Like the gleeful sound one makes upon hearing that a particularly obnoxious and troublesome relative will not be attending a family gathering, Washington officials probably issued a collective sigh of relief when hearing the news that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has canceled his visit to Washington planned for next week. The Israeli Prime Minister has caused enough diplomatic problems for the Obama government recently and his appearance at an international summit on the spread of nuclear weapons could have further embarrassed both Israel and the United States.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu will not attend the weapons conference because he is afraid to confront a group of representatives of Arab nations who plan to bring up the issue of Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s non-participation in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. These nations want to force Israel to publicly acknowledge its nuclear capability and permit international inspection of its facilities.<\/p>\n
The Jerusalem Post<\/em><\/a> refers to the Israeli nuclear arsenal as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153alleged,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d maintaining the ludicrous Tel Aviv \u00e2\u20ac\u0153policy of ambiguity.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The headline of the Hebrew version of Ynet<\/em><\/a> says Netanyahu is afraid of an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ambush\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by the Arab delegates to the conference. Israel will send Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor to the conference to be the flak-catcher for Netanyahu. The Israeli leader\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s absence will deflect attention from the potential bad publicity that discussion of Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nuclear capability will generate.<\/p>\n Israel maintains an arsenal which is assumed to be between 100 and 300 warheads depending on the source of the data estimate. Mordechai Vanunu revealed details of Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nuclear arsenal to the British press in 1986. He served 18 years in an Israeli prison after being abducted from Italy by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Vanunu is prohibited from leaving Israel, where his freedom of speech, association and movement have been severely limited by authorities since his release. He has been designated as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to the Federation of American Scientists<\/a> website, it has been reported that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fearing defeat in the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Israelis assembled 13 twenty-kiloton atomic bombs.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The fact that Israel may have seriously considered a nuclear strike in 1973 first became known to the general public in Seymour Hersh\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 1993 book, The Samson Option<\/a><\/em>. If my memory serves me, Hersh claimed that Israel loaded the nukes on missiles and aimed them.<\/p>\n