A majority Americans say US foreign aid to Israel is excessive either
much too much (32.5 percent) or too much (29.4 percent). The
single-question
March 10, 2016 opinion survey, fielded through
Google Consumer Surveys, reveals only slight changes since it was
first asked on
September 27, 2014. (For details on sample size, bias and other
findings, see the survey data links above).
More
A
new poll published by the
Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, shows that a plurality of
Americans misunderstand a fundamental fact about the Middle East.
Specifically, a statistically representative sample of Americans and
three other nationalities were asked a simple question about Israel and
Palestine. The wording of the question and the results are shown below:
More
...The U.S. adult internet population is alone in North America
believing that Israelis are under a Palestinian occupation. A
simultaneous survey of Canadians reveals that 51.4 percent correctly
believe Israelis occupy Palestinian land, while 54.6 percent of Mexicans
also believe Israel occupies Palestinian territory...More
U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East was
criticized as being unfairly tilted toward Israel, to the detriment of
both countries, at a conference Friday examining whether pro-Israel
lobbying groups have an undue influence on Congress and government
agencies.
Several hundred people attended the event
sponsored by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a D.C.-based
magazine featuring articles questioning Israeli government policies and
U.S. aid to the country.
The conference was
timed to precede this weekend's conference of the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC) at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center,
a large, annual affair that this year will draw virtually all the
presidential candidates as well as Vice President Biden.
Friday’s conference in the ballroom of the
National Press Club was an answer to AIPAC, offering a counternarrative
in which U.S. support for Israel clashes with democratic and
humanitarian values... More
WASHINGTON, March 3, 2016
/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- This release is released by Institute for
Research: Middle Eastern Policy:
Organizers of the
March 18 conference "Israel's Influence: Good or Bad for America?" are
pleased to announce the following panel topics and keynote addresses: More
...The
emails, obtained by The Intercept as part of a FOIA request submitted by
the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, show Block repeatedly
instructing the VOA producer that Jebreal "a crazy person" and
"anti-Semite" should not be booked or even acknowledged as someone
worthy of hearing from. While Block blithely argued that her political
perspectives and intellect should be ignored, the duo took time to have
a spirited debate over her "looks." (Bakhtiar says his "editor was keen
on having her on because of her looks (although she is hardly my type)"
while Block excitedly exclaims: "Now that make sense!"
Instead of Jebreal,
Block urged the booking of "someone like Ghaith al-Omari, who is a
former PLO official and peace process negotiator." Al-Omari is a fellow
at the D.C.-based Washington Institute for Near East Policy ”alongside
pro-Israel stalwarts such as longtime pro-Israel U.S. diplomat Dennis
Ross and former Bush Treasury official Matthew Levitt” and, as such,
remains faithfully within the D.C. consensus for how Israel and
Palestine are discussed. The institute previously boasted as one of its
fellows Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon. On news of al-Omari's
joining, Haaretz described the group this way: "Established in 1985, the
Washington Institute is known for its ties in the U.S. and Israeli
governments..."
More
Favorable views toward Israel, the Palestinian Authority,
and Iran, % Very/Mostly favorable (click to enlarge)
The percentage of Americans viewing Israel favorably has fallen to 59
percent. By contrast, nearly a quarter of Americans (24 percent) now
view the Palestinian Authority favorably. Americans viewing Iran
favorably also surged to a recent high of 16% of the adult population.
These are the results of three IRmep polls of the U.S. adult internet
population fielded by Google Consumer Surveys February 19-20. The
questions posed were, "What is your overall opinion of [country]?"
Respondents could also fill in their own response. Most of these,
representing up to 12.9% of the total responses, offered no opinion...
...American public opinion of Israel (survey
results) has not been this low since 2004, a year Israel conducted
three separate military operations against Palestinians living in Gaza.
