Flash From the Past: Why an Apparent Israeli Nuclear Test In 1979 Matters Today 441
Lasrick writes: Stanford's Leonard Weiss writes about growing evidence that Israel and South Africa cooperated on nuclear weapons testing in the 1970s, and in fact conducted a test: "On September 22, 1979, a US satellite code-named Vela 6911, which was designed to look for clandestine atmospheric nuclear tests and had been in operation for more than 10 years, recorded a double flash in an area where the South Atlantic meets the Indian Ocean, off the coast of South Africa. The detection immediately triggered a series of steps in which analysts at national labs in the United States informed their superiors that the recorded signal had all the earmarks of a nuclear test... The event has been a subject of controversy ever since, but is now recognized by most analysts as the detection of an Israeli nuclear test with South African logistical cooperation." Weiss goes through the history of the investigation and new evidence that has come to light, and relates it to the rhetoric surrounding Iran's nuclear energy program and the recent agreement Iran struck with the P5+1, as well as to efforts for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East. Terrific cloak-and-dagger read with plenty of technical details.
Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" (Score:3, Insightful)
Nor does Israel murder Iranians in Argentina. [wikipedia.org]
Why?
Because Judaism doesn't have the concept of dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb, nor does Judaism demand death or conversion for all kafirs [wikipedia.org].
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Nor does Israel murder Iranians in Argentina. [wikipedia.org]
Why?
Because Judaism doesn't have the concept of dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb, nor does Judaism demand death or conversion for all kafirs [wikipedia.org].
This is the difference. Liberal anti-Semites can't seem to wrap their heads around this concept. Israel wants to be left alone in peace; Muslim countries are hell-bent on destroying Israel. Also note: if Israel has had nukes since the 70's as this is claiming, funny how they've never used them, even in defense at this point? Compare that to Muslim countries' vows to eradicate Israel at any possible opportunity. Who do you think is more responsible with nuclear technology?
Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" (Score:4, Interesting)
Who would israel use nukes against? Only a fool would nuke your neighbors, even if they hate you.
Why does the US and UN continue to allow Israel to have them? They don't really need the weapons, they can't use them in anyway without starting a massive war that will basically eliminate their country.
By having the weapons, it causes their neighbors to want them to keep forces equal. So you have fucking crazy states like Iran constantly trying to even the playing field with Israel.
The only reason I can see for Israel to have them is leverage over the US and other countries. As long as their nukes exist (or everyone thinks they exist), there's a kind of cold war that can be easily sparked into actual war, so the US, UN, etc can't unilaterally do anything to either side without potentially sparking an even bigger war.
Since Israel is one of the bigger powers in the region, this unstableness prevents the larger powers from getting involved and gives more slack to do what they want.
(this isn't meant to be anti-israel rant, just a theory. I'm generally pro Israel as a western style democracy in an otherwise fucked up region of the world).
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Who would israel use nukes against? Only a fool would nuke your neighbors, even if they hate you.
Why does the US and UN continue to allow Israel to have them? They don't really need the weapons, they can't use them in anyway without starting a massive war that will basically eliminate their country.
By having the weapons, it causes their neighbors to want them to keep forces equal. So you have fucking crazy states like Iran constantly trying to even the playing field with Israel.
The only reason I can see for Israel to have them is leverage over the US and other countries. As long as their nukes exist (or everyone thinks they exist), there's a kind of cold war that can be easily sparked into actual war, so the US, UN, etc can't unilaterally do anything to either side without potentially sparking an even bigger war.
Since Israel is one of the bigger powers in the region, this unstableness prevents the larger powers from getting involved and gives more slack to do what they want.
(this isn't meant to be anti-israel rant, just a theory. I'm generally pro Israel as a western style democracy in an otherwise fucked up region of the world).
The nukes are Israel's doomsday weapon aimed at the leaders of the Muslim countries surrounding them. Those nukes say this to those leaders:
"If you follow through on your Islamic tenets and try to reclaim this little bit of dar al-Harb for the greater glory of your Prophet, you personally are going to disappear in a blinding white flash of light. And all your cities will be glassed-over desert."
If you don't know what dar al-Harb is, you don't understand the fundamental nature of the Arab/Israeli war - Isr
Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" (Score:5, Informative)
I dare you to try to identify another culture in the history of humanity that actually openly celebrates the murder of innocent civilians like way too many Muslims did on 9/11.
More specifically: some muslims openly celebrated the murder of innocent civilians and were caught on camera. Some extremist christians do similar things. Some extremist jews do similar things. Some Russians do similar things. Muslims don't have a monopoly on mediaval behaviour.
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Too what extremist christian sect are you referring....I am sick and tired of hearing this as an argument. Please, citation, what modern christian group has danced around in the streets because innocent civilians where killed? ....Im waiting....I really want to hear your response....
