COUNTYWIDE : Israeli Nuclear Ban Urged by Journalist

If the United States wants to prevent Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq and Iran from developing nuclear weapons, it should pressure Israel to dismantle its hefty nuclear arsenal, an Israeli journalist told a group of Orange County Jews and Palestinians this week.

Gideon Spiro, who has worked as a journalist and peace activist in Israel for more than 20 years, said during a speech Monday in Orange that he strongly supports the United Nations’ efforts to prevent Iraq from building nuclear arms.

But he argued that a similar effort should be directed at disarming Israel, the only country in the region known to have nuclear capabilities.

“Dismantling Iraq alone is not going to do the job,” Spiro told a meeting of the Cousins Club of Orange County, a group of local Jews and Palestinians. “If the United States does not want to see a proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Muslim world, it must make a clear attempt to show that it is not only they, the Arabs, it is watching over, but also Israel.”

By possessing a reported 300 nuclear weapons, Israel “is a trigger for any other country in the region to build nuclear arms,” said Spiro, who writes a weekly column for the Israeli daily newspaper Davar and for the weekly Yom Hashishi publication.

Spiro’s comments were greeted sympathetically by the members of the Cousins Club, which favors Palestinian independence.

But the speaker’s views on several points clashed with those of some members in attendance.

Spiro, for example, opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state and is opposed to the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO’s leader “Yasser Arafat is not my cup of tea,” Spiro said, smiling.

And even on the nuclear issue some members quibbled with details of Spiro’s position.

“I don’t see why (the United States) should be a nuclear power while others are told to be nuclear-free,” said Roni Lebauer, a Jewish member of the group. “I’m not sure I’m for a ban on nuclear arms.”

Spiro responded: “You want to wait until justice will prevail in the United States, and then the Middle East will dismantle.

“The danger in that is by the time justice arrives, nuclear (expansion) will make it impossible.”

Spiro, who last December participated in the first anti-nuclear demonstration in Israel, acknowledges that his views on the subject are opposed by about 90% of the Israeli population, including many factions of the country’s peace movement.

But, noting that Israel concealed its nuclear development for three decades, he argued that the nuclear issue should be openly discussed among Israelis. “By neglecting the issue, you don’t contribute to the situation,” he said.

Spiro added, however, that change in Israel’s nuclear policy will come only from outside pressure.

“The European community is certainly interested in a nuclear-free zone (in the Middle East) because it’s so close,” he said. “But America is the key.

“Americans should start campaigning to make it an issue. They should be asking their media and politicians, ‘Why are we not dismantling the nuclear bomb in Israel?’ ”