35 thoughts on “Facebook Offers Furtive Peek at Israel’s Nuclear Mysteries – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. So the Jericho III can reach 3,000 miles.

    Seymour Hersh wrote in his book “The Samson Option” that a “former Israeli govt official” with “first hand knowledge of his government’s nuclear weapons program” told him: “We can still remember the smell of Auschwitz and Treblinka. Next time we’ll take all of you with us.” ”

    The flight distance between London and Tel Aviv is 2,212 miles.

    1. Shocking. Wikipedia features this only slightly less shocking quote fr an IDF senior officer:

      Soon after the successful [Jericho III] test launch, Yitzhak Ben Yisrael, a retired army general and Tel Aviv University professor who is now an MP, told Israeli Channel 2 TV:

      “Everybody can do the math and understand that the significance is that we can reach with a rocket engine to every point in the world”

      1. “We can still remember the smell of Auschwitz and Treblinka. Next time we’ll take all of you with us.”

        Sorry, this doesn’t hold water. It sounds like a quote of someone who’s looking for his 15 minutes of fame. He got an interview for A BOOK so why not say something sensational? It’s long way from this quote to official policy.

        As for the range,

        “Jericho I and II ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear payload up to 1,000 miles, easily capable of hitting Iran”.

        Not true. If you open Google earth, you can easily measure the distance between say Jerusalem and Teheran. It’s almost exactly 1000 miles. Now, you need a margin of error, so 1000 miles is not enough. Besides, there are areas of Iran up to 1700 miles away. Would be perfect for putting bases there, out of the 1000 miles range.

        Now, suppose you want to arm the missile with a conventional high-explosive payload, to bust a bunker far away. now a really long range missile would be handy since you could equip it with a heavier conventional bomb and give up some of the range.

        Of course, all of this is pure speculation, but so is this entire post. Truth is, none of us knows what the true nuclear policy is. All we have are a few pieces of information leaked to the public. You choose to connect the dots in one way but there are other ways, just as valid, just as true.

        1. Sorry, this doesn’t hold water.

          Boy if you want to doubt the credibility of a Pulitizer Prize winning journalist w. some of the best sources in the business you better be damned good. And you ain’t. Sy Hersh has the goods. He doesn’t make stuff up. He knows he has too many enemies to do that.

          The Jericho II may debatably be in range or not. But the Jericho III most assuredy is in range reaching up to 6,000+ miles depending on payload.

          My post is NOT speculation. It is based on solid sources. Discredit the sources why don’t you by providing real evidence as opposed to rank speculation.

          1. Claims about the Jericho III’s range are themselves speculative in nature, but you’re right that it would be safe to assume that Iran is in range. BTW, if you want to gouge Israel’s ballistic missile technology, you can do so fairly reliably by looking at Israel’s Ballistic Missile interceptors (Arrow etc.), which are amongst the most advanced in the world. It should be noted that the same plant that is responsible for the Arrow’s design is alleged to be involved with programs of a much more offensive nature…

            You need to know an awful lot about Ballistic missiles to intercept them.

          2. I’m not trying to discredit the journalist – my doubts are about the source. Of course, the journalist reported correctly in his book, it’s the “former Israeli govt official” who got his head spinning once he understood he’ll be widely published. Should have expressed myself more clearly.

            You’re sources are solid, I’m sure, but scarce nonetheless. Of what is publicly known and trustworthy, hardly any conclusion can be made. Like I said, it’s the way you connect the dots that looks wrong to me.

            The point remains the same: Besides the range, we don’t know almost anything. Not the guidance system, not the yield, not the warhead. And that’s just the technical side of things. In my opinion, you go very far in your conclusions, based on insufficient data, even if it is correct in itself (which I think it is).

    2. I’m beginning to wonder if “Reverend” John Hagee might be partially correct about the End Times™!

      1. Hagee Blows IDIOT Wind!

        On November 9, 2007, I attended a Hagee happening at the James L. Knight Center in Miami and I still have nightmares about it!

        The Center was packed to the rafters with John Hagee’s tribe of Christian Zionists and south Florida’s right wing Jewish community.

        Zion’s Fire Banners, dancers, singers and a band whipped the crowd into a frenzy of spinning, jumping, clapping, twirling and moved the rotund Hagee to link arms with men in skull caps and dance the Hora-not to Hava Nagila, but to repeated choruses of:

        Shout for joy and victory! Bat Yerushalyim

        From one end of the stage to the other, the largest American and Israeli flags I have ever seen were draped side by side and by the end of the evening I imagined every star on the red-white-and blue had morphed into the Star of David.

        [See it on the left margin of my homepage]

        Miami-Dade County Commissioner Joe Martinez pointed to the flags and exclaimed: “Isn’t that beautiful up there together? I get goose bumps! All nations have been created by an act of man, except Israel was created by an act of God.”