Gallup's February 2015 poll captured a small year-on-year decline at the
onset of Israel's final attempt to thwart the P5+1 nuclear deal with
Iran. Negative headlines and reports subsequently filled U.S airwaves
with news of the Netanyahu administration's many efforts against the
deal. According to reports, Israel even spied on U.S.-Iran negotiations
and then leaked details to Israel affinity organization leaders working
against it in the United States...More
"...Although
a Freedom of Information Act request for the final report on the NUMEC
affair was filed with Department of Justice in 2011, DOJ claimed it
could not locate any documents. On February 11, 2016 the Department of
Justice, without producing any solid evidence, told the US District
Court of the District of Columbia to move on, and close down the CIA
NUMEC FOIA lawsuit. Presumably, any release of CIA files revealing that
NUMEC was a criminal smuggling front from the very start rather than a
legitimate business with liabilities that could be legally assumed by
successors “ would undermine DOJ's efforts to extort millions of dollars
from both BWXT and unsuspecting US taxpayers who might otherwise prefer
that the government of Israel pay for the Pennsylvania cleanup..."
More
Susan Abulhawa
is executive director of
Playgrounds for Palestine,
author of the bestselling novel
Mornings in Jenin, and plaintiff in a lawsuit against the U.S.
Treasury over illegal settlement funding flows from U.S. charities.
Kirk J. Beattie
is a professor at Simmons College and author of a new book,
Congress and the Shaping of the
Middle East. The book dissects the enormous power of lobbies, like
AIPAC.
Rula Jebreal
is an award-winning journalist, author, and foreign policy analyst. See
news release.
Maria LaHood
is deputy legal director at the
Center for Constitutional Rights,
where she defends the constitutional rights of Palestinian advocates in
the US.More
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16, 2015
/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Rula Jebreal is an award-winning journalist,
author, and foreign policy analyst. Her first novel, Miral, sold two
million copies and was made into a major motion picture. She frequently
appears on CNN, HBO and Bloomberg News, and has contributed op-eds to The
New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy,
The Guardian, Newsweek, The Nation, and
San Jose Mercury News. Jebreal has anchored multiple television
shows in both Italy and Egypt, and reports extensively from across the
Middle East, Europe, and the U.S., frequently challenging Islamophobic
rhetoric and media on coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Jebreal will be discussing why lumping all Muslims into one monolithic,
extremist-linked bracket is actually a victory for ISIS, as well as how
and why the media abrogates its responsibility to cover all sides of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Gideon Levy is a journalist for the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz, and is widely considered the "dean" of Israeli
journalism. His columns about politics, money, how Israel's military
occupation is changing Israeli society and about U.S.-Israel relations
are widely read and discussed around the world. Video of Levy's
presentation at last year's conference has gone viral and received over
200,000 views. Levy will outline what politicians, members of Congress
and media elites visiting Israel should know about the situation on the
ground--as opposed to what hundreds are told on junkets organized by the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
More
Jonathan
Pollard's release from federal prison on November 20 has triggered a
flood of superficial stories in the establishment media. Few of them
address lingering mysteries or contextualize huge changes in U.S.-Israel
relations. Pollard was charged with (PDF) "Gathering or delivering
defense information to aid foreign government" in 1986. The spy used his
courier status and security clearances as a U.S.-Navy intelligence
analyst to deliver a huge volume of U.S. intelligence to Israel from the
NSA, CIA and DIA. The Defense Intelligence Agency--Israel's biggest
victim--even used the Pollard affair as the case study for a
counterintelligence training video.
Yet in court, Pollard expected to be treated with extreme leniency and
be merely slapped on the wrist and deported to Israel. In his own words
"it was the established policy of the Department of Justice not to
prosecute US citizens for espionage activities on behalf of Israel." A
huge public relations campaign, some spurred on by former AIPAC Near
East Report editor Wolf Blitzer, framed the boundaries of acceptable
public debate about Pollard while calling into question aspects of the
criminal investigation.
