Avner Cohen

Cohen has held positions at several American research institutions. In 2004 he was identified as a senior researcher at the University of Maryland's Center for International and Security Studies.[6] By 2017 he was a professor of history at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center.[5] The Center's Nuclear Proliferation International History Project maintained a digital archive known as the "Avner Cohen Collection."[5]

His publications in the mid-1990s included scholarship on the Kennedy–Eshkol correspondence concerning Dimona inspections and an article titled "Cairo, Dimona, and the June 1967 War," published in the Middle East Journal in 1996.[7] These articles preceded Israel and the Bomb, which drew on declassified American and Israeli government documents and extensive interviews with former officials.[8]

Israel and the Bomb (Columbia University Press, 1998) presents a detailed account of the political dimensions of Israel's nuclear history. It drew on thousands of American and Israeli government documents — many recently declassified and previously uncited — and more than 100 interviews with participants.[8] The book examined whether Israel had effectively become a nuclear-weapon state by 1968, drawing on physicist Edward Teller's recollections and testimony by former CIA official Carl Duckett. Teller characterized his belief that Israel possessed nuclear weapons as his "personal opinion" and "conjecture"; Duckett recounted a CIA estimate reaching that conclusion, though no such estimate has since been located in the archives.[4]

The book also argued that Israel possessed a deliverable nuclear capability during the 1967 war, citing Rafael head Munya Mardor and other sources for the claim that Israel had "cobbled together" two deliverable devices.[7] It was published abroad after Israeli censorship barred its publication in Israel; security authorities alleged it disclosed nuclear secrets, while Cohen maintained that the documents he relied on had been cleared for publication in both Israel and the United States.[9]

Cohen's 2010 book, The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb, shifted from historical narrative toward policy critique. A Congressional Research Service report summarized Cohen's argument that the defense ministry exercised substantial but publicly undisclosed influence over the nuclear program, including control over aspects of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission's budget and security. Cohen also argued that authority distributed among the prime minister, defense ministry, cabinet, military chiefs, and commission contributed to ambiguity and potential confusion in decision-making.[10] In the 2009 INSS article "Nuclear Legislation for Israel," he argued that legislation governing the commission could demonstrate that the rule of law reaches even this sensitive area and could clarify a reality not publicly defined.[11]

With Marvin Miller, Cohen argued for "bringing Israel's bomb out of the basement." Their case for moving from opacity to an openly declared posture emphasized Israeli democratic accountability more than strategic advantage and maintained that ending ambiguity need not mean relinquishing the nuclear option.[3][12]

Cohen also coauthored a 2016 article with William Burr on the 1979 Vela satellite incident. They sided with the view that the Vela signal originated in a nuclear test while acknowledging that the documentary record did not definitively establish whether an Israeli test with South African assistance had occurred.[13] Cohen and Burr subsequently edited a 2020 collection on the 1964–65 U.S. inspections of Dimona.[14]

Cohen identified Ernst David Bergman, David Ben-Gurion, and Shimon Peres as the three men who "eventually fathered" Israel's nuclear project.[1] He credited Peres's most important contribution as establishing the connection with France and interpreted the 1956 French-Israeli rapprochement as an opportunity Peres exploited to advance Ben-Gurion's nuclear vision. Cohen treated French reactor cooperation as an "additional incentive" for Israel's participation in the Suez Crisis rather than its decisive price. This interpretation differs from the account offered by Michael Bar-Zohar and in some respects from that of Avi Shlaim.[1]

Cohen's analysis of Israel's pre-nuclear period also drew on research into early nonconventional-weapons programs. He dated the start of a Haganah biological-weapons effort to February 18, 1948, when Yigal Yadin sent microbiology student Alexander Keynan to Jaffa to establish a unit called HEMED BEIT. He quoted the unit's original commander, Ephraim Katzir, describing exploratory work on chemical and biological weapons in a 1993 interview.[15] Writing in the Nonproliferation Review's 2001 Fall-Winter edition, Cohen argued that by 1955 Ben-Gurion was pressing the defense establishment to operationalize a nonconventional capability before a possible war with Egypt, and characterized that "cheap nonconventional capability" as chemical rather than biological.[15]

One of Cohen's prominent research claims concerns an Israeli nuclear contingency plan on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War. In interviews conducted in 1999 and 2000 with retired Brigadier General Yitzhak "Ya'tza" Yaakov and reported publicly in 2017, Yaakov described a plan code-named "Shimshon" (Samson) to position an atomic device near the Egyptian military complex at Abu Ageila in Sinai and detonate it as a warning to Egypt and other Arab states if Israel believed it was on the verge of defeat.[5][16] Yaakov called it "Operation Judgment Day" and said that the rapid Israeli victory rendered the plan unnecessary.[5]

The reported plan required direct authorization from Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin. A small paratrooper force would divert Egyptian attention while helicopters brought and buried the device. Yaakov also described a reconnaissance flight with Israel Dostrovsky, the first director of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, that turned back after the team was exposed.[16]