        Rabbi Freedman delivered the Invocation, “We are all friends of the only democracy in the Middle East.”

        I immediately recalled what American Israeli, Jeff Halper, the Founder and Coordinator of ICAHD/Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions told me during one of my five journeys to Jerusalem:

        “Israel is a not a democracy but is an Ethnocracy, meaning a country run and controlled by a national group with some democratic elements but set up with Jews in control and structured to keep them in control.”

        Rabbi Freedman continued on, “From Mount Sinai to Mount Zion to Mount Vernon we are all Zionists! Israel is second to America in how many immigrants we have absorbed.”

        Immigrant absorption in Israel comes with perks and is called Aliyah, [“go up”] and is a fundamental concept of Zionism enshrined in Israel’s Law of Return, which permits any Jew from any where in the world the legal right to government assisted immigration and settlement in Israel, automatic Israeli citizenship, unemployment benefits, free medical, and subsidized housing. Young adult immigrants receive free room, utilities, and three meals a day for the first five months and 100 percent of their tuition is paid by the government.

        Hagee’s mastery of manipulating the fears of his audience garnered him a standing ovation as the shofars blew, “Israel was re-born by an act of God and Israel lives! The Jews have suffered great persecution and survived slavery and the Final Solution! God Jehovah will bury Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran! The flag of Israel will fly over the undivided Jerusalem and be the praise of all the earth! It’s 1938 again and the new Hitler is Ahmadinejad! Radical Islamisicts are threatening to develop nuclear weapons in order to destroy Israel and then the USA! But we are indivisible and we are both here forever!”

        The oft repeated comment ascribed to President Ahmadinejad, that “Israel must be wiped off the map,” was addressed by Virginia Tilley, Professor of political science who wrote:

        “In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word “map” or the term “wiped off”. According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was “this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”

        “In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s (a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then). Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah’s regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison. So, too, the “occupying regime” in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence: ‘This too shall pass.'” http://www.counterpunch.org/tilley08282006.html

        Being a Christian Anarchist of the Beatitudes-meaning I stick to what Jesus actually taught and do not worship any Institution, State or Nation, I hope that the zeal of particular ‘Christians’ for the state of Israel will also pass; and because of their love for the Jewish people, I have hope they will have ears to hear the wisdom of the American Jewish progressive political and spiritual community and organization, Tikkun.

        Tikkun is Hebrew for mend, repair and transform the world.

        Tikkun researched to discover that there are three distinct elements energizing the Christian Zionists:

        1. A strong commitment to conservative and ultra-nationalist American politics (so strong, I believe, that if the U.S. were to decide to break with Israel, this part of the Christian Zionist leadership would go along with that and drop its defense of Israeli policies).

        2. Dispensationalist religious commitments that lead many of the Christian Zionists to yearn for a cataclysmic “end of history” eschatological war in the Middle East that will precipitate the second coming of Jesus and the Rapture in which all true Christians will go to heaven and all Jews who have not yet converted to Christianity will burn in hell for eternity.

        3. A widespread understanding among many Christians that atonement and repentance is needed for 1700 years of murder, rape, and oppression of Jews that was frequently generated by the Church (though, of course, the Evangelicals do not recognize that church as their church). In this category are many Christian Zionists who genuinely feel terrible about what has happened to the Jews and genuinely want to help the Jewish people. Their philo-Semitism is real and sincere. [Rabbi Lerner, Tikkun Magazine page 9, Nov/Dec. 2007]

        But in Miami that night, multitudes of misled and misinformed Christian’s celebrated military occupation, violence, power and control and ignored the gospel Jesus preached: “It is the peacemakers who shall be called the children of God.” –Matthew 5:9

        Hagee repeatedly cited that all worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but neglected to mention that the first mention of Israel is in Genesis 32:22, when Jacob was renamed Israel for having wrestled and struggled with the Divine.

        Hagee threw out the names of all the Hebrew prophets, but not the fact that God raised up prophets to speak truth to power and arrogance and to remind people of what God desires:

        “What does God require? He has told you o’man!
        Be just, be merciful, and walk humbly with your Lord.” -Micah 6:8

        God also raised up prophets to remind them they cannot know the mind of the Mystery of the Universe, for “His thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.”- Isaiah 55:8

        God raised up prophets to admonish the “stiff necked people” [Exodus 34:9, Proverbs 29:1] and that “My people are fools, they do not know me! They are skilled in doing evil, they know not how to do good.”-Jeremiah 4:22

        Hagee invoked the “Torah Way” but neglected what the Torah commands:

        “From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught…that the Jewish claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as the Torah tells us, ‘vomit you out’ if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently stated mitzvah [command]:

        “When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’ but also ‘you shall love the other.'” [Rabbi Lerner, TIKKUN Magazine, page 35, Sept./Oct. 2007 ]

          1. I was responding to the query from DICKERSON3870

            “I’m beginning to wonder if “Reverend” John Hagee might be partially correct about the End Times!”

