Samson Option

{{see also|Samson}}

When the Lehi militant group were discussing ways to assassinate General Evelyn Barker, the British Army commander in Mandatory Palestine, a young woman volunteered to do the assassination as a suicide bombing. She said "{{ill|Let my soul die with the Philistines|he|תמות נפשי עם פלשתים}}" as a reference to the Samson story in the Hebrew Bible. Other members of the group rejected her offer.{{cite web | title= Raskin, Fania – Freedom Fighters of Israel Heritage Association | url= https://lehi.org.il/en/raskin-fania/ | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20220707020736/https://lehi.org.il/en/raskin-fania/ | archive-date= 7 July 2022 | quote= "Fania then spoke up and volunteered herself. She was sure that for an operation such as this, she would find the strength to stand and walk. “My life is no life anyway” she added. This was a “Let my soul die with the Philistines” proposal, the Samson option. Of course, her suggestion was rejected. Fania Raskin passed away on July 20, 1947, in Jerusalem. She was thirty-one."}}{{cite web | script-title= he: רסקין פַניה – “מרגלית” – העמותה להנצחת מורשת לח״י | url= https://lehi.org.il/he/%d7%a8%d7%a1%d7%a7%d7%99%d7%9f-%d7%a4%d6%b7%d7%a0%d7%99%d7%94/ |language=he-IL}}{{cite book | title= Lehi People | script-title= he: לח''י אנשים | date= 2002 | location= Tel Aviv |page=800| url= https://books.lehi.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/%D7%9C%D7%97%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%A0%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%9D-2-%D7%93%D7%99%D7%92%D7%99%D7%98%D7%9C%D7%99.pdf | access-date= 21 December 2024 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20241221184320/https://books.lehi.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/%D7%9C%D7%97%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%A0%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%9D-2-%D7%93%D7%99%D7%92%D7%99%D7%98%D7%9C%D7%99.pdf | archive-date= 21 December 2024 |format=pdf| quote= כאשר תוכננה התנקשות בגנרל בארקר, מפקד הצבא הבריטי בארץ־ישראל, הועלה רעיון, שבחורה תטייל עם עגלת תינוק, שתתפוצץ כאשר הגנרל יעבור לידה. נשאלה השאלה איך הבחורה תצליח להסתלק לפני ההתפוצצות. כאן התפרצה פניה והציעה את עצמה. בשביל פעולה כזאת, אמרה, היא תמצא כוחות לעמוד וללכת. ״ממילא חיי אינם חיים״, הוסיפה היא התכוונה לפעולת ״תמות נפשי עם פלשתים״. הצעתה נדחתה, כמובן. פניה רסקין הלכה לעולמה ב־-20.7.1947ג׳ מנחם אב תש״ז, בירושלים והיא בת 31 |language=he-IL}}

==Nuclear ambiguity==

{{see|Nuclear weapons and Israel}}

Israel refuses to confirm or deny it has nuclear weapons or to describe how it would use them, a policy of deliberate ambiguity known as "nuclear ambiguity" or "nuclear opacity." This has made it difficult for anyone outside the Israeli government to describe the country's true nuclear policy definitively, while still allowing Israel to influence the perceptions, strategies and actions of other governments.{{Sfn | Cohen | 1998 | pp = 1–3, 7, 341}}{{Citation | first = Avner | last = Cohen | chapter-url = http://www.geocities.com/alabasters_archive/nuclear_opacity.html | chapter = Israel's Nuclear Opacity: a Political Genealogy | title = The Dynamics of Middle East Nuclear Proliferation | pages = 187–212 | editor1-first = Steven L | editor1-last = Spiegel | editor2-first = Jennifer D | editor2-last = Kibbe | editor3-first = Elizabeth G | editor3-last = Matthews | series = Symposium | volume = 66 | location = Lewiston, New York |publisher= Edwin Mellen Press | year = 2001}}. However, over the years, some Israeli leaders have publicly acknowledged their country's nuclear capability: Ephraim Katzir in 1974, Moshe Dayan in 1981, Shimon Peres in 1998, and Ehud Olmert in 2006.{{cite news |author=Katz |first=Yaakov |date=December 15, 2006 |title=Mum's the N-word |page=14 |work=The Jerusalem Post |publisher= |url=https://www.jpost.com/features/security-and-defense-mums-the-n-word |access-date=July 16, 2022}}