Pollard was therefore shocked to receive a life sentence in 1987 from
Judge Aubrey Robinson. This immediately followed a classified memorandum
in aid of sentencing from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger that
had a huge impact on the judicial decision. Yet three decades later,
core questions about conduct of government with huge relevance to
Americans remain unaddressed:
More Scott Horton Show
interview about Pollard.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2015
/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- "Israel's Influence: Good or Bad for
America?" is the theme of a daylong conference at the National Press
Club in Washington, DC, on March 18, 2016. Expert
panelists and keynote speakers will analyze the enormous impact Israel's
influence has on Congress, establishment media, academia and other major
institutions. They will explore the costs and benefits in terms of
foreign aid and covert intelligence, foreign policy, America's regional
and global standing, and unbiased news reporting. "Israel's Influence" is co-sponsored by the
American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs, and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy
(IRmep). Attendees receive lunch and an invitation to a special
attendee-speaker reception.Register online today at
http://IsraelsInfluence.org/.
....Even
Michael Oren must know that the American public has grown less
infatuated with Israel each passing year. The Internet, alternative
media watchdogs and WikiLeaks are buttressing American popular will
that their country not be drawn into more Middle East conflicts on false
pretenses by pro-Israel forces. The secrecy-powered "united front"Â Oren
and many other Israel affinity groups pine for is both bankrupt and
simply no longer possible.
In his last pages, Oren finally admits--in
what may be the understatement of the century--that the so-called
alliance "is not, of course, symmetrical." In his first pages he claims
"vocal segments" of the American Jewish
community are "vital component
of the alliance." Uniting the two provides the book's key unintentional
insight. The "special relationship" is not in fact an alliance, because
it is all cost and almost no benefit to the U.S. It is rather a corrupt
linkage that exists only because of the constant machinations of a small--and declining--subset of Americans who in their zealotry work as
hard as Oren to bind America to Israel. Unlike Oren, most never have to
finally turn over their U.S. passports, put on a uniform, or move to
Israel. As an insider's catalog of the demands and surface mechanics of
this "undue influence,"Allyis
somewhat useful to those well-read enough to distill unintended insights
from Oren's pithy anecdotes, soaring rhetoric and stomach-wrenching
propaganda.
More
...Finally,
not the mainstream media, but part of the trend. The Institute for
Research Middle East Policy has filed a request with the Justice
Department to regulate AIPAC as a foreign agent.
According to Grant F. Smith, director of IRmep, the case for
reregulating AIPAC as a foreign agent immediately is compelling. AIPAC
was designed to supplant the American Zionist Council as the arm of the
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the United States after the DOJ
ordered the AZC to register as a foreign agent. As such, Americans
should have full public access to biannual FARA registrations detailing
AIPAC's publicity campaigns, lobbying
expenditures, funding flows, activities of its offices in Israel and
internal consultations with its foreign principals "particularly over
such controversial issues as illegal settlements and US foreign aid."More
Request for new
Attorney General to enforce FARA (PDF)
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8, 2015
/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Central Intelligence Agency released 130
pages of reports, memos and other files about the 1960s diversion of
weapons-grade uranium to Israel from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment
Corporation NUMEC formerly headquartered in Apollo, Pennsylvania. (PDF
of CIA files and release statement). The August 31 CIA release came
in response to a lawsuit (Lawsuit
PDF) filed by the director of the Institute for Research: Middle
Eastern Policy (IRmep) on February 13, 2015...
...Today the razed NUMEC
facilities sites near Apollo will cost $350 to $500 million to toxic
waste cleanup over the next decade according to US Army Corps of
Engineers estimates. CIA Tel Aviv Station Chief John Hadden, whose
findings are redacted from the new release, publicly characterized NUMEC
as "an Israeli operation from the beginning..."
IRmep plans to further court actions to obtain full release of CIA
operations files that would allow Apollo residents to sue the Israeli
government directly for cleanup costs and massive health-related damages
caused by the smuggling front, or have the funds deducted from Israel's
annual $3.5 billion package of foreign aid from the United States. (See
the IRmep Center for Policy and Law
Enforcement for the lawsuit, oral argument transcripts and other
legal updates.)
More
According
to formerly top-secret and secret Central Intelligence Agency files
(PDF) released August 31 in response to a Freedom of Information Act
lawsuit (PDF), the agencys long retention of key information ultimately
stymied two FBI investigations into the 1960s diversion of weapons-grade
uranium from a Pennsylvania-based government contractor into the Israeli
nuclear weapons program.
The Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) was a nuclear
fuel processing company founded by legendary chemist Zalman Mordecai
Shapiro and financed by entrepreneur David Luzer Lowenthal. According to
the Department of Energy, during Shapiro's reign at NUMEC, the company
lost more weapons-grade uranium "337 kilograms after accounting for
losses" much of a particularly unique and high enrichment level than
any other U.S. facility. Losses only returned to industry norms after
Shapiro, who later unsuccessfully tried to get a job working on advanced
hydrogen bomb designs, was forced out of NUMEC...
...Unknown to the FBI, every CIA director was complicit in withholding a
key clandestine operational finding from investigators. According to a
May 11, 1977 report by Shackley, the "CIA has not furnished to the FBI
sensitive agent reporting" since the decision was made by Directors
Helms, Colby and Bush that this information would not further the
investigation of NUMEC but would compromise sources and methods."
More Scott Horton Show
interview
WASHINGTON
(CN) - A researcher seeking budget records for intelligence support the
CIA gave Israel told a federal judge that the agency is improperly
claiming ignorance of its own policy.
Grant
Smith, who runs the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, says
he filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to inspect the
CIA's funding for Israel-related intelligence.
The CIA
denied the request by claiming it could neither confirm nor deny that
such a budget exists, according to a federal complaint Smith filed
Wednesday. Smith said he filed the suit after the agency did not respond
to his appeal in the time allotted under the law.
The
agency's refusal to even acknowledge its support of Israel goes directly
counter to public statements President Barack Obama made in August at
American University, according to the action.
Smith says
Obama touted his administration's "unprecedented" financial commitment
to Israel's security through intelligence and military efforts in those
remarks.
"We want to
know, is it $3 billion a year?" Smith said in an interview Thursday. "Is
it $3 million? Has it varied over time?" Israel is the largest recipient
of U.S. foreign aid, despite the country's history of spying and the
presence of laws that should prevent such assistance to countries with
nuclear stockpiles, Smith says in the complaint.
One of
the side effects of the Iran Deal debate is that Israel's nukes are also
being discussed. There are signs of pressure on Israeli nukes inside the
US media and government.
In this article, Phil Weiss will summarize
the recent news, and Grant Smith, the lead investigator of the Institute
for Research Middle East Policy, follows with a report on a gag order
affecting disclosure of US federal information about the Israeli nuclear
program.
Let's call it
from now on the United States of Israel. Because many times when someone
looks at the relations between Israel and the United States, one might
ask, who is really the superpower between the two? And those questions
become much more valid in the recent days when you see what is going on
in Iran. We are
dealing now really with almost questions of sovereignty. We are dealing,
needless to say hat no state in the world would have dared to do it,
and no statesman in the world. And I will tell you frankly, it's not
Israel's fault. Israel is doing whatever it can,
it's the one who
enables it".
Gideon Levy,
Haaretz, speaking in Washington DC, April 10.
Gideon Levy, Israel's most well-known
journalist outside of Israel, and the most controversial inside of it,
was referring to the royal welcome given to Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu by a joint session of the US Congress a month earlier
and to his announced plans to pressure the US Congress to kill any deal
that might be negotiated with Tehran over its nuclear enrichment program
that would leave Iran with any semblance of national sovereignty.
Levy made his
remarks at an all-day conference on the Israel lobby at the National
Press Club, organized by the Institute for Research/Middle East Policy
and the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs which, despite its
venue and distinguished cast of speakers, received nary a mention in the
nation's mainstream or leading alternative media outside of a commentary
by Ralph Nader in CounterPunch remarking on that very fact.
More
Retired Gen. (and former
CIA Director) David Petraeus"who despite
recent scandals is (according to CNN) still advising the White Houseâ€
was asked at a recent Aspen Institute event about Israel's
nuclear weapons arsenal and replied "I can't
comment."
This seems to be part of long-standing U.S. and Israeli government
policy not to confirm the existence of Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal.