            So, please pardon me for offering too much information.

  2. lol.. what a joke..
    you are basing an article on what some young people wrote in their facebook accounts..
    BTW.. they didn’t wrote “the group with highest quality people on Facebook”
    they wrote “the group with highest quality and the most insane people on Facebook” (in Hebrew it sounds batter)..

    it got nothing to do with their army service.

    any way.. its obvious why israel would want batter range missiles for nuclear deterrence.

    a range of 1000 miles do not cover iran..
    a range of 3000-6000 miles..do.
    any way they started to develope this missiles in the time of the cold war..
    whan an israel nuclear deterrence against Moscow was needed too.

    1. No, the Facebook group is only part of the story. Equally interesting is breaking the veil of secrecy over Israeli nuclear policy & bases.

      The Jericho III was not developed during the Cold War. It was brought online in 2008 as I wrote. Read more carefully.

  3. Its one of those known secrets…

    But the interesting stuff I find in your post is the connection between the “environmentalist” community (in Israel) and the cover up of nukes. If you dig deeper into who are the heads of the major groups (mostly american immigrants) you will find some ironies. Basically, the old mapai method is to send the idealist young offsprings, unwittingly, to cover up the dirty secrets of their parents, preferably with a fig leaf. By the time they find out why they are doing that, they already have too much to lose.

    that’s much more interesting , IMHO< than the range of missiles. We never know if those infos are disinfos, so why bother.

    1. what’s the cover up? why not assume that all those young “highest quality” israeli soldiers, NCO and officers actually care about the environment and were given free hand to act?are you suggesting the IAF is using the sewage treatment facility as a front for some eland-born weapon development project or what (-: ?

      1. you either didnt read what I wrote or wish to sidetrack

        My point was social, not military. Environmentalists whose fathers work in the area of WMD production are an interesting social fact in israel. I don’t know/care if they are bona fide or psychologically trying to compensate for their ancestors, or simply liars.
        i think its worth looking into, same as the disproportionate number of “civil rights activists” whose parents are arch war criminals.
        My take is not the issue here, its not my blog.

  4. Dear Richard,

    I began a series of interviews with Vanunu in 2005 and met with him on all 7 of my trips to Jerusalem.

    In 2007 I began updating Vanunu’s WIKI page, but many of my links and information were edited out.

    Thus, I offer WHY Israel persists to persecute Vanunu, which begins on 24 April 2004, three days after Vanunu was released from 18 years in a windowless tomb sized cell jail for providing the photographic proof and telling the truth about Israel’s clandestine seven story underground WMD Program in the Negev, as Uri Avnery wrote:

    “Everybody understands that he has no more secrets. What can a technician know after 18 years in jail, during which technology has advanced with giant steps?

    “But gradually it becomes clear what the security establishment is really afraid of. Vanunu is in a position to expose the close partnership with the United States in the development of Israel’s nuclear armaments.

    “This worries Washington so much, that the man responsible in the State Department for ‘arms control’, Under-Secretary John Bolton, has come to Israel in person for the occasion. Vanunu, it appears, can cause severe damage to the mighty super-power.

    “The Americans, it seems, are very worried. The Israeli security services have to dance to their tune. The world must be prevented by all available means from hearing, from the lips of a credible witness, that the Americans are full partners in Israel’s nuclear arms program, while pretending to be the world’s sheriff for the prevention of nuclear proliferation.”

    In 2005, Vanunu told me:

    “President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection.

    “When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.

    “Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.”

    A Brief History:

    On April 30, 2007, the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, convicted Vanunu on 14 [out of 21] counts of violating a court order prohibiting him from speaking to foreign journalists in 2004. Vanunu was also convicted for traveling the four miles from Jerusalem to Bethlehem when he hoped to attend Christmas Eve mass at the Church of the Nativity, his first Christmas after being released from 18 years in jail [most of it in solitary] on April 21, 2004.

    On July 2, 2007, Israel sentenced Vanunu to six more months in jail for speaking to foreign media in 2004.

    On September 23, 2008, the Jerusalem District Court reduced Vanunu’s six-month jail sentence for speaking with foreign media in 2004, to three months, “In light of his ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country’s security in jeopardy.”

    After appealing that sentence, the Israeli Supreme Court returned Vanunu to jail on May 23, 2010, after they refused his counter-offer to do three-months of community service in Arab east Jerusalem, the only community he has known since 21 April 2004. The Court insisted Vanunu must serve in west Jerusalem, which is 99% Jewish-populated, but Vanunu feared attack there by angry Israelis, most of whom consider him a traitor.

