U.S. Says Israel Must Give Up Nukes

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
21

FYI - Just found out this is on Frontline tonight:

Israel’s Next War?
Tuesday, April 5, at 9pm, 60 minutes

They do not believe in peace talks. They do not want to share the land. They are well armed and are carrying out increasingly violent attacks, even targeting innocent civilians. They are members of Israel’s militant far right, and they are threatening to become Israel’s next big problem.

In “Israel’s Next War?” airing Tuesday, April 5, at 9 P.M. on PBS (check local listings), FRONTLINE goes deep inside the world of militant Jewish radicals who pose a grave new threat to Israeli security and, potentially, to the region. “The dream of these extremists”?to blow up the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, one of the most important holy sites in the Muslim world?“should give us sleepless nights,” says former Israeli Security Chief Avi Dichter. “Jewish terror is liable to create a serious strategic threat that will turn the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a conflict between thirteen million Jews and a billion Muslims all over the world.”

In “Israel’s Next War?” FRONTLINE profiles two young men?Shlomo Dvir and Yarden Morag?who planned to set off a bomb at a Palestinian girls school just as hundreds of young students arrived in the morning. The timing was carefully designed to harm as many children as possible. “It was my idea,” says Shlomo Dvir in an exclusive interview from an Israeli prison. “Whoever gets hurt, gets hurt.” Most Israelis reacted with shock and horror when Dvir and Morag’s plan was revealed?but a small minority refused to condemn them.

Dvir and Morag’s bomb never went off?an Israeli policeman lucked onto their plot at the last minute?and the investigation led Israeli security officials to an underground of other radical settlers who helped with this attack and others. These settlers are part of a much larger group of far rightists in Israel?the Kahanists, who are members of the outlawed party of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who rose to prominence in the 1980s with his message that nothing short of the expulsion of all Arabs from Jewish land will guarantee Israeli security.

“There are certain conditions, according to Jewish law, under which non-Jews may live here,” says Shmuel ben Yishai, an Israeli settler in Hebron. “This doesn’t apply to the Arabs, they don’t fit the category. They have to get the hell out!”

“At a time when most in Israel are hoping for a fresh opportunity for peace with the Palestinians, a rift is developing between the extremists and the rest of the Israeli people,” says producer Dan Setton. “And that rift will only grow if the extremists find a wider audience for their message.” Right now, while some among the settlers might be sympathetic, relatively few are willing to act. Still, the security services are worried.

“The phenomena that we’re talking about are not on the fringe,” says Yitzhak Dar, head of the Jewish section of the Israeli security service. “The glue that holds them together is ideology. It’s a very, very dangerous ideology…When they try to put it into action, through the murder of the prime minister, through the murder of the Arabs, through the massacre at the Hebron Mosque, it’s the beginning of the end of a system that can defend itself.”

Among the extremists, there is a feeling of persecution by the Israeli government.

“I think the government is mainly afraid of us because we represent an alternative,” says Noam Federman, a prominent Kahanist who trained some of the school bomb plotters on how to withstand interrogation from Israeli police. “We basically explain the Arab problem as Rabbi Kahane saw it. We say this should be a Jewish country and I think that’s what threatens them.”

Mike Guzofsky, a transplanted New Yorker and leading Kahanist, is convinced that the very people who are now painted as extremists will one day be viewed as heroes. “I think the day will come when the secret service and the government will look for Jews who are willing to risk their lives and go into Arab villages and kick them out, kill them… and we have thousands of civilians with the military know-how to instigate a mega-attack against Arabs.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/press/2311.html

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[quote]hedo wrote:
I don’t think we would ask Iran to give them up if they were not so radical, anti-US and an official state sponsor of terrorism. I think Israel has restraint and judgement. Their likely opponents have anger and a determination to destroy them.[/quote]

Somehow I don’t think being Anti-US is a valid reason for someone to give up something; somehow I can’t see the US giving up their nukes if asked. :slight_smile:

BTW: Iran is not hugely radical these days; at least not in comparison to the regime under Khomeni.

