Guardian UK: Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons

[marmar]

Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons
Exclusive: Secret apartheid-era papers give first official evidence of Israeli nuclear weapons

Chris McGreal in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 23 May 2010 21.00 BST


Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons.

The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes". The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.

The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor denying their existence.

The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa's post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky's request and the revelations will be an embarrassment, particularly as this week's nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York focus on the Middle East.

They will also undermine Israel's attempts to suggest that, if it has nuclear weapons, it is a "responsible" power that would not misuse them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-weapons

[grassfed]

1. Israel’s dark past arming apartheid South Africa - War in Context

A new attack on Judge Richard Goldstone is the latest effort in a campaign to direct attention away from his allegations that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza. In this instance though, questions about Goldstone’s record as a judge in apartheid South Africa are overshadowed by the Jewish state’s own role in helping support the racist policies of one of the cruelest regimes of the 20th century.

more

[grassfed]

2. Israel's Secret Arms Pact with Apartheid South Africa - PBS Newshour

Because of sanctions against it in the 1970s, South Africa also began to collaborate secretly with Israel for the transfer of arms and technology. According to a 2000 article in the South African Weekly Mail and Guardian, Dieter Gerhardt, a senior commander in the South African Navy said that Israel agreed in 1974 to arm eight Jericho II missiles with "special warheads" for South Africa. And, David Albright reported in 1994 that in 1977 South Africa traded 50 metric tons of yellowcake uranium for 30 grams of Israeli tritium, a radioactive isotope used as a component in triggering thermonuclear weapons.

more

[BlueMTexpat]

9. Wiki also has a good overall write-up and has included these reports from the Guardian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

[Bert]

3. You dont say

When will the US call them out and stop playing the patsy to these warmongers?

[applegrove]

4. I had an African History professor in University who told us that Israel

supported apartheid because they new if apartheid ended that Israel would then become a world pariah. And they were right.

[Bert]

5. None dare call it apartheid in israel

[applegrove]

6. At least some sorta talks are going on between Israel and Palestine.

[Bert]

7. I guess

If there were one thing that could help world peace more than anything it would be a solution to the israel palestine problem, be it two state, one state or whatever. Hell, you could always evacuate everyone, nuke it and then let them fight over the crater.

[BlueMTexpat]

8. The Guardian has a slew of articles about this in its on-line version.

One of the most interesting is this one: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-documents

and these documents: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2010/05/23/SA-general-nuclear.pdf and http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2010/05/23/Israel-SAagreement.pdf

Our wonderful print MSM is, of course, right on top of things. Not. I couldn't find anything in the on-line NYT about this. The WaPo has a report from AP where Peres "categorically denies" that Israel offered nukes to SA. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/24/AR2010052400386.html

In the meantime, the Israeli government has put Mordechai Vanunu, the nuclear whistleblower, back into prison. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/israeli-nuclear-whistleblower-prison-sentence