This policy has apparently taken the form of official gag orders on the
issue, as Grant F. Smith, director of the Washington, D.C.-based
Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, has noted.
More
...Similarly,
there has been little coverage of
documents from 1969 that were declassified a year ago; these
documents show that the United States--at that moment in time--was quietly
working to prevent Israel from acquiring nuclear weapons and to steer
that country towards joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Instead, Israel offered the United States only an ambiguous description
of its plans, saying that Israel would not be the first country to
introduce weapons to the Middle East, but pursued nuclear weapons in
secret and declined to become a member state of the NPT. Israel still is
not a member of the NPT, and its unacknowledged nuclear program angers
many countries that are members. In fact, the NPT Review Conference
recently collapsed without an agreement on a final document, at least
partly because a group of countries wanted to begin a long-promised
conference on a weapons of mass destruction-free zone in the Middle East
within a set time frame, and the United States and United
Kingdom--supporters of Israel, which opposed such a conference--refused to
go along.
And it is surprising how
little mainstream media coverage there has been about a 1987 Pentagon
report, released this spring in response to a Freedom of Information Act
request, that confirms that the
Pentagon knew many details of Israel's nuclear program in 1987 and
promptly covered them up. (A notable
and
praiseworthy exception to this
lack of interest has been The
Nation)...
More
06/07/2014 IRmep poll about
Israeli nuclear weapons discussed on C-SPAN
Nearly 65 percent of
Americans believe Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons program should be
officially acknowledged. Almost 55 percent believe the program should be
subject to international inspections.
The IRmep poll, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percent, was
fielded June 4-6 by Google Consumer Surveys and received 1,518
responses. The poll may be viewed online at:
In May the US, UK and Canada blocked a United Nations initiative to
create a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East in order to avoid
any review of Israel, which is not a signatory to the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. In contrast, the new poll finds broad popular
American support for bringing the region's only existing program out of
the shadows.
Israel maintains a "nuclear ambiguity" policy of neither confirming nor
denying possession of nuclear weapons. Since the Nixon administration,
American presidents have enforced a gag policy in the US. Federal
employees are currently banned from discussing Israel's arsenal under
threat of losing security clearances, job loss and criminal prosecution.
Major news media organizations generally fail to cover Israel's impact
on proliferation citing lack of official acknowledgment. In 2009
President Obama refused to answer a direct question about the arsenal.
More at
Antiwar.com
...The
federal governmentnot to mention Israelhas presumably been content to
see NUMEC's diversion secrets bottled up forever. But now the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers will begin a cleanup of NUMEC's waste dump estimated
to cost a half-billion dollars, to be paid by American taxpayers. It is
this insult to injury that triggered IRmep's second major lawsuit in
federal court.
Based largely on research compiled for the book Divert! (available from
AET's Middle East Books and More), the Freedom of Information Act
lawsuit asks the court to compel release of sufficient classified CIA
material on the diversion to allow subsequent lawsuits against the
Israeli government for cleanup and heath-related costs.
Although the initial CIA lawsuit may seem like a long shot, late in
February IRmep's separate court action against the Department of Defense
(DoD) produced a stunning report that officially confirms--for the very
first time--â€the advanced state of Israel's nuclear weapons program" (see
Jan./Feb. 2015 Washington Report, p. 28). A major premise of the DoD
lawsuit was that U.S. taxpayers were being forced to pay for aid
packages to a state that is simply not eligible...
More
...That
no AIEF briefing books are publicly available should come as no surprise
to the observant. AIEF is not functionally separate from AIPAC, a lobby
for the Israeli government ever since it split off from the defunct
American Zionist Council in 1962. AIEF is housed in the very same
offices as AIPAC , with 66% of its board of directors drawn from AIPAC.
(PDF) On annual tax charitable returns, AIEF (which raises $45 million
in yearly tax-deductible donations) claims to have no employees. It
doesn't need any since according to materials accompanying the briefing
book AIPAC employees like the "Grassroots and Missions Director" and
"Israel Seminars Assistant" accompany travelers to Israel.
