- If there is one nation on this planet that deserves to
be described and dealt with as a rogue state, armed with weapons of mass
destruction and intent on using them, it is Israel, under the terror reign
of war criminal Ariel Sharon.
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- If this was a matter of assertion or conjecture in the
past, statements coming out of top Israeli officials in the past days have
eliminated any cause for hesitation.
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- On June 26, the Israeli newspaper of record, Ha'aretz,
cited two top Israeli space scientists, who declared that Israel now has
the capacity to fire missiles at targets anywhere on earth. Prof. Moshe
Gelman, head of the Asher Institute at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology,
boasted to Ha'aretz that "From the moment the State of Israel has
the capability to launch a satellite into orbit around the earth at a height
of hundreds of kilometers, it established [its] capability to launch, by
means of a missile, a payload to any location on the face of the earth."
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- Dr. Gelman's words were seconded by Avi Har-Even, the
director-general of the Israeli Space Agency (ISA), which recently launched
the Ofek 5 satellite, who told Ha'aretz's Amnon Barzilai that the Ofek
5 launch had two strategic objectives: providing Israel with an independent
spy satellite capability to monitor military activities in targeted countries
throughout the entire Near East. "The second involves Israel's launch
capabilities."
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- Democratic Party Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche
reacted strongly to the Israeli announcement about an ICBM capability.
He characterized it as a direct threat by Ariel Sharon against any nation
that attempts to interfere with Israel's mad drive for its "Greater
Israel" permanent annexation of the West Bank and Gaza and the mass
expulsion of the 3.5 million Palestinians living in those territories.
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- "Israel is threatening global thermonuclear war,"
LaRouche warned, and this is unacceptable. He called upon the international
community to immediately make the entire Mideast a "denuclearized
zone," by forcing Israel to dismantle its nuclear weapons arsenal.
LaRouche characterized the announcement of the Israeli ICBM capability
as a "phase-change" in a global strategic situation, already
driven to the brink of war by the onrushing financial collapse and the
June 25 speech by President George W. Bush, which gave Sharon a defacto
American "green light" to take any action against the Palestinians
which he deems necessary.
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- NATO Officially Warned
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- The Israeli intent to use nuclear weapons was a topic
of, at minimum, implicit discussion, at a June 26 Brussels behind-closed-doors
meeting of NATO's North Atlantic Council, which was addressed by the current
head of the Israeli Mossad, Ephraim Halevy. According to the June 27 Ha'aretz,
Halevy reported to the NATO officials that Mossad is convinced that Iran
is developing intermediate and long range missiles, and "weapons-grade
nuclear capabilities," as well as VX gas and biological weapons. As
Ha'aretz's Amir Oren reported, Halevy asserted that "Israel cannot
spare any effort to foil, prevent or delay the attainment of weapons of
mass destruction by countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya."
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- Pushing A New Regional War
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- According to Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld,
who wrote that "Sharon's Plan Is to Drive Palestinians Across the
Jordan," the intent of the present Israeli government is to seize
upon either a U.S. military attack on Iraq, aimed at overthrowing Saddam
Hussein, or a serious terrorist incident inside Israel to launch a "mass
transfer" of more than two million Palestinians living in the West
Bank and Gaza, across the river into Jordan.
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- "Should such circumstances arise," Van Creveld
wrote in the April 28, 2002 issue of Conrad Black's Sunday Telegraph, "then
Israel would mobilise with lightening speed--even now, much of its male
population is on standby."
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- He spelled out a precise order of battle for the "mass
transfer," although he wrote of his own personal opposition to the
Sharon scheme:
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- "First, the country's three ultra-modern submarines
would take up firing positions out at sea. Borders would be closed, a
news blackout imposed, and all foreign journalists rounded up and confined
to a hotel as guests of the Government."
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- He continued, "A force of 12 divisions, 11 of them
armoured, plus various territorial units suitable for occupation duties,
would be deployed: five against Egypt, three against Syria, and one opposite
Lebanon. This would leave three to face east as well as enough forces
to put a tank inside every Arab-Israeli village just in case their populations
get any funny ideas.
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- "The expulsion of the Palestinians would require
only a few brigades. They would not drag people out of their houses but
use heavy artillery to drive them out; the damage caused to Jenin would
look like a pinprick in comparison."
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- Van Creveld estimated that none of the Arab states would
respond militarily to the Israeli move, adding, "Should Saddam be
mad enough to resort to weapons of mass destruction, then Israel's response
would be so `awesome and terrible' (as Yitzhak Shamir, the former prime
minister once said) as to defy the imagination." There is no question
that this was a direct reference to an Israeli use of nuclear weapons against
Iraq.
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- He added, "Israeli military experts estimate that
such a war could be over in just eight days."
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- Van Creveld concluded that only the United States could
stop such an Israeli doomsday scenario from playing out, and right now,
chances are slim to nil that America will step in to stop Israel, which
is seen by Bush as a major ally in the "war on terrorism." After
Bush's June 25 speech, copies of Van Creveld's article were taken from
the files and studied, intensively, by many Arab military and intelligence
commanders, according to a well-informed Egyptian source.
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- Deadly Arsenal
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- The scale of the Israeli nuclear weapons program is vast,
and has now been qualitatively transformed, by Israel's acquisition of
three German-made diesel powered submarines, which, according to a recent
study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, are armed with
nuclear warheads on Cruise missiles. Carnegie published a report early
in June 2002, detailing the Israeli nuclear weapons program. That booklength
report on global nuclear weapons proliferation, Deadly Arsenals--Tracking
Weapons of Mass Destruction, included an entire chapter on Israel's nuclear,
chemical and biological weapons program.
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- The authors wrote, "Probably the most important
nuclear-related development in Israel is the formation of its sea-based
nuclear arm. By July 2000 Israel completed taking delivery of all three
of the Dolphin-class submarines it had ordered at the Thyssen-Nordseewerke
shipyard in Kiel, Germany. In doing so, it is widely believed, Israel
moved significantly toward acquiring a survivable second-strike nuclear
capability. All indications are that Israel is on the way to finalizing
a restructuring of its nuclear forces into a triad, like the United States.
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- "Since the early 1980s (and probably even earlier)
the Israeli navy (jointly with other governmental agencies) lobbied hard
for the notion that Israel should build a small fleet of modern diesel
submarines for `strategic purposes,' an Israeli euphemism for a sea-launched
nuclear capability... It is also believed (but not confirmed) that the
most sensitive aspect of the project, the cruise-missile technology that
renders the diesel submarines nuclear-capable launching platforms, was
developed and built in Israel... According to one report in the London
Sunday Times, by early 2000 Israel had carried out the first launching
tests of its cruise missiles."
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- The Carnegie study concluded, "A fleet of three
submarines is believed to be the minimum that Israel needs to have a deployment
at sea of one nuclear-armed submarine at all times."
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- The fact that Israel has achieved a deployable nuclear
triad was advertised in a June 15 report in the Washington Post, under
the headline, "Israel Has Submarine-Based Atomic Arms Capability."
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- (The preceding will appear on July 1, in Electronic Intelligence
Weekly, the online of EIR. For more information, call, toll-free, 1-888-347-3258)
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