Mood:
sadTopic: peace
It's not our struggle (or maybe it is ecology wise?), but self described 'righteous gentile' here has noticed an inconvenient truth from our 6 years doing hack for crusty anti nuclear group Friends of the Earth Sydney 1995-2001.
That's a group that had (in)direct contact with Mordechai Vanunu via their eccentric anti nukes campaigner John Hallam who was also a friend and supporter of Reverend Ray Richmond of Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross (and notice Jewish local Norman Lee father of Ben Lee in the link there donating to Wayside). Mordechai spent time in the backpacker/tourism/entertainment/foodie/red light district when he visited Sydney briefly:
The Sydney connection
While working at the nuclear plant, Mordechai Vanunu became troubled by the implications of his work. Despite signing security agreements, he took photos of the Dimona plant. He took these with him on his travels.
Visiting Sydney in mid-1986, Mordechai Vanunu joined a discussion group at St John's Anglican Church, Darlinghurst. While in Sydney he made two momentous decisions. One was to become a Christian (a major step for someone from an Orthodox Jewish family). The second was to make his photographs public in order to warn the world about Israel's nuclear capacity and the spread of nuclear weapons.
There has been a corner of every ngo heart for the anti nuke/peace activist whistleblower ever since. God/Yaweh bless him.
So anyway .... we greatly sympathisise with the view Israel has become a covert aparthied state, increasingly in the South African pariah sense, with haughty assertions it has earned the right to be so. This is morally wrong as most thinking people understand and a festering sore on the body geo politik.
It tempts fate both in terms of demographic frictions within and close to their own 'borders' and tests western allies like the USA with it's own racial baggage and lessons of such as ML King. It tests Australia who repudiated South Africa under the ultra right, Nazi sympathising SA Govt (how ironic is that, refer Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom) up 1990.
This all suggests a one state solution over time with commonsense and mediation over time and good faith on both sides. Except for one thing. And it's quite probably a game breaker on the one state solution which should worry the whole wide world.
Because it involves an irresistable force of growing Arabic population demographic to immovable object of 100-200 nuclear arsenal that Israel wisely keeps highly discreet (referenced below). And everyone knows how humans have trouble with these situations ending in war, only it could be a war to finish all of us.
Who really believes short of disarmament treaties with Iran etc and iron clad confidence of USA backers, and a reconstructed Israel polity itself, let alone Hezbollah, Hamas etc, an ethnically diverse country and govt will be trusted with that nuke weaponry? And even those pre conditions won't be enough probably.
It's a big ask. Not inconceivable but just about. This is why we tend to conclude there will always be a two state agenda preserving 'Israel' as we know it for as long as there is always a planet to locate same. And it's with a heavy heart too given the aparthied implications and intractable grievance.
One thing is for sure, not recognising this impasse and not talking about it won't do either. There might be people smarter than we, an Einstien of diplomacy, and not just nuclear physics, out there to help?
We were put in mind of this dismal impasse recently resolving this clumsy censorship (?) or perhaps misunderstanding at centre left New Matilda, keeping similar view off this string. We can be grateful for the line of inquiry, 2nd story here on SAM albeit grim: We came across this referencing to the profound Federation of American Scientists (below) which corroborates exactly this analysis of covert nuke weaponry of USS 'Aircraft Carrier Israel' :
Excerpt from 160-page secret DIA report, first disclosed and reproduced in Rowan Scarborough, Rumsfeld's War (Regnery, 2004), pp. 194-223.
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 4:11 PMSubject: still waiting .... Israel nuke arsenal, Federation of American Scientists"Israel could potentially have produced a few dozen nuclear warheads in the period 1970-1980, and is thought to have produced sufficient fissile material to build 100 to 200 warheads by the mid-1990s. In 1986 descriptions and photographs of Israeli nuclear warheads were published in the London Sunday Times of a purported underground bomb factory at the Dimona nuclear reactor. The photographs were taken by Mordechai Vanunu, a dismissed Israeli nuclear technician. His information led some experts to conclude that Israel had a stockpile of 100 to 200 nuclear devices at that time.By the late 1990s the U.S. Intelligence Community estimated that Israel possessed between 75-130 weapons, based on production estimates. The stockpile would certainly include warheads for mobile Jericho-1 and Jericho-2 missiles, as well as bombs for Israeli aircraft, and may include other tactical nuclear weapons of various types. Some published estimates even claimed that Israel might have as many as 400 nuclear weapons by the late 1990s. We believe these numbers are exaggerated, and that Israel's nuclear weapons inventory may include less than 100 nuclear weapons. Stockpiled plutonium could be used to build additional weapons if so decided."
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http://www.fas.org/about/index.html
"The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) was founded in 1945 by scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bombs. These scientists recognized that science had become central to many key public policy questions. They believed that scientists had a unique responsibility to both warn the public and policy leaders of potential dangers from scientific and technical advances and to show how good policy could increase the benefits of new scientific knowledge."