Also, you can hardly blame Iran for regarding the US with a large degree of suspicion, it’s not like relations between the two have been historically friendly, and IIRC it wasn’t Iran that the US backed in the Iran/ Iraq conflict…of course, since the US have invaded their previous ally it would hardly fill me, with warm fuzzies, if I was Iranian. Heh

23

[quote]rockhard_4eva wrote:
Come on guys, Jews pretty much developed the Nuclear program for the US and then moved to Israel (Unfortunately, they also gave the secrets to the Russians).
[/quote]

No. Scientists developed the nuclear programme, not Jews, the fact that they happened to be Jews is simply a historical conincidence based on the fact that a lot of the jews who ended up at Los Alamos, amongst other places, were running from the distinctly jew-unfriendly regimes in Europe at the time.

Is it too much to ask for people to remember that Judaism is a religion not a race…

24

[quote]hedo wrote:
I don’t think we would ask Iran to give them up if they were not so radical, anti-US and an official state sponsor of terrorism. I think Israel has restraint and judgement. Their likely opponents have anger and a determination to destroy them.[/quote]

Somehow I don’t think being Anti-US is a valid reason for someone to give up something; somehow I can’t see the US giving up their nukes if asked. :slight_smile:

BTW: Iran is not hugely radical these days; at least not in comparison to the regime under Khomeni.

Also, you can hardly blame Iran for regarding the US with a large degree of suspicion, it’s not like relations between the two have been historically friendly, and IIRC it wasn’t Iran that the US backed in the Iran/ Iraq conflict…of course, since the US have invaded their previous ally it would hardly fill me, with warm fuzzies, if I was Iranian. Heh

25

rock and GDollar are right…

Israel developed it’s own Nuclear Program…interestingly enough, with the intial help of France…

The U.S. had some input, and voiced their concerns periodically…but the U.S. had no control…nor did they try to stop it…

As a side note…the Israeli Nuclear Arsenal has been placed on High Alert twice that we know of:

  1. In 1973 during the initial stages of the Yom Kipper War when Syrian and Egyptian forces overan Israeli positions and came within striking distance of the Jordan River. (U.S. Nuclear forces were also placed on high alert …)

  2. In 1991 when Saddam Hussein hit Tel Aviv and Haifa with Scud Missles…

The Arab world fully understands that Israeli Nuclear Weapons exist…and that they will not hesitate to use them…

Mufasa

26

[quote]vroom wrote:
Hmm, perhaps an opening move in an interesting chess game involving Iran and North Korea?

Gather up your pieces, this could be some of the most interesting maneuvering we’ll see in our lifetime, at least if it is part of the ongoing strategy we’ve seen unrolling so far.[/quote]

I think your probably right Vroom. I’m wondering if this is just a half-hearted attempt to gain back some cred with the Muslim world - which really is about the only thing we could do at this point.

The other possibility is that the US really is starting to toughen up it’s stance on Israel because of the ongoing Pentagon spy investigation as well as Israel’s persistence in selling our military technology.

Israel keeps playing the victim and the US media is completely silent on Israel’s role in this global “chess match”. Our media makes it sound like Israel is a poor defenseless country completely at the mercy of Palestine.

They ARE the elephant in the living room.

27

[quote]Mufasa wrote:
The Arab world fully understands that Israeli Nuclear Weapons exist…and that they will not hesitate to use them…
[/quote]

Exactly. Most people here in the US have the misconception that the Israeli government wants peace. (to add: most of their citizens do want peace)

28

JtF:

I think that the Israeli Goverment favors peace…

However…the survival of Israel supercedes any other consideration…

Mufasa

29

[quote]ConorM wrote:
Ok so I post some opinions and they aren’t valid because I am irish. Americans think the world begins and ends at their borders, no you are not ‘right’ about everything. You wonder why other countries hate you, well its for reasons such as this. Half you guys claim to be friggin Irish, yet you are hated here.

You guys are all for the war, ignoring the fact you were decieved by a shameful government. The arguments being mainly that it was ‘humanitarian intervention’ or something in that ilk. SO it was ok to be deceived? And surely the ‘intervention’ was nonsensical being that the main human rights violations in Iraq where against the Kurds in 88 and after the Gulf war and not ongoing.

Don’t try to belittle me, or people from other nations, all it does is make your own opinion less valid.[/quote]

No, I have very specific reasons to dislike the Irish.

