Rep. Thomas Massie posts he will address the issue of the USS Liberty on June 8, exactly 59 years after it was attacked by Israel; see IPA news release with video of a survivor, Bryce Lockwood.
Section 224 of the National Defense Authorization Act is scheduled for a vote Thursday, during the House Armed Services Committee’s markup session; see IPA news release: “Congress ‘Moves to Integrate U.S. and Israeli Militaries.’“
Congress is debating the Lebanon War Powers legislation put forward by Rep. Rashida Tlaib; see recent IPA news release.
Rep. Joaquin Castro on Wednesday questioned Secretary of State Marco Rubio about Israel’s nuclear weapons. Rubio stated that a “feature” of U.S. government policy was not acknowledging their existence for a “variety of reasons” and that he’d be happy to talk about it — in a hearing closed to the public.
Castro replied: “If they, in fact, possess nuclear weapons — and you’re right, in open-source reporting, that has come across — we don’t know what their red lines are for using those nuclear weapons.”
JOHN STEINBACH, [email protected], (703) 822-3485
Steinbach is co-founder of the Hiroshima Nagasaki Peace Committee of the National Capital Area. He wrote the in-depth article “The Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program,” which makes numerous points including: “During the 1973 war, Israel used nuclear blackmail to force Kissinger and Nixon to airlift massive amounts of military hardware to Israel.”
He stresses that Israel’s nuclear weapons program should not be compared with the North Korean, Indian or Pakistani programs. He notes that at this point there’s significant evidence it is more advanced than the British program, or the French program from which it emerged in the 1950s. He was recently interviewed on “Flashpoints” on Israel’s nuclear weapons (at 30-minute mark).
SAM HUSSEINI, [email protected], (202) 421-6858, @samhusseini
Senior analyst for the Institute for Public Accuracy, Husseini is also an independent journalist who has questioned numerous officials who have refused to acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons; see video compilation by Decensored News.
The Washington Post recently noted: “‘There is a low boil of unease about Israel’s nuclear program and what could compel them to use nuclear weapons short of facing a WMD attack,’ said an administration official. A scenario gaining fresh scrutiny among U.S. officials involves Israel’s air defenses becoming overwhelmed by missile or rocket fire from its neighbors. Whether Israel would resort to a nuclear response when faced with an unusually high civilian death toll has been discussed ‘frequently,’ said the administration official.” Husseini warned about such a scenario, drawing on Steinbach’s research, in this article published in March: “Imperial Israel’s Nuclear Threat: A Clear and Present Danger.”
Also see piece by Archbishop Desmond Tutu published by The Guardian in 2020: “Joe Biden should end the U.S. pretense over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons” which has the subheading: “The cover-up has to stop — and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country with oppressive policies towards Palestinians.” The piece states: “Amendments by former Senators Stuart Symington and John Glenn to the Foreign Assistance Act ban U.S. economic and military assistance to nuclear proliferators and countries that acquire nuclear weapons.”
However, a recent Congressional letter from Castro and other Democrats to Rubio states: “When required, the United States Congress has passed exemptions to nonproliferation laws, as in the case of India, where Congress passed the Hyde Act, or through presidential waivers in the case of Pakistan. If any such disclosure of any Israeli nuclear weapons capability would implicate U.S. laws concerning nonproliferation, we are ready to work with you to address those concerns through legislative action.”
Steinbach in his in-depth paper notes that the Israeli nuclear weapons arsenal was exposed by “Mordechai Vanunu, a nuclear technician working in the Dimona plutonium reprocessing plant.” He has been called “the preeminent hero of the nuclear era” by Daniel Ellsberg. Steinbach notes he was “lured to Rome by a female Mossad spy, was beaten, drugged and kidnapped to Israel. Following a campaign of disinformation and vilification in the Israeli press, Vanunu was convicted of treason by a secret security court and sentenced to 18 years in prison. He served over 11 years in solitary confinement in a 6-by-9 foot cell. Vanunu was released from prison in 2004, but has since been held under virtual house arrest under draconian 1945 British Mandate Emergency Regulations.”