Why Won't the Media Mention Israel's Nukes?
(zeteo.com)
from theacharnian@lemmy.ca to world@lemmy.world on 16 Jun 01:54
https://lemmy.ca/post/46188000
from theacharnian@lemmy.ca to world@lemmy.world on 16 Jun 01:54
https://lemmy.ca/post/46188000
#world
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Because then the US any every other IAEA signatory would be obligated to sanction Israel which would be the end of Israel’s economy.
No news media dares mention it because they have no proof and would both loose any insider access and get buried in libel cases.
Forced by who? The Republican Congress would likely say Iran deserved it, and even if they didn’t Trump would dismantle any group the executive branch is supposed to use to enforce them as he was pushing for with Russia .
Their biggest trading partner is China … not sure what they would do
It has nothing to do with a ‘republican’ congress.
Democrats wouldn’t stand up to Israel either and you’re delusional if you think otherwise.
Irony
You know that they put the sanctions on Russia right, even with a Republican Congress. Or do you forget how the sanctions were held until Trump came into office and stopped allowing the executive branch to uphold them?
That means democrats would stand up to Israel?
This is what I mean by delusion. You people are so far gone you can’t even realize it.
Sanctioning Israel if they dropped a nuke on Iran? Absolutely. I’m not even a democrat but you are living in another world if you think they wouldn’t. What realm of insanity are you living in.
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Post a nuke being dropped Iran only gains sympathy for standing up for the Palestinians.
Democrat Congress members are idiots who were way behind on what their constituents wanted and had money funneled to them. But there is no way they would be able to support Israel after that and ever be elected again
They wouldn’t even stop supporting Israel when they started committing a modern holocaust, let alone actually sanctioning them.
They were also perfectly happy to support Israel even if it stopped them getting elected.
If Israel nuked Iran, the Democrats would do some performative brow furrowing, call for Israel to show restraint, and send them another billion dollars
If you look at that chart, it even shows partly why. Sympathy for Palestinians didn’t hit above 50% of the democratic party till 2024/2025. Which means those members elected were elected in a time of less than 50% support for Palestinians. Also sanctions as being discussed are made by Congress which has not had a Democrat majority since 2009. So there is not way they could have passed any sanctions the Republicans didn’t negotiate to agree with. (Which those charts show less than 20% of Republicans having sympathy towards Palestinians at all times since 2001). So it would be career suicide for a Republican to vote for such, as their constituents don’t want it.
If it were voted on again now, we would likely see 100% Republican Congress support for Israel and 40% support from Democrat Congress support, which is rediculous… But fairly accurate of how that graph would indicate.
Yeah, you’re just going to keep moving goalposts rather than admit you’re wrong.
You did it once and I gave you a pass, but twice is inexcusable.
I’m going to ignore you now. Goodbye.
And they didn’t put sanctions on Israel. In fact, they sent them record amounts of free weapons
I know, that’s the part where I said the Democrats congressmembers were slow and had been funneled money from Israel for their campaigns. When they were elected into office support for Israel was over 50% in the U.S. in 2023 it was still over 50% so it was borderline rediculous. In 2025, support for Israel is only over 50% by one of those 2 parties. As for the other guy saying I’m moving goal posts… The post is about Israel having nukes and the media not mentioning them while discussing war with Iran, so I didn’t find it off topic to say this was about Israel possibly using nukes on Iran, but oh well. We’ll just have differing opinions.
Hope you have a good day
They weren’t slow, though; they were very swift in supporting Israel.
Okay, so support (not even support, just sympathy) according to that chart for Palestinians didn’t pass 50% until 2024. The aid you are referring too started in 2023. So mid 2024 I would have expected to see about 50% democrats saying yes, 50% saying no. If less than 50% of Democrat Congressmembers voted against sending aid to Israel, then I would consider them slow on being up to date with their constituents wants.
The issue is if 100% Republicans vote aid, and 50% Democrats vote aid, you have a supermajority (~75%) still voting for aid to Israel.
