US Should Arrest Benjamin Netanyahu When He's in Washington

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 03: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is greeted by members of Congress as he arrives to speak during a joint meeting of the United States Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol March 3, 2015 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Netanyahu is an international war criminal and also helped steal American nuclear technology

by Philip Giraldi, reposted from the Unz Review, July 18, 2024

America’s highly esteemed president who should be called Doodle-Head every time he opens his mouth came out with a beauty last Tuesday, claiming that if it weren’t for the existence of Israel “every Jew in the world would be at risk.” No Joe, you got it wrong. The reality is that Israeli behavior is precisely what fuels anger directed against what might be referred to as the “International Jewish Conspiracy,” whereby the wealthy and powerful Jewish diaspora enables Israel to literally get away with war crimes and mass murder without any consequences. Joe has also said the he has done more for the Palestinians than anyone, which means that he finds some benefit in watching them die under relentless bombardment by Israel with US provided munitions.

This ability to twist perceptions of what is going on in the Middle East and also at home based on a grossly exaggerated standard narrative of perpetual Jewish suffering means that Jewish groups benefit from a double standard that enables them to avoid condemnation for their over-the-top manipulation of government and other institutions with avoidance of any penalty for their activity. Matt Brooks, the CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition spoke Tuesday at the RNC, providing the standard line about poor suffering American Jewry, saying “President Trump will bring back law and order so that American Jews can once again wear a kippah and walk the streets without fear,” while waving a kippah with Trump’s name embroidered on it. This playing the perpetual victim is true in the United States most particularly, but it also works in Britain, France, Canada and Germany where fundamental rights like freedom of speech are under attack to protect the state of Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a monster, even regarded as such in his own country due to his corruption and that of his wife. He knows that if the Gaza war were to end, he might quickly wind up impeached and in jail. Interestingly, one of his major crimes involved receiving $250,000 as a bribe from Israeli film maker Arnon Milchan, who made his fortune in the United States and was also involved in espionage directed against US nuclear technology to enable the Jewish state to develop its own secret – and illegal – nuclear weapons arsenal. Milchan and Netanyahu were together involved in illegally obtaining the nuclear triggers needed to detonate the nukes.

Milchan earned his fortune, estimated to be in excess of $3 billion, in part by spying for Israel to the detriment of the United States which is the country that has provided him with the opportunities to become rich and relatively famous. The Milchan tale is just one part of the successful effort by Israel to obtain the technology and raw materials for its secret nuclear arsenal. Preventing nuclear proliferation was a major objective of the US government when in the early 1960s President John F. Kennedy learned that Tel Aviv was developing a nuclear weapon from a CIA report. He told the Israelis to terminate their program or risk losing American political and economic support but was killed before any steps were taken to end the project. Many believe that Israel may have had a hand in the killing of both Jack and Bobby Kennedy and the American public is still waiting for the US government to release all the reports detailing what was obtained in the investigation of the deaths.

Israel accelerated its nuclear program after the death of President Kennedy. By 1965, it had obtained the raw material for a bomb consisting of US government owned highly enriched weapons grade uranium obtained from a company in Pennsylvania called NUMEC, which was founded in 1956 and owned by Zalman Mordecai Shapiro, head of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Zionist Organization of America. NUMEC was a supplier of enriched uranium for government projects but it was also from the start a front for the Israeli nuclear program, with its chief funder David Lowenthal, a leading Zionist, traveling to Israel at least once a month where he would meet with an old friend Meir Amit, who headed Israeli intelligence. NUMEC covered the shipment of enriched uranium to Israel by claiming the metal was “lost,” losses that totaled more than six hundred pounds, enough to produce dozens of weapons. Such was the importance of the operation that in 1968 NUMEC even received a private incognito visit from Israeli top spymaster Rafi Eitan. In spite of all the evidence that something extremely shady had taken place at NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro was never charged with any crime.

With the uranium in hand, the stealing of the advanced technology needed to make a nuclear weapon is where Milchan and later Netanyahu come into the story. Arnon Milchan was born in Israel but moved to the United States and eventually wound up as the founder-owner of a major movie production company, New Regency Films. In a November 25, 2013 interview on Israeli television Milchan admitted that he had spent his many years in Hollywood as an agent for Israeli intelligence, helping obtain embargoed technologies and materials that enabled Israel to develop a nuclear weapon. He worked for Israel’s Bureau of Science and Liaison acquisition division of Mossad, referred to as the LAKAM spy agency.