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That would be the sect that lined up again and again to buy tickets for "American Sniper"
Have you seen "American Sniper?" Man, that thing is an anti-war movie. Everyone who voted to go to war should be forced to watch that thing, because it shows the horrific situations we put our fellow citizens into......and for what? Even the main character, who was heroic, was affected by the war.
War needs to have a clear objective, and it needs to be an objective we are willing to die for. Do not vote for a war unless you would personally be willing to risk your life for the given objective.
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It isn't a sect, it is rank-and-file. I don't think you even know any Christians if you aren't aware that celebrating death and accidents that befall people of disliked religions is a standard type of social communication.
You seem to be simply claiming you haven't met these people, and that therefore they don't exist. It is a laughable claim to anybody who, due to being an employed adult who does business-to-business work, engages people from all walks of life in a relaxed atmosphere where they often say wh
Hardly the only example (Score:5, Insightful)
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."
- Anne Coulter
Please consider that just for a minute. Imagine if some commentator said "My only regret with Osama bin Laden is he didn't order the planes to fly into the Wall Street Journal." Would they then be welcome on news programs, asked their opinion, sell hundreds of thousands of books, and basically be a spokesperson for ideologically "pure" members of the Democratic party, instead of being rightfully shunned?
You need to open your eyes a little. One of the reason why blacks don't clutch their pearls quite so much over the relatively microscopic handful of terrorist deaths in the U.S., is because they've suffered terrorism for a century: the KKK burning crosses on their front yards, lynchings, and racist police on a hair-trigger, murdering completely innocent people and planting evidence (and getting off scott free, even when the evidence comes to light). But see, terrorism don't matter when it's just black lives being lost - at least not for the millions that Coulter, Rush, and many other mainstream Republicans. They don't even want to call it terrorism. [atlantablackstar.com] White terrorists are all just "criminally insane", not like real terrorists - you know "them", "those people".
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Muslims do not have a monopoly on that kind of behavior, but of the 30+ officially muslim nations of the Arab League not one of them is NOT openly and explicitly promoting that kind of behavior in their government sanctioned teachings, television shows, and sermons. I mean hell look at Jordan... it's probably the single least anti-Israel arab state out there and Jordan's official government sponsored sermons teach that the jews murder babies to make matza every passover.
Muslims VS Christians (Score:4, Insightful)
And that sort of shit is really what burns my ass (and I`m not Muslim). Yes, some Muslims did stupid, terrible shit. In more recent ``Christian`` history, we have Kim Davis getting a standing ovation to fucking eye of the tiger [newyorker.com] after being jailed for multiple instances of contempt because she refused to marry gays like her fucking job says to (apparently it`s against her religion, while her 4 marriages and infidelity weren`t somehow)
And we conveniently forget that in Iran, the major reaction to 9-11 was not celebration but actually this [liveleak.com], because they recognize that - regardless or religion - all lives are valuable and a terrible thing had happened. Despite that, some people still want to put Iran in the same camp as ISIS (guess who was fighting ISIS before the rest of us got involved), and major outlets like the New York Times had articles that advocate an unprovoked bombing of Iran [nytimes.com] as a better alternative than a peaceful settlement.
I`ve met some pretty terrible Muslims in my life. For the most part they were holier-than-thou assholes that thought that praying twice a day made them ``good people`` in spite of their conduct. I see the exact same shit from certain members of Christian churches, as well as Jews, etc. There will always be bad people out there, and there are plenty who would use their so-called religion or beliefs to pretend they are good whilst actually doing evil.
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So you're saying Americans weren't celebrating the death of 350000 Japanese civilians that resulting from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima? There's plenty of citations in this paper [dickinson.edu] that suggest otherwise.
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The Japanese in World War Two had dehumanized themselves to the point that NO ONE GAVE A FUCK about 300,000 civilians. Have you bothered to READ SOME HISTORY?!?! Open a google search, and enter "rape of nanking". Go ahead, you can do it. Try to distinguish between the more authoritative and historical links, as opposed to simple minded propaganda. Yes, look for the actual numbers of people killed by beasts in Imperial uniforms. Tossing babies into the air, and catching them on bayonets, then tossing t
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All serious analysis of the choices that US military commanders were making (nuke or ground assault) shows that more civilians would have been killed in a ground assault than were killed in the nuclear strikes.
It is totally OK to have negative opinions of the decision. Each of us chooses our own opinions. But you can't have your own facts. There was not a choice between "nuke and people die, or don't and have nobody die." If you also measure the civilians in China, Korea, and other places murdered by the Ja
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Or to put that in terms people can relate to: The conservative casualty estimates for non-nuclear options like a ground invasion were so high that every single purple heart ever awarded since World War 2 has been part of the batch made to cover the invasion of japan. It would have been another stalingrad, easily.
Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" (Score:5, Insightful)
I dare you to try to identify another culture in the history of humanity that actually openly celebrates the murder of innocent civilians
Didn't the US have a little problem with lynching in the past?
But I guess you're going to say all those blacks were criminals, right? No white supremacist would ever just want to see black guys dead, 'guilty' or not.
The thing you have to realize is that almost all humans are very, very good at dehumanizing their out groups (i.e.: the 'not us' people), to the extent that there are no innocents among those groups (hell, they're not even human. They're 'less than dogs').
'The only good [x] is a dead [x]' isn't just some farcical mythological exclamation, it is deeply ingrained in our biology. It takes hard work to build up civilization to prevent that instinct from surfacing and even then that layer of civilization is very thin and easily destroyed.
Muslims were literally dancing in the streets on 9/11
If I'm not mistaken, there are no records of Muslims in the biggest Muslim nation on earth (Indonesia) dancing in the streets because of 9/11, nor do I believe that American Muslims did so. Ask yourself what the difference is between the dancing ones and the non-dancing ones and their relation to the US (and their relationship with Israel). I'm not saying they are right to hate the US or excusing them for it, just that their human capability for hating enemies and disregarding the humanity of those killed in 9/11 is fueled by that relation, not by the specific religion they were brought up with.
I don't know if you've looked at the ongoings in central and southern Africa in the last couple of decades, but I'm pretty sure there have been some pretty horrendously acting Christians there as well: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/afr... [bbc.co.uk]
Bottom line:
Humans don't need a lot to deeply hate an entire group of people and rather see them die than live.
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Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" (Score:5, Insightful)
And why the fuck are we supposed to specifically differentiate Indonesian Muslims
You don't have to, but you are proving my point exactly: Humans don't need a lot to deeply hate an entire group of people. I showed you ~220 million members of a group who did not engage in celebrating the deaths of 9/11 (and are generally quite peaceful) and you respond by implying that they and all other members of their group will do terrible things to naive people. If that's not blind hatred of an out group, then I'm not sure what would qualify as such.
Likening unrelated and dissimilar historical circumstances is a red herring.
I was providing the exact thing that was requested: "I dare you to try to identify another culture in the history of humanity that actually openly celebrates the murder of innocent civilians"
I identified (granted: implicitly) white supremacist culture as one that has quite undoubtedly openly celebrated the murder of innocent civilians. QED.
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I suggest we invade, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.
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Who said anything about being a religion of peace? It's the easiest one to slide Muslims into (Abrahamic, not Judaism) and Christians in 2015 don't run around beheading and raping people.
Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an atheist and even I know religion is not going to die. Faith/superstition/curiosity about the ineffable is part of the human condition, religions will always emerge to prey on that aspect of humanity just as humans exploit other human vulnerabilities (disparities in power, wealth etc.). There is no way any clever argument is going to prevent humans taking advantage of other humans.
The best hope, to my mind, is to try and reduce the disadvantages with which so many in the world find themselves encumbered, teach them to read, join them to the internet etc. Allow people to travel freely across national borders (fat chance of that happening), treat people fairly no matter their origin, protect the vulnerable (especially children).
Inequality is fertile soil for the corralling effect of religions. I certainly admire the great works done in the name of various churches, but I think we should remember that these were achieved by humans that could just as easily been inspired by a personal faith as one of the "name brands" without the incumberance of fighting between the brand leaders.
There are plenty of things to fight over, lets strike religion off the list and work on overcoming the others
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The reason for Israel to have them is they can use them if they start to lose a defensive war. The Israeli nation, don't believe they would survive the Israeli state losing a serious war. Hence strategic nuclear forces make sense as a defensive weapon for them.
Obviously there would be horrible political repercussions, but most stuff is better than death.
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Given the stated goal of the complete extermination of the entire jewish race and every Israeli citizen it's not really expected that there would be any political repercussions because, in the event Israel goes for the Samson Option, it's not really expected that there will be anyone left.
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Since Israel has taken an unusual "don't confirm - don't deny" stance we can only assume that the nukes are meant to be revealed, and used if necessary, as a last resort in a scenario where Israel has lost the conventional fight against enemy forces and is about to be conquered and occupied.
If Israel primarily intended to use the weapons as a deterrent they would have revealed that they have them and how may they have, since the deterrent effect is proportional to the amount of firepower that you have. An u
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Their nukes are the only thing which has stopped Iran/etc from invading them for the last thirty years.
False on two counts: First the Israeli army is fierce-some and serves as much as a deterrent as nukes. Second when Israel was considering bombing the nuclear facilities in Iran, Iran threatened to invade with a combined Syrian-Iranian forces if Israel if they did so. The defense preparations by the IDF, which were extensive did not include nuclear retaliation from Israel, but conventional warfare.