Right now I imagine we would see it tottering on a supermajority, around 66-67 percent, but that’s just hypothetical as there isnt a vote at the moment.
Edit: the only thing close we may see is the bill Tim Kaine just put forward to block U.S. support to Israel pertaining to sending strikes at Iran ourselves, which is obviously different, and hopefully will split some of the Republicans votes. That said, Trump can veto just like he did when Kaine tried to block Trump from sending strikes at Iran in 2020
Were you in a coma for all of last year?
I’m talking about the present, where everyone knows Israel has nukes but not officially. Not some future scenario where Israel nukes Iran.
Why would you think they would need to be sanctioned for not using them? China and India both have nuclear weapons and have small skirmishes (granted not as big as this) and we don’t discuss sanctioning both of them for it. I would think threatening to use or using them would be the only scenarios where sanctions would be “forced hand” for lack of a better term.
nor india and pakistan. that’s the conflict I worry about more.
I saw elsewhere that Pakistan stated they would be attacking Israel back with nukes if Israel used them against Iran. Which is why I assume it’s a given they won’t be used and we won’t have to worry about them coming into play
yeeeah, I do wonder about that. the world has seen what a few madmen can get away with for a decade here and there… doesn’t seem to be stabilizing.
Any state that signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is obligated to sanction any other state that didn’t but has nuclear weapons.
China is an authorized to have nukes in the NPT as NWS. However, neither India nor Pakistan are NPT signatories and get mixed sanctions based on who is doing it. The US has sanctions on Pakistan but overt nuclear deals with India. China has deals with Pakistan. Australia had sanctions on India until recently.
Basically international law is only enforced if politically expedient. It shouldn’t surprise you that Israel certainly wouldn’t actually face any actual sanctions if they declared they had nukes. But they are legitimately afraid of getting the Apartheid South Africa treatment so they don’t give any ground on the issue.
Yeah I don’t see why anyone would care bout that treaty if people can ignore it. Shit the U.S. /India have 1.5 billion dollar satellite being launched into space this week from India. I don’t see why we would be sanctioning people and building future endeavors with them.
Except we magically give all the shits about it when it comes to Iran. All treaties are selectively applied. Welcome to the world of foreign relations.
It’s an interesting satellite though if you hadn’t seen anything about it yet.
sciencealert.com/nasa-teams-up-with-india-to-laun…
Seems like it can monitor everything down to moisture levels in soil and is supposed to pass the data for free to research companies, but of course that’s what they say now, and who knows how that will play out. Otherwise building agricultural models and seeing how areas are changing over time could be really neat.
Plus they killed the last people who were telling.
Yeah that’s not happening
I think the West has already demonstrated that they’re perfectly happy to just ignore obligations like that, as evidenced by them all refusing to inforce the arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
They’re already ignoring it. They just don’t want to admit their ignoring it.
Hahha there is tons of proof, if you use the standard the US used to claim Iraq had WMD and then invade them.
Difference being that Israel actually has nukes and does everything they can for a very long time to stop the IAEA from getting assigned to look at them…
…and Saddam actually let weapons inspectors in, because the only chemical weapons he still had were old artillery shells we fucking sold him in the 80s, ageing and leaking in a few armories that had been cordoned off as hazardous waste dumps.
…
Howabout the fact that Israel has a nuclear weapons doctrine?
That you can find random essays written by West Point grads in 30 seconds of websearching… that are about Israel’s nuclear doctrine?
mwi.westpoint.edu/israel-samson-option-interconne…
Despite Israel also having a ‘nuclear ambiguity’ policy?
Despite also Ephraim Katzir, Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres and Ehud Olmert all actually making public statements that Israel does have nuclear weapons?
That they caused a giant fucking scandal back in the 60s by stealing actual fissile material from NUMEC, a US company that uh, refines weapons grades uranium?
Look up ‘Apollo Affair’.
That the CIA believed Israel had working nukes back in '75?
That they conducted a nuclear test in cooperation with South Africa in '79?
‘Vela Incident’.
