In a report on Saturday, The Washington Times quoted three unnamed sources as saying Obama had confirmed to Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, that he would maintain the "don’t ask, don’t tell<\/font><\/strong>" policy.<\/font><\/p>\n The incident reportedly occurred when the two met at the White House in Washington DC in May.<\/font><\/p>\n Neither Israel’s embassy in Washington, nor the White House National Security Council would comment on the claim.<\/font><\/p>\n Avner Cohen, an Israeli expert and author, was quoted by the paper as saying that under the deal "the United States passively [accepts] Israel’s nuclear weapons status as long as Israel does not unveil publicly its capability or test a weapon".<\/font><\/p>\n There is no official accounting of the deal, supposedly agreed in 1969 between Richard Nixon, then US president, and Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister at the time… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Inserted from <Common Dreams><\/a><\/p>\n Don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell<\/em> is a lousy way to run our military. It requires LGBT service personnel to live a lie in order to serve our nation in the military. A standard of openness requires that they be able to serve with honor without having to hide their sexuality.<\/p>\n In the same way, don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell<\/em> is a lousy way to run our international relations. A standard of openness requires a level playing field for all participants. How can we be taken seriously, when we demand that North Korea give up or that Iran not develop nuclear weapons when we look the other way at Israel\u2019s nukes?<\/p>\n Furthermore, this policy poisons our relationships with the Muslim world. When Muslim countries consider this this policy, they believe, with just cause, that the US considers them second class world citizens, because we give preferential treatment to a nation they consider a foe. Many of them have to live in Israel\u2019s nuclear shadow, and they are rightly indignant.<\/p>\n Some may argue that Israel, surrounded by enemies, needs nuclear weapons to insure their national security. However, the US has more than enough power to insure Israel\u2019s security, if we choose to do so, but I can\u2019t see any way that Israel will ever give up nuclear weapons. I\u2019m not saying we should attempt to force them to do so, just as we have made no such attempts with India or Pakistan. But why can\u2019t we at least be honest about it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There has long been a secret agreement between the US and Israel, concerning Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons. I had hoped that the Obama administration would change that as part of the openness Obama promised us during his campaign. Sadly, I was disappointed. Barack Obama, the US president, has agreed to abide by a 40-year policy of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"israel_nuke\"](\"http:\/\/s217.photobucket.com\/albums\/cc83\/TomCat1948or2\/Blog%202009\/USSilentonIsraeliNuclearArms_2E97\/israel_nuke.jpg\" "\\"israel_nuke\\"")
<\/a> Barack Obama, the US president, has agreed to abide by a 40-year policy of allowing Israel to keep nuclear weapons without opening them to international inspection<\/strong>, according to a US newspaper.<\/font><\/p>\n