AIEF, like AIPAC, echoes the rhetoric of the Israeli government. Members
of Congress on junkets are told by AIEF that "Jerusalem is Israel's
largest city not a settlement." There are no longer any final status
issues to be negotiated despite UN insistence to the contrary because according to AIEF
Israel later incorporated the eastern half of
the city and declared the unified Jerusalem to be the capital of
Israel." AEIFs "case closed" approach to what the rest of the world
considers to be open issues probably did at least prepare
junket-attendees for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
election-time declaration that there would be no Palestinian state on
his watch.
The
AIEF briefing book is full of flattery to Congress, declaring that
"Congress has regularly recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in
various resolutions and law." Yet how representative of America are such
"regular" resolutions?
More
April
10, 2015 9AM-5PM
The Israel
Lobby: Is It Good for the US? Is It Good for Israel? (YouTube
playlist)
...ALAS, ALL OF THE SPECULATION is based on
falsehoods. Obama had no hand in the releaseand the report wasn't
classified. In January, Federal
Court Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington ordered the Defense Department
to release the report by Feb. 12, in response to the FOIA suit by Grant
Smith, head of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, a
small policy-research and education organization highly critical of U.S.
policy toward Israel. The timing of the judge's decision was purely
coincidental.
Under the law, the U.S. government had to obey the judgeabsent a
written objection from Israel. The Israelis were contacted prior to the
release and saw no reason to block it, a senior administration official
tells me.More
An
Israeli-conceived, U.S.-enforced farce masquerading as "grand strategy"
is finally dead. For years the Israeli government refused to confirm or
deny its nuclear weapons program. The February release of the Israeli
section of the Defense Department-commissioned report "Critical
Technology Assessment in Israel and Nation Nations" (PDF) killed off the
policy while setting off an Internet conflagration last week (the most
vicious unfolding over Twitter). At one side of the political spectrum,
the document's release was evidence of "a shocking breach" by the Obama
administration and betrayal of Israel by some media outlets for even
reporting it. At the other it revealed a "highly successful partnership
of American and military science" despite zero evidence the U.S.
intended such "Atoms for Peace" gifts as Israel's Soreq nuclear reactor
to be used for anything but peaceful purposes.
The five tragedies of "ambiguity" and benefits to be gained by its
demise are only slowly emerging from the rubble.
1. Ambiguity was premised on presidential
fear of the Israel lobby. The history of so-called "ambiguity" is
sordid, which is why it was classified for decades. Until the very end,
JFK waged a two-front battle against Israel going nuclear and the undue
influence of the Israel lobby. Both the LBJ and Nixon administrations
considered withholding conventional military aid in order to keep Israel
from going nuclear. In the end, fear of Israel's US lobby, rather than
any legitimate US national security concern, was the linchpin of
"ambiguity." As recently declassified administration papers put it,
fears of a "Zionist campaign to try to undermine"
Nixon encouraged him to sign America on.More
Last month, the United States released
documentation from 1987 of its assessment of Israel's nuclear weapons
capabilities at the time, required to do so by law after receiving a
request filed under the Freedom of Information Act.
The document, formally titled "Critical Technological Assessment in
Israel and NATO Nations," was written by Leading Technologies
Incorporated for the Institute for Defense Analyses, and commissioned by
the Department of Defense. Its contents are based on visits by US
experts, in coordination with the US embassy in Tel Aviv and with the
guidance of the Pentagon, to various facilities and laboratories across
Israel.
While Israel has never publicly declared itself a nuclear weapons state,
its arsenal is widely acknowledged by the international community.
Israel is not a signatory of the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
This document, however, summarizes in detail Washington's understanding
of the nature and purpose of that program as it stood in the 1980s.
In early February, the Pentagon
declassified a 386-page report from 1987, exposing for the first time
ever the actual depth of top-secret military cooperation between the
United States and Israel ?¢â‚¬â€ including, amazingly, information about
Israel's unacknowledged nuclear program.
