READER LETTER | Beware of Israel’s nuclear arsenal

It is a recorded fact that Israel tested a nuclear weapon with SA in 1979, which was picked up as a flash by the US Vela satellite.

Israel currently has 80 nuclear weapons, of which 30 are gravity bombs for delivery by aircraft. The remaining 50 weapons are for delivery by the Jericho range of missiles that are based in a fortified underground bunker near East Jerusalem. Israel’s five submarines are designed to carry nuclear-tipped Popeye cruise missiles. Each submarine has 16 missiles with a 200 kiloton warhead containing 6kg of plutonium.

The Hiroshima bomb delivered around 15 kilotons.

During the Iraq war, Israel warned the US that it would explode a neutron bomb on an Iraqi city if Sadam Hussein launched a chemical or bacterial assault on its cities. The neutron bomb or enhanced-radiation weapon kills people in large numbers while doing minimal damage to the infrastructure.

The New York Post of November 11 2021 reported that Israel had developed a new suite of electromagnetic weapons called “Scorpius”. An electro-magnetic bomb uses non-lethal gamma rays, which will destroy electric devices over a very wide area. Electromagnetic pulse bombs create a brief pulse of microwaves powerful enough to fry computers, blind radar, silence radios, trigger crippling power outages and disable the electronic ignitions in vehicles and aircraft.

Unless sanity prevails, we as homo sapiens, are on the verge of being obliterated. Farouk Araie, Johannesburg