Milchan explained in his interview that “I did it for my country and I’m proud of it.” He also said that “other big Hollywood names were connected to [his] covert affairs.” Among other successes, he obtained through his company Heli Trading 800 krytrons, the sophisticated triggers for nuclear weapons. A krytron is a gas-filled tube used as a high-speed switch. US government munitions licenses are required to export krytrons precisely because they can be used as triggers for nuclear weapons. California-based MILCO International Inc. shipped 15 orders totaling 800 krytrons through an intermediary to the Israeli Ministry of Defense between 1979 and 1983. MILCO obtained the krytrons from EG&G Inc. After the U.S. government rejected several requests for krytron export licenses to Israel, the devices were acquired from the California top secret defense contractor MILCO International. Milchan personally recruited MILCO’s president Richard Kelly Smyth as an agent before turning him over to another Heli Trading employee, none other than Benjamin Netanyahu, for handling. Smyth was eventually arrested in 1985 and cooperated in his interrogation by the FBI before being sentenced to prison, which means that the Federal government knew all about both Milchan and Netanyahu at that time but did not even seek to interview them and ultimately did nothing about them, a cover-up to protect Israel that persists to this day.

Assuming that the statute of limitations on the crime has not run out it should still be possible to arrest and try the perpetrators, which would include both Milchan and Netanyahu. And there should be plenty of evidence if one were to look for it. An exhaustive investigation was carried out on both the thefts given their role in “nuclear proliferation,” though the complete reports have not to this day been made public as the Jewish state’s friends in government and the media have scrambled to cover up the direct Israeli government role insofar as possible. Also, there was physical evidence relating to the diversion of the uranium. Refined uranium has a technical signature that permit identification of its source. Traces of uranium from NUMEC were identified by Department of Energy inspectors in Israel in 1978. The Central Intelligence Agency has also looked into the diversion of enriched uranium from the NUMEC plant and has concluded that it was part of a broader program to obtain the technology and raw materials for a nuclear device for Israel.

Milchan initially retained his US visa even though his role in the trigger thefts had been exposed in the media. The multi-year residency visa was restored to him in 2016 through the intervention of Prime Minister Netanyahu with Secretary of State John Kerry, perhaps predictably, though Milchan has not traveled to the US recently and is believed to be living in Europe and is in poor health. He is also avoiding visiting Israel due to pending charges relating to his bribery of Netanyahu. The issue of Israel’s nukes is regarded as particularly sensitive both in Washington and Jerusalem as, under the Symington Amendment, the US is forbidden from providing military aid to any government that has secret or undeclared nuclear weapons. If the law were applied as written, US arming and funding Israel in its slaughter of the Palestinians would have to stop, but the deference to Israeli interests in this case is just one more example of how the Jewish state is above the law in the reckoning of American government officials and the media.

The tragedy is that spying for Israel appears to be regarded as something like a victimless crime, but in the case of Milchan it was dead serious, involving as it did nuclear proliferation on behalf of a nation that might generously be described as aggressively paranoid. And note that Benjamin Netanyahu, the very “statesman” who received 29 standing ovations from the US Congress, was also involved in the major Mossad operation to steal critical technology from the United States. In fact, even though the Israelis and their “friends” continue to rob America blind it is extremely difficult to be punished for doing so even after being caught red handed.

Prosecutions for Israeli spying are so few because of Department of Justice unwillingness to pursue them, according to a retired FBI agent who claimed that hundreds of potential prosecutions were rejected for political reasons. The actual convictions involve crimes so egregious that they cannot be ignored or covered up, like overheard conversations over lunch, as when Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin provided intelligence on Iran to American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) staffers Keith Weissman and Steve Rosen as well as to officials in the Israeli Embassy. Franklin went briefly to jail and was subsequently reported to be waiting on tables in West Virginia. US Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard, America’s most damaging spy of all time, stole enough top secret codeword secret material to fill a room before he was arrested and convicted. He obtained Israeli citizenship while in prison and is now living in Israel and is celebrated there having been freed of his parole conditions by President Donald Trump. Apart from that, nada! Time to change all that.

Netanyahu, Milchan and the others are not friends of the United States, quite the contrary, and deserve to be treated like any other spies caught in flagrante. The American people should demand that the government begin to recognize that fact and act accordingly. Putting Arnon Milchan and his colleague Benjamin Netanyahu in jail, or even sanctioning them to strip them of their assets, as has been done to numerous Iranians and Russians by Joe “Mumbles” Biden, would be a great start. Arresting Netanyahu on his upcoming celebration trip to address the Joint Session of Congress and visit Biden in the White House would really send a message to the Israelis about proper deportment and would be even better. One can only imagine what it would look like to see Netanyahu in an American prison! Hard labor, please!

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served eighteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He holds an MA and PhD from the University of London in European History and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the University of Chicago. He speaks Spanish, Italian, German, and Turkish. Giraldi is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, which seeks to promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests.

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