That the French helped them build an enrichment facility outside of Dimona in the Negev, that an unclassified US report released in 1980 concluded its had working, functional capacity since 1965?
babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011997288…
…
Why?
Why doesn’t the world openly call out this bullshit?
Well it certainly couldn’t have anything to do with Mossad and Jeffery Epstein, no sir, nothing like that, definitely not that.
Sorry for the confusion when I said “no proof”. I meant “no official sources”. Everyone knows Israel has nukes they just have to pretend they aren’t for the legal reasons I stated.
I get what you are saying but there are extensive, publically released offcial documents from the US government that the US has been very much convinced Israel has had nukes since the 60s.
What… what kind of … what can be more official than a declassified CIA document that says ‘yeah we’re pretty sure Israel has nukes’?
From all the minutes (transcripts) of Congressional hearings about the Apollo Affair, which also had FBI reports and CIA reports and I think the NSA as well?
I am not asking this rhetorically, to just belabor a point for emphasis.
I am asking you: If all this shit doesn’t meet your ‘official source’ criteria… what does?
Its not my criteria, its about what will legally hold up in a US court against an AIPAC or ADL libel case. Remember, we’re talking about reasons why news sources don’t mention it. Not what I personally think is adequate proof.
Ooooh ok your framework is media don’t say due to fear of being sued for libel.
Uh well, that…
Well ok.
If we pretend the rule of law still exists at that level, which it doesn’t…
Then uh, all the media has to do is just bring up all this stuff, all these documents, have Seymour Hersh on to talk about it, read the quotes from former Israeli PMs, show the unclassified documents and just always give context and caveats… and then just ask ‘Why is nobody taking this seriously? Why do we not have definitive answers?’
Assuming the rule of law as we knew it in say, 2018 existed, they’d be fine. Maybe the ADL or AIPAC could try to sue them, but it wouldn’t work.
But this is all moot because if somebody, MSNBC or whatever, did that, today, what would happen is a Scientology style intimidation/terror/ruin your life campaign x100 on everyone something like 2 or 3 direct personal connections away from everyone speaking in that news segment, orchestrated by Mossad.
And/Or, the entire Republican apparatus doing the same. And then directing stochastic lethal terrorism at them, or just fuck you, executive order says you in particular go to CECOT, bye bye!
Or the Supreme Court just makes another completely nonsensical ruling that goes against centuries of precedent and effectively destroys the first ammendment.
Thats the actual reason why no one does this, at this moment.
…
The ‘state of Israel’ has no legal standing to… sue the US for reputational damages or making false claims.
They would also… in this hypothetical, you know, have to actually prove, in court, that… that they are being lied about.
AIPAC or the ADL would have to attempt to construe it as hate speech. Which wouldn’t work in 2018 land where the law and legal system still exist and work and stuff.
Interesting read about the topic
www.thenation.com/…/israel-nuclear-weapons/.
Not just an interesting read: also a good example of the media mentioning Israel’s nukes, like OP seems to think they never do.
apnews.com/…/israel-nuclear-weapons-gaza-iran-chi…
Plus israel has talked before about the “samson option”. When has Iran talked using nukes?
Hard talking about what you don’t have. Well almost, but now very very not almost.
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Exactly, Israel is such a peaceful country. They would never invade their neighbors like Lebanon, Syria, ignore treaties, or pretend that Palestinian territory is actually belonging to them
At some point, with a quarter hundred downvotes and many negative replies, the person you should first inspect is not the other, but self.
Supposedly 50 million people voted for a reality tv star to have control of the largest stockpile of nuclear arms on earth… Perhaps the herd is diseased.
Lol who says ‘25’ this way?
If I’ve learned one thing it’s that it’s absolutely impossible to have productive discussions on geopolitics on Lemmy. People are insanely uninformed but at the same time will not move an inch from their preconceived opinions.
The fact that Israel is a warmongering country guilty of a genocide but at the same is no real nuclear threat in the region whereas Iran would be is something that exceeds the binary thinking of people here.
You mean the completely baseless assertion
🤡
Nice self portrait
Got em
👍
Do you deny the genocide in Gaza?
