by Gerry Condon, published on Common Dreams, April 20, 2024
The national organization Veterans For Peace is demanding that the Biden administration abide by U.S. law regarding the illegal possession of unregulated nuclear weapons and halt all military aid to Israel.
In a letter to President Joe Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace asserts that U.S. law requires the cutoff of all military aid to Israel because it possesses nuclear weapons in noncompliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel does not admit it possesses nuclear weapons, has not signed the NPT, and does not allow inspections of its nuclear arsenal.
The letter lists multiple credible reports that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for decades. Because Israel has not signed the NPT, the Symington-Glenn Amendments to the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which allow no presidential discretion, require the suspension of all military aid.
The United States may not be able to directly control Israel’s nuclear weapons program, but it surely can—and must—curb the invasion of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s intensifying conflicts with its neighbors.
The president may not waive the cutoff of the aid and exports under the Glenn Amendment where there has been a nuclear weapons detonation, or the offending state has received a nuclear explosive device. Congress would have to enact new legislation authorizing the president to waive some or all of these sanctions.
“The law is quite simple,” said VFP National Director Mike Ferner. “Does Israel have an unregulated nuclear weapons arsenal? Yes, it does. Is Israel a signatory to the NPT? No, it isn’t. So, the question to Biden is, ‘Will you obey the law or continue to let the Madmen Arsonists run America?’”
The well-referenced 11-page letter was researched and written by VFP member Terry Lodge, an activist lawyer who specializes in nuclear issues. It makes for a fascinating read, detailing Israel’s many illegal actions to acquire nuclear weapons materials, and Henry Kissinger’s approval of Israel’s “strategic ambiguity.” Israel has never officially admitted it possesses nuclear weapons, but “everybody knows.” In November, an Israeli cabinet member actually suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.
The letter also references former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s hacked email (“The boys in Tehran know Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran, and we have thousands.’’). Colin Powell’s assertion that Iran’s capital Tehran has long been targeted by Israel’s nuclear weapons is especially chilling at this moment, when Israel has provoked an armed conflict with Iran and may be trying to drag the U.S. into a wider war in the Middle East. Would Israel attack Iran with nuclear weapons?
All U.S. Military Aid to Israel Must Be Ended Immediately
Israel’s provocative approach to foreign relations before and since commencing the genocidal invasion of Gaza suggests that nuclear weapons might be used against both real and perceived existential threats to Israel. In May 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assessed that Israel’s security problems come from Iran, and then in September, he insisted at the United Nations that “[A]bove all, Iran must face a credible nuclear threat.”
Presently, Israel has at least 90 warheads, and possibly as many as 200. Israel’s bombs are deliverable via aircraft, land-based ballistic missiles, and submarine-based cruise missiles. Israel’s Jericho III intercontinental ballistic missiles are capable of delivering a nuclear warhead from 4,000 miles away, which means that Iran, Pakistan (another NPT scofflaw non-weapons state believed to have nuclear weapons), and all of Russia west of the Urals—including Moscow—are within range of Israeli nuclear targeting, should Israel resort to The Bomb.
Israel is conducting an ongoing genocidal military campaign in the Gaza Strip against Palestinian civilians and the Hamas government, even as it bombs and fires artillery and rockets into Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. The United States may not be able to directly control Israel’s nuclear weapons program, but it surely can—and must—curb the invasion of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s intensifying conflicts with its neighbors. Given the overwhelming evidence that Israel has received many nuclear weapons from its military branch and has maintained that offensive nuclear capability for decades, federal law compels President Biden to immediately terminate all military assistance to Israel.
Veterans For Peace is demanding that the president issue a formal finding that (1) Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968; (2) that Israel is, as a matter of law, a “non-nuclear-weapon state” under the NPT; (3) that Israel has acquired an arsenal of nuclear weapons with the means of using them in war and has experimentally detonated nuclear weapons in the past; and (4) that Israel has violated 22 U.S.C. § 2799aa-1(b)(1)(B). Federal law requires Biden to end all defense sales and licensing of Munitions List exports to Israel, terminate all foreign military financing, cease delivery of any military weapons and munitions, and implement all other aid cutoffs and curtailments required by the Symington and Glenn Amendments.
While awaiting a response from the Biden administration, Veterans For Peace, with over 100 chapters in the U.S., is calling on all its members, friends, and allies to tell their congressional representatives to oppose any further funding or weapons shipments to Israel. The veterans organization recently sent a letter to the State Department detailing multiple U.S. laws that are being broken by sending weapons to Israel while it is blatantly violating the human rights of Palestinian men, women, and children.
Gerry Condon is a Vietnam-era veteran and former president of Veterans For Peace.