    On 18 June 2010, Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East Programme stated:

    “Mordechai Vanunu should not be in prison at all, let alone be held in solitary confinement in a unit intended for violent criminals. He suffered immensely when he was held in solitary confinement for 11 years after his imprisonment in 1986 and to return him to such conditions now is nothing less than cruel, inhuman or degrading. Mordechai Vanunu is a prisoner of conscience. The prison authorities might claim that he has been put in isolation to protect him from the risk of attack by other inmates, but if the Israeli government is really concerned for his safety it should release him without delay. His re-imprisonment is both harsh and unjustified. The restrictions on Mordechai Vanunu arbitrarily limit his rights to freedom of movement, expression and association and are therefore in breach of international law. They should be lifted and he should be allowed to start his life again as a free man.”

    The restrictions that have subjected Vanunu to 24/7 surveillance [his movements, phone calls and emails] for the last six years come from the Emergency Defense Regulations, which were implemented by Britain against Palestinians and Jews after World War II.

    Attorney Yaccov Shapiro, who later became Israel’s Minister Of Justice, described the Emergency Defense Regulations as “unparalleled in any civilized country: there were no such laws in Nazi Germany.”

    During my interviews with Vanunu, he informed me that, “All the secrets I had were published in 1989 in an important book, by Frank Barnaby, The Invisible Bomb: Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East.”

    Frank Barnaby, the Nuclear Physicist, who was hired by the London Sunday Times to interrogate Vanunu, testified at his closed door trial, “I very vigorously cross-examined Vanunu, relentlessly asking the same questions in a number of different ways and at different times…I found Vanunu very straightforward about his motives for violating Israel’s secrecy laws he explained to me that he believed that both the Israeli and the world public had the right to know about the information he passed on. He seemed to me to be acting ideologically.”

    But, Vanunu was rendered defenseless during that closed door trial when the court ruled that his motivations were not ideological and they refused to allow Vanunu’s own statements regarding his intentions to even be considered in his defense.

    On November 24th, 2006 Vanunu wrote:

    “My lawyer succeeded to reveal a few very important facts: This General of the Army also was not allowed to see all the secrets that he is required to protect by these restrictions that they claim I know them. So, he gave orders of restrictions without knowing what he is protecting or that he is also following orders blindly, and Mossad Sheen Bet using its authority for just punishing me. He testified that it is not a crime for me to talk with foreigners in general anywhere. He testified that I can speak freely to any Israeli citizens about anything; it is not his concern what I am saying to them. These Israelis can give this information to any foreigners. It was difficult for the Judge to understand why this dichotomy exits between foreigners and Israelis. It means that it is not about secrecy but about something else.”

    The “Something Else”

    In 2004, Yossi Melman wrote for Haaretz:

    “This is the secret that hasn’t yet been told in the affair: the story of the security fiasco that made it possible for Vanunu to do what he did, and the story of the subsequent attempts at cover-up, whitewashing and protection of senior figures in the defense establishment, who were bent on divesting themselves of responsibility for the failure…intended only to divert attention from what has not yet been revealed: the security blunders and their cover-ups.”

    On March 26, 2006, Vanunu told me:

    “Many journalists come here to the American Colony, from CNN and NY Times. They all want to cover my story, but their EDITORS say no…CNN wants to interview me; but they say they can’t do it because they don’t want problems with the Israeli censor. BBC is doing the same thing.

    “Sixty Minutes from the United States from the beginning they wanted to do a program, but because of the censor situation they decide not to do it. Also big media from Germany, France, Italy, Japan. None of them wants problems with the Israelis.”

    I began the taping of “30 Minutes with Vanunu” with this question:

    “If the British Mandate has expired why not the British Mandate’s Emergency Defense Regulations?”

    Vaunu replied, “The reason given is security but it is because Israel is not a democracy unless you are a Jew. This administration tells me I am not allowed to speak to foreigners, the Media, and the world. But I do because that is how I prove my true humanity to the world. My freedom of speech trial began January 25, 2006 for speaking to the media, the same day as the Palestinian elections.”

    Dear Richard, I am hoping you will follow this story until Vanunu is free, and I do believe in solidarity we can make it happen as the times are changing rapidly:

    After serving more than ten years of a 15 year sentence for espionage, Russian arms researcher Igor Sutyagin was freed in what is being reported as the largest spy swap between the United States and Russia since the end of the Cold War. His case was taken up by human rights organizations, and the U.S. State Department declared he a political prisoner.

    And NOW that Israel’s Nuclear Ambiguity was finally officially blown by President Obama, as reported by Israel Army Radio, on July 7, 2010, regarding the United States sending Israel a ‘secret’ document committing to nuclear cooperation between the two countries, to sell Israel materials used to produce electricity, as well as nuclear technology and other supplies, despite the fact that Israel is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,

    And during last week’s meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, the two supposedly discussed the global challenge of nuclear proliferation, the need to strengthen the nonproliferation system, and to continue to work closely to “support our common efforts to strengthen international peace and stability” I propose that NOW is the time they have mercy, do justice and FREE VAnunu.