No, that part is true
Good job proving their point
No
The fact that IF Iran had nukes… A hypothetical fact then? Right…
They have literally come very close to launching them when they were losing a few battles during the Yom Kippur war when Golda Meir ordered them readied to be launched. She then extorted Nixon for supplies because if he didn’t agree to airlift in help she’d order them launched.
Like this isn’t crazy talk. They have a known policy under which they will take the entire region with them if they fall.
It’s worth considering and talking about and just because you don’t know basic history surrounding this doesn’t mean others are stupid for considering it a possibility.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
Israel will destroy the entire planet with nukes if they don’t get unfettered access to their “holy land.”
If you read the link you’ve provided you’ll see that it’s a last resort doctrine meant to deter neighboring countries from invading. Pretty much in line with how most western (nuclear) nations would use their nuclear arsenal.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. I can’t tell how it’s any different from MAD based on what’s written.
People get very emotional when discussing Israel and can’t stay with the facts.
It’s different because they will fuck over allies too, and make sure the world is unlivable. It’s a massive fuck you to the world.
You mean the nuclear arsenal that Israel denies exists?
Which of those western (nuclear) nations are also doing that?
Okay so Israel denies that they have nuclear weapons but at the same time threatens the whole world with nuclear annihilation as the user above claimed. How does that work?
Israel doesn’t deny that they have a nuclear arsenal
(They don’t admit to having it either. ‘No comment’, essentially.)
I just don’t get why they are so fucking evil. It makes no sense.
Of course. Israel is one of the most peaceful countries, after all.
Are you genuinely worried they will use their nukes?
When terrorists have nukes, you must always entertain the possibility they will use them. Otherwise, you’re a moron.
It’s obviously possible, you’d have to be a moron to not know that. But compared to if Iran or hamas had nukes I’m not as worried.
But that’s just because you’re racist. Israel is the genocidal state, not Iran or Palestine
I’m sure Iran and hamas want to wipe out israel too
Who, out of the three, are actively committing genocide right now?
Suddenly, crickets haha
The only country with the ability to. If Iran or Hamas could they would too. They can’t because Israel is backed by the us. I find it troubling that people here have such a hard on for the underdog that they completely forget how shitty these other countries are just because there’s another shitty country doing shitty things to them. As if all these shitty things that are happening took place in a vacuum of Iran and Hamas dancing around rainbows and singing about love and peace. When two shitheads are fighting you don’t have to cheer for the one who is smaller or the one who didn’t start it. You can simply observe two shitheads fighting.
You say we should “simply observe” - so we should stop all military and financial aid and diplomatic support, cease repression of protests, and allow NGOs and the press to do their job? We happen to agree on that.
Perhaps not so much when it’s just an excuse to maintain the status quo and ignore international law and human rights though.
That’s a big if, huge. The genocidal terror state already has nukes though, no ifs.
All I’m saying is I’d be far more worried if it were the other way around
Yes. Have you seen the yahoos in charge in Israel?
Why are you not?
Yes. It’s unlikely, but definitely possible.
This is the same Israel which is currently bombing Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran?
It’s like portraying a person who is actively gunning down civilians with a handgun as "unlikely to kill anyone with a rifle’.
They have also bombed Yemen and Iraq multiple times.
Why is there no such danger? Explain.
This has to be a joke right?
What about Pakistan?
Netanyahu went on a massive warning rant about them having nukes and using it all over the middle east, yet they haven’t.
Because Israel has a disproportionate amount of control over the media.
Why won’t the mainstream media of the Western bloc, a well known propaganda apparatus that will always spin things in favour of capitalists and Western imperialism, mention Israel’s (a Western colonial project) nukes? Gee, I wonder why. 🤔😅
Everyone would rather circle around the answer
Only mainstream Western media and those who consume it without question… which I guess is a lot of people, NGL.
Now this is a classic lemmy world salad
MSM has talked about Israel’s nukes. Can’t remember which channel it was, but yesterday they were doing a comparison between Israel’s and Iran’s offense & defense capabilities.
