defense

But then again to the Israeli right wing every horrid act and atrocity is justified as "self defense." I guess the shattered network of refugee camps surrounding Israel and housing the Palestinians are on the verge of destroying the entire Jewish State -- and I'm just too blind to see that the IDF could not possibly fend them all off without a nuclear holocaust in its back pocket.

[davidinalameda]

12. would you rather have the Israelis in refugee camps

or better yet, concentration camps?

or would you rather have those Arab countries with the Bomb just start dropping them on Israel so you can forget about the camps

As much as I don't like nukes, I'd say that the threat of Israel retaliating has allowed the country some safety

it's like having a big dog in your yard, no one is going to come out of fear

[AlamoDemoc]

4. YES> Israel posses WMD and Nuclear Weapons

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FG10Ak01.html


Nuclear Israel: Belling the cat
By Ehsan Ahrari

In an era of intense global support for nuclear non-proliferation, Israel's unspoken possession of a nuclear arsenal - euphemistically known as an outcome of its policy of "strategic ambiguity" - is coming under increased criticism and limelight. Mohammad ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - the United Nations' nuclear watchdog - visited Israel on Tuesday to talk to the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon about making the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. Even though a spokesman of that agency denied that ElBaradei's mission was to ask the Jewish state to unravel its nuclear-weapons program, one is hard pressed to know how else that region would ever become a nuclear-free zone. According to the unclassified estimates of the US intelligence community of the late 1990s, Israel possesses between 75 and 130 nuclear weapons.

<snip>

If one were looking for a gaping example of US nuclear non-proliferation policy double standards, that it lets Israel continue to modernize its nuclear arsenal without even a word of criticism would fit the bill. Not that Washington was ever oblivious to the existence of such Israeli capabilities. On the contrary, as the website of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) - a prestigious nuclear non-proliferation group - notes, "The United States first became aware of Dimona's existence after U-2 overflights in 1958 captured the facility's construction, but it was not identified as a nuclear site until two years later. The complex was variously explained as a textile plant, an agricultural station, and a metallurgical research facility, until David Ben-Gurion stated in December 1960 that Dimona complex was a nuclear-research center built for 'peaceful purposes'." One should recall similar explanations that India proffered in the aftermath of its so-called peaceful nuclear explosion in 1974, and until it became a declared nuclear power in 1998. Iran is currently using the very same rationale to pursue its own nuclear program.

[Octafish]

7. The horrorible thing is, if they exist they can be used. Ask AQ Khan.

Israel has the nukes, probably enough to incinerate most of the world's major cities.
Anywyay. If Israel is about to be overrun, it will more than likely use them to defend her people.
Trouble is, Pakistan and possibly other Middle Eastern nation have nukes, too.
If Israel uses nukes, so might Pakistan. And that could destroy all of Israel.
And that could easily lead to the end of the world.

Oh yeah. The people who made it possible for much of the above are friends of the Bush Crime Family: Cheney, Rumfeld, Kissinger, et al.

Great thread! Learned more about the Israeli nuclear program, quicker, than most any other source.

Thanks, whistle and other DUers.

NUKOOLER
NIGHTMORON