During his 2006 confirmation hearings before the United States Senate regarding his appointment as George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates admitted that Israel had nuclear weapons, and two years later, in 2008, former US president Jimmy Carter stated the number of nuclear weapons held by Israel to be "150 or more".{{Cite news |title=Israel has at least 150 atomic weapons: Carter |last= |first= |website=Reuters |date=May 26, 2008 |access-date=May 29, 2021 |url= https://www.reuters.com/article/instant-article/idCAL2673174120080526 |quote=Former President Jimmy Carter has said Israel holds at least 150 nuclear weapons, the first time a U.S. president has publicly acknowledged the Jewish state’s atomic arsenal. }}

In his 2008 book The Culture of War, Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history at Israel's Hebrew University, wrote that since Gates admitted that Israel had nuclear weapons, any talk of Israel's nuclear weapons in Israel can lead to "arrest, trial, and imprisonment." Thus Israeli commentators talk in euphemisms such as "doomsday weapons" and the Samson Option.{{Citation | first = Martin | last = Van Creveld | title = The Culture of War | publisher = Random House Digital | year = 2008 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=ytyMD5hxyRMC&q=Martin+van+Creveld+Samson+Option&pg=PA284 | page = 284 | isbn = 978-0-345-50540-8}}

Nevertheless, as early as 1976, the CIA believed that Israel possessed 10 to 20 nuclear weapons.In March 1976 the CIA accidentally publicly admitted that Israel had 10–20 nuclear weapons "ready to use." Arthur Kranish, "CIA: Israel Has 10–20 A-Weapons," The Washington Post, March 15, 1976, p. 2 and David Binder, "C.I.A. says Israel has 10–20 A-bombs," The New York Times, March 16, 1976, p. 1. By 2002, it was estimated that the number had increased to between 75 and 200 thermonuclear weapons, each in the multiple-megaton range.{{Citation | last1 = Norris | first1 = Robert S | first2 = William | last2 = Arkin | author3-link = Hans M. Kristensen | first3 = Hans M | last3 = Kristensen | first4 = Joshua | last4 = Handler | title = Israeli nuclear forces, 2002 | journal = Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists | volume = 58 | number = 5 |date=September–October 2002 | pages = 73–5 | url = http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-25888562_ITM | type = excerpt | doi=10.2968/058005020| bibcode = 2002BuAtS..58e..73N | s2cid = 145154481 | url-access = subscription | doi-access = free }} Kenneth S. Brower has estimated as many as 400 nuclear weapons.{{Citation | first = Kenneth S | last = Brower | title = A Propensity for Conflict: Potential Scenarios and Outcomes of War in the Middle East | journal = Jane's Intelligence Review | type = special report | number = 14 |date=February 1997 | pages = 14–5}}. These can be launched from land, sea and air.{{Citation|first=Douglas |last=Frantz |publisher=Common dreams |url=http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1012-02.htm |title=Israel Adds Fuel to Nuclear Dispute, Officials confirm that the nation can now launch atomic weapons from land, sea and air |newspaper=The Los Angeles Times |date=October 12, 2003 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20071021000445/http://commondreams.org/headlines03/1012-02.htm |archivedate=October 21, 2007 }}. This gives Israel a second strike option even if much of the country is destroyed.{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/24/AR2006082401050.html |newspaper=The Washington Post |first=Ramit |last=Plushnick-Masti |title=Israel Buys 2 Nuclear-Capable Submarines |date=August 25, 2006}}

In 1991, American investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning political writer Seymour Hersh authored the book Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal & American Foreign Policy.published by Random House, 1991 ({{ISBN|0-394-57006-5}}) In the preface of the book he writes: "This is a book about how Israel became a nuclear power in secret. It also tells how that secret was shared, sanctioned, and, at times, willfully ignored by the top political and military officials of the United States since the Eisenhower years."

