December 4, 2012
Times of Israel

UN Calls on Israel to Open Nuclear Facilities

Resolution urges Israel to sign non-proliferation treaty 'without further delay'

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution Monday calling on Israel to quickly open its nuclear program for inspection and backing a high-level conference to ban nuclear weapons from the Middle East which was just canceled.

All the Arab nations and Iran had planned to attend the conference in mid-December in Helsinki, Finland, but the United States announced on Nov. 23 that it wouldn't take place, citing political turmoil in the region and Iran's defiant stance on nonproliferation. Iran and some Arab nations countered that the real reason for the cancellation was Israel's refusal to attend.

The resolution, approved by a vote of 174-6 with 6 abstentions, calls on Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty "without further delay" and open its nuclear facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Those voting "no" were Israel, the US, Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.

Resolutions adopted by the 193-member General Assembly are not legally binding but they do reflect world opinion and carry moral and political weight. . . .

FULL TEXT

Tweet
Follow @wisdomfund

[This collection, now referred to as the "Avner Cohen Collection" represents nearly two decades of academic research on the history of Israel's nuclear program. It includes tens of thousands of pages of copies of archival documents, countless press clippings, and hundreds of hours of oral history interviews.--Avner Cohen, "New Exclusive Interviews on the Israeli Nuclear Program," wilsoncenter.org]

[Have you ever wondered which weapons the United States gives Israel with more than $3 billion in taxpayer money each year and which corporations profit?--"U.S. Weapons to Israel," http://endtheoccupation.org]

Israel's Secret Weapon, BBC Correspondent, March 17, 2003

Robert S. McNamara, "Nuclear Weapons as a Foreign-policy Tool: Immoral, Illegal and Dreadfully Dangerouss," Foreign Policy, May/June 2005

Luke Harding and Duncan Campbell, "Israel PM Admits That Israel Has Nuclear Weapons," Guardian, December 13, 2006

John Mearsheimer, "Israel's Nukes Harm US National Interests," Antiwar.com, July 9, 2010

John Glaser, "US Cancels Mid East Conference on Nuke-Free Zone: The US blamed regional turmoil, but it was Israel's refusal to attend that prompted cancelation," antiwar.com, November 24, 2012

Herb Keinon, "J'lem rejects UN call to open nuke program to probe," jpost.com, December 4, 2012

"Israel has 80 nuclear warheads, report says," timesofisrael.com, September 15, 2013

Mitch Ginsburg, "The inside story of Israel's chemical and biological arsenal," timesofisrael.com, September 17, 2013

Victor Gilinsky and Henry D Sokolski, "Let's Be Honest About Israel's Nukes," nytimes.com, September 18, 2013

Philip Giraldi, "The producer of 'Pretty Woman' helped Israel build its nuclear arsenal," theamericanconservative.com, December 4, 2013

[When the former speaker of the Knesset, Avraham Burg, broke the taboo last month, declaring Israeli possession of both nuclear and chemical weapons and describing the official non-disclosure policy as "outdated and childish" a rightwing group formally called for a police investigation for treason.

Meanwhile, western governments have played along with the policy of "opacity" by avoiding all mention of the issue. In 2009, when a veteran Washington reporter, Helen Thomas, asked Barack Obama in the first month of his presidency if he knew of any country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, he dodged the trapdoor by saying only that he did not wish to "speculate".--Julian Borger, "The truth about Israel's secret nuclear arsenal," theguardian.com, January 15, 2014]

[The documents outline how the American administration worked ahead of the meeting between President Richard Nixon and Prime Minister Golda Meir at the White House in September 1969, as officials came to terms with a three-part Israeli refusal -- to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty; to agree to American inspection of the Dimona nuclear facility; and to condition delivery of fighter jets on Israel's agreement to give up nuclear weaponry in exchange for strategic ground-to-ground Jericho missiles--Amir Oren, "Newly declassified documents reveal how U.S. agreed to Israel's nuclear program," haaretz.com, August 30, 2014]

Grant Smith, "US Confirmed Existence of Israeli H-Bomb Program in 1987: Report Raises Questions over US Refusal to Enforce Own Foreign Aid Laws," antiwar.com, February 14, 2015

Binoy Kampmark, "Flouting the Non-Proliferation Treaty: Israel's Nuclear Exceptionalism," counterpunch.org, February 18, 2015

[Israel's nuclear research labs, the IDA researchers reported, "are equivalent to our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories."--William Greider, "It's Official: The Pentagon Finally Admitted That Israel Has Nuclear Weapons, Too," counterpunch.org, March 20, 2015]

Ari Yashar and Matt Wanderman, "US Declassifies Document Revealing Israel's Nuclear Program," israelnationalnews.com, March 25, 2015

Ofer Aderet, "Declassified: How Israel misled the U.S. about its nuclear program," haaretz.com, April 21, 2016

[The first iteration of the secret letter was drafted during the Clinton Administration--Adam Entous, "How Trump and Three Other U.S. Presidents Protected Israel's Worst-Kept Secret: Its Nuclear Arsenal," newyorker, June 18, 2018]