The irish tell themselves that if it weren’t for alcohol then they would rule the world. This is perfectly indicative of the irish way of looking at things: make excuses. “We can’t do this or that because of…” (Insert external element here, like England or the EU or the rain or the government or whatever).

Probably the funniest example of this were two irish film (pronounced fill-um in Dublin) directors that I knew. Both produced shitty fill-ums that no one saw. When asked why they didn’t make any money, both said: “1) Because Hollywood wouldn’t distribute them 2) The government didn’t give them enough money to distribute it.” Nevermind that the movies sucked.

Ireland won its independence not by defeating its oppressor but by murdering enough ordinary citizens that the UK finally left. The calculus on Downing Street was: “Why are we staying? Their farmers are too lazy to produce grain, they murder our women and children, they aren’t productive enough to bring in any taxes… Plus, their dreary culture is wearing off on some of our citizens. Fuck it, we’re out of there!”

Let’s talk about Ireland’s historical largesse. When I was living there it was at the time of the “Celtic Tiger” in the 1990’s. This was the time when the Industrial Revolution came to Ireland, and was largely funded by the wealthier nations in the EU. So what happened when Eastern European countries wanted to join? The irish people voted overwhelmingly against it in a referendum, as they would no longer be recipients of the fruits of others’ labors but would be forced to contribute to those that were less fortunate. There was no other reason put forward – just sheer greed.

You can’t look back in history and point out where the irish have done anything good as a nation for anyone else. World War I? Revolted. World War II? Stayed neutral despite the fact that the Nazis killed irishmen and women on the high seas. The Cold War? Took advantage of the largesse and protection of the US while badmouthing it the whole time.

Your history of “greatness” is almost totally invented. I don’t mean “spun”, as in putting a nice coloring on a historical tale. I mean totally invented, as in “We never accomplished anything as a nation besides building a few rickety stone tombs while the pyramids were being built.” In truth, irish history is a bloody catalogue of defeat, alcoholism and religious strife. All your national heroes were martyrs to losing causes. So now you require your students to learn gaelic, and print your road signs in it, although only five people on the planet still speak it because the language died 300 years ago.

You want to know why people don’t dislike the Irish? It’s not because they’ve done anything right. It’s because no one knows them. Your neighbors who know you best – England, Wales, and Scotland – regard you as the whiny, dirty neighbor. Even if the irish stood in the UN and screamed at the top of their lungs no one would hear.

Ireland is great at criticizing others in grandiose fashion (see Mary Robinson) while violence, terrorism, and alcoholism are endemic at home. Ireland has produced lots of people that are great talkers (Yeats, Robinson, etc.) and NO doers (Churchill, Lincoln, etc.).

The exception to this would be your expatriates, but let’s look at how the man on the street treats the expatriate. “You’re not really irish, the real irish stayed!” (and made the only 3rd world country in Western Europe). (By the way, I was the largest guy in your entire country, so I didn’t hear a peep out of any of you malnourished, drunk midgets. But you had no problems picking on my smaller American co-workers when I wasn’t around. Hmmm…) Irish Americans, Irish Canadians, Irish Australians, etc. have all done well for themselves, but it wasn’t until they shed their depressing native culture.

Let me tell you what Irish foreign policy is: “Let other nations protect us, feed us, build our highways. They’re going to act by their conscience, so they’re going to do it regardless of what we do. So we should then criticize them like nasty little punks, so that way our enemies will think we’re really with them! It’s 11 am, let’s have a drink!” No pride there, but it’s Ireland – there’s nothing to be proud of.

30

[quote]vroom wrote:
OK, I will now discout all of your opinions because you are Canadian. Wait, too late!

Bah, if you aren’t simply kidding, you are a retard.[/quote]

Yes, I was just kidding. There are lots of reasonable pleasant and tough Canadians who I wouldn’t mind having at my back in a fight.

You are not one of them.

31

"ConorM wrote:
Erm I dunno about this for sure but I was fairly certain the US gave the Israelis their nukes??

Also why does every country have to give up Nukes if the US themselves do not? What gives them the World Authority?"

I’m calling on the irish to give up alcohol and go to the dentist.

