Israel's Unmentionable Stockpile of Nuclear Bombs

By John Law

How far can a respected news publication go in trying to protect an official Israeli cover story"?

Apparently, pretty far.

This seems to be the case in an article by George J. Church, in the July 8 issue of Time magazine, in which he discusses the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty. After noting that Israel did not sign it, he states that "Israel, India and Pakistan are all in this category, but they nonetheless are believed to have secret weapons programs underway."

Israel is believed to have secret weapons programs underway? Considering what is known about Israel's nuclear weapons Stockpile, this is roughly equivalent to writing that Israel is "believed to be planning to occupy the West Bank and Gaza. " The fact is that Israel isn't just believed to have a nuclear weapons program underway, but is known to have had a stockpile of bombs for more than 20 years. The only difference in the two situations is that Israel doesn't because it can't deny that it has troops in the West Bank and Gaza, but it can choose to refrain from comment about its nuclear stockpile (it never confirms or denies its existence) because the bombs aren't sitting out there for all the world to see.

No Ruffling of Feathers

Yet Mr. Church, instead of fulfilling his journalistic responsibility to "tell it like it is," apparently prefers not to ruffle the feathers of the Israeli government. The only way he could have downplayed it more would have been to repeat Israel's ritualistic phrase: "Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East, " which means zilch. It was designed to mean nothing, because to have said that "Israel will not be the first to produce nuclear weapons in the Middle East" would have been too much of a barefaced lie even for Israel's leaders.

The CIA already knew in the 1960s, through scientific monitoring, that Israel was striving to produce nuclear weapons in a reactor facility in Dimona, which it told US officials was only a "textile factory." In 1969, the CIA drew up a National Intelligence Estimate to the effect that Israel had joined the nuclear club and passed it to President Johnson (who hushed it up). In February 1976, Carl Duckett, then the CIA's deputy director for science and technology, told a group of American space technologists at a Washington briefing that Israel "has 10 to 20 nuclear weapons ready and available for use. " And, irony of ironies, in its issue of April 12, 1976, Mr. Church's own magazine, in an article titled "How Israel Got the Bomb, " announced: "Time has learned that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal of 13 atomic bombs, assembled, stored, and ready to be dropped on enemy forces from specially equipped Kfir and Phantom fighters or Jericho missiles."

The CIA knew in the 1960s that Israel was striving to produce nuclear weapons.

Since the mid-'80s, US and foreign intelligence officials have been estimating that Israel has a stockpile of between 100 and 200 nuclear bombs, of which a score are the more powerful "hydrogen" bombs. Israel added credibility to this estimate beginning in 1986, when a nuclear technician named Mordechai Vanunu, who had worked in Dimona for 10 years, revealed the size of the stockpile to London's Sunday Times. After tracking him down in Europe and returning him forcibly to Israel, the government tried and convicted Vanunu of treason for violations of security. It never denied his allegations.

The current predilection in the press for avoiding mention, when possible, of Israel's nuclear capabilities has been sadly evident in stories about the plans for Middle East arms control, which have recently been proposed by the US and by the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council. The US plan, while calling for the destruction by Middle East countries of all chemical and biological weapons and the prohibition of any activity by them to produce nuclear weapons, would allow Israel to retain all of its current stockpile of nuclear bombs. Yet many media stories, perhaps even most, bury this point far down in the story, if they mention it at all.

One of numerous such examples is a story by Alan Riding, in the July 10 issue of The New York Times, about a Paris meeting of the five permanent members of the Security Council, during which they concentrated on the US proposal for Middle East arms control. Not once in this story was it ever mentioned that the proposal would require Arab countries to abandon any efforts to develop a nuclear capability, but that Israel—while being required to stop producing more nuclear bombs—would be permitted to keep all the nuclear bombs that it already possesses. In fact, it didn't even mention that Israel has a nuclear stockpile!

An Editorial Non Sequitur

The Christian Science Monitor, on the other hand, in a May 16 editorial that came out just after the Bush proposal, accurately described its terms but came to the following conclusion: "This is a constructive proposal.... For either the Israelis or the Arab countries to now reject what is an utterly rational White House non-proliferation proposal—which gets at the heart of the military-strategic problem in the region—would send the world exactly the wrong message. "

It's hard to see how tilting the balance of power even more sharply in Israel's direction will help reduce the danger of Arab-Israeli conflict. Over the years, Israel's knowledge of the existence of an Arab capability for launching ballistic missiles with various kinds of unconventional as well as conventional warheads has surely had at least a minor deterrent influence, on occasion, when Israelis made a decision on whether or not to take over more territory or "punish" an Arab foe. With even this tiny deterrent gone, Israel would never have to think twice before using its iron fist. On the other hand, the new balance of power arrangement would be unlikely to make the Arabs decide to lie down and allow Israel to do what it wants in the region. On the contrary, frustration and resentment would drive them to try to circumvent the arrangements, more radical groups might come to power, and terrorism would surely grow. At the same time, Israel might decide it was being provoked enough to carry out the wish of its extremists to drive out (or "transfer") the Palestinians from the territories, and might even become less inhibited about pushing its nuclear button.

As things are now, the Arabs are complaining about the US arms proposal and, in another display of breathtaking chutzpah, so are the Israelis, who think 400-to-0 in nuclear bombs is better than 200-to-0.

John Law, founding and chief editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs from 1982 to 1984, was for 22 years the chief Middle East correspondent for US News and World Report.