Left I on the News

So today's news is that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has "pulled out" of the "nuclear security summit" in Washington next week, because of rumors that Egypt and Turkey were going to use the summit to demand that Israel sign the NPT. The title of this post refers to the nearly unbelievable chutzpah that Netanyahu (i.e., Israel) exhibited in accepting the invitation in the first place! In some ways, no more so I suppose than their chutzpah in demanding that Iran be denied the right to "nuclear programs" which might enable Iran if it chose to to develop nuclear weapons, while Israel sits on one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons in the world. Still, it's one thing to do so from the comfort of your own country, it's quite another to do so at a public conference about nuclear proliferation.

Anyway, a big thank you to Egypt and Turkey for planning (supposedly!) to raise the issue.

Meanwhile, have you noticed that news reporters still insist on the "coy" approach to Israeli nuclear weapons ("they have never admitted having them, but also never denied it"), despite Mordecai Vanunu and Jimmy Carter (among others) providing absolute confirmation that Israel does have nuclear weapons, while adopting precisely the opposite linguistic approach to Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program, widely referred to in the media as simply existing, without even mentioning Iran's denials (much less the lack of actual proof).