This is common knowledge in Israel, since all young males are in the army so they often talk about what they are
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If Israel wants to be left alone, perhaps they should stop their policy of murdering innocent civilians and building homes in areas that don't belong to them.
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I have to agree. I would find supporting Israel much easier if they would take the high road with Gaza.
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There are 0 Israelis who live in Gaza. There are 0 settlements in Gaza. All the Gazan Israeli wars of the last 10 years wars have been Gaza attacking Israel.
They tried taking the high road, the Gazans still won't accept living in Gaza and not Israel.
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Yes, the settlements are gone, but the blockade remains.
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So what you're saying is no matter what, under any circumstances, Israel should never, at all, ever, make any kind of response whatsoever to a government demanding the total annihilation of the jewish race and then launching thousands of rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians?
Or are you saying instead of a blockade and wall you'd rather just see a much more overt military response?
Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" (Score:5, Insightful)
There are 0 Israelis who live in Gaza. There are 0 settlements in Gaza. All the Gazan Israeli wars of the last 10 years wars have been Gaza attacking Israel.
They tried taking the high road, the Gazans still won't accept living in Gaza and not Israel.
Gaza is surrounded on all sides by a blockade which doesn't allow them to import or export any significant goods, or leave and come back to a university, for example. It reminds a lot of Jews, including me, of the Warsaw Ghetto.
A blockade is an act of war. A people have a right to defend themselves against an attack.
The people who are firing those missiles and making those attacks are usually not controlled by Hamas, but are smaller militant factions, which don't want peace with Israel and often sabotage the peace efforts.
Israel claims that those militant factions are the "responsibility" of Hamas. If that's true, then logically, the Israeli government is responsible for the illegal land grabs and killings by the settlers, for example, but I can't remember an Israeli prosecution of settlers for killing Palestinians.
Israel would also be responsible for the illegal killings of civilians during the Gaza wars, including the "white flag" incidents where Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians, including children, who came out carrying a white flag as ordered (documented in the Goldstone report), but Israel has never prosecuted a solider for killing a Palestinian, or even admitted that it happened.
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Between 1940 when it was established and mid-1942 when the uprising started the 1,125 calories a day allocation caused over 1/5th of the population of the Warsaw Ghetto to starve to death. When the first uprising happened the Germans killed another 10% of the population within 3 months are exported the remaining population to death camps.
In Gaza the death toll from multiple uprisings is around 1/4%. The starvation is not remotely similar. It
Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" (Score:5, Insightful)
Between 1940 when it was established and mid-1942 when the uprising started the 1,125 calories a day allocation caused over 1/5th of the population of the Warsaw Ghetto to starve to death. When the first uprising happened the Germans killed another 10% of the population within 3 months are exported the remaining population to death camps.
In Gaza the death toll from multiple uprisings is around 1/4%. The starvation is not remotely similar. It is an obscenity to compare the Warsaw Ghetto to If you are a Jew, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for saying something like that.
I read Emanuel Ringelblum's Warsaw Ghetto diaries, and I read the Amnesty International reports of Israeli human rights abuses. I read the accounts of how ambulances took pregnant Palestinian women to the border crossings, where the Israeli border guards forced them to get out and wait, until they delivered their babies at the crossing, where many of the children (and some of the mothers) died. I read a story of how a 50-year-old Palestinian man with a heart attack arrived at the border crossing, trying to get to an Israeli hospital, and the border guards wouldn't let him through, and he died. My father had a heart attack at the same age, he went to the hospital, and he lived another 20 years. I used to call the Israeli public relations office to verify these stories, and they simply lied. I saw many uncomfortable similarities between what I read in Ringelblum's diaries and what I read (and verified) in the Amnesty International report.
When I grew up, people used to say, "How could the world stand by silently when Jews were being killed?" Well, now you know. Palestinians are being killed, just as the world, including you, are standing by silently. I made a vow that if it ever happened again, I wouldn't stand by silently. That's why so many Jews led the opposition to the Vietnam war (and to every war).
If you are a Jew, or even if you're not, you should be ashamed to stand by silently while Palestinians are being killed.
Gaza has declared a state of war. The parent asserted that the Palestinians were interested in peace but the settlement enterprise prevented it. Gaza has no settlement enterprise.
I don't think Gaza declared a state of war, but I do know that immediately after -- at American and Israeli urging -- they had their elections, and Hamas won, the Israelis blockaded most of Gaza's imports and exports. There was no provocation. According to the Israelis themselves, they're deliberately keeping the Gazans in a state of "starvation." The doctors on the ground say that they're not getting enough food, medical supplies and other necessities. I remember Ringelblum saying that when the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto complained that they weren't allowed enough food, one of the arrogant Nazi officers said, "You Jews are very clever, you can smuggle in all the food you need." (The penalty for smuggling was death.) I saw the Israelis brag about the inadequate food they were supplying, and that's when the similarity to the Warsaw Ghetto became stark.
