Israelli PM Netanyahu pulls out of US nuclear summit

Israelli PM Netanyahu pulls out of US nuclear summit

news.bbc.co.uk

Mr Netanyahu made the decision after learning that Egypt and Turkey intended to raise the issue of Israel's presumed nuclear arsenal, Israeli radio said.

Mr Obama is due to host dozens of world leaders at the two-day conference, which begins in Washington on Monday.

Israel has never confirmed or denied that it possesses atomic weapons.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.washingtonpost.com
www.haaretz.com
www.ynetnews.com
www.politico.com

I suppose its not surprising really, Netanyahu not making this trip. This could become very embarrasing for both the Israelis and their American allies. Considering how Obama is calling for a nuclear free world and taking cuts to reach that, Israel is the elephant in the room.

Israel has never admitted to its nuclear arsenal. Although everyone knows it exists built with significant help from the French.

However is it fair just to target Israel? India, Pakistan, N Korea are also non-members of the NPT. In a perfect world they should all be pressured to join by the likes of Turkey and Egypt, but the other three are not regional threats to Turkey and Egypt so its not surprising they are solely targeting Israel.

This follows the increasing pressure from the U.S. and rest of the world over Israeli settlement expansion in E. Jerusalem and the stalled peace process. It will be interesting to see if the U.S. has the bottle to confront Israel on this issue.

news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 8-4-2010 by Peruvianmonk]

He knows he will have very though questions to answer to if he shows his face.

Israel does whatever the hell they want and no one including our corrupt governmetn says or does anything. This whole nuclear weapons reduction dialogue and pen pushing means jack squat. It's all smoke and mirros to keep the masses placated and satisifed.

Originally posted by Peruvianmonk



However is it fair just to target Israel?
India, Pakistan, N Korea are also non-members of the NPT. In a perfect world they should all be pressured to join by the likes of Turkey and Egypt, but the other three are not regional threats to Turkey and Egypt so its not surprising they are solely targeting Israel.

I agree , ideally they would all be signatories of the NPT , however , it is only Israel with the chutzpah to incessantly accuse Iran of engaging in something they have done themselves.
A breath-taking piece of audacity indeed!

Some history on the Israeli nuclear programme.

For reactor design and construction, Israel sought the assistance of France. Nuclear cooperation between the two nations dates back as far as early 1950's, when construction began on France's 40MWt heavy water reactor and a chemical reprocessing plant at Marcoule. France was a natural partner for Israel and both governments saw an independent nuclear option as a means by which they could maintain a degree of autonomy in the bipolar environment of the cold war.

Trouble arose in May 1960, when France began to pressure Israel to make the project public and to submit to international inspections of the site, threatening to withhold the reactor fuel unless they did. President de Gaulle was concerned that the inevitable scandal following any revelations about French assistance with the project, especially the chemical reprocessing plant, would have negative repercussions for France's international position, already on shaky ground because of its war in Algeria.

At a subsequent meeting with Ben-Gurion, De Gaulle offered to sell Israel fighter aircraft in exchange for stopping work on the reprocessing plant, and came away from the meeting convinced that the matter was closed. It was not.

Over the next few months, Israel worked out a compromise. France would supply the uranium and components already placed on order and would not insist on international inspections. In return, Israel would assure France that they had no intention of making atomic weapons, would not reprocess any plutonium, and would reveal the existence of the reactor, which would be completed without French assistance. In reality, not much changed - French contractors finished work on the reactor and reprocessing plant, uranium fuel was delivered and the reactor went critical in 1964.

Although the United States government did not encourage or approve of the Israeli nuclear program, it also did nothing to stop it. Walworth Barbour, US ambassador to Israel from 1961-73, the bomb program's crucial years, primarily saw his job as being to insulate the President from facts which might compel him to act on the nuclear issue, alledgedly saying at one point that "The President did not send me there to give him problems. He does not want to be told any bad news."

After the 1967 war, Barbour even put a stop to military attachés' intelligence collection efforts around Dimona. Even when Barbour did authorize forwarding information, as he did in 1966 when embassy staff learned that Israel was beginning to put nuclear warheads in missiles, the message seemed to disappear into the bureaucracy and was never acted upon.

