Crash of Cargo Plane in Holland Revealed Existence of Israeli Chemical and Biological Weapons Plant
By Victor Ostrovsky
On Oct. 4, 1992 a Tel Aviv-bound El Al cargo aircraft crashed into an apartment complex in Bijlmermeer, a neighborhood
on the outskirts of Amsterdam a few minutes after takeoff from the nearby Shipol airport. The crash of the Boeing
747-200 killed 39 people on the ground and all four crew members.
The plane's cargo was the subject of wide speculation for the next six years. The local media suspected something was
not right when the crash site was cordoned off and access was limited to non-Dutch search teams in space suit-like
protective gear.
At first the rumor was that there were radioactive materials on board, and radioactive traces continued to send Geiger
counters off their scales long after the site was cleaned up. The Dutch government accepted the Israeli government's
explanation that radioactive counterweights were present in all early models of the 747s.
After the crash El Al representatives handed over to the Dutch authorities a revised cargo manifest which, sources now
admit, included a variety of materials previously not disclosed. For some unexplained reason, the Dutch officials agreed
to keep Israel's secrets.
For years following the crash, however, residents of the surrounding neighborhoods displayed a uniquely high number of
unusual ailments. But when they took to the media their inquiries as to whether the plane's cargo could have contained
health hazards, both the residents and the media were brushed off. Even though Dutch authorities knew what was on that
plane, they preferred to lie to their own citizens rather than confront Israel.
Finally, on Oct. 1 of this year, the Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported it had obtained documents confirming
that when the El Al flight crashed six years ago it had on board 190 liters of dimethyl methyl phosphonate (DMMP), a
chemical used to produce Sarin, the nerve gas used to deadly effect by members of a religious cult on the Tokyo subway
system.
The following day a spokesman for El Al, the Israeli national airline, confirmed that "the documentation states that
DMMP was on the plane, that it was packed in accordance with the international regulations governing uplift of this
material, and the document was signed by the captain stating that everything was in order prior to departure. All of
these documents were turned over to the Dutch authorities after the accident." It was further learned that the chemical
in question was ordered by the Israeli biological institute in Nes Zionna. Finally, the jig was up.
Pre-Emptive Face-Saving
In an ironic attempt to save face, Israeli Transport Minister Shaul Yahalom ordered the Civil Aviation Authority to
reopen its investigation into what the Boeing 747-200 was carrying. Shortly thereafter, Aviv Bushinsky, the spokesman
for the office of the Israeli prime minister, stated that the chemical known as DMMP was not used for the manufacturing
of nerve gas (which is illegal under all of the international treaties to which Israel is a signatory, but has never
ratified), but instead is used in the testing of gas masks.
The Dutch paper said the chemical came from Solkatronic Chemicals Inc., an American company based both in Pennsylvania
and at 30 Two Bridges Road, Fairfield, NJ 07004-1530. The newspaper also reported that the amount of DMMP on board the
aircraft was enough to produce up to 594 pounds of Sarin, and that three of the four main components needed for Sarin
production were on the plane.
Solkatronic vice president John Swanziger told an Israeli newspaper that the chemicals his company sold to the "Israel
Institute for Biological Research" were not for testing gas masks and were, in fact, on a special restrictive list,
requiring a license from the U.S. Department of Commerce for their sale. The license was provided to the company by the
office of Israel's prime minister prior to shipment.
Swanziger added that after the crash there was a second order which also was filled. The second order, however, was made
by an Israeli gas mask manufacturer. He added that Israel was the only country outside the U.S. to which his company had
ever sold DMMP, and that at the time he believed that the institute was a civilian rather than a military research
facility.
In fact, however, the Israeli government has always regarded the Nes Zionna facility as one of its most closely kept
military secrets. Israeli journalist Uzi Mahanimi wrote in the London Times that the plant at Nes Zionna first attracted
unwanted scrutiny when the Dutch authorities confirmed that it was the intended destination of the DMMP shipment aboard
the El Al plane that crashed. The plant, he wrote, manufactures not only chemical and biological weapons for use in
bombs, but more unusual arms as well. It supplied the poison for last year's assassination attempt by the Mossad, Israel
's equivalent of the CIA, on the life of Khaled Meshal, a Hamas Party leader in Jordan.