If that's true, then logically, the Israeli government is responsible for the illegal land grabs and killings by the settlers [in the West Bank], for example
I don't know how something that the operating government permits can be "illegal"
After WWII, a movement of international lawyers -- led in large part by Jewish lawyers, motivated by the example of the Nazi crimes -- wrote a body of law to make these activities illegal. Those were codified in the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. Even the Israeli government's own lawyers, such as Theodor
Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" (Score:4, Informative)
One more thing I forgot to say. The Jewish reaction to the Holocaust was not to get a few lawyers together and work for a better United Nations. Rather it was to start the process of galvanizing support among the remaining European Jews for Zionism. The reaction was not the Geneva Convention to protect Jews. Jews had seen international conventions protecting them be ignored many times over the last 1900 years. Rather the reaction was to form a Jewish army and stop being a stateless minority. The mass migration to Palestine had the support of European Jewry after WWII.
And to a great extent the success of the Zionist project then caused a nationalist surge in the other major bodies of Jews. The mainstream Jewish political philosophy of a century ago looks nothing like it does today. Circumstances changed ideology.
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Why would Israel use their nuclear weapons when they haven't been threatened with nukes? If there was a credible threat, they'd quickly make it known that either they have nuclear weapons, or the US would either tactically or logistically provide them. If Israel was attacked with a nuke, it would only be a matter of time before they retaliated with a nuke of their own.
In Western Europe, NATO doctrine involved using nukes on West German soil to stop a Soviet tank rush. I imagine Israeli doctrine is similar.
Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" (Score:5, Insightful)
Israeli doctrine allows for unprovoked attacks on neighboring countries.
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We're sorry.
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We're sorry.
Oh, we're sorry that your sorry, eh.
Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm trying to remember what Iraq did to provoke the bombing of Osirak ... I think they built something that might eventually have allowed the development of nuclear parity.
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Unprovoked? If Canada was lobbing missiles carrying conventional warheads at Wisconsin an attack on Canada wouldn't be an unprovoked attack.
No, but those cheese-eaters certainly have it coming...
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Naw, you just mass produce light tanks and counter rush as soon as his tanks are dead.
Re:Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map" (Score:4, Informative)
The whole history of that region has been various peoples stomping the shit out of various other peoples. This latest spat is just a continuation of stuff that has been going on for at least eight centuries. If it wasn't Israel it would be something else (Lebanon for instance). Of course, the British managed to screw things up [wikipedia.org] in a way only the British can do when the created Palestine. To be fair, the French tried hard but were out classed by the Brits.
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The primary British fuckup was in letting the Grand Mufti make his alliances with Hitler and then import nazi driven anti-semitism into the region, mixing it with arab nationalism. That's really the long and short of the Arab Israeli conflict since the mandate gave something like 90% of the land to the Arabs even though they walked out on talks and the whole identity of "palestinians" didn't even exist until later when his egyptian nephew made them up and started calling himself "Yasser Arafat".
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Re: Israel hasn't vowed to "wipe Iran off the map (Score:2)
If by occupied you mean bought from the people who owned it then sure.
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Ariel Sharon was born in Kfar Malal, Palestine. Your problem is that you are a racist and don't believe that people should be citizens where they were born.
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Typical anti-Zionist. If you get contradicted on the facts rant louder.
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Have you read your own link?
According to a report in The Nation, the author claims that James Cheek, United States Ambassador to Argentina at the time of the bombing, told him, "To my knowledge, there was never any real evidence [of Iranian responsibility]. They never came up with anything." The hottest lead in the case, he recalled, was an Iranian defector named Manoucher Moatamer, who "supposedly had all this information." But Moatamer turned out to be only a dissatisfied low-ranking official without the
Forced conversion (Score:5, Interesting)
I have lived amongst many Muslims here in africa. Not one has even mentioned converting me.
However on my first trip to Atlanta, i got given a bible on day one
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You say they forced you to take a bible?
Your wife/girlfriend was forced to wear a veil? She wasn't allowed to pick you up at the airport?
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You weren't forced to take it - you chose to take it. It might have been less socially awkward to do so, but you weren't forced to.
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I'm not anti-semetic by any stretch of the imagination, but perhaps a little history might do you some good - try examining the roots of modern 'terrorism' followed by the role of the Haganah (which later became the backbone of the IDF) in pre and post-WWII Zionism. Israel was, quite literally, founded through terrorism.
Israel murders plenty of people - in fact they're rather famous for being so good at it; however, so does our own government.
Saying that, yes, Iranian religious leaders are pretty much your
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The Yisuv used a variety of tactics to get achieve their goal of an independent Jewish state, just like most national liberation movements do. They did make use of Terrorism but they also made use of agricultural development and cultural enrichment did so on a much wider scale and with a higher budget. It is simply dishonest to take one attribute of the Yishuv's methods and claim that they were "literally founded through terrorism".