    Please listen to Vanunu speak for himself in 2005, 2006 and 2008 video interviews freely streaming @ http://wearewideawake.org
    THE VANUNU SAGA 2005-2010!

    Thank you,

    Eileen Fleming, Producer “30 Minutes with Vanunu” and “13 Minutes with Vanunu”

  5. RE: Facebook

    On July 6, 2009, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinish, continued the restrictions against Vanunu, stating that his “case is still generating great interest, like any other security-related case. The media’s attention he gets is proof of that.”

    On July 7, 2009, while in the midst of posting the following question to, “Letters to Netanyahu and Obama: FREE VANUNU NOW” a Facebook Cause that I created and was the only administrator of, I was Deactivated.

    Facebook never responded to my email inquiries as to WHY did they banish-delete-censor-deactivate me for posting this question and the links that lead to the videos:

    “Have you eyes to see and ears to hear Vanunu on video in 2005, 2006, 2008?”

    Thank you for consideration in helping Vanunu, for as he signs his emails:

    “FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM I NEED NOW. VANUNU MORDECHAI John Crossman”

    PS: On July 8, 2010, i established this Youtube group:

    “Do Somethin­g to Help FREE Mordecha­i Vanunu”

    http://www.youtube.com/group/FreeVanunuNow

    It is for anyone who will act by petitioning their political representatives to Help FREE Vanunu via phone calls, emails, faxes, create Youtube messages in support of FREEDOM for Vanunu and ALERT their Mainstream Media to Learn the Facts @ http://wearewideawake.org/
    THE VANUNU SAGA 2005-2010!

  6. Richard, yet another good catch of Israel’s Secret Empire. A couple of comments:

    1. The environment ministry prize link didn’t work for me.

    2. S’dot Micha is the name of a Moshav near the base. Usually in Israel the base is known after another nearby Moshav, Kfar Zakaria. I think it has been mentioned in foreign media under that name. The Facebook screenshot you bring says “S’dot Ha-Ela”, which would make sense as the Base’s true name since the entire region is known as Ha-Ela valley.

    3. To the “Israeli” discrediting this story: you are being ridiculous. This base’s existence is well-known. Our missiles must be sitting somewhere, and obviously not in Dimona. I spoke with at least one person who served there.

  7. 6,000 statute miles would be a greater range than a Trident D5 missile, although this figure changes with the warhead and how near the Equator launcher and target are.

    Some of the figures given for Jericho 3 warhead yields are much higher than any British or American warheads made since the sixties. This may indicate that Israeli warhead science is so much greater (someone is bound to claim this), or more probably that the guidance is a lot more chancy and a really big warhead is needed.

    6 megatonnes has been mentioned: such a warhead cannot possibly weigh less than a tonne and probably weighs more, especially when a re-entry vehicle is taken into account. Such a yield betrays either an inability to get the warhead any closer to a military deep bunker target than about half of a mile, or a desire to destroy a very large metropolitan area with one hit.

    Jakarta is probably the largest Muslim city, but as Richard has noticed, London has a lot of Muslims, too, as has Buenos Aires.

    Medawar rather suspects that the high yields and long ranges were meant, by pro-Israeli American governments, to give Israel a blackmail option over any less pro-Israeli American government that might arise in the future.
    Perhaps the real fear about Vanunu is what his comments about the specifics of the weapons might say about the targeting policy driving their design.

    Whereas the yield of Britain’s nuclear deterrent has come down as accuracy improves with each generation, because the targeting policy is to guarantee the destruction of Russian (or possibly other) decision-makers under practically any circumstances, but with as little other destruction as could reasonably be achieved in a nuclear war, Israel appears to have upped the yield each time.

    Unless their guidance systems are going backwards in terms of technology, that suggests that the target is not a potential aggressor’s decision-makers, but whole populations, whole races.

    It also suggests that the target is not expected to possess defences of any kind, because that would drive them towards smaller, multiple, warheads.

    If the idea is to kill a hundred Muslims in revenge for every Jew killed if Israel is over-run, then only Indonesia possesses the population required to supply enough victims.
    Yet it’s profoundly unlikely that Indonesia would play a key, if any, role in an attack on Israel.

    As if the policy was not just retaliatory genocide, but retaliatory genocide by proxy.