What’s MSM? MSN?
mainstream media?
e.g. all of them
Gotcha, thx.
Found it. Looks like SkyNews was reporting it.
mainstream media, basically all news on networks.
because they’re trying to manufacture consent for a war with Iran
We should welcome an Iranian bomb. Honestly, it’s what the Middle East really needs to bring it to stability.
The biggest destabilizing force in the Middle East is Israel. They’re a destabilizing force because they’re an expansionist nuclear-armed power with no hard borders. Their borders aren’t actually fixed; they’re in a decades-long process to slowly expand them. For those who forget, Israel’s MO is to:
Israel has been expanding like this for decades, and there’s no end in site. Their immediate neighbors are all to weak and destabilized to resist this process of slow Israeli lebensraum. The people in the Middle East are rightly afraid that they’ll be next under the Israeli boot, and they’ll find themselves reduced to the plight of the Gazans.
Israel is out of control. It’s an expansionist military power hellbent on gobbling up its neighbors. The reason they’re able to get away with this is because they have nuclear weapons. No Arab nation can invade them without the threat of being nuked in return. Israel uses its nuclear arsenal to conquer its neighbors.
Another nuclear power is desperately needed in the region to hold them in check. A nuclear Iran would serve this role well. They wouldn’t be able to wipe Israel off the map, as that would result in them getting nuked in return. What a nuclear-armed Iran can do is to finally put a check on Israel’s endless military expansion. We need powers that can stand up to the Israelis as equals and say, “no. Your borders are fucking big enough. You’re not taking one more square meter of land.”
As much as I agree that Israel is a destabilizing force and that you have their MO fairly spot on, Israel doesn’t seem to be using its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent for invasion. They don’t have to, they have significant conventional forces with US backing, making invasion nigh-impossible anyway. That’s how it went in the past at least with the various regional wars.
I’m not sure an Iranian bomb would stabilize much if anything. Israel sees it as a direct existential threat and will stop at nothing to prevent or disable such a weapon. Iran has also repeatedly threatened to use it on Israel offensively, which doesn’t really bode well for peace either. Suppose Iran does lob a bomb at Israel, how would they respond? Or what if Israel strikes first? I don’t trust either party to be reasonable and responsible here tbh.
Iran can’t use the weapon to threaten Israel as you say, because it’d be an empty threat. Iran can’t nuke Israel without getting nuked right back. Israel knows this, so they can continue their expansions just fine.
MAD doctrine prevents nuclear wars from breaking out, but as we have been seeing recently it doesn’t prevent conventional wars.
So it’s just a coincidence that no neighboring country has threatened them with outright military invasion since they got nukes?
And when has Iran ever threatened to use a bomb against Israel? They deny they’re even trying to get a bomb. Do their politicians like to say, “death to Israel?” Sure, but that’s just part of their discourse. The Iranians use “death to” as a synonym for “down with.” They say the same thing during political campaigns against opposing political candidates.
An Iranian bomb would stabilize the situation because the same pattern has occurred in numerous other conflicts. Yes, nukes don’t prevent conventional wars, but they do prevent total war between nuclear powers. Russia would have never attempted its invasion of Ukraine if Ukraine still had their nukes. India and Pakistan’s arsenals are what kept the recent conflict between them from spiraling further than it did.
You can speculate that nukes wouldn’t prevent further expansion of Israel, but that’s ahistorical analysis. Having an opponent that is just as well armed as you are makes you act more carefully. The Soviets didn’t just keep expanding across Europe, precisely because the US had the bomb to hold them in check. Israel has been able to act with such impunity because ultimately none of its neighbors can stand up to it. It’s only when some of Israel’s neighbors actually have nukes, and they have to address their neighbors as equals, that peace is actually possible. As long as one side holds complete military dominance, real peace isn’t possible.
I mean, haven’t they?
The IAEA cites several officials that have stated that Iran is able to manufacture nuclear weapons, and pundits on state tv have threatened Israel with total destruction and “annihilation”. It doesn’t take much to put two and two together. They’re overt threats, but threats nonetheless.
