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Flash From the Past: Why an Apparent Israeli Nuclear Test In 1979 Matters Today

Posted by samzenpus on from the doomed-to-repeat dept.

Lasrick writes: Stanford's Leonard Weiss writes about growing evidence that Israel and South Africa cooperated on nuclear weapons testing in the 1970s, and in fact conducted a test: "On September 22, 1979, a US satellite code-named Vela 6911, which was designed to look for clandestine atmospheric nuclear tests and had been in operation for more than 10 years, recorded a double flash in an area where the South Atlantic meets the Indian Ocean, off the coast of South Africa. The detection immediately triggered a series of steps in which analysts at national labs in the United States informed their superiors that the recorded signal had all the earmarks of a nuclear test... The event has been a subject of controversy ever since, but is now recognized by most analysts as the detection of an Israeli nuclear test with South African logistical cooperation." Weiss goes through the history of the investigation and new evidence that has come to light, and relates it to the rhetoric surrounding Iran's nuclear energy program and the recent agreement Iran struck with the P5+1, as well as to efforts for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East. Terrific cloak-and-dagger read with plenty of technical details.

23 of 441 comments (clear)

  1. Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nor does Israel murder Iranians in Argentina.

    Why?

    Because Judaism doesn't have the concept of dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb, nor does Judaism demand death or conversion for all kafirs .

    1. Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nor does Israel murder Iranians in Argentina.

      Why?

      Because Judaism doesn't have the concept of dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb, nor does Judaism demand death or conversion for all kafirs .

      This is the difference. Liberal anti-Semites can't seem to wrap their heads around this concept. Israel wants to be left alone in peace; Muslim countries are hell-bent on destroying Israel. Also note: if Israel has had nukes since the 70's as this is claiming, funny how they've never used them, even in defense at this point? Compare that to Muslim countries' vows to eradicate Israel at any possible opportunity. Who do you think is more responsible with nuclear technology?

    2. Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by binarylarry · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Who would israel use nukes against? Only a fool would nuke your neighbors, even if they hate you.

      Why does the US and UN continue to allow Israel to have them? They don't really need the weapons, they can't use them in anyway without starting a massive war that will basically eliminate their country.

      By having the weapons, it causes their neighbors to want them to keep forces equal. So you have fucking crazy states like Iran constantly trying to even the playing field with Israel.

      The only reason I can see for Israel to have them is leverage over the US and other countries. As long as their nukes exist (or everyone thinks they exist), there's a kind of cold war that can be easily sparked into actual war, so the US, UN, etc can't unilaterally do anything to either side without potentially sparking an even bigger war.

      Since Israel is one of the bigger powers in the region, this unstableness prevents the larger powers from getting involved and gives more slack to do what they want.

      (this isn't meant to be anti-israel rant, just a theory. I'm generally pro Israel as a western style democracy in an otherwise fucked up region of the world).

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    3. Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Who would israel use nukes against? Only a fool would nuke your neighbors, even if they hate you.

      Why does the US and UN continue to allow Israel to have them? They don't really need the weapons, they can't use them in anyway without starting a massive war that will basically eliminate their country.

      By having the weapons, it causes their neighbors to want them to keep forces equal. So you have fucking crazy states like Iran constantly trying to even the playing field with Israel.

      The only reason I can see for Israel to have them is leverage over the US and other countries. As long as their nukes exist (or everyone thinks they exist), there's a kind of cold war that can be easily sparked into actual war, so the US, UN, etc can't unilaterally do anything to either side without potentially sparking an even bigger war.

      Since Israel is one of the bigger powers in the region, this unstableness prevents the larger powers from getting involved and gives more slack to do what they want.

      (this isn't meant to be anti-israel rant, just a theory. I'm generally pro Israel as a western style democracy in an otherwise fucked up region of the world).

      The nukes are Israel's doomsday weapon aimed at the leaders of the Muslim countries surrounding them. Those nukes say this to those leaders:

      "If you follow through on your Islamic tenets and try to reclaim this little bit of dar al-Harb for the greater glory of your Prophet, you personally are going to disappear in a blinding white flash of light. And all your cities will be glassed-over desert."

      If you don't know what dar al-Harb is, you don't understand the fundamental nature of the Arab/Israeli war - Israel's very existence is an insult to Islam. Israel is surrounded by a few hundred million people living in a culture that makes right-wing abortion clinic bombers look downright sane. I dare you to try to identify another culture in the history of humanity that actually openly celebrates the murder of innocent civilians like way too many Muslims did on 9/11. Other cultures might kill innocents, but there's always reluctance to accept it and some sort of rationale used to justify it. But not Islam - Muslims were literally dancing in the streets on 9/11.