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Judaism certainly has problematic concepts as well. Islam wants to convert us, Ovadia Yosef just wanted to rule us.
The establishment of Israel makes it in my opinion inevitable that religious Judaism will change into a form pushing for the annexation of the temple mount and the promised land in general ... the orthodox outside Israel might maintain the illegitimacy of Israel, but the ones inside won't be able to unite the dichotomy for long. See the changing rabbinic opinions about visitations to temple mou
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Might want to be careful about citing the United Nations [unwatch.org]. We're talking about an organization that will condemn Israel 22 times in a single year but can't be bothered to take time out of their schedule to do something about the african genocides.
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Nor does Israel murder Iranians in Argentina. [wikipedia.org]
Why?
Because Judaism doesn't have the concept of dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb, nor does Judaism demand death or conversion for all kafirs [wikipedia.org].
Or Iran might have had nothing to do with it, it's a legitimately unsolved crime:
Other opinion
According to a report in The Nation, the author claims that James Cheek, United States Ambassador to Argentina at the time of the bombing, told him, "To my knowledge, there was never any real evidence [of Iranian responsibility]. They never came up with anything." The hottest lead in the case, he recalled, was an Iranian defector named Manoucher Moatamer, who "supposedly had all this information." But Moatamer turn
Apartheid (Score:4, Insightful)
Two apartheid states working hand-in-hand. Quelle surprise.
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And at the risk of Godwinning the discussion, there's at least one Christian country that also killed as many members of what it considered to be an "enemy" religion in the middle of the last Century.
Which country would that be? The Fascists were atheist. The Communists were atheist. That doesn't leave many left.
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You are a liar. Mussolini and the Catholic church were best buddies [wikipedia.org]. His both children were baptized, Catholicism was the state religion and marriage was controlled by the church.
Maybe you mean the nazis? But no, most of them were Christian. Hitler was a Catholic, as most Austrians were at that time. There was a concordat between the nazi Germany and Vatican, "Gott mit uns" was the official slogan of Wehrmacht, and Hitler's Jew hate was very typical for the contemporary Catholics. Germany never was secular
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You are a liar. Mussolini and the Catholic church were best buddies.
So? He had to get their support early on in his reign.
His both children were baptized, Catholicism was the state religion and marriage was controlled by the church.
Fascists and Nazis had a lighter touch when it came to religion than the Communists did. They often went through the motions of public religious observance. None of that stuff indicates a belief in Christianity.
For example, Mussolini supposedly advised [google.com] some visiting Nazi leaders (in early 1937):
"The Catholic Church is like a rubber ball, if you don't keep up the pressure, it will return to its original shape."
Both Mussolini and Hitler repeated discoursed on the absolute nature of their ideologies. For example, this quote by Mussolini [google.com] in the aftermath of the Italian
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A lighter touch? Do you actually read what I have written? Catholicism was the state religion of fascist Italy and atheists were oppressed in nazi Germany.
This is the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Unchristian behavior was the norm in every christi
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Just because a person is atheist doesn't mean they'really incapable of seeing religion as "the enemy." In fact, I see atheists make that very comment almost daily right here on Slashdot - that religion is at fault for most of our social ills, and should be done away with.
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Re: Apartheid (Score:3)
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Stalin was actually a seminarist in his early years.
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Yes, because ISIS is representative of Muslim states.~
Oh wait, it isn't. And at the risk of Godwinning the discussion, there's at least one Christian country that also killed as many members of what it considered to be an "enemy" religion in the middle of the last Century.
Islamic states are not particularly progressive these days (understatement) but the hate against believers in Islam is absurdly irrational and out of proportion.
It'd be nice if those goddamn Jews could catch a break, right?
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Yes, it would. But they're not going to get one if every single time they're under threat we treat it as a simplistic game of bad guys vs good guys.
The entire existence of Israel is itself a cause of a number of issues that nobody's willing to address, and which itself causes hatred - not that the hatred is right, but let's not pretend that things would somehow be exactly the same if the Palestinian death rate wasn't so high, if conspiracy theories about their existence weren't treated as historical fact
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I don't hate believers in Islam. I don't really hate anybody.
However I have a rational self-interest in the preservation of Western Civilization and freedom in general. Islam is incompatible with those things. Since Islam is not likely to change soon, then belief in Islam must be ended.
I suggest converting them to Christianity. I know you'd prefer they be enlightened atheist secular humanists, but I believe their brainwashing is so ingrained they could never let go of belief in the supernatural. An Abrahami
Re:Apartheid (Score:5, Insightful)
A complicated and nuanced situation that's not nearly so clear-cut as you maintain.