I’m an American authority because my teeth are clean and I drink only a minimal amount of alcohol.

Therefore, I don’t offend the world with my body habitus. Now it’s your turn.

Thanks!!!

JeffR

32

“Israel developed its own Nuclear program - I proudly served in the Israeli Defence Forces and can understand how Americans think anything outside of the USA is inferior – this is called patriotism. I wish Canada had more…”

One of the top ten posts of the year!!!

JeffR

33

“ConorM wrote:
Ok so I post some opinions and they aren’t valid because I am irish.”

No, but it doesn’t help.

“Americans think the world begins and ends at their borders, no you are not ‘right’ about everything.”

Of course we are. Might makes right.

“You wonder why other countries hate you,”

Usually, the same reason why people dislike me. The better, larger, and smarter you are, the more people (aka… the irish) dislike you.

“well its for reasons such as this. Half you guys claim to be friggin Irish”

What? Do you do research at the Al Shades School of “Make shit up and claim it as truth?”

“yet you are hated here.”

Great. Stop emigrating!!!

“You guys are all for the war, ignoring the fact you were decieved by a shameful government.”

Did I just hear an irish-“man” belittling another government?

“The arguments being mainly that it was ‘humanitarian intervention’ or something in that ilk.”

Definetly was part of it. The other was that thing you guys specialize in: terrorism. We don’t like it. We aren’t going to allow it to spread.

“SO it was ok to be deceived?”

You mean like Sinn Fein denying responsibility?

“And surely the ‘intervention’ was nonsensical being that the main human rights violations in Iraq where against the Kurds in 88 and after the Gulf war and not ongoing.”

Do they have television/newspapers in your area? You might have heard about rape rooms, human shredders, mass graves, mutiliation. Or maybe not.

“Don’t try to belittle me, or people from other nations, all it does is make your own opinion less valid.”

I want to make sure you understand that I am aiming my ire directly at you.

You are the one to be belittled.

Thanks!!!

JeffR

34

[quote]Yes, I was just kidding. There are lots of reasonable pleasant and tough Canadians who I wouldn’t mind having at my back in a fight.

You are not one of them.[/quote]

Oh boohoo. I’m hurt.

Anyhow, I enjoyed your post on the relative merits of the Irish. It was a good read. However, both you and the Irish dude would do well to realize that your posts are defined by yourself, not the country you live in.

If you have the brainpan to consider what I say, and judge it on its own merits, I’ll be more than happy.

Anyhow, you can go fight your battles without me, I’ve got my own to attend to.

35

[quote]Mufasa wrote:
JtF:

I think that the Israeli Goverment favors peace…

However…the survival of Israel supercedes any other consideration…

Mufasa[/quote]

It’s not what they say - it’s what they DO…

Israel ignores US reproach over settlement expansion
By Harvey Morris in Jerusalem
FINANCIAL TIMES
April 6 2005

A rare diplomatic spat has broken out between Israel and the US over planned Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank, although officials and diplomats said on Wednesday it was unlikely to mar next week’s summit between Ariel Sharon and President George W. Bush.

The dispute centres on a project, supported by the Israeli prime minister, to add two new neighbourhoods and around 3,500 new homes to Maale Adumim, three miles east of Jerusalem and, with 30,000 inhabitants, the largest settlement in the territory.

The project, which would fill the gap between the settlement and predominantly Arab suburbs of east Jerusalem, has been on the drawing board for a decade. However, the controversy surfaced only after Israeli officials said legal procedures to launch construction were nearly complete.

The planned expansion conflicts with international law that regards all settlements as illegal and also contradicts the US view that settlements should not be enlarged, at least not outside their present limits.

Despite expressions of US displeasure - including remarks by Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, that the planned expansion was “at odds with American policy” - Mr Sharon was this week quoted as telling a parliamentary committee that construction must go ahead.

President Bush indirectly responded by saying he would press Mr Sharon at their summit in Crawford, Texas, on Monday to abide by the international peace road map. “And the road map calls for no expansion of the settlements,” he told reporters.

Tzipi Livni, Israeli housing minister, on Wednesday followed up on those remarks by acknowledging there were differences with the US administration. “It seems that the debate is more over whether Israel can expand the perimeters of these communities. There apparently will be disputes with the Americans over this,” she told Army Radio.