      Honor killing where fathers murder their own daughters.

      Execution of homosexuals.

      Islam needs to grow the fuck up.

    4. Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Informative

      The whole history of that region has been various peoples stomping the shit out of various other peoples. This latest spat is just a continuation of stuff that has been going on for at least eight centuries. If it wasn't Israel it would be something else (Lebanon for instance). Of course, the British managed to screw things up in a way only the British can do when the created Palestine. To be fair, the French tried hard but were out classed by the Brits.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    5. Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by CanHasDIY · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Israeli doctrine allows for unprovoked attacks on neighboring countries.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    6. Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by rbrander · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm trying to remember what Iraq did to provoke the bombing of Osirak ... I think they built something that might eventually have allowed the development of nuclear parity.

    7. Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by elgatozorbas · · Score: 5, Informative

      I dare you to try to identify another culture in the history of humanity that actually openly celebrates the murder of innocent civilians like way too many Muslims did on 9/11.

      More specifically: some muslims openly celebrated the murder of innocent civilians and were caught on camera. Some extremist christians do similar things. Some extremist jews do similar things. Some Russians do similar things. Muslims don't have a monopoly on mediaval behaviour.

    8. Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Too what extremist christian sect are you referring....I am sick and tired of hearing this as an argument. Please, citation, what modern christian group has danced around in the streets because innocent civilians where killed? ....Im waiting....I really want to hear your response....

    9. Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by dinfinity · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I dare you to try to identify another culture in the history of humanity that actually openly celebrates the murder of innocent civilians

      Didn't the US have a little problem with lynching in the past?
      But I guess you're going to say all those blacks were criminals, right? No white supremacist would ever just want to see black guys dead, 'guilty' or not.

      The thing you have to realize is that almost all humans are very, very good at dehumanizing their out groups (i.e.: the 'not us' people), to the extent that there are no innocents among those groups (hell, they're not even human. They're 'less than dogs').

      'The only good [x] is a dead [x]' isn't just some farcical mythological exclamation, it is deeply ingrained in our biology. It takes hard work to build up civilization to prevent that instinct from surfacing and even then that layer of civilization is very thin and easily destroyed.

      Muslims were literally dancing in the streets on 9/11

      If I'm not mistaken, there are no records of Muslims in the biggest Muslim nation on earth (Indonesia) dancing in the streets because of 9/11, nor do I believe that American Muslims did so. Ask yourself what the difference is between the dancing ones and the non-dancing ones and their relation to the US (and their relationship with Israel). I'm not saying they are right to hate the US or excusing them for it, just that their human capability for hating enemies and disregarding the humanity of those killed in 9/11 is fueled by that relation, not by the specific religion they were brought up with.

      I don't know if you've looked at the ongoings in central and southern Africa in the last couple of decades, but I'm pretty sure there have been some pretty horrendously acting Christians there as well: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/afr...

      Bottom line:
      Humans don't need a lot to deeply hate an entire group of people and rather see them die than live.

    10. Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by bugs2squash · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm an atheist and even I know religion is not going to die. Faith/superstition/curiosity about the ineffable is part of the human condition, religions will always emerge to prey on that aspect of humanity just as humans exploit other human vulnerabilities (disparities in power, wealth etc.). There is no way any clever argument is going to prevent humans taking advantage of other humans.

      The best hope, to my mind, is to try and reduce the disadvantages with which so many in the world find themselves encumbered, teach them to read, join them to the internet etc. Allow people to travel freely across national borders (fat chance of that happening), treat people fairly no matter their origin, protect the vulnerable (especially children).

      Inequality is fertile soil for the corralling effect of religions. I certainly admire the great works done in the name of various churches, but I think we should remember that these were achieved by humans that could just as easily been inspired by a personal faith as one of the "name brands" without the incumberance of fighting between the brand leaders.

      There are plenty of things to fight over, lets strike religion off the list and work on overcoming the others

      --
      Nullius in verba
    11. Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by dinfinity · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And why the fuck are we supposed to specifically differentiate Indonesian Muslims

      You don't have to, but you are proving my point exactly: Humans don't need a lot to deeply hate an entire group of people. I showed you ~220 million members of a group who did not engage in celebrating the deaths of 9/11 (and are generally quite peaceful) and you respond by implying that they and all other members of their group will do terrible things to naive people. If that's not blind hatred of an out group, then I'm not sure what would qualify as such.

