Translated "Avante!" Article by Rui Paz, Collaborator of the PCP International Department
The Howaldtswerken-Deutsche Werft (HDW) shipyards, in the city of Kiel, north of Germany, delivered the fourth Dolphin ultramodern submarine to Israel, in May last. The three first were almost totally paid by Germany, in other words , by the people of Germany and in first place by the Berlin Government anti-social policy victims, within the framework of the “military aid” to Telaviv. Israel and Germany have done their best to discretely conceal this deal, with extremely serious involvements. The submarines are prepared, with slight modifications, to be able to carry and launch nuclear warheads up to 1500 and 2000 kms distance. It is a total irresponsibility sign of the German government, violating the laws which limit the export of war materials from its country, delivering such susceptible armament to a State, that beyond already holding the most dangerous army in the region, insists in keeping up an aggressive policy against the neighbour Arab states and brutally oppresses the Palestinian people’s rights. The scandal is even bigger if one considers that Angela Merkel, the current chancellor, then in the opposition, supported the Iraq military aggression and invasion, a country falsely accused of possessing massive destruction weapons, by the well-known trio, Bush, Blair and Barroso.
But in the case of Israel it is exactly the opposite. Israel is the only Middle-East state that in fact possesses atomic weapons, considering that Pakistan is situated far from Israel, near the India border.
The HDW shipyards, belonging to the Thyssen-Krupp group, two German armament industry sounding names, which drew Hitler and the Nazi party unto power, are famous for their military traditions. A tradition which was kept even after 1945 with Germany’s rearmament and its integration in NATO, although not resorting to nuclear armament. Therefore, the HDW produced submarines for Greece’s colonels dictatorship, in 1967. The Shah of Persia also ordered half a dozen of those war vessels in the mid 70’s, but not having politically survived to their delivery, two of them were sent to the sanguinary general Pinochet’s Chile. And Turkey’s navy, a NATO “democracy” with the highest number of military coups, cannot either manage without these war instruments. In order to make belief Germany struggles for the defence of “democracy” and “human rights” at a world-wide scale, the military deals with the apartheid regime were secretly signed down, in 1985.
If one takes into account the suffering and oppression which fall upon the Palestinian people together with the discriminatory laws that dominate within the illegally occupied territories by Israel, the situation is almost identical to the then South-African racist regime.
Israel’s nuclear potential is estimated to be about 80 atomic bombs ( in Sipri, Research Institute for Peace, Stockholm) and 400 (Jane’s Information Group, London), with a 50 megatons capacity. A megaton corresponds to 80 times the Hiroshima bomb.
Telaviv, besides the land systems, has aerial systems such as the “Jericho”missiles, with nuclear warheads, as well as a high number of atomic bombs, carried by war F-16 planes. Mordechai Vanunu, the Israel nuclear technician, who denounced the atomic programme and the possibility of Israel using nuclear weapons against its Arab neighbours, together with his repression and prison, prove why Israel did not sign the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty. Germany’s purpose is to help Israel - whose governments are more and more fascist and aggressive - providing itself with an atomic weapon maritime system, in order to unexpectedly attack any state in the region, within the framework of the so-called preventive war. A real playing with fire, coming from a state, that irresponsibly, has done all to reinforce the European Union militarist character.