{{main|Nuclear strategy|Deterrence theory|Mutual assured destruction}}

Although nuclear weapons were viewed as the ultimate guarantor of Israeli security as early as the 1960s, the country avoided building its military around them, instead pursuing absolute conventional superiority so as to forestall a last resort nuclear engagement.{{Citation |url=http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/israel/doctrine.htm |contribution=Israel's Strategic Doctrine |publisher=Global Security |title=Weapons of mass destruction}}. The original conception of the Samson Option was only as deterrence. According to American journalist Seymour Hersh and Israeli historian Avner Cohen, Israeli leaders like David Ben-Gurion, Shimon Peres, Levi Eshkol and Moshe Dayan coined the phrase in the mid-1960s. They named it after the biblical figure Samson, who pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistines who had captured him, mutilated him, and gathered to see him further humiliated in chains as retribution for his massacres of their people.Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906), [http://jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=122&letter=S&search=Samson "Samson"]Comay, Joan; Brownrigg, Ronald (1993). Who's Who in the Bible: The Old Testament and the Apocrypha, The New Testament. New York: Wing Books. pp. Old Testament, 318. {{ISBN|0-517-32170-X}}.Rogerson, John W. (1999). [https://archive.org/details/chronicleofoldte00john/page/61 Chronicle of the Old Testament Kings: The Reign-By-Reign Record of the Rulers of Ancient Israel.] They contrasted it with the ancient siege of Masada where 936 Jewish Sicarii committed mass suicide rather than be defeated and enslaved by the Romans.{{Sfn|Hersh|1991|pp=136–7}}{{Sfn|Cohen|1998|p=236–237}}

In an article titled "Last Secret of the Six-Day War" the New York Times reported that in the days before the 1967 Six-Day War Israel planned to insert a team of paratroopers by helicopter into the Sinai. Their mission was to set up and remotely detonate a nuclear bomb on a mountaintop as a warning to belligerent surrounding states. While outnumbered, Israel effectively eliminated the Egyptian Air Force and occupied the Sinai, winning the war before the test could even be set up. Retired Israeli brigadier general Itzhak Yaakov referred to this operation as the Israeli Samson Option.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/world/middleeast/1967-arab-israeli-war-nuclear-warning.html|title='Last Secret' of 1967 War: Israel's Doomsday Plan for Nuclear Display|last1=Broad|first1=William J.|date=June 3, 2017|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-04-14|last2=Sanger|first2=David E.|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}

In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Arab forces were overwhelming Israeli forces and Prime Minister Golda Meir authorized a nuclear alert and ordered 13 atomic bombs be readied for use by missiles and aircraft. The Israeli Ambassador informed President Nixon that "very serious conclusions" may occur if the United States did not airlift supplies. Nixon complied. This is seen by some commentators on the subject as the first threat of the use of the Samson Option.{{Sfn|Hersh|1991|pp=225–7}}{{Sfn|Cohen|1998|p=236}}{{Citation |first=Mark |last=Gaffney |title=Dimona, The Third Temple: The Story Behind the Vanunu Revelation |year=1989 |publisher=Amana Books |page=147}}.{{Citation |first=Warner D |last=Farr |url=http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cpc-pubs/farr.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000914203946/http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cpc-pubs/farr.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=September 14, 2000 |title=The Third Temple's Holy of Holies: Israel's Nuclear Weapons |series=Counterproliferation Paper |number=2 |publisher=USAF Counterproliferation Center, Air War College |date=September 1999}}.Avner Cohen, [https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/06/opinion/the-last-nuclear-moment.html The Last Nuclear Moment], The New York Times, October 6, 2003.