  8. RE: “In 2008, it brought online the Jericho III, which is capable of traveling 3,000 miles…” – R.S.

    ALSO SEE: “Israeli Nukes on German-built Submarines?”, dw-world.de, 10/14/10
    (excerpts)…Israel received the first of its three “Dolphin”-class submarines from Germany in 1999…Recent media reports have highlighted the growing international awareness of how German-built submarines are expanding Israel’s nuclear capacity…A report this weekend by the Los Angeles Times on how the Israelis have modified American-supplied cruise missiles to carry nuclear warheads has re-ignited concern about Germany’s role in providing the country submarines that can launch them from the sea….
    ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,996295,00.html
    WIKIPEDIA, Dolphin class submarine – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_class_submarine
    P.S. Wouldn’t it be funny if “Reverend” John Hagee turns out to be partially right about the End Times™?

    1. RE: “dw-world.de, 10/14/10” – me, above
      SHOULD HAVE READ: dw-world.de, 10/14/2003 I was not trying to spoof the “Early Edition” TV series (1996-2000) which I never watched. I would like to think I had outgrown TV by that time.

  9. Hagee is the epitome of what millennium of theologians have ascribed the Antichrist to be all about: Anti-what Christ was all about!

    And ‘Christian’ Zionism is the fastest growing cult in the US!

    Christian Zionism is an extremist Christian movement which supports the claims of those who believe that the State of Israel should take control of all of the land currently disputed between Palestinians and Israelis. It views the creation and expansion of the modern state of Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy toward the second coming of Jesus.

    Christian Zionism is a modern theological and political movement that embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism, thereby becoming detrimental to a just peace within Palestine and Israel.

    The Christian Zionist program provides a worldview where the Gospel is identified with the ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism.

    In its extreme form, it laces an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading to the end of history rather than living Christ’s love and justice today.

    Believing that God fights on the side of Israel, Christian Zionists call for the unqualified support for the most extreme political positions related to the Holy Land.

    Christian Zionist spokes persons have attributed Hurricane Katrina to God’s wrath over our failure to stop Israel from pulling out of Gaza. They consistently oppose any moves towards a solution to the conflict which would validate the political aspirations of both Palestinians and Israelis.

    Christian Zionism has significant support within American Protestant fundamentalists, who number between 10 and 20 million.

    Its reach is broad, by virtue of its favorite themes related to the “End Times” and an Israel-fixated Christian media.

    Christian Zionism is both a political movement and a way of interpreting current events. Its focus is on Israel and the Middle East, as much an ideology as a “movement.”

    Its promoters share many beliefs but are not organized through any one institution.

    Throughout history Christians have at times twisted scripture to justify violence: for the Crusades, for Anti-Semitism, and for slavery.

    Too often the church has been slow to respond to these biblical distortions with disastrous results.

    Today Christian Zionists – particularly those with dispensationalist leanings – are at it again. Although their motives are couched in terms of compassion toward the Jewish people based on a literal reading of scripture the political agenda of territorial expansion advocated by Christian Zionists has given rise to injustice against Palestinians and added fuel to the fire of conflict in the Middle East.

    The GOOD NEWS is that some mainstream churches have spoken out against this inherently anti-Semitic theology.

    What follows are but a few words from some of those who have.

    The Presbyterian Church in the USA at its July 2004, National General Assembly issued a statement on Confronting Christian Zionism:

    “Christian Zionism promotes a theology that justifies grievous violations of basic rights of people who are also made in the image of God, and is contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

    The United Church of Christ in July 2003, at its National General Synod offered An Alternative Voice to Christian Zionism:

    “We believe that the tenets of Christian Zionism neither reflect the intention of the teachings of Jesus and the prophets, nor promote peace in the Middle East, and respectfully recommend …an alternative voice to this theology.”

    The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in June 2005 at its Chicago Metropolitan Synod issued a Resolution to Encourage the Study of Christian Zionism:

    “The movement of Christian Zionism based on these biblical interpretations seeks to influence U.S. policy toward Israel in a manner that would arguably facilitate mistreatment of Palestinians, continued occupation of the land, opposition to a two-state solution, and exclusive Israeli control of Jerusalem.”

    The United Methodist Church, in June 2005 at its Illinois Conference on Unwrapping the Rapture warned:

    “Every household should give prayerful consideration as to how God will actually judge us for our silence about and complicity in the crushing of the Palestinian people.”

    The Episcopal Church, in November 2004 at its Diocese of Chicago Confronted Christian Zionism:

    “A partial response to Christian Zionism would be to say that we read Scripture in light of [Jesus’] two great commandments – to love God and our neighbor.”

    Back to Hagee:

    In 2006, The Nation reported that Hagee’s Christians United For Israel/CUFI pressed White House officials to adopt a more confrontational posture toward Iran, to refuse aid to the Palestinians and to give Israel a free hand as it ramped up its military conflict with Hezbollah.

    The White House has not revealed the names of the officials who met with the CUFI lobbyists, which is a venomous tentacle from the Armageddon-based foreign-policy view of its founder, John Hagee.