In early 1968, the CIA issued a report concluding that Israel had successfully started production of nuclear weapons. This estimate, however, was based on an informal conversation between Carl Duckett, head of the CIA's Office of Science and Technology, and Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb. Teller said that, based on conversations with friends in the Israeli scientific and defense establishment, he had concluded that Israel was capable of building the bomb, and that the CIA should not wait for an Israeli test to make a final assessment because that test would never be carried out.

CIA estimates of the Israeli arsenal's size did not improve with time. In 1974, Duckett estimated that Israel had between ten and twenty nuclear weapons. The upper bound was derived from CIA speculation regarding the number of possible Israeli targets, and not from any specific intelligence. Because this target list was presumed to be relatively static, this remained the official American estimate until the early 1980s.

www.fas.org...

Given Israel's position and geographic location, I understand why they are paranoid, and they have reason to be, as does everyone else in that region.

But I consider this to be a very poor decision on their part.

It's only a matter of time until the Zionists push the button and launch the world into a nuclear holocaust; Where the living will envy the dead.

Those that believe in prophesy will bring it about just for the ability to go....
"see, I told you so"

It's a brave new world, welcome to the monkey house.

[edit on 8-4-2010 by whaaa]

reply to post by ladyinwaiting


Agreed, just invites even more crictisim on Netanyahu in particular. How long can he keep eluding a vote of no confidence?

Funny how Obama did not include non-Signatuors of the NPT into his change in nuclear policy. This includes Israel...........prophecy indeed Whaa.

[edit on 8-4-2010 by Peruvianmonk]

reply to post by whaaa


After just seeing the video of Americans murdering a whole bunch of Iraqi's, and the psychotic/demonic talking of these people as they did it... I think if anyone is going to nuke anyone, then it will be America... Oh yeah... They have done that already! If anyone needs disarming for the sake of the world its them...
I suggest that those with nukes keep a hold of them... They seem to be a yank repellent....
Screw Obama... We dont need some hypocrite who is killing people in their thousands telling us what to do...
Go Bibi!!

So how stupid do you honestly believe the wold community is....well guess again. So why is the media pushing a topic on Iran instead of dealing with fundamental issues...well its simply politics.

Welcome to the real world .

Israel has never officially admitted having nuclear weapons, but is widely recognised to possess a significant arsenal. There are estimates it has between 75 and 200 nuclear warheads.

The state is able to maintain its policy of ambiguity as it has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is therefore not subject to inspections and the threat of sanctions by the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

This is a source of grievance for Iran and Arab countries which are signatories. Their attempts to get an IAEA resolution on Israel have been blocked by the United States and its allies.

Israel's nuclear reactor at Dimona in the Negev desert was built secretly with help from France and was completed in 1964. It provides power and is understood to be the source of plutonium for Israeli nuclear weapons.

news.bbc.co.uk...

edit:

The story of an Israeli citizen by the name of Dr. Avner Cohen is a classic example of Israeli democracy's "black hole": the area of national security, to which the usual laws of a democratic society do not apply.Cohen's tale illustrates yet again that, whenever the subject is national security, any citizen forced to confront the establishment is totally helpless and can rely on almost no support - legal, social or institutional. The moment Cohen was "marked" by the defense establishment in Israel - on the basis of rumor and hearsay - as a criminal who had undermined Israeli national security, he became a pariah.

www.fas.org...


[edit on 8-4-2010 by tristar]

While there are those that think that by pulling out of US nuclear summit talks that Israel is buying herself time, but while Israel deludes herself, Obama prepares his sharp pointed stick and will most likely use the reluctance of Israel as a justification for any action he may decide to take that allows him to use his newly sharpened and pointed presidential UN Security Council stick.

With the main stream media repeating the same old tired cover story of Israel never having admitted to having any nuclear weapons is as old and as tired an excuse as Barbra Bush. The world knows that Israel has nuclear weapons and Obama will attempt to earn his Cowboy pants on Israel by using Israeli arrogance against them to justify some covert action where Israel becomes an afterthought.

