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.
Doesn’t surprise me. They had a lot in common.
Be careful, or some Jew in here say you’re a racist Nazi for ratting Israel out and he/she will use the death of a relative during the Holocaust to win the argument.
Interesting how the blind supporters of the government of Israel have avoided this thread. Smart of them.
Well I support Israel on this one. The whole bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you thing. I choose not to be anti-Semitic.
#19 – jbellies,
Tom Lehrer wrote a song Who’s Next?
Great song too. Here it is for any who haven’t heard it yet.
http://tinyurl.com/ch38tn
Doesn’t surprise me. They had a lot in common.
I’m with bobbo, what exactly do you think they have in common? Are you aware that there are Arabs in the Knesset? Were there blacks in government in South Africa?
Also, keep in mind that unlike apartheid South Africa which was mostly black and ruled by whites, Israel is actually mostly Jewish, 75% so. I am not personally happy with a lot of Israel’s behavior. But, comparing them to a minority dictatorship over an enormous majority is truly an invalid comparison.
1975 most of the folk on this blog my self included were to put it mildly youngsters. The rest weren’t even hatched yet. If this is news, so is the fact that I had a good movement this morning.
#13–Comacho==I read your critique carefully and “textually” I see agreement and not any conflict at all. In both statements, I say Israel was about “homeland.” Where is the conflict? Hopefully, conflicts when identified can be explained in context or deeper understanding gained by recognizing the conflict. If you are gonna run for Prenident, you are gonna have to explain these simple concepts to people like me in words and examples we can understand.
#17–Phydeau==pariah states? I don’t see Israel as a pariah, more a small, non-mulsim, threatened state? But I do see some could call Israel a pariah to all the Arab states around them===whereas I see all the states around Israel as pariahs. HA!!! Pariah status being in the eye of the beholder.
#20–bahramks==I did choose my words carefully-not to santize what happened but to cover two very different occurrences. In very broad brush, Israel was created by fiat and the area was flooded/invaded by displaced Jews under color of international law. In South Africa, it was a process of orderly immigration into tribal areas without any overarching government to control/object. In Israel, the jews immediately had numerical superiority facing a minority in revolt when they could. In South Africa, the minority took over the function of a government and brought stability to the area but kept power and profit for themselves over the natives who were kept poor.
Within that broad brush we have the movement and displacement of people, but other similarities are hard to identify.
How would you have phrased it in one sentence to capture the similarity between the two?
SA was in a perilous position due to apartheid and being a government from the minority. They were also sitting on huge natural resources (gold, diamonds, uranium). They also had the Angola revolution/invasion that was being funded by the USSR though Cuba.
SA was the last domino in Africa. All the other former colonial democracies had stopped being white, and were all falling into corruption, crime, and revenge on the whites that remained.
It was the cold war, the USSR was involved perhaps just to make things interesting. The Boers wanted to retain their power and land despite overwhelming numbers against them. Pretty much the same boat as Israel – surrounded by hostiles, perceived as interlopers, with an opposition funded by the Commies just for shits and giggles.
As it stands now, the only smart white South African has emigrated, their is no way that SA will not go like every other African nation and end up seizing all white property and either killing or driving them off. Then after 30 years of revolution and destruction maybe they reach a point they can grow from.
Apparently, not only does Israel have nukes. It has a surplus of them, that they can afford to sell them to other, non-Muslim governments. That secret agreement very probably forbids their resale, to other nations. Just so they don’t end up coming back to bite them on the ass, someday. So the nukes aren’t being sold, free of strings. It’s more like a lease, until consumed or recalled.
honeyman,
Nice attempt at comparing SA to Israel.
The truth is that unlike apartheid South Africa, Israel is a democratic state. Its 20% Arab minority enjoys all the political, economic and religious rights and freedoms of citizenship, including electing members of their choice to the Knesset (Parliament). Israeli Arabs and Palestinians have standing before Israel’s Supreme Court. In contrast, no Jew may own property in Jordan, no Christian or Jew can visit Islam’s holiest sites in Saudi Arabia.
#26 Bobbo
“Within that broad brush we have the movement and displacement of people…”
I see you have clearly illustrated one of the similarities.
#29 ethanol
True there are as many differences as similarities, but both states at the time, and Israel to this day, have a disgraceful record in the way they treat their displaced ethnic populations. I’m not the only one to have made the comparisons.
It surprises me that you focus on my comments rather than the documentary evidence that Israel offered nuclear weapons to a violent white supremacist regime. Clearly the Israeli government saw common ground.
Israel has a 20% Arab minority *now*, they are also surrounded by a sea of hostility.
Israel did not SELL the nukes, they traded them for the raw material to make a hell of a lot more. They had the know how but lacked the raw materials.
>> clancys_daddy said, on May 24th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
>> 1975 most of the folk on this blog my self included were to put it mildly youngsters. The rest weren’t even hatched yet. If this is news, so is the fact that I had a good movement this morning.
I was a teen but I have a very vague memory that this was a news story at the time — maybe in a Jack Anderson column.
The right wingers hated him like hell and it makes me miss him all the more!
>> Posted by honeyman in Politics, international, military
>> Doesn’t surprise me. They had a lot in common.
You mean apartheid? The right wingers went ape-crazy when Jimmy Carter used “apartheid” as a cautionary term for Israel.
Israel and South Africa are fairly different situations so I would not use the term “apartheid” to describe the second-class status of Arabs in Israel
But I will say that Israel has really lost the moral high ground it had and deserved after WWII.
(Not to defend the Palestinian terrorists and their supporters! There are plenty of victims and victimizers on each side of that conflict.)
“1/7 Syndrome of Control” You Tube-Lindsey Williams-Testimony Jonathan May.
The Committee of 300 1/10 You Tube-Dr.John Coleman
Benjiman Freedman Speech WW1-11-111 You Tube
The Book The Founding Myths of Modern Israel
By Roger Garaudy
Treason-The New World Order BY Gurudas
Turkey-Greece-Ireland-Kuwait-Algeria ships
head toward Gaza now with supplies for Palestine.
Walter E. Haas Search yahoo-Google.com
God Bless America
#33 GregAllen,
I don’t know that I agree that Israel ever really had such a moral high ground, personally. It’s more that the terrorists took a particularly low moral ground (especially for those of us who remember Yassir Arafat claiming responsibility for blowing up school buses) that made the middle of the road look nearly pristine.
Israel is still just a bunch of people who have been dealing with a really difficult situation for over 60 years. How many of us would still have perfect morals after sending our kids to school in armored school buses and hoping beyond all hope that the armor is strong enough?
BTW, I think someone should point out that not all Palestinians living in Israel are terrorists. In fact, I’m betting it’s a pretty small minority who just get into the headlines rather a lot.
#34 – Wally,
Do your own searching and post the links. I, for one, have no freakin’ clue what you’re trying to say and will definitely NOT do your homework for you.
>> Misanthropic Scott said, on May 25th, 2010 at 5:34 am
>> I don’t know that I agree that Israel ever really had such a moral high ground, personally. It’s more that the terrorists took a particularly low moral ground
I was referring to the Holocaust post-WWII standing they had in the world’s eyes.
There was a overwhelming global sense that the world owed Israel a gigantic good deed after WWII.
I doubt the founding of Israel would have happened had it not been for the Holocaust.
But the behavior of Israel since then has pretty much ended that global good feeling for them — with the exception of Americans who mostly don’t read international news beyond the headlines.