by Stephen Lendman

Israel's open secret is well known. It's nuclear armed and dangerous.

It won't discuss or reveal its program publicly. It wants regional exclusivity to maintain and use its arsenal at its discretion.

Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion recruited Eastern European Jewish scientists to "increase (Israeli) capacity to kill masses," he said.

He was determined to have "non-conventional weapons" - notably nuclear ones to counter what he called the Arabs' numerical advantage.

His farewell address expressed confidence Israeli "science (would) provide us with the weapons that are needed to deter our enemies from waging war against us."

He and former prime minister/president Shimon Peres became Israel's driving forces behind developing and maintaining Israel's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

They date from the 1950s. Following Israel's 1967 Six Day War of aggression, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan ordered production of four to 12 nuclear bombs annually.

US presidents supported Israel's program. By the early 1970s, it had advanced nuclear technology.

Today it's believed it includes hundreds of powerful nuclear weapons and delivery capability able to hit distant targets accurately.

France, South Africa and America were directly involved in aiding Israel's program.

In the 1950s, Washington sent Israel a 5-megawatt highly enriched uranium research reactor as part of Eisenhower's so-called Atoms for Peace initiative.

It was provided to help it develop nuclear weapons. Israeli scientists were trained at US universities.

They had access to domestic weapons labs. Since the early 1970s, Washington gave Israel advanced technology - including supercomputers able to design sophisticated nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

In the mid-a1980s, Dimona nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu revealed dozens of top secret photos and documents on Israel's nuclear weapons program.

His courage cost him 18 years in prison - mostly in solitary confinement.

Israel’s thermonuclear weapons today can destroy entire cities.

In February, the Pentagon released a previously kept secret Institute for Defense Analysis report titled "Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations" dated April 1987.

Revealing what's been long known followed Institute for Research: Middle East Policy director Grant Smith's FOIA suit.

DOD's release is the first official US confirmation of Israel's nuclear weapons program.

US officials knew about it and helped develop it for decades - at least since the 1960s, maybe the 50s.

Western officials, Israeli ones, and media scoundrels obsess over Iran's peaceful nuclear program well known to have no military component.

At the same time, available information on Israel's nuclear weapons program is willfully suppressed.

US major media ignore it entirely. Discussing it is considered verboten - including US help developing it.

Israel is one of only a handful of nations refusing to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Washington ignores its own laws. The 1961 US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits aiding nations developing nuclear weapons.

Israel was secretly exempted. The newly released Pentagon report discusses its nuclear infrastructure.

It includes a vast array of facilities - "equivalent to (America's) Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories," the report said.

They're "an almost exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories," it explained.

It includes extensive R&D facilities, factories, private companies, and government research centers devoted to developing, upgrading, producing and maintaining Israel's nuclear arsenal.

Its SOREQ center "runs the full nuclear gamut of activities from engineering, administration and non-destructive testing for electro-optics, pulsed power, process engineering and chemistry and nuclear research and safety," the report said.

"This is the technology base required for nuclear weapons design and fabrication."

In 1987, it was known Israel "develop(ed) the kind of codes (needed) to make hydrogen bombs."

They "detail(ed) fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level."

Israeli nuclear weapons capability was well advanced in the 1980s. Imagine how sophisticated it is now - perhaps matching America's.

Israel was given or stole US technology for decades. Knowledge about it was systematically ignored or suppressed.

Political, economic, military and technological partnership between both countries is longstanding.

It includes America helping Israel develop sophisticated nuclear weapons able to incinerate the entire Middle East and beyond.

Maybe lunatics in both countries have that and more in mind.

US and Israeli Middle East wars are real time testing grounds for new weapons systems - including chemical, biological and radiological ones.

Partnership between both countries may kill us all.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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