If you get a chance, it's very much worth a visit to Israel and Palestine. Will give you a chance to see how things really are on the ground. Palestinians who live within the green line (pre-1967 boundaries) are as you say Israeli citizens that the Israelis call Israeli Arabs. They can vote, and they have relative freedom of movement. However they are treated by many as second-class citizens. The Knesset system is badly broken and as such doesn't really represent people, Jewish or Arab, since seats are apportioned according to a party's percentage of the popular vote. Arab MKs are often marginalized by government. They have never been a part of the government coalitions as far as I know. Israeli Arabs feel like the Israeli government favors Jewish school districts and cities when it comes to funding. In some parts of Israel, such as around Haifa, there has been relatively good integration between Palestinian and Jewish villages and neighbors. But in other parts of the Galilee things are often tense.
In the West Bank, Palestinians are not Israeli citizens, and crossing Israel to get to Gaza to see relatives has always been a difficult task. The vast majority of Palestinians live in the West Bank and aren't citizens, though Israel very much controls their movements.
Inside Jerusalem, things are the most apartheid. Though Israel has annexed Jerusalem, none of the Palestinians there have been granted citizenship. Also, they are not considered residents of the West Bank by the Israelis either. So while a Palestinian in the west bank can travel from one part to another, Palestinians in Jerusalem cannot travel anywhere without getting Israeli paperwork. It's the worst of both worlds. Israel acts like Palestinian Jerusalem residents are favored, but in reality they are more restricted.
So I can understand how people draw parallels between apartheid in SA and Israel. The situation is very much the same. The demographics is why Israel can never annex the west bank too, as doing so would absolutely make them just like SA.
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Your description is accurate except for Jerusalem. Non-Jews with Jerusalem residency are entitled to Israeli citizenship or Jordanian citizenship. They can choose. Many Palestinians until recently felt that accepting Israeli citizenship was accepting the Israeli annexation of Jerusalem and refused to become citizens. Lately (the last 5 years or so) that attitude has started to change and roughly 3-5% of Palestinians are becoming Israeli per year. In a generation the majority of Palestinians in Jerusale
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There are very few Arab-Israelis, so it costs ISraeli next to nothing to let them vote.
Very few as in 20% of the population, you mean?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The real test is when Israel demands conscription from them. Only when Arab Israelis are trusted to guard their fellow Jews can Israel claim to be a democracy.
This I agree with, and there is already talk of changing this, but not clear if reforms will actually be implemented.
And Carter was one of the good ones (Score:4, Insightful)
Imposing sanctions on Israel, on the other hand, would be a political disaster, involving a major loss of support for the administration among the Jewish diaspora in the United States, an important political constituency for Carter and the Democratic Party. For all these reasons, the administration was highly motivated to offer some explanation other than a nuclear test for the Vela event and to hide, suppress, or otherwise soft-pedal information and evidence to the contrary—in other words, to engage in a cover-up.
Of course there's no way around it, but how might the World look if elected officials didn't put personal considerations ahead of national or earthly considerations.
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how might the World look if elected officials didn't put personal considerations ahead of national or earthly considerations.
Except the problem is really not the elected officials - its the people doing the electing. (the voters)
Imagine, for a moment, that we somehow elected a full slate of conscientious politicians. They're goal is not to pander and get reelected, their goal is to do right by the country, its citizens, and the world in general. Hooray! ... now what happens? Well, more likely than not, they'll piss off some constituency. That means that while they might be great in their one term, they'll lose in their next elect
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but how might the World look if elected officials didn't put personal considerations ahead of national or earthly considerations.
As if voters put national considerations ahead of personal considerations. The voters get what they collectively deserve, in this case that is true.
What "new evidence"? (Score:2)
The summary uses "new evidence that has come to light" as the anchor text for a link to the article, but the most recent date in the article is 2012. Is that supposed to be the "new evidence", or am I missing something?
Nuclear proliferation (Score:2)
It is time for the testing of nuclear weapons to finally be banned.........We go forward with no illusions. Some will break the rules, but that is we need a structure in place that ensures that when any nation does, they will face consequences.”
It's reasonable. We're trying to stop nuclear proliferation, because the more nukes, the more likely a crazy person will get a chance to use one.
The problem is, and the article points out, there are already consequences that should be in place for nations that test nuclear weapons, but when countries have tested nuclear weapons, they didn't face the consequences. As a result, countries will continue to get nukes. Israel and South Africa first, then Pakistan and soo
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You seem to be equating countries like Israel, Pakistan, and India — who never promised not to seek nuclear weapons — with the likes of Iran and North Korea, who did make such a promise, but developed (or are developing) them anyway.
Maybe, both groups should see some consequences, but the latter group's punishment ought to be much more severe.
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Consequences can be tricky things. What we didn't want was a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, which would be triggered by Israeli testing. So what is the best option, at least in the short run, when evidence of secret Israeli testing falls into your lap?