Lately, the recent treaty with Russia is another possible indicator that Israel may be in the cross hairs and or is being considered as "Ground Zero" for some future move by the Prince of Darkness, because the last thing Obama or the Muslim world want is for Israel to have weapons when they don't.

It would make sense to Obama to take Israels weapons away by force as an excuse to destroy Israel and be done with her while unleashing his angels of death and destruction to involve the world in a war of his evil making.

Israel has become Obama's sacrificial and bloody ticket to paradise. The paradise where you check in but you can never leave but where the place is filled with vampires that feed off of the blood of innocents. The paradise where one day you ask what's for lunch and they all of a sudden, surprise, surprise tell you that you=are.

Anyway, let's hope that rational minds prevail and that Obama does not publicly demand that Israel give up all her nuclear arsenal as a condition of compliance to some UN mandate of or else face obliteration off the face of the earth, because on that day when Obama hears "No" it will be for the last time he knows he will have to listen to it.

Thanks for the posting.

Originally posted by MaxBlack


Israel has become Obama's sacrificial and bloody ticket to paradise. The paradise where you check in but you can never leave but where the place is filled with vampires that feed off of the blood of innocents. The paradise where one day you ask what's for lunch and they all of a sudden, surprise, surprise tell you that you=are.

Anyway, let's hope that rational minds prevail ..........

You didn`t happen to have Hotel California on in the background whilst you wrote that did you...?

Lets hope rational minds prevail ....... yes lets .

============================

Israel will never give up its nuclear arsenal and as a consequence the middle east will soon have many nations attempting clandestine nuclear weapons programs . The rationale being that the nuclear nations don`t get half the grief and threats that the non nuclear nations receive .Which is clearly the status quo.
That fact is as obvious as the double standards played out on the world stage.

We can debate what the ` international rules ` nations should abide should be ...... but surely we can agree that no serious progress can be achieved in conflict zones etc when the rules aren`t applied evenly . The truth is that they are circumvented quite openly, much to the chagrine of nations , chided often by the West for their inadequacies .

Round up the cattle is a season branding.

Hey tristar, reading your previous post, i think your full of BS...


Hmm..okay now lets find our bearings and re organize our real life reality check.

Mr Netanyahu made the decision after learning that Egypt and Turkey intended to raise the issue of Israel's presumed nuclear arsenal, media reports said.

news.bbc.co.uk...


...oh what a tangled web we weave..!

1000 dolloars/euros who ever guesses as to why Israel pulled out of the talks

I find this quote very telling indeed.

In the words of Shakespeare

You doth protest too much

Benjamin Netanyahu said today:

"I'm not concerned that anyone would think that Israel is a terrorist regime," he told reporters. "Everybody knows a terrorist and rogue regime when they see one, and believe me, they see quite a few around Israel."

The Guardian Uk

There are certainly many many organisations and states within the Middle East causing Terror, and engaged in acts of terrorism.

However to be honest I think any rational observer would have to include Israel in that description to.

Iran is an signatory of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, maybe for not much longer however if they don’t stay in, thereby opening themselves up to the recent exclusion from not having Nuclear Weapons used on them by the US, by Obama's announcements.

Does this mean that Israel to are to be in the US list of those countries it would Use Nuclear weapons on, as they are not an signatory or ones within the framework of the NPT?

The whole issue of where they got their nuclear Material from is like a book from Tom Clancy anyhow, and leaves many questions unanswered.

Why don’t they just admit the 100 or so Nukes they have, play the game, and therefore pressurise Iran more to stop trying to produce them.

Why should the Iranians bow to diplomat pressure if the Israeli's are the only country in the world besides North Korea who are not signatories or open and honest about their Nuclear Programme.

Why aren’t the IAEA and UN pushing for inspectors to go into Israel?

Why won’t they just be honest? It seems like they say they want to create peace and stability in the Middle East, however this action just makes that likelihood more distant, and takes away all the Aces in the hands of the diplomatic pressure to control sort out the Iranian Nuclear issue.

I don’t know who is the craziest in the region any more to be honest; this political move is just as confrontational and off the wall as many of the statements by the Iranian regimes mouthpiece.

I knew Netanyahu was going to destabilise more the region when he got in from past actions as a General and the slaughter in Janine etc.. I pray for a change of leadership in Israel, and Iran soon to more rational less entrenched and peaceful leaders.