      Likening unrelated and dissimilar historical circumstances is a red herring.

      I was providing the exact thing that was requested: "I dare you to try to identify another culture in the history of humanity that actually openly celebrates the murder of innocent civilians"
      I identified (granted: implicitly) white supremacist culture as one that has quite undoubtedly openly celebrated the murder of innocent civilians. QED.

    12. Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by nbauman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There are 0 Israelis who live in Gaza. There are 0 settlements in Gaza. All the Gazan Israeli wars of the last 10 years wars have been Gaza attacking Israel.

      They tried taking the high road, the Gazans still won't accept living in Gaza and not Israel.

      Gaza is surrounded on all sides by a blockade which doesn't allow them to import or export any significant goods, or leave and come back to a university, for example. It reminds a lot of Jews, including me, of the Warsaw Ghetto.

      A blockade is an act of war. A people have a right to defend themselves against an attack.

      The people who are firing those missiles and making those attacks are usually not controlled by Hamas, but are smaller militant factions, which don't want peace with Israel and often sabotage the peace efforts.

      Israel claims that those militant factions are the "responsibility" of Hamas. If that's true, then logically, the Israeli government is responsible for the illegal land grabs and killings by the settlers, for example, but I can't remember an Israeli prosecution of settlers for killing Palestinians.

      Israel would also be responsible for the illegal killings of civilians during the Gaza wars, including the "white flag" incidents where Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians, including children, who came out carrying a white flag as ordered (documented in the Goldstone report), but Israel has never prosecuted a solider for killing a Palestinian, or even admitted that it happened.

    13. Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by nbauman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It reminds a lot of Jews, including me, of the Warsaw Ghetto.

      Between 1940 when it was established and mid-1942 when the uprising started the 1,125 calories a day allocation caused over 1/5th of the population of the Warsaw Ghetto to starve to death. When the first uprising happened the Germans killed another 10% of the population within 3 months are exported the remaining population to death camps.

      In Gaza the death toll from multiple uprisings is around 1/4%. The starvation is not remotely similar. It is an obscenity to compare the Warsaw Ghetto to If you are a Jew, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for saying something like that.

      I read Emanuel Ringelblum's Warsaw Ghetto diaries, and I read the Amnesty International reports of Israeli human rights abuses. I read the accounts of how ambulances took pregnant Palestinian women to the border crossings, where the Israeli border guards forced them to get out and wait, until they delivered their babies at the crossing, where many of the children (and some of the mothers) died. I read a story of how a 50-year-old Palestinian man with a heart attack arrived at the border crossing, trying to get to an Israeli hospital, and the border guards wouldn't let him through, and he died. My father had a heart attack at the same age, he went to the hospital, and he lived another 20 years. I used to call the Israeli public relations office to verify these stories, and they simply lied. I saw many uncomfortable similarities between what I read in Ringelblum's diaries and what I read (and verified) in the Amnesty International report.

      When I grew up, people used to say, "How could the world stand by silently when Jews were being killed?" Well, now you know. Palestinians are being killed, just as the world, including you, are standing by silently. I made a vow that if it ever happened again, I wouldn't stand by silently. That's why so many Jews led the opposition to the Vietnam war (and to every war).

      If you are a Jew, or even if you're not, you should be ashamed to stand by silently while Palestinians are being killed.

      Gaza is surrounded on all sides by a blockade which doesn't allow them to import or export any significant goods, or leave and come back to a university, for example.

      Gaza has declared a state of war. The parent asserted that the Palestinians were interested in peace but the settlement enterprise prevented it. Gaza has no settlement enterprise.

      I don't think Gaza declared a state of war, but I do know that immediately after -- at American and Israeli urging -- they had their elections, and Hamas won, the Israelis blockaded most of Gaza's imports and exports. There was no provocation. According to the Israelis themselves, they're deliberately keeping the Gazans in a state of "starvation." The doctors on the ground say that they're not getting enough food, medical supplies and other necessities. I remember Ringelblum saying that when the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto complained that they weren't allowed enough food, one of the arrogant Nazi officers said, "You Jews are very clever, you can smuggle in all the food you need." (The penalty for smuggling was death.) I saw the Israelis brag about the inadequate food they were supplying, and that's when the similarity to the Warsaw Ghetto became stark.

