The U.S.-Israeli relationship has long been America’s Achilles heel. Our first president warned against “entangled alliances” particularly when, as here, there’s a “passionate attachment.”

Our “special relationship” with this rogue state has placed the U.S. outside the same system of international law that we now seek to impose on others, including Iran.

Our handling of the current crisis on the Korean peninsula could restore our tattered reputation.

What’s the first issue that needs to be addressed?

Here’s where you the reader may well ask: “Do you mean the issue concerning the collapse of Building 7 of the World Trade Center?” No, but nor is that question irrelevant to this latest crisis.

Here’s the second issue that must be addressed: to which nations has Israel transferred nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons technology? Is North Korea on the list?

That issue became relevant with the release of The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa. Archival research by author Sasha Polakowsky-Suransky uncovered “top secret” minutes of a military agreement signed in April 1975 between Shimon Peres, now president of Israel, and South Africa’s defense minister P.W. Botha.

Though Israel denies the conclusions reached by reporters for The Guardian (U.K.), the agreement suggests an offer of nuclear weapons while its Apartheid regime was under international sanctions.

Israel was then building a surrogate arms industry in South Africa using what was, in practical effect, slave labor. That industry has since moved to Israel where it employs “guest workers.” Peres was responsible for building Israel’s nuclear program with help from France in the 1950s.

Some weeks before the offer, Israel and South Africa signed a covert agreement (code name Secment) governing their military alliance. In the subsequent meetings, “correct payload” was used to describe the nuclear warheads Israel would provide for a Jericho missile system. As The Guardian explained:

“The use of a euphemism, the ‘correct payload’, reflects Israeli sensitivity over the nuclear issue and would not have been used had it been referring to conventional weapons… the only payload the South Africans would have needed to obtain from Israel was nuclear. The South Africans were capable of putting together other warheads.”

South Africa did not go ahead with the deal it was offered though it did develop its own nuclear weapons, possibly with Israeli assistance. The Apartheid government revealed the program to Nelson Mandela when he became president.

In 1986, nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu revealed Israel’s nuclear weapons program to the Sunday Times (London). Vanunu was kidnapped by Mossad agents in Rome and returned for trial in Israel. Sentenced to 18 years, he served 11 years in solitary confinement. On May 23^rd, he was sentenced to another three months in prison for breaking the terms of his release by having unauthorized meetings with foreigners.

Evil Doers vs. Evil Doing

Even now Israel strives against all odds to maintain “ambiguity” about its nuclear weapons. But how can you offer nuclear weapons you don’t have?

Who provided nuclear technology to North Korea? That backward state, now nuclear-armed, was included in G.W. Bush’s post-911 “Axis of Evil” speech. Care to guess who wrote that speech?

Shortly thereafter the U.S. invaded Iraq to remove an Evil Doer. Only later did we learn that our “flawed” intelligence was “fixed” around a goal long sought by Israel as chronicled in A Clean Break, a strategy document written for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a team of Israeli-Americans led by Richard Perle.

In 2001, Perle became chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Review Board.

The United Nations has long been scheduled to review the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and to consider the creation of a Middle East free of nuclear weapons. As the date approached, the world community experienced a well-timed torpedo attack on a South Korean warship, reportedly by a North Korean submarine.

In the midst of these negotiations, mainstream media has been flooding the national consciousness with power-of-association stories about Iran, its nuclear program and even its links to North Korea. Tehran, of course, was the third member in the trio of Bush-era Evil Doers.

News outlets controlled by Israeli-American Rupert Murdoch are particularly active, including Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.

Is it true that Tel Aviv transferred to Pyongyang a German-made submarine? If so, does that qualify as evil doing?

Perhaps here is a good place to pose an out-of-sequence question: What about the collapse of Building 7?

Master Myth Makers

Does Israel routinely transfer war materiél to nations subject to international sanctions?

That would help explain their status as the world’s third largest arms exporter. The U.S. holds first place with Russia second. Israel and France vie for third and fourth trailed by the U.K. and China in the Dirty Half Dozen.

If Israel has an extensive arsenal of nuclear weapons, why does the U.S not insist on inspections?

How does U.S. protection of Israel’s illegal conduct advance U.S. interests?

How is our conduct consistent with the behavior we are now pressing on Iran?

What is so valuable about the U.S.-Israeli relationship that we should sacrifice our credibility to cover-up violations of international law that make us appear guilty by association?

By law isn’t the U.S. obliged to support U.N. sanctions for Israel?

Why discredit the U.S. and undermine the stature of the United Nations? Wasn’t the U.N. the post-WWII organization founded in large part by the U.S. to discourage just such behavior?

Serial Provocations and Murderous Misdirection

Instead of sanctions, what do we see instead? Misdirection and intimidation.

The Internet is awash with Men in Black accounts featuring the usual array of conspiracies. Elvis may yet be blamed for a Korean peninsula incident that could ignite a nuclear war in the region.

How long before we see a story blaming Hezbollah terrorists led by the Pakistan Taliban aboard an Iranian submarine advised by Syrian nuclear scientists and Palestinian strategists?

Or aliens.

The stage has been set for another 911, possibly featuring a nuclear incident. A series of “plausible” Evil Doers have been prominently featured in assorted “terrorist incidents.”

Enough pre-staging has been done that Americans again feel insecure following the media coverage given the Ft. Hood shooting, the Christmas Day Bomber and now the Times Square Terrorist.

One small problem: none of these storylines hold up under close scrutiny. But then that’s not the point. Neither did the “intelligence” on which we relied to wage war in Iraq in response to the provocation of 911. It didn’t need to be true, just believable.

Time to Redo the Report

Anyone of substance associated with the report of the 911 Commission knows we still need a good faith investigation. Mainstream Europeans routinely call for it. Those demands are routinely couched in code due to the perils facing those in the EU who question our “special relationship.”