Yesterday Helen Thomas blasted the Obama administration’s response to the Israeli special forces massacre on the decks of the Freedom Flotilla. Said Thomas to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs:
Our initial reaction to this flotilla massacre, deliberate massacre in international waters, was pitiful. What do you mean, you “regret,” when something should be so strongly condemned, and if any other nation in the world had done it we would have been up in arms? What is this sacrosanct iron-clad relationship with a country that deliberately kills people…
There is other recent news about Israel that shocks the conscience but most Americans have not heard those stories because the American media doesn’t cover them. In this diary I want to put this recent massacre in the context of other recent news about Israel, and then find out whether the readers of Daily Kos share Helen Thomas’ outrage or whether you favor continuing what she calls our “sacrosanct” relationship with a country that “deliberately kills people.”
Of course we all heard the story coming out of Dubai recently. The local police reported that at least 32 Israeli agents descended on Dubai using the stolen passports of citizens from half a dozen advanced nations (who were Israeli allies). The dozens of agents managed to murder a Hamas commander by smothering him in his hotel room.
But most Americans DON’T know the story about Israeli soldiers harvesting body parts from dead Palestinians without their families’ permission. The story first broke in Sweden’s Aftonbladet in August of last year. Israel reacted with fury, saying the story was anti-Semitic. But then on December 21 of last year Al-Jazeera ( but not the New York Times or the Washington Post) reported that the story was true after all. The article began
Israel has admitted that it harvested organs from the dead bodies of Palestinians and Israelis in the 1990s, without permission from their families.
Finally most Americans have not heard the most shocking story of all, one that is being reported in the May 24, 2010 issue of England’s Guardian newspaper. The Guardian reports that an American researcher has obtained convincing evidence to show that in 1975 Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear-tipped Jericho missiles. Israeli President Shimon Peres was quick to deny the claim, saying “there exists no basis in reality” for making such a claim. But according to the Guardian
“Sasha Polakow-Suransky, the American academic who uncovered the documents while researching a book on the military and political relationship between the two countries, said the denials were disingenuous, because the minutes of meetings Peres held with the then South African defence minister, PW Botha, show that the apartheid government believed an explicit offer to provide nuclear warheads had been made.
Polakow-Suransky noted that Peres did not deny attending the meetings at which the purchase of Israeli weapons systems, including ballistic missiles, was discussed. "Peres participated in high level discussions with the South African defence minister and led the South Africans to believe that an offer of nuclear Jerichos was on the table," he said. "It's clear from the documentary record that the South Africans perceived that an explicit offer was on the table. Four days later Peres signed a secrecy agreement with PW Botha."
The Guardian also cites South African academic Steven Friedman on the relationship between Israeli nuclear scientists and South Africa. Friedman, the director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Rhodes University and the University of Johannesburg, said:
In the 1970s and 1980s there was a sudden influx of Israeli nuclear scientists. We knew there was extensive military cooperation
"
So those are the shockers. We know Israel harvested body parts from dead Palestinians, including Palestinians that Israeli soldiers had killed, without their families’ permission. We know that Israeli commandos massacred nine civilians on a boat in international waters carrying desperately needed supplies to a people kept in a veritable ghetto by Israel itself. And while we do not have the full story yet on Israeli nuclear cooperation with South Africa, the documents certainly make it appear that Israel did offer to sell South Africa nuclear-tipped Jericho missiles