In view of the caustic tension that has
increased lately between Washington and Jerusalem, the timing of the
publication's declassification, after a long legal process, might raise
a few eyebrows. I have some knowledge about the build-up process of
Israel's nuclear capacity and after reading the report in question I
must express my astonishment: I have never seen an official American
document disclosing such extensive revelation on subjects that until now
were regarded by both administrations as unspeakable secrets.More
While the
Washington press corps obsessed over Hillary Clinton's emails at the
State Department, reporters were missing a far more important story
about government secrets. After five decades of pretending otherwise,
the Pentagon has reluctantly confirmed that Israel does indeed possess
nuclear bombs, as well as awesome weapons technology similar to
America's.
Early last month the Department of Defense released a secret report done
in 1987 by the Pentagon funded Institute for Defense Analysis that
essentially confirms the existence of Israel's nukes. DOD was responding
to a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by Grant Smith, an
investigative reporter and author who heads the Institute for Research:
Middle East Policy. Smith said he thinks this is the first time the US
government has ever provided official recognition of the longstanding
reality.More
A federal lawsuit seeks disclosure of
thousands of Central Intelligence Agency files revealing why the CIA is
convinced that Israel stole enough U.S. government-owned weapons-grade
uranium in the 1960's to manufacture over a dozen atomic weapons.
The
147-page complaint (PDF) filed in
DC's U.S. District Court contains exhibits about how U.S. weapons-grade
uranium was illegally diverted from the now-defunct Nuclear Materials
and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) in Apollo, Pennsylvania into the
clandestine Israeli nuclear weapons development program. The CIA
WASHINGTON, Feb. 25, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A federal lawsuit
seeks disclosure of thousands of Central Intelligence Agency files
revealing why the CIA is convinced that Israel stole enough U.S.
government-owned weapons-grade uranium in the 1960's to manufacture over
a dozen atomic weapons.
The 147-page complaint
(PDF) filed in DC's U.S. District Court contains exhibits about how U.S.
weapons-grade uranium was illegally diverted from the now-defunct
Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) in Apollo,
Pennsylvania into the clandestine Israeli nuclear weapons development
program. The CIA for decades has blocked researcher Freedom of
Information Act access to its core files on the NUMEC diversion.
The lawsuit against
CIA comes at the conclusion of IRmep's
courtroom victory this month
against the U.S. Department of Defense to release a report (PDF) on the
Israeli H-bomb development program, laser enrichment of weapons-grade
material and 1987 status of its nuclear weapons production sites.
More Lawsuit (PDF)
In
the depths of the Cold War, a legendary Israeli spy made a visit to a
Pennsylvania plant that processed government-supplied U-235 uranium into
fuel for the U.S. Navy. Around the same time, hundreds of kilograms of
uranium disappeared from the plant.
Traces of uranium were found outside Israel's Dimona nuclear facility in
the 1960's and later revealed to carry the unique signature of uranium
from the Philadephia [Apollo] plant.
The mystery of how the uranium traveled from one place to the other is
what a Washington-based researcher is trying to unravel through a
federal court complaint filed Friday.
The complaint asks for CIA files regarding "the unlawful diversion of
U.S. government-owned weapons-grade uranium from the Nuclear Materials
and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) into the clandestine Israeli nuclear
weapons program."
Filed by Grant Smith, who directs the Washington D.C. based Institute
for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, the complaint follows Smith's
victory earlier this month winning release of a 1967
[1987] Defense Department
report titled "Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO
Countries."
More
New details on Israel's nuclear weapons,
Netanyahu's role in krytron smuggling
Dennis Bernstein of
Flashpoints on Pacifica radio interviews Grant F. Smith on the newly
released report "Critical
Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations."
Interview follows the Corries and Gareth Porter on Iran's civilian
nuclear program.
The
1987 report's confirmation of Israel's advanced nuclear weapons program
should have immediately triggered a cutoff in all U.S. aid to Israel
under the Symington and Glenn Amendments to the US Foreign Assistance
Act of 1961. Although 100 copies of the tightly-controlled report were
apparently published, none seem to have made their way into the office
of the President in time to cut off any of the $82 billion in aid
subsequently delivered to Israel--or publicly issue the required
waivers. This is done in the case of other countries with weapons
programs operating outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation regime such as
Pakistan.