Mahanimi also attributed to official military sources a report that Israeli assault aircraft have been equipped to carry
chemical and biological weapons manufactured at a top-secret institute near Tel Aviv. Crews of Israel's F-16 fighters
have been trained to mount an active chemical or biological weapon on the aircraft within minutes of receiving the
command to attack.
Despite the fact that Israel has accused just about every country it regards as an enemy of developing chemical and
biological weapons, it has never acknowledged its own programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. Yet a biologist
who once held a senior post in Israeli intelligence told Mahanimi, "There is hardly a single known or unknown form of
chemical or biological weapon.which is not manufactured at the institute."
The institute, which covers 70 acres and is about to be expanded by as much as 20 percent, was founded in 1952 as a
single building hidden in an orange grove. It is surrounded by a six-foot-high concrete wall topped with sensors that
reveal the exact location of any intruder. However, the institute is omitted from all local and aerial survey maps.
The institute answers only to the office of the prime minister (as does Mossad), but professionally is under the
direction of "REFAEL" (Rashut Pituach Amtsai Lechima). This is the weapons development authority, the umbrella agency
for the weapons development in Israel.
Official publications disguise its more sinister activities, stating vaguely that the institute provides services to the
defense ministry as well as chemicals for agriculture and research for civilian companies. When elected members of the
Knesset (Israel's parliament) foreign affairs and defense committee asked to visit the plant, however, they were denied
access.
The mayor of Nes Zionna won a temporary injunction freezing the institute's expansion plans. According to sources, four
accidents in the plant have killed at least six workers, but detailed accounts of the accidents have been banned by
military censors.
The secrets Israel holds behind the six-foot-high walls surrounding the complex are far darker then anyone can imagine.
Professor Marcus Klingberg, who worked in the institute and was jailed some 20 years ago after being convicted of spying
for the former Soviet Union, has finally been released, due to his medical condition. Even though it has been more than
20 years since he worked in the institute, his release was under the strictest stipulations. The 80-year-old man is not
allowed out of his apartment except for a few hours a day, and he must pay the costs of two guards approved by Israel's
internal security service who are with him around the clock. He is not allowed to use the phone, make contact with the
media or talk to anyone except for three approved people, his daughter, his grandson and a friend.
This surveillance is almost as strict as that under which he spent more than 10 years of his imprisonment. He was in a
section of the Israeli prison system known as "the Xes." There the prisoners are known only by a number. Their
identities and even the fact that they are imprisoned are considered national secrets.
The fact that none of this detail has been covered in the U.S. mainstream media is testimony to the power of Israel's
U.S. lobby which, it seems, has enabled the Israeli government to get away with anything up to and including murder,
over and over again.
So the next time someone shouts, "The sky is falling, the sky is falling," Americans might well take a minute to look
up. You never know what might be coming down.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad case officer, has written two books about his experiences, By Way of Deception: The
Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer and The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret
Agenda.
Post by bananaRe. the story about how a US passenger aircraft flying from Amsterdam to
Mumbai changed course in German airspace and returned 'under Dutch
fighter escort' to Schiphol airport in the Netherlands where a number of
passengers were 'detained for questioning'...
...it may be worth recalling that Schiphol Airport houses the European
HQ of the Israeli secret service, Mossad.
Said presence has been likened to a 'state within a state'.
Israeli aircraft have special status at Schiphol. In 1992, one carrying
materials for biological warfare, produced in the US and for delivery in
Israel, crashed into an Amsterdam apartment block, killing dozens of
people.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijlmer_disaster>
The plane, like all Boeing 747s at that time, also contained about
400 kg of depleted uranium as trim weight in the tail, a fact unknown
during the recovery effort.
One presumes the passengers frogmarched off the aircraft today are
Muslim or Arab.
Schiphol is Europe's fourth largest airport, by no. of passengers, after
London Heathrow, Paris Charles de Gaulle, and Frankfurt.
--
banana "The thing I hate about you, Rowntree, is the way you
give Coca-Cola to your scum, and your best teddy-bear to
Oxfam, and expect us to lick your frigid fingers for the
rest of your frigid life." (Mick Travis, 'If...', 1968)