Israel offerred to sell apartheid South Africa nuclear weapons

In 1978, Graham Greene published a book called The Human Factor, which - if my memory serves me correctly - included a sub-plot about the sale of nuclear arms to apartheid South Africa. I think the idea originated from unsubstantiated rumours about efforts by Israel to conduct such a transaction.

Well, now they are are substantiated:

The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes". The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.

The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor denying their existence.

The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa's post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky's request and the revelations will be an embarrassment, particularly as this week's nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York focus on the Middle East.

They will also undermine Israel's attempts to suggest that, if it has nuclear weapons, it is a "responsible" power that would not misuse them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted. (1)

Now what is it they say about truth and fiction?

Beyond the hypocrisy of preaching about the dangers of Iran passing on nuclear arms and technology is the jaw dropping idea that Israel supplying the most blatantly racist and fascistic government since the fall of the Nazis with nuclear arms. I can't help but read this as showing that the Israeli government of the day - which means luminaries like Peres who are still in office - tacitly agreed with the sick ideas of the racist apartheid regime.

Any Israeli would surely agree that regime that offered support to the Nazis in World War Two and tried to supply them with secret weapons would have faced vilification and ostracism, especially if they continued to keep the people who brokered the deals in power. I can't see why a similar sanction shouldn't be applied to Israel, as long as it continues to honour the scum who masterminded this disgustingly cynical ploy.

A regime that defies the UN, attacks civilian populations within its borders, is suspected of possessing weapons of mass destruction, and is willing to sell them to evil bastards. Bit of deja vu?

1 - "Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons," by Chris Mcgreal. Published in The Guardian, 23rd of May, 2010. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-weapons)