You consider two options: make the information public, or sweep it under the rug. The consequences of making the information public are immediate: every country in the Middle East that has the capacity to do so starts seeking its own nuclear bomb.
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Worst kept secret is all the A-bombs sitting there on the American bases, which I hope is not really true.
Between ICBMs and submarine launched nukes, there's really no reason to keep nukes out there. But who knows, crazier things have happened.
nonsense (Score:2)
From TFA: "This cover-up is all the more troubling because it runs contrary to President Obamaâ(TM)s speech in Prague in 2009"
Troubling?
Nearly stopped reading at this point; to vapidly disregard the radically different geopolitical circumstances (both regional and global) between 1979 and 2009 is, frankly, tendentious idiocy.
It might also be worth noting that Israel, who'd been attacked generally by the Arab states around it in 1948, 1967, and 1973. It has not been openly attacked since.
where was the fallout (Score:3)
Where was the radioactive fallout? If there was an atmospheric test there should have been detectable amounts of radioactive fallout. The article does not mention any. What's up with that?
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If there was an atmospheric test there should have been detectable amounts of radioactive fallout.
There was some radiation detected in Australia consistent with a small, clean bomb near South Africa. For political reasons, the US (Jimmy Carter) didn't want to find any proof that a nuclear bomb was detonated. They sent a couple of planes to the general vicinity as a token effort but didn't really search the correct location.
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The atmospheric test (Vela incident) was most likely of a small (as in artillery shell sized) fission device intended for use as part of a thermonuclear device. These devices have small yields, and are mostly neutron output, and produce very little fallout. A high air burst with a limited yield means that there is limited ground (or seawater) sucked up into the fireball. By the 60s, people had figured out how to do tests that didn't fill the air with fallout. Essentially, this was a "neutron bomb".
Israel
We Arm Isreal, Anyway. (Score:2)
We treat Isreal like one of our states.
Don't worry, the American Taxpayer can afford anything : P
So, WHY does it matter? (Score:2)
The titles of both the submission and TFA promised to explain, why it matters, but contain nothing but evidence of the test taking place.
Ok, suppose Israel did, in fact, test a nuke in 1979 and remained nuclear-armed ever since — for over 35 years. Why does it matter today?
I could offer some suggestions of my own — quickly to be denounced as "troll" and "flamebait" by the dimmer part of the audience — but neither the write-up nor the article deliver any of theirs.
A sloppy piece of propa
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Even though Israel has refused to admit to it over the years, almost everyone believes and has for a long time believed that they have nukes.
The only interesting timing here might be the amount of increase in interest in Israel's nuclear history given the Iran deal bullshit.
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They don't have nukes like Mossad don't assassinate people. I mean sure you can never prove it was Mossad, and in fact that agrees with the neatly written note (in Hebrew) left at the scene of the assassination saying "lol good luck proving this was Mossad".
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I don't think Israel has ever denied having nukes. They avoid the question or pull one of those "I can neither confirm nor deny" answers.
As for Mossad assassinating people, I don't really care if they do or do not. The people I know of who it is claimed that they assassinated are people I'm more comfortable living in a world that doesn't have them in it. If they do assassinate people, I can think of several more they should get on top of. But as I said, I don't really care about it.
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Israel have stated they won't be the first to introduce weapons to the middle east.
As for Mossad assassinating people
Way to miss the point.
Re:Israel did not break the CTBT (Score:5, Informative)
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If you got nukes, you should be willing to shoot first.
Thats what Bertrand Russell said, with the proviso "until they get nukes then we should disarm."
The famous peacenik and founder member of CND believed in nuking the soviet union before they had a chance to develop their own nukes.
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No radioactive fallout was detected
that rules out a nuclear test. We should be able to go out to the sea floor of the site right now and detect fallout. I believe it's been since concluded that this was a meteor.
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It's a big planet and a small nuke. Although it would be a smoking gun, so to speak, either the sensors didn't find the fallout or the information is still classified.
As the article points out, pretty much every other bit of evidence points to a nuclear explosion. Personally, I think it was a lead in to District 9. We were telling the aliens where to land but something screwed up.
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It's a big planet and a small nuke. Although it would be a smoking gun, so to speak, either the sensors didn't find the fallout or the information is still classified.
As the article points out, pretty much every other bit of evidence points to a nuclear explosion.
No, it doesn't. In fact, almost no other piece of actual evidence points to a nuclear explosion with the exception of a disputed Australian sheep iodine measure that was unable to be replicated (including by New Zealand, who are nuclear-hostile an
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It is impossible to own land in Israel. People lease plots from the government. The only ones with ownership are the folks holding deeds from the times before Israel was created.
Another bold-faced lie. Were it not for Israeli police, various Christian sects would've torn each other apart limb-by-limb, for example.
Given the amount of obvious lies in your post, I am not even going to dig through the re