Olmert comes clean on nukes

According to an article in Arutz Sheva, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, after decades of Israeli "amimut" - a policy of deliberate nuclear ambiguity.

The disclosure occurred during an interview with the German TV network SAT 1, where Olmert was asked for his comments on a statement by US defense minister Robert Gates regarding Israel's nuclear ability. Olmert became quite upset when he was asked if the fact that Israel possessed nuclear power had the effect of weakening the position of Western nations with regard to Iran's nuclear ambitions.

His response was that "Israel is a democracy and does not threaten anyone," he exclaimed. "The only thing we have tried to do is to live without terror, but we have never threatened to destroy another nation. Iran explicitly, openly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map." Olmert then admitted Israel's nuclear capability when he said "You can say that it is the same level as America, France, Israel and Russia," he said, adding that those countries had nuclear weapons but did not threaten any one with them.

This response is packed full of the usual duplicitousness and deceit to be expected of Israeli government statements. For starters, any nation that is set up solely for the benefit of one race of people and seeks to actively purge or suppress those who are not of that race is not a democracy. Secondly, for every day of its existence Israel has threatened the Palestinian nation. Over the years, the public statements of scores of Israeli officials and their cheerleaders bear witness to the fallacious nature of Olmert's claim. I have provided a small but representative sample of these statements below.

"When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle."
Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces,
New York Times, 14 April 1983.

"We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves."
Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.

"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them."
Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party
Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

As for the allegations against Iran and their leaders, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never once called for the destruction of Israel. What he did do was to pointout that regime change is both necessary and possible in Israel, just as it happened in Iran when the Shah was deposed.

His speech was deliberately mistranslated by the likes of the Middle East Media Research Institute, an organisation that could hardly be described as being impartial, as it was founded by Yigal Carmon, a retired colonel from Israeli military intelligence.

William Rugh, former US ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, described MEMRI as a news/translation service that "does not present a balanced or complete picture of the Arab print media" and went on to say that "Quotes are selected to portray Arabs as preaching hatred against Jews and westerners, praising violence and refusing any peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue."

The implication that although Israel possesses nuclear weapons, but is not threatening anyone with them, can only be seen as nonsense in the light of numerous threats made to other nations, including the slightly veiled but utterly chilling "Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches." statement made by Ariel Sharon before he became Prime Minister.

Such sabre rattling is not limited to officials. Prof. Martin Van Crevel, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, recently said “Our armed forces are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. Israel has the capability of hitting most European capitals with nuclear weapons. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes under." This claim, even if it is true, is nothing less than blackmail and the product of a seriously unstable mindset.

Back to Olmert's statement and its ramifications... attempting to bolt the stable door after the horse has bolted, the Israeli Prime Minister's Office said the statement by Olmert was misinterpreted (an all too familiar Zionist refrain when anyone gets a little too close to the truth, whether by design or by accident). Haaretz report that Olmert faces a barrage of criticism for his slip of the tongue and there have been calls for his resignation. I really don't see the point. Israel's nuclear capability, much like the faux nature of its democracy, has always been Pulcinella's secret.