    Hagee is a fundamentalist [meaning one who has quit thinking!], fire-and-brimstone preacher and a leader of the fastest growing cult in America: Christian Zionism, which is inherently anti-Semitic!

    While Jewish Zionism began with the hope that all Jewish people would have a safe and peaceful dwelling place, these corruptors of the gospel Christ preached, adhere to a 200 year old convoluted interpretation of disparate scriptures that they have chosen to weave together to support their fear based judgmental narrow minded doctrine.

    Hagee has mesmerized nearly 18,000 misled Christians at his Cornerstone Church with his take on whom the anti-Christ is. He also hosts a major TV ministry where he explains his views of how the end times will unfold.

    He blatantly corrupts and denies the message that Christ preached. Hagee, Hal Lindsay and the Left Behinder’s are doomsday false prophets who believe that the only way to defeat-what they and the neocons refer to as- “Islamist fascists” is with a full-scale military assault.

    The cult of ‘Christian’ Zionism is what the concept of the Anti-Christ is all about!

    This heretical theology of Premellenial Dispensation worships a god of Armageddon and not the God of love, forgiveness and compassion that Jesus/AKA The Prince of Peace modeled even while being nailed to a cross.

    The Left Behind series of fiction is the epitome of what millennium of theologians have always understood to be what the term anti-Christ is truly about.

    The term “antichrist” only appears five times in the Bible, but a cult not based on sound theology has created an urban legend that seeks Armageddon.

    The term “antichrist” never appears in John’s Revelation or Daniel, two disparate works of literature written three centuries apart and under very different circumstances, yet the Left Behinder’s weave them together.

    The small texts that mention the “antichrist” were written to attack the Gnostic understanding of who Christ was. A Gnostic relies on intuition and not on dogma and doctrine. Gnostic’s were most certainly free spirits and most all of the writings we have about Gnostics, have been the attacks upon them. That all changed when the Nag Hamadi Library was translated and published, for what had been deemed heretical by those in power in the fourth century can now be read in most every language.

    LEARN MORE @ http://www.wearewideawake.org

    THE GREATER AWAKENING link

  10. It’s a well known secret that the Jericho missile program is closely linked with the Shavit satellite launcher program. so to answer your question as to why Israel needs a 3,000 miles missile – it’s so we can launch satellites into space with it.

    As to the nuclear part, I don’t see how the existence of a secret military base proves it holds 100 nuclear warheads. aren’t there any other reasons why a base should be classified? the only possible reason is that it’s a secret nuclear missile base?

    1. This sounds like an obfuscation to me. NONE of the many websites I consulted about this base and the Jericho program say that it is used to launch satellites. It may be that the missile is used for that purpose. But it’s certainly not done at this particular base, otherwise the expert websites I consulted would’ve noted this.

      If you dispute the fact that the base houses nuclear missiles you’ll have to take it up w. these sites which are far better informed at Israeli’s nuclear capabilities than I. That’s why I relied on them & linked to them.

      1. The launch site of Israeli satellites is widely known – it’s Palmachim AFB. You can look it up even on Ynet.

        It’s also known that at least as far a Jericho II goes, it’s basically the Shavit. read about it here:

        http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Israel/Missile/index.html

        a second source to support this opinion is armagedon.org.il, states clearly that IAI’s Malam factory makes both Jericho and Shavit missiles. Considering the fact that Cold War era ICBMs are routinely used for space launches (look up the Dnepr rocket) and that Israel’s resources for rocket development are limited, it makes perfect sense that both rockets are nearly identical. Perhaps Shavit has an additional third stage.

        Now, it’s perfectly reasonable to extend the range of Jericho 3 in order to launch heavier satellites, especially since Israel has to launch westward, against the rotation of the earth in order to avoid pieces of the rocket falling on Arab countries.

          1. I just think those are two different launch sites. Satellites are launched from Palmachim (that’s a fact) and nukes are launched from sdot micha.

            Take the US for example. Satellites are launched from Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg AFB and nukes are launched from numerous missile silos across the country.

  11. Where’s the “furtive peek at Israel’s Nuclear Mysteries”? I didn’t see any operational issues discussed on that Facebook group.

    I reckon it’s a little hard for Americans to realize the differences between Israeli and US security & diplomatic situations. Whereas US strategic assets were well publicized and analyzed during the cold war (so as to deter a soviet attack, and recognizing the soviet intelligence gathering ability), Israel faces a broader range of threats and wants a higher level of operational security. In the Israeli context, it makes sense to “hide” an operational base, while in the US it would seem to mark a conspiracy. As you mentioned, the base staff might be subject to foreign government harassment while abroad or even terror acts. couple of years ago, a palestinian burglar planted an IED beneath a navy colonel bed. The colonel was the head of israel navy computer programming unit and had no operational importance. hebrew link:
    http://www.nrg.co.il/online/archive/ART/204/798.html
    http://www.mprest.com/AboutUs_LeadingTeam.aspx
    I guess any soldiers from the “nuclear missile base” would make prized targets for terrorist groups.

