More About Israeli Nukes

Commentary By Ron Beasley

A few days ago I asked But What About The Israeli Nukes?

It's probably the worst kept secret in the world - Israel's nuclear arsenal.  It's the original "don't ask don't tell" policy.

Now I don't know is Tom Engelhardt reads Newshoggers but he sure picks up the meme.

'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Middle Eastern-Style

And you thought "don't ask, don't tell" was a U.S. law on gays in the military that Barack Obama has promised to change. As it turns out, the same phrase plays quite a different role in the Middle East, where Obama seems to have no intention of changing it at all. Successive administrations have adhered to a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to Israel's sizeable arsenal of nuclear weapons. That country has never acknowledged their existence, adhering instead to another arcane formula: "We will not introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East." Jonathan Schell has described this strange situation: "Evidently, in some abstruse way, possessing [nuclear weapons] is not introducing them. You'd have to do something more to introduce them. You'd have to brandish one or make a threat with one, or maybe just acknowledge that you had them. As long as they keep them in the basement and don't make any introductions, then it's alright.

In May, the Obama administration evidently agreed not to break step with the fictions of previous administrations by acknowledging, or attempting to force Israel to publicly acknowledge, its estimated 100-200 nuclear weapons, including city-busters and cruise missiles adapted to be nuclear-armed and put on subs in the Mediterranean. His administration seems also to have agreed not to pressure the Israelis to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) under which nuclear arms are theoretically managed on our planet.

The Israelis believe the rules the rest of the world follows don't apply to them and the US has gone along with the nuke charade.  But is that about to change?  The Zionists at the WSJ think so.

When American diplomats sat down for the first in a series of
face-to-face talks with their Iranian counterparts last October in
Geneva, few would have predicted that what began as a negotiation over
Tehran's nuclear programs would wind up in a stunning demand by the
Security Council that Israel give up its atomic weapons.

Yet that's just what the U.N. body did this morning, in a resolution
that was as striking for the way member states voted as it was for its
substance. All 10 nonpermanent members voted for the resolution, along
with permanent members Russia, China and the United Kingdom. France and
the United States abstained. By U.N. rules, that means the resolution
passes.

The U.S. abstention is sending shock waves through the international
community, which has long been accustomed to the U.S. acting as
Israel's de facto protector on the Council. It also appears to reverse
a decades-old understanding between Washington and Tel Aviv that the
U.S. would acquiesce in Israel's nuclear arsenal as long as that
arsenal remained undeclared. The Jewish state is believed to possess as
many as 200 weapons.

Tehran reacted positively to the U.S. abstention. "For a long time
we have said about Mr. Obama that we see change but no improvement,"
said Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. "Now we can say there
has been an improvement."

And what does the resolution demand? That Israel should play be the same rules we are demanding of Iran.

The resolution calls for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle
East. It also demands that Israel sign the 1970 Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty and submit its nuclear facilities to
international inspection. Two similar, albeit nonbinding, resolutions
were approved last September by the International Atomic Energy Agency
in Vienna.

As it should be.

Update:

Here is another example of Israel not thinking the rules apply to them.

Deep Denial
Why the Holocaust Still Matters

The Goldstone Report goes further than Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers by stripping the Jews not only of the ability and the need but of the right to defend themselves. If a country can be pummeled by thousands of rockets and still not be justified in protecting its inhabitants, then at issue is not the methods by which that country survives but whether it can survive at all. But more insidiously, the report does not only hamstring Israel; it portrays the Jews as the deliberate murderers of innocents�as Nazis. And a Nazi state not only lacks the need and right to defend itself; it must rather be destroyed.

Matt Yglesias explains what's wrong with this.

Needless to say, the Goldstone Report just doesn�t say anything remotely like this.

The specifics of the outrageous slander involved here aside, the
doctrine Oren seems to be trying to put forward is the idea that if a
state is attacked then anything the state does in the way of a
defensive response is legitimate. This just isn�t what international
humanitarian law says or ever has said. I think the post-9/11 invasion
of Afghanistan easily fit the bill as self-defense. But that fact
itself doesn�t immunize the United States against the charge of war
crimes.