This ignores the many proxy wars the US and USSR fought in many regions. I wouldn’t necessarily call that very stabilizing. Meanwhile the theory that wars won’t be declared between nuclear powers is actively being tested by several states at the moment, prodding and probing nuclear-capable alliances to test where the boundary lies.
Results achieved in the past do not guarantee success in the future.
There are other countries too that unofficially have nukes
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing
They don’t have nukes as such. They are prepositioned US owned nukes that remain under the custody of the USAF. The part of the base where the nukes are stored is strictly off limits to local personnel.
What makes them “shared”, is that they are intended to be dropped by planes owned by the host country, and both the government of the host country as well as the US government need to give their authorization to activate and use them.
So you may as well just consider them as US nukes.
Iran needs nukes to defend itself from a nuclear armed aggressor. Everyone needs nukes for that reason. Greenland needs nukes to protect itself from the US.
Probability of nuclear war rises with number of states having nukes. It’s best to keep that number as low as possible, so I would not think it wise for Greenland to have nukes. It would not be a sin for Iran to have them, though, given Iran’s allies aren’t exactly offering a nuclear umbrella.
That is the conventional wisdom. Wisdom written by people with nukes who can’t stop bullying everyone else.
the conventional wisdom checks out to me. Sometimes bullies happen to be right.
Yeah it would be cool if Ukraine was a positive example of what happens when you surrender your nuclear weapons.
How about we all just agree to glass any religious fanatics, especially ethnostates, that get their hands on the things?
Yeah after ukraine, i don’t think anyobe else will ever make that mistake again.
with extinction technology, i don’t know what the answer is. i think you either need a high level of trust and cooperation between all wielding parties which never goes away, or you need a singular world government which has no reason to arm itself with such a thing.
the stalemate situation where all enemies have a gun to point at one another so that nobody fires a shot is crazy. that can’t be the solution.
Greenland is part of Denmark, which is part of NATO and the EU. That means they technically have UK’s, France’s, and the US’s nukes.
Everyone’s got them but nobody uses them. So do they really need them or just need to convince other countries that they have them.
not every country has a nuclear arsenal
Why not? Everyone should keep a nuke in their basement just in case
It’s my uhh hunting tactical nuke. I use it when I need to blast 40-60 wild hogs in 5 milliseconds
Just gotta dig up grandpa’s old Atomic Energy Lab play set and experiment a bit.
In an oligarchy, corporate media is state media.
Relevant: independent.co.uk/…/colin-powell-leaked-emails-nu…
Pretty simple. Currently not all nations have nukes, out of those who have, a few have enough to completely destroy a rival nation. This means that the nations with the big nuke stocks are the ones calling the shots as to who should have nukes and how much. Iran being mostly against the US is not allowed nukes, Israel being mostly a US ally is allowed nukes.
This is the unpolitical explanation.
we really should have some deal to allow Iran to have access to nuclear power under supervision
We used to have that, Trump 45 ripped it up.
trump departed from that agreement.
The world ends because a bunch of elderly white dudes want to measure dicks. Yay!
take your pick
Israel violates international laws and has been since 1948, invades its neighbours and commits genocide, and western media still portrays it as a victim.
I’ll throw post WW2 apologetics into the ring. Can’t blame Israel publicly without risking career suicide, both in politics and corporate.
being persecuted for decades/centuries priors helps shield them from any criticism, because they can claim anti-semitism every time.
The persecution isn’t even theirs. Sure they’d likely have relatives affected by the Holocaust of WW2, but these are the the Jewish people who were rich enough to escape it. Actual Holocaust of WW2 survivors live under the poverty line in Isn’treal.
What’s with these weird imaginary articles? The media has talked enough about their nukes, western youtube is filled with documentaries and western wiki has detailed info on vela incident and other related information, not even talking about the fact that I, a westerner, learned about Israel’s nukes from western media. Idiocy.
As an example: theguardian.com/…/truth-israels-secret-nuclear-ar…