Seymour Hersh writes that the "surprising victory of Menachem Begin's Likud Party in the May 1977 national elections ... brought to power a government that was even more committed than Labor to the Samson Option and the necessity of an Israeli nuclear arsenal."{{Sfn|Hersh|1991|p=259}}

Louis René Beres, a professor of political science at Purdue University, chaired Project Daniel, a group advising Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He argues in the Final Report of Project Daniel and elsewhere that the effective deterrence of the Samson Option would be increased by ending the policy of nuclear ambiguity.{{Citation |publisher=ACPR |url=http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/03-ISSUE/daniel-3.htm |title=Daniel Project final report |place=IL}}. In a 2004 article he recommends Israel use the Samson Option threat to "support conventional preemptions" against enemy nuclear and non-nuclear assets because "without such weapons, Israel, having to rely entirely upon non-nuclear forces, might not be able to deter enemy retaliations for the Israeli preemptive strike."{{Citation |publisher=Jerusalem summit |url=http://www.jerusalemsummit.org/eng/razdel.php?article_id=101&id=15 |title=Israel and Samson. Biblical Insights on Israeli Strategy in the Nuclear Age}}.

Some have written about the "Samson Option" as a retaliation strategy.

Israeli reporter Ari Shavit writes of Israel's nuclear strategy:My Promised Land, by Ari Shavit, (London 2014), page 191

{{Quote|Concerning anything and everything nuclear, Israel would be much, much more cautious than the United States and NATO. Concerning anything and everything nuclear, Israel would be the responsible adult of the international community. It would well understand the formidable nature of the demon and keep it locked in the basement"}}

In 2002, the Los Angeles Times published an opinion piece by Louisiana State University professor David Perlmutter.

{{quote |Israel has been building nuclear weapons for 30 years. The Jews understand what passive and powerless acceptance of doom has meant for them in the past, and they have ensured against it. Masada was not an example to follow—it hurt the Romans not a whit, but Samson in Gaza? What would serve the Jew-hating world better in repayment for thousands of years of massacres but a Nuclear Winter. Or invite all those tut-tutting European statesmen and peace activists to join us in the ovens? For the first time in history, a people facing extermination while the world either cackles or looks away—unlike the Armenians, Tibetans, World War II European Jews or Rwandans—have the power to destroy the world. The ultimate justice?{{Citation | first = David | last = Perlmutter | type = opinion piece | title = Israel: Dark Thoughts and Quiet Desperation | newspaper = The Los Angeles Times | date = April 7, 2002 | url = https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-apr-07-op-perlmutter-story.html | url-status = live | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180728195841/http://articles.latimes.com/2002/apr/07/opinion/op-perlmutter | archive-date=July 28, 2018}}.}}

In his 2012 book How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III, the American Jewish author Ron Rosenbaum described this opinion piece as "goes so far as to justify a Samson Option approach".{{Sfn | Rosenbaum | 2012 | pp = [https://books.google.com/books?id=ntpyaiwadXsC&dq=Perlmutter+%22Samson+Option%22&pg=PA148 22–3]}}

In that book, Rosenbaum also opined that in the "aftermath of a second Holocaust", Israel could "bring down the pillars of the world (attack Moscow and European capitals for instance)" as well as the "holy places of Islam." and that the "abandonment of proportionality is the essence" of the Samson Option.{{Dubious|date=January 2016}}{{Sfn | Rosenbaum | 2012 | pp = 21–2, 141–2}}

In 2003, a military historian, Martin van Creveld, thought that the Second Intifada then in progress threatened Israel's existence.{{Citation | url = http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,1046646,00.html | place = UK | title = We have the capability to take the world down with us | newspaper = The Guardian | date=September 21, 2003}}. Van Creveld was quoted in David Hirst's The Gun and the Olive Branch (2003) as saying:

{{quote |We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: 'Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.' I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.{{Citation | url = https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/sep/21/israelandthepalestinians.bookextracts | title= Extract: The Gun and the Olive Branch | newspaper = The Observer | place = UK | date = 20 September 2003}}.}}

However, according to Aluf Yitzhak Yaakov, who was the mastermind behind the "Samson Option",{{Cite news|url=https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4971018,00.html|title=Israel planned to detonate nuclear device in Sinai during Six-Day War|date=April 6, 2017|website=Ynetnews|language=en|access-date=2019-04-14|last1=Bergman|first1=Ronen|last2=Shmilovitz|first2=Tzipi}} it was unlikely Israel could have even targeted Europe{{Citation needed|date=May 2024}}, as Israel did not yet have other measures like bombs or missiles to carry the nuclear payload.

In 2012, Günter Grass published the poem "Was gesagt werden muss" ("What Must Be Said") which criticized Israel's nuclear weapons program.

Israeli poet and Holocaust survivor Itamar Yaoz-Kest published a poem entitled "The Right to Exist: a Poem-Letter to the German Author" which addresses Grass by name. It contains the line: "If you force us yet again to descend from the face of the Earth to the depths of the Earth—let the Earth roll toward the Nothingness".

Israeli Jerusalem Post journalist Gil Ronen saw this poem as referring to the Samson Option, which he described as the strategy of using Israel's nuclear weapons for "taking out Israel's enemies with it, possibly causing irreparable damage to the entire world."{{Citation | first = Gil | last = Ronen | url = http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/154608#.T4H4MtXAE14 | title = Israeli Letter-poem to Grass: If We Go, Everyone Goes | newspaper = Israel National News | date = April 8, 2012}}.

• {{ill|Let my soul die with the Philistines|he|תמות נפשי עם פלשתים}}
• {{annotated link|Dahiya doctrine}}
• {{annotated link|Hannibal Directive}}
• {{annotated link|Israel and weapons of mass destruction}}
• {{annotated link|Massive retaliation}}
• {{annotated link|Mutual assured destruction}}
• {{annotated link|No first use}}
• {{annotated link|Nuclear weapons and Israel}}
• {{annotated link|Pre-emptive nuclear strike}}
• {{annotated link|Preventive war}}
• {{annotated link|Project Daniel}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{Citation | first = Avner | last = Cohen | title = Israel and the Bomb | publisher = Columbia University Press | year = 1998}}.
• {{Citation | first = Seymour | last = Hersh | title = The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy | publisher = Random House | year = 1991}}.
• {{Citation | first = Ron | last = Rosenbaum | title = How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III | publisher = Simon & Schuster | year = 2012 | isbn = 978-1-4165-9422-2}}.

• Louis René Beres, [http://www.jerusalemsummit.org/eng/razdel.php?article_id=101&id=15 Israel and Samson. Biblical Insights on Israeli Strategy in the Nuclear Age] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080117171515/http://www.jerusalemsummit.org/eng/razdel.php?article_id=101&id=15 |date=January 17, 2008 }}, [http://www.jerusalemsummit.org/ JerusalemSummit.Org].
• Ross Dunn, [http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1223502002 Sharon eyes 'Samson option' against Iraq], [http://news.scotsman.com/ Scotsman.Com news], November 3, 2002.
• Ross Dunn, [http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/20/1032054963247.html In war, Israel retains the Samson option], [http://smh.com.au Sydney Morning Herald], September 20, 2002.
• David Hirst, [http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1046411,00.html The War Game, a controversial view of the current crisis in the Middle East], The Observer Guardian, September 21, 2003.
• {{Citation | url = http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/doctrine/ | contribution = Strategic Doctrine | title = Israel | publisher = Federation of American Scientists}}.

{{Samson}}

Category:Foreign relations of Israel

Category:Israeli nuclear development

Category:Arab–Israeli conflict

Category:Nuclear strategy

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