    BTW, may I remind that earlier this year the UK criticized Google for showing images of a SAS base on it “street view” service.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7479690/Google-Street-View-criticised-for-showing-images-of-secret-SAS-headquarters.html
    So I guess the UK is also involved in some deep-buried, undisclosed mysterious plan that must be publicized?

    1. Considering the base is basically secret and considering the level of attack & denial I’m facing in the Fresh forum (Hebrew) for daring to write this post at all and claim there are nuclear missiles at Sdot Micha, I’d say that ANY information about the base from any source offers a peek at Israel’s nuclear program. I didn’t say it was a major peek or substantive one. But it’s a peek nonetheless. And how is this raising howls from the IDF loyalists at Fresh! One poster even demands that the moderator lock the thread for some unspecified offense.

      http://www.fresh.co.il/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=517945&goto=nextnewest

  12. This may sound like an obscure technical point, but if anyone with inside knowledge were to cast light on the fusion fraction of Israel’s warheads, as well as their (apparently quite high) yield, it would tell us a great deal about what they are for and in what circumstances they might be used. High fusion fractions generally mean “clean”. Anything that combines a multi-megatonne yield with a fusion fraction down around 30% would be very, very dirty.

    How you get the rumoured 6MT out of something weighing just over a tonne and compact enough to re-enter the atmosphere at very high speed, is to take a relatively modest fission-fusion device of about 200KT to 400KT, and make everything around it, including the re-entry heatshield, out of around 600KG+ of depleted uranium. This is not fissile, but it is fissionable by high-energy neutrons from the fusion bombs.

    This would give you the yield of some of the big Russian and American H bombs of the early sixties and probably about ten times the fallout.

    A bad enough nightmare to be what that lot would do.

  13. Richard.
    The reason why I found the 6MT yield figure so worrying, is more obvious when you turn things around and look at them another way:
    If you were to deliberately try and get the maximum possible amount of radionuclides out of the heaviest (and bulkiest) warhead that a Jericho Three could carry without sacrificing too much range, then an explosive yield of around 6MT would be what you got, almost as an accidental consequence of this.

    A clean 6MT bomb is possible, but a high fusion fraction means a lot of fusion fuel must be highly compressed, and that requires that the warhead contain a LOT of empty space inside its x-ray reflector casing in order to focus X-rays on that fusion fuel to compress it.

    American and Russian devices of this nature were many feet long and more than a yard wide: mainly to be dropped by B36, B52 or TU16 bombers.

    Some very high yield H-bomb warheads were fitted to Titan missiles and their Soviet equivalents, but these rockets were several times bigger than the Jericho Three: you can use a Titan to put a large communication satellite into geostationary orbit, whereas the satellites launched by what’s supposed to be a Jericho Three derivative are a couple of hundred kilos weight and placed in a more lower orbit than that.

    And that’s why I thought that the rumoured yield rang true, in a nasty way.

    A lot of Israelis agree that the country should have a nuclear deterrent, but there are nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons.

    BTW: Cobalt bombs and the like are an urban myth: radioactive cobalt is very nasty, but the high energy neutrons from an H bomb aren’t QUITE high energy enough to make cobalt (or bismuth) radioactive every time they meet. Only a tiny proportion of a cobalt tamper would become radioactive, and there was a test done in Australia in the fifties that proved this.

    When radio-cobalt or polonium is needed for industrial or scientific purposes, cobalt or bismuth are usually subjected to a neutron source that works by firing highly accelerated charged particles at a target to create higher energy neutrons by “spallation”.
    In any case, even when it happens, one very high energy neutron makes one radio-nuclide.

    If that high energy neutron hits an atom of uranium 238 instead, it splits into two or many more lighter nuclides, nearly all of which are radioactive, as well as releasing a lot of energy and a number of lower energy neutrons as well.

    The dirtiest bomb possible with current technology, or even with forseeable technology, is a modest fusion bomb surrounded by a lot of depleted Uranium (the waste from making reactor or weapons grade material) or a similar amount of Thorium.

    The cleanest bomb possible is a three stage fission-fusion-fusion device, because there are so many high energy neutrons from the third stage, relative to the amount of fissile and fissionable material, that even the radionuclides made by the first stage, get forcibly fissioned into still lighter nuclides that tend to have shorter half lives. (Often measured in hours rather than weeks.) The drawbacks are:

    This requires volume as well as weight and that’s a problem for missiles and F15-sized aircraft.

    If your objective is to kill millions of people and leave their land desolate for generations, the dirtiest possible bomb is what you need.

    I’m afraid that this all rather fits with “we’ll take all of you with us”. And I think that “all of you” might mean the wider world and not just the Muslim world.

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