Palestinian officials have complained to Washington that construction on the hilly region between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim - an area codenamed E-1 - would cut Arab neighbourhoods of Jerusalem from the West Bank and effectively split the north and south of territory earmarked for a future Palestinian state.

Diplomats said they doubted that the dispute would dominate the Crawford summit, which is likely to focus on Israel’s forthcoming evacuation of settlements in the Gaza Strip. “We’ve seen this sort of thing before,” said a western diplomat.

“While the US may not be happy about Israeli settlement activity, the priority at this stage is disengagement,” he said. “There’s no appetite for giving Sharon a hard time. Bush has made similar noises before, but it never went beyond that.”

Others suggested Mr Bush’s remarks might have been partly directed at his partners in the international road map Quartet - the UN, European Union and Russia - to reassure them that he would press for Israeli compliance with the peace plan.

By a similar token, Mr Sharon’s reported remarks about the necessity of the Maale Adumim expansion might have been geared to reassuring his right wing that he was intent on consolidating Israel’s hold over the West Bank even as it withdraws from Gaza.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c023046e-a6af-11d9-a6df-00000e2511c8%2Cdwp_uuid%3D99eafd16-a001-11d8-81c6-000e2511c801.html

Israel to dump 10,000 tons of garbage a month in the West Bank
By David Ratner
HAARETZ
April 4, 2005

Israel has decided to transfer garbage beyond the Green Line and dump it in the West Bank for the first time since 1967. The project was launched despite international treaties prohibiting an occupying state from making use of occupied territory unless it benefits the local population.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/560433.html

36

All of this is like that film with all those guys pointing guns at eachother maybe half of them bluffing and half of them for real. Anyhow any country giving up its nuclear weapons is a good thing.
I usually tend to agree with the people who can see the bigger picture and not those who take things for face value i.e. this does look very much like a way of getting some cred with the arab world just to show that it’s not all one sided, such a nice thing to do it almost brings a teer to my eye.
Oh and the ‘problem’ with the palestinians is that they cant exactly nuke them, that would be like smacking yourself in the nose because a fly sat on it.

37

JtF:

Both articles bring up a fundamental problem that Israel has…

  1. By Law, edict and/or “Divine Mission”…any Jew, Worldwide, has the right to Israeli citizenship…(and MANY have heeded the call to “come home”…)

  2. Couple # 1 with very limited land and resources and pressure from Jewish Fundamentalist…and you have a volitile no-win scenario.

Water…food…land…Religion…Power…

Yep…one or some combination of the above have been at the root of just about all Wars…

Mufasa

38

Hey, shorty!

I remember two such scenes! (There have been many!)

1)“Saving Private Ryan”

2)“Reservoir Dogs”

(Okay…from Thermonuclear Stockpiles beneath the Negev desert to Quintin Tarantino! Go figure…!)

Mufasa

39

Jesus Christ!

I only stated that Jews helped to develop the US weapons program. Isreal is a Jewish state, and those Jewish scientists had close connections and later lived in Israel. Where the hell does this “its a religion not race BS come in?”

Fact is, US helped Israel develop its weapons program by giving us foreign aid, not information/schematics. Have any of you been to an Ivy League university – Hell, Yale’s motto is “Cream of the cream” written in Hebrew. Israel, being a Jewish state with many Jews (too many) living abroad all over the world, but especially the US, does not need help developing anything, just the funds.

On the China post; it is quite embarassing if it is indeed true. I do not believe that Israel would sell US weapons to China. If they did, its because for whatever reason, the US wanted Israel too.

PS. Intel’s second largest R&D center (not production/manufacturing) is based in Israel. Because stem cells are fair game in my religion, a lot of the most advanced stem cell research is being done today in Israel, but both US and Israeli, Jewish and non-Jewish scientists, and is being funded by our friend George W. This is well known in Israel.

Politcs, gotta love it.

40

Oh yeah,

I love Irish…women.

Wow.

If anyone ever finds a real Irish girl, don’t let her go, at least until you sleep with her.

And don’t play fight with them, you’ll end up with a broken nose.