      If that's true, then logically, the Israeli government is responsible for the illegal land grabs and killings by the settlers [in the West Bank], for example

      I don't know how something that the operating government permits can be "illegal"

      After WWII, a movement of international lawyers -- led in large part by Jewish lawyers, motivated by the example of the Nazi crimes -- wrote a body of law to make these activities illegal. Those were codified in the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. Even the Israeli government's own lawyers, such as Theodor

    14. Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" by jbolden · · Score: 3, Informative

      One more thing I forgot to say. The Jewish reaction to the Holocaust was not to get a few lawyers together and work for a better United Nations. Rather it was to start the process of galvanizing support among the remaining European Jews for Zionism. The reaction was not the Geneva Convention to protect Jews. Jews had seen international conventions protecting them be ignored many times over the last 1900 years. Rather the reaction was to form a Jewish army and stop being a stateless minority. The mass migration to Palestine had the support of European Jewry after WWII.

      And to a great extent the success of the Zionist project then caused a nationalist surge in the other major bodies of Jews. The mainstream Jewish political philosophy of a century ago looks nothing like it does today. Circumstances changed ideology.

  2. Apartheid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Two apartheid states working hand-in-hand. Quelle surprise.

    1. Re:Apartheid by caseih · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A complicated and nuanced situation that's not nearly so clear-cut as you maintain.

      If you get a chance, it's very much worth a visit to Israel and Palestine. Will give you a chance to see how things really are on the ground. Palestinians who live within the green line (pre-1967 boundaries) are as you say Israeli citizens that the Israelis call Israeli Arabs. They can vote, and they have relative freedom of movement. However they are treated by many as second-class citizens. The Knesset system is badly broken and as such doesn't really represent people, Jewish or Arab, since seats are apportioned according to a party's percentage of the popular vote. Arab MKs are often marginalized by government. They have never been a part of the government coalitions as far as I know. Israeli Arabs feel like the Israeli government favors Jewish school districts and cities when it comes to funding. In some parts of Israel, such as around Haifa, there has been relatively good integration between Palestinian and Jewish villages and neighbors. But in other parts of the Galilee things are often tense.

      In the West Bank, Palestinians are not Israeli citizens, and crossing Israel to get to Gaza to see relatives has always been a difficult task. The vast majority of Palestinians live in the West Bank and aren't citizens, though Israel very much controls their movements.

      Inside Jerusalem, things are the most apartheid. Though Israel has annexed Jerusalem, none of the Palestinians there have been granted citizenship. Also, they are not considered residents of the West Bank by the Israelis either. So while a Palestinian in the west bank can travel from one part to another, Palestinians in Jerusalem cannot travel anywhere without getting Israeli paperwork. It's the worst of both worlds. Israel acts like Palestinian Jerusalem residents are favored, but in reality they are more restricted.

      So I can understand how people draw parallels between apartheid in SA and Israel. The situation is very much the same. The demographics is why Israel can never annex the west bank too, as doing so would absolutely make them just like SA.

  3. And Carter was one of the good ones by rmdingler · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Imposing sanctions on Israel, on the other hand, would be a political disaster, involving a major loss of support for the administration among the Jewish diaspora in the United States, an important political constituency for Carter and the Democratic Party. For all these reasons, the administration was highly motivated to offer some explanation other than a nuclear test for the Vela event and to hide, suppress, or otherwise soft-pedal information and evidence to the contrary—in other words, to engage in a cover-up.

    Of course there's no way around it, but how might the World look if elected officials didn't put personal considerations ahead of national or earthly considerations.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:And Carter was one of the good ones by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      how might the World look if elected officials didn't put personal considerations ahead of national or earthly considerations.

      Except the problem is really not the elected officials - its the people doing the electing. (the voters)

      Imagine, for a moment, that we somehow elected a full slate of conscientious politicians. They're goal is not to pander and get reelected, their goal is to do right by the country, its citizens, and the world in general. Hooray! ... now what happens? Well, more likely than not, they'll piss off some constituency. That means that while they might be great in their one term, they'll lose in their next election. So someone else gets a shot at the job.

