Israel and Daesh: in Light of the Nuclear Security Conference
Prof. As’ad Abdul Rahman
The White House sent invitations last month to world leaders to attend a summit in Washington devoted to nuclear security and plans against nuclear threats facing the international community. Many assumed that the conference was to deal with recent threats coming from North Korea, but nothing was far from the truth than this assumption.
It is important first to go back into history and recall that the United States hit two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagazaki, with two atomic bombs during world war two in order to end it with the least death toll. Japan surrendered following the attacks bringing an end to the war in 1945. A million or more Americans who invaded Japan at the time were killed while the Japanese lost around three times this number. It is to be remembered that the death toll in World War II was between 60 -70 million people.
The atomic bombs killed 66,000 people and injured 69,000 in Hiroshima, while Nagasaki lost 39,000 and around 25,000 injured. In comparison, the death toll of the German city of Dresden, due to constant bombings of 14 hours by British and American planes during the war, was around six fold those figures. The conventional bombing raised the air temperature to 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit which left 350,000 to 500,000 dead, many of whom were liquefied into jellied mass that melted into the asphalt of roads or were left in piles of ashes amid a city that was totally left in ruins. This would have been the fate of Japanese cities in a conventional invasion. The atomic bomb was a ‘blessing’ in disguise that allowed Japan to recover within two decades with American help to become a great economic power to this day.
Atomic bombs became in time useless because many nations have them and there is no winner in a global atomic war that would poison the whole atmosphere of this earth with deadly radiation. With the advent of the neutron bomb in the 1960s which kills the masses instantly with its flash of radiation while destroying no buildings neither leaving harmful radiation behind, atomic and hydrogen bombs became absolutely useless. And that brings us to the Washington summit that was assumed to be a reaction to North Korea’s ’childish’ atomic threats. My conviction is that the North Korean military who are the only rich class in a starving country are not suicidal. They only want to live and would hardly ever execute an order to use atomic weapons against any one. They are all playing a blackmail game to get free aid from South Korea, Japan and the United States
Some authoritative observers believe that the true reason for the conference is that the CIA has recently received top intelligence that ISIS/Daesh is now preparing to launch its future attacks with ‘dirty bombs’, which the CIA dubbed in the past as “Al-Qaeda’s favorite weapon”. The extremist group tried four times to hit New York City and Washington, DC. with such bombs but failed. The CIA describes a detonation of a dirty bomb of 50 pounds of explosives packed with 3500 curia of cesium-137 ( found in hospitals that treat cancer with radiation) in Manhattan would transform it with nearby areas into a radio-active waste land unfit for human habitation. It will not cause instant death, but it will in time for whoever stays in the contaminated areas.
The CIA reported an incident that took place in Goiania in Brazil in 1987. When a merchant bought scrap from a closed hospital and in it was one small capsule of cesium chloride. Shredding the scrap made the radioactive dust contaminate the area. Pavements had to be scrubbed and tons of soil had to be crated. Four people died and were to be buried in lead coffins while 200 others received treatment. Around 100,000 people had to be screened and tested.
Daesh/ISIS is now losing ground and there is nothing like a ‘dirty bomb’ attack to grab the attention of the world! Just imagine the recent Brussels attack had they included few capsules of a radioactive material in the explosives and what a huge catastrophe it would have been? Israel is well aware of such consequences, while Hizbollah will never dare use it or even attempt to target Israeli storage sites of radioactive material because Tehran would be the target of an Israeli neutron bomb. The Lebanese group once had the ability to destroy the ammonia tanks in Haifa in 2006, but did not, in order to spare Tehran similar strikes.
It is the same case with Hamas, but definitely not with Daesh/ISIS who does not need 100,000 rockets to pose an existential threat to Israel who is now helping Al-Nusra of Al-Qaeda in Syria to save itself from the latter’s “favorite weapon”. All that ISIS needs is a dozen Palestinian youth trained to make homemade mortars and shells laced with radioactive material from any Palestinian hospital.
It is my view that the current threats by Daesh/ISIS to use the dirty bomb against Israel and European capitals as well had prompted the White House to convene the nuclear security conference. It was meant to urge nations to secure their radioactive material especially the radioactive waste of hospitals treating cancer with radiation.