Kind Regards,

Elf

Why has this thread attracted so many strange comments?

What a surprise that the Republicans have jumped on the Israeli bandwagon and are backing this decison.

WASHINGTON - The news of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's canceled trip to Washington was warmly welcomed by some republicans in the United States on Thursday. Liz Cheney's announcement of Netanyahu's cancellation was met with a round of applause in the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans.

Cheney, daughter of former US Vice President Richard Cheney, opened the conference with a verbal attack against the Obama administration and noted the cold reception the president gave the prime minister during his last Washington visit. "President Obama is playing a reckless game of continuing down the path of diminishing America's ties to Israel," she said deeming the world safer when there is "no daylight" between the two countries.

www.ynetnews.com...

Pipe down Cheney Junior!.

Interesting bit of analysis at the end.

The website noted that several analysts were skeptical about the official Israeli explanation and estimated that the issue was actually related to the steps Israel is being required to take in order to promote proximity talks with the Palestinians.

So this was part of the demands that Obama issued to Netanyahooooo. Although Nety isn't attending there will be an Israeli delegation there. Will that be enough for Obama?

Probabley.

Whils't I am no lover of Netanyahu's views, which I honestly think are counter productive to peace in the region.

However, i want to pose this question to those anti-zionist, anti-israel and Jew haters (yes there are many on here, but they deny it, although extremely obvious):

Whils't Israel has had Nuclear bomb delivery systems for many decades it has never resorted to using these weapons against it's enemies although it has been provoked and threatened many times.

The real question is: If Palestinian extremists or even other Arab extremist organisations or nations had the bomb, do you think they would even think twice about detonating a nuclear device in or on Israel?

Answers on a postcard please

reply to post by Hongkongphooey


Yes i am an anti-Zionist and have Jewish heritage, go figure eh. Israel has also done its fair share of provoking and threatening. And continues to do so.

I don't think any surrounding nations would attack Israel with nuclear weapons becasue of the immediate retaliation from both Israel and the U.S.. It's pretty obvious that the Iranian regime is after a nuclear weapon as a defensive measure to prevent any attempt at regime change like we saw in Iraq.

As for extremist faction, such as Al-Qaeda well yes i assume they would as that is their ideology. However i think there is no way a Palestinian faction such as Islamic Jihad would as the immediate blast and fallout would effect them.

No the real question is, does Israel want peace?

reply to post by Peruvianmonk


The Southern Republican Leadership Conference

What a ho-down ! That must have been a meeting of mental giants or did I mean troglodytes ?

Anywho..Back to the topic...

Bibi has clearly been told by the US not to attend for its recent "sins" against the US and is using Turkey/Egypt's attendance as a form of lame "honourable withdrawal"...

I would imagine the US would only want nations serious about reducing the risk of nuclear weapons being used in any form of conflict in attendance...Israel is not serious about reducing its arsenal, and is the nation most likely to use nuclear weapons out of those possessing them...

PM made a good point about Pakistan, India and North Korea...I would have liked to have seen these nations and others in those parts of the world at this conference putting pressure on Pakistan/India/NK to reduce their arsenals...

[edit on 9/4/2010 by Retrovertigo]

[edit on 9/4/2010 by Retrovertigo]

reply to post by Hongkongphooey


No, they would not use a nuclear bomb. Jerusalem is a holy place for Muslims and the other reason is that any country who launched nuclear weapons would get quite a few lobbed back at them, Iran is many things..but bat# crazy enough to launch nuclear weapons preemptively they are not. Nuclear weapons are a deterrence, a big flashing neon sign that says "Don't even think about invading us" Iran is the one being threatened here, it is Iran who should be scared for it's future and peoples and not Israel which is a rogue, nuclear armed state. As for terrorist groups getting hold of a nuke, i very much doubt they could. Small suitcase type nukes if you will are very,very hard to make. Only a few countries have the technology to make one and nukes can be traced back to their origin. And i see you did not even address the fact about Dimona while Iran has all it's facilities monitored 24/7. Why can Israel have illegal nuclear weapons exactly?