Former Israeli atomic official Elie Geisler separately provided Cohen with testimony about guarding a radioactive "metallic half-sphere" in a wooden crate at the Qatra police station near Gedera in the weeks before the war. Cohen said Geisler's account supported aspects of Yaakov's testimony but disagreed with Geisler's interpretation that Yaakov's attempts to access the site constituted an attempted military takeover. Cohen instead characterized the episode as confusion stemming from unclear authority during Israel's early nuclear development.[17]

The account was publicly challenged by historian Michael Oren, who argued that Cohen's report rested on a single source and that the large body of released Six-Day War documents did not corroborate it. Oren stated that he too had interviewed Yaakov and was not persuaded the account held up.[18]

Before the fortieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Cohen made public a videotaped interview he had conducted in 2008 with Arnan ("Sini") Azaryahu, an aide and close associate of minister Yisrael Galili, as part of a documentary project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The interview was conducted shortly before Azaryahu died at age 91.[19]

Azaryahu recounted a wartime meeting among Prime Minister Golda Meir, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, Galili, and Yigal Allon. According to Azaryahu, Dayan proposed that, "since we will not have a lot of time and a lot of options, it would be a good idea to prepare a demonstration of the nuclear option too." Those present objected and the proposal was dropped.[19] Cohen's book The Last Taboo initially placed the meeting on October 9, 1973; following a subsequent interview with Azaryahu, Cohen revised that date to October 7. Researcher Yair Evron placed the episode on the night of October 8–9, while Azaryahu himself did not recall the exact date.[19]

Cohen was also one of five researchers on the 2013 CNA Strategic Studies study "The Israeli 'Nuclear Alert' of 1973: Deterrence and Signaling in Crisis." Its authors assessed that Israeli officials — possibly below prime-ministerial level — may have ordered increased readiness for elements of the nuclear enterprise, probably including Jericho missiles, as a defensive or precautionary measure. They did not characterize the action as an attempt to coerce the United States and concluded that any report of the change had no significant effect on U.S. decision-making. The INSS account emphasized that there was no definitive proof of a change in Israel's nuclear arsenal and noted the absence of corroborating recollections from other officials or supporting documentation.[19]

Cohen has been a persistent public critic of Israel's policy of nuclear opacity, under which Israel acknowledges nothing factual about its nuclear status, activities, or capabilities and neither confirms nor denies them.[11] He described the policy as arising through the interaction of a social taboo, military censorship, and political strategy, and advocated open public debate while stopping short of rejecting the deterrent value of nuclear weapons.[1]

On the U.S. role in sustaining opacity, Cohen attributed the long-standing American-Israeli silence to an understanding reached between President Richard Nixon and Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1969. He said the United States agreed to use ambiguity to shield Israel from international oversight and argued that Israel could not have maintained the policy for decades without American support.[2] He also said that published estimates of Israel's arsenal varied widely — from fewer than 100 to more than 300 warheads — and that uncertainties about the Dimona reactor's size and operation and the design of Israeli weapons made precise figures impossible to confirm.[6]

In 2004, Cohen argued that Mordechai Vanunu should not remain detained after completing his prison sentence, saying Vanunu had paid for his actions, possessed no new knowledge, and had a right to express his views even if the Israeli government disagreed.[6]

The publication of Israel and the Bomb brought Cohen into direct conflict with Israeli security authorities. The book was published abroad in 1998 after Israeli censorship barred its domestic release. After spending four years away from Israel, Cohen returned, was questioned by security investigators and police on suspicion of offenses against state security, and was released on bail while the investigation continued.[9] His lawyer said Cohen maintained that he had done nothing to harm Israel's security and had participated in the questioning willingly. The cited report does not provide the investigation's eventual outcome.[9]

By 2004, Cohen had submitted a new manuscript — a planned policy critique titled The Last Israeli Taboo, distinct from the historical focus of Israel and the Bomb — to the Israeli censor. Approximately seven months after submission, approval had not been granted.[6]

Cohen's published and archival work has assembled a substantial documentary and oral-history record of Israel's nuclear history. Israel and the Bomb drew on thousands of government documents and more than 100 interviews, while the Wilson Center's Nuclear Proliferation International History Project maintained the digital "Avner Cohen Collection."[8][5]

His research has also been cited in a U.S. State Department historical editorial note examining whether Israel had become a nuclear-weapon state by 1968 and in a Congressional Research Service report addressing the organization and decision-making structure of Israel's nuclear program.[10][4]

Several of Cohen's historical claims rely substantially on interview testimony from former officials rather than corroborating archival documentation. The 1967 Sinai contingency-plan account derives principally from Yaakov's interviews with Cohen and journalist Ronen Bergman; historian Michael Oren argued that the broader documentary record of the Six-Day War does not support it.[18][16] Cohen's interpretation of the 1956 French-Israeli nuclear cooperation — that reactor assistance was an "additional incentive" rather than the decisive price for Suez participation — also differs from other historical accounts.[1]

The 1973 nuclear-readiness question carries similar evidentiary ambiguities. The study Cohen coauthored found no definitive proof of a change in Israel's nuclear posture, and the INSS account noted the absence of corroborating documentation or recollections from other senior U.S. officials.[19] The exact date of the wartime meeting at which Dayan reportedly proposed a nuclear demonstration remains unresolved across Cohen's successive accounts and those of other researchers.