      If they're also a conscientious person, we're back in the same boat - a one term wonder. But what if, by chance, a smarmy people-pleaser gets elected? His main goal is getting reelected, not being conscientious. Now, as his main goal was to avoid pissing off the electorate, chances are that he *will* get reelected, and go on to a second, third, fourth ... term. Now imagine that happening across all seats? The contentious people will slowly get phased out by the reelection-oriented ones, even if contentious politicians are more numerous than the reelection-oriented ones. (Even if the conscientious politicians are five times more prevalent than the reelection oriented ones, if a reelection oriented one get ten terms for every one a conscientious one gets, the selfish politicians will outnumber the conscientious ones 2:1 in Congress.)

      So the problem here is not really the politicians. Even with an excess of conscientious politicians, most seats in government will be occupied by people who can get reelected. It's really the fault of the *electorate* for being such a fickle bitch. If conscientiousness is not a major factor in the choices of the electorate, then it's very difficult for conscientious people to stay in politics - they're racking up "cons" without anything in the "pro" column.

      When's the last time you looked at a politician and said "I disagree with the position he's taken, but I respect his integrity, so I'd vote for him anyway." ... I don't think I ever have. I doubt most other people have either. But that's really what you'd need for things to work out. You'd need people in the electorate willing to overlook a few disagreements about position but respect their conscientiousness enough to vote for a politician anyway.

      P.S. Another solution that presents itself as obvious is term limits. If you keep people from getting reelected (so no one has 10 terms), you "fix" the bias I talk about above.. But that's not really a solution in practice. This just pushes being smarmy for "getting reelected" down to being smarmy for "getting elected in the first place". You also can't expect people to dump any sort of campaign promises and start acting conscientious when they're a lame duck, for the simple reason that endorsements, party affiliations, protégées, etc. all mean that performance while a lame duck can have adverse influence on similar people later. That is, if the Conscientious Party lame duck pisses you off, there's a possibility that you'll switch your vote to the Smarmy Party candidate.

  4. Re:Israel did not break the CTBT by vittal · · Score: 5, Informative
    *sigh* The article doesn't claim they violated the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, rather it says (in the first paragraph no less) it was a violation of the Limited Test Ban Treaty which Israel signed in 1963 and ratified in 1964.
  5. Forced conversion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have lived amongst many Muslims here in africa. Not one has even mentioned converting me.

    However on my first trip to Atlanta, i got given a bible on day one

  6. Hardly the only example by StevenMaurer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."

    - Anne Coulter

    Please consider that just for a minute. Imagine if some commentator said "My only regret with Osama bin Laden is he didn't order the planes to fly into the Wall Street Journal." Would they then be welcome on news programs, asked their opinion, sell hundreds of thousands of books, and basically be a spokesperson for ideologically "pure" members of the Democratic party, instead of being rightfully shunned?

    You need to open your eyes a little. One of the reason why blacks don't clutch their pearls quite so much over the relatively microscopic handful of terrorist deaths in the U.S., is because they've suffered terrorism for a century: the KKK burning crosses on their front yards, lynchings, and racist police on a hair-trigger, murdering completely innocent people and planting evidence (and getting off scott free, even when the evidence comes to light). But see, terrorism don't matter when it's just black lives being lost - at least not for the millions that Coulter, Rush, and many other mainstream Republicans. They don't even want to call it terrorism. White terrorists are all just "criminally insane", not like real terrorists - you know "them", "those people".

  7. Muslims VS Christians by phorm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And that sort of shit is really what burns my ass (and I`m not Muslim). Yes, some Muslims did stupid, terrible shit. In more recent ``Christian`` history, we have Kim Davis getting a standing ovation to fucking eye of the tiger after being jailed for multiple instances of contempt because she refused to marry gays like her fucking job says to (apparently it`s against her religion, while her 4 marriages and infidelity weren`t somehow)

    And we conveniently forget that in Iran, the major reaction to 9-11 was not celebration but actually this, because they recognize that - regardless or religion - all lives are valuable and a terrible thing had happened. Despite that, some people still want to put Iran in the same camp as ISIS (guess who was fighting ISIS before the rest of us got involved), and major outlets like the New York Times had articles that advocate an unprovoked bombing of Iran as a better alternative than a peaceful settlement.

    I`ve met some pretty terrible Muslims in my life. For the most part they were holier-than-thou assholes that thought that praying twice a day made them ``good people`` in spite of their conduct. I see the exact same shit from certain members of Christian churches, as well as Jews, etc. There will always be bad people out there, and there are plenty who would use their so-called religion or beliefs to pretend they are good whilst actually doing evil.