At the United Nations in 1958 the Irish government proposed the idea of an international agreement to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
They suggested that nuclear states shouldn't transfer nuclear weapons or the technology needed to make them to non-nuclear states. The proposal was supported by the Soviet Union. It was opposed by the United States, France and the members of NATO. The contrast with the imperialists' current views in states acquiring nuclear weapons does not need to be elaborated.
The Israeli government made the acquisition of nuclear weapons one of its very earliest priorities. As early as 1948 its first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion began recruiting scientists who could "increase the capacity to kill masses."
In 1952 the Israel Atomic Energy Agency was founded. In 1955 under the leadership of future Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shimon Peres, the Israeli state began a programme to build the nuclear reactor that would allow them to make nuclear weapons.
France was to be the principal assistant in this programme. In 1948 Israel did not have a single nuclear physicist. Students were sent to study in Zurich, Amsterdam, Chicago and Bristol but without significant foreign support it would be a long time before the Israelis could make their own bomb.
The French government obliged by letting Israeli scientists work in the French Nuclear Research Centre. It was to be one small part of an intimate relationship.
The Americans were also keen to help. In 1954 they offered the Israelis a nuclear reactor as part of a programme called "Atoms for Peace".
Naturally they could have it on condition that it was used for experiments and research into generating electricity and no other purposes. Shortly after this offer was made Ben Gurion ordered the development of a chemical weapons programme.
The Egyptian government renationalised the Suez Canal in July 1956, an action that would prompt the British and French to send their troops to try to re-capture it. The day after this event the French government invited the Israelis to join the operation. At the same meeting Shimon Peres made a deal with the French that they would build a reactor at Dimona in southern Israel and supply the uranium it needed.
Norway too was keen to help. The Israelis asked them for 20 tons of heavy water which is necessary to make plutonium. The Norwegians wanted to keep control of the water after it was sold; presumably to be sure it wasn't used for untoward purposes
The Israeli response from Ernst David Bergman, the scientific director is just as valid today;" the controls of which one speaks so much today in the field of atomic energy are only applied by the big countries to the smaller ones, they are unjust, unwarranted and represent an infringement of the sovereignty of the smaller countries." Quite so, George W.
The Israeli programme was conducted entirely without political debate. Ben Gurion had not discussed the matter in cabinet. Only two cabinet members were informed about it and the information they received was confined to what they needed to know.
Funding came from outside the normal state budget and Israeli business people and American Zionists were asked for large donations.
Although the idea was to build a reactor capable of producing materials for nuclear weapons in secrecy it was impossible to conceal the presence of several hundred French engineers and construction workers at Dimona.
Many of these worked for a French company well-known for building large nuclear reactors. In 1960 a visiting American nuclear scientist told his ambassador in Tel Aviv that the Israelis had succeeded in building a reactor similar to the sort the French used to make their nuclear weapons.
The Americans asked the Israelis if this was true but it took the CIA seven months to establish that it wasn't a textile factory after all but a forty-megawatt nuclear reacThe following year President Kennedy, who called Ben Gurion "a wild man", gave him an ultimatum of thirty days to permit an inspection of the plant. The inspection took place on a Sabbath when most employees were absent, anything suspicious had been concealed, the inspectors were not allowed to take photographs, measurements or use instruments. The Israeli version that the plant was for peaceful purposes became the official US line.
To show that there were no hard feelings Kennedy struck a deal with the Israelis to supply them with surface to air missiles. Kennedy had suggested that the plant be inspected twice a year to ensure that weapons grade plutonium wasn't being produced.
Ben Gurion agreed but the inspections never took place more than once a year and ion of were always as constrained and ineffectual as the first one. They soon stopped.
Kennedy's successor Lyndon Johnson had a novel approach to nuclear proliferation. He let the Israelis continue with their nuclear weapon programme. However to make sure they wouldn't have to use them he increased the supply of conventional weaponry.
The only condition was that they had to agree not to be the first to "introduce" them into the Middle East. There may be a distinc tion between "build" and "introduce" in this context but it is not an obvious one.
Analysis by the Federation of Atomic Scientists indicates that Israel may have two hundred atomic bombs.
It is also believed that the Israeli state has enough plutonium to make one or two hundred nuclear bombs. It also has the long and short-range missiles needed to deliver its thirty-five tactical and strategic thermonuclear
Public Copyright FAS an
Eye devices. Israel has never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty
When pressed on the matter of its nuclear weapons its spokespeople don't admit that they have them but it is right that they should have them
It isn't just Israeli government representa tives who are coy on the question of Israeli nuclear weapons. Blair was prepared to go to war on the pretext of a few clapped out Soviet era Iraqi missiles.
He is an accomplice in the build up to war against states that don't want to play by the rules of the new imperial order.
The history of the Israeli nuclear programme and the British government's silent complicity with it are one more fact to prove that the war against Iraq was based on lies and the planned wars against Iran and North Korea will be based on lies.
satellite view of the Israeli nuclear plant that everyone seems to pretend does not exist Bistributon and publishing in an