Similarly, the US did not move to curb as required Israel's
weapons-related work using the Soreq reactor, lab and testing facilities--provided by US taxpayers in the late 1950's under Eisenhower's Atoms
for Peace Program under the provision they not be used for weapons
programs.
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In the midst of controversy over the Israeli prime minister's plans to
address Congress next month, a researcher has won the release of a
decades-old Defense Department report detailing the U.S. government's
extensive help to Israel in that nation's development of a nuclear bomb.
"I am struck by the degree of cooperation on specialized war making
devices between Israel and the US," said Roger Mattson, a former member
of the Atomic Energy Commission technical staff.
The 1987 report, "Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO
Nations," compares the key Israeli facilities developing nuclear weapons
to Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories, the principal U.S.
laboratories that developed the bomb for the United States.
The tightly held report notes that the Israelis are "developing the kind
of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes
which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and
macroscopic level."
The release comes after Grant Smith, director of the Washington,
D.C.-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy filed filed a
FOIA request last year and followed with a lawsuit in September seeking
to compel release of the report.
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Congress
has never debated or held open hearings on Israel's nuclear weapons
program. A 2008 congressional report on nuclear proliferation excludes
Israel and simply does "not take a position on the existence of Israeli
nuclear weapons." The penalties for lower level government officials
making even passing references to Israel as a nuclear weapons state are
swift and harsh. Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear analyst James
Doyle wrote candidly about Israel's nuclear weapons for a magazine in
2013. After a congressional staffer read the article, which had passed a
classification review, it was referred to classification officials for a
second review. Doyle's pay was then cut, his home computer searched, and
he was fired.
Two gag rules are known to exist as a result of Doyle's unsuccessful
appeals to get his job back. GEN-16 is a "no-comment" policy on
"classified information in the public domain" (which President Obama
apparently invoked). The other is "DOE Classification Bulletin WPN-136
on Foreign Nuclear Capabilities," which is secret but presumably forbids
publicly stating that Israel is a nuclear power.
While it is difficult to
deny that the "ambiguity" muzzle has greatly benefited Israel and its
U.S. lobby, it is an ongoing and costly disaster for American taxpayers.
According to a September Google Consumer Survey, 64 percent of Americans
believe Israel has nuclear weapons, while 6 in 10 think U.S. foreign aid
to Israel is "too much..."
Yet because it is official U.S. policy to pretend the existence of
Israel's arsenal is unknown, a $3 billion-plus taxpayer giveaway of
top-shelf American military aid, cash and intelligence support is
delivered annually, despite Israel having long possessed the ultimate
military deterrent. And researchers and historians have long been
stymied by the withholding of key U.S. government documents locked
securely away from the public in National Archives and Records
Administration vaults.
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02/04/2015
Obama, what about Israel's nuclear arsenal?
It is disappointing, if not disturbing, that
US President Barack Obama avoided airing any views about the
decades-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict in an hour-long interview
about US foreign policy issues with CNN's much-respected anchorman
Fareed Zakaria.
One possible
explanation is that Obama had told Zakaria that he did not want to
discuss the issue, or Zakaria thought it wiser not to raise the subject
since US-Israeli relations have hit rock bottom. Whatever the case, the
fact remains that the American president has avoided the issue ever
since he and his Secretary of State, John Kerry, failed to bring the two
parties any closer, which prompted the Palestinians to successfully
approach the United Nations. The obvious reason in the view of many
Palestinians is that Israel has strong support within the American
establishment.
But a Washington-based think-tank, the
Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) recently painted a
different, and more appealing, picture. A "special report" written by
its director, Grant F. Smith, focused on a lawsuit that it has filed
challenging "US ambiguity towards Israel's nuclear arsenal".
More
01/28/2015
Poll: Netanyahu should be investigated for nuclear
weapons tech smuggling before US visit
A majority of Americans believe Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be investigated by the FBI for
nuclear weapons technology smuggling before being allowed to enter the
United States according to a new poll.
Poll ResultsNews
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Institute for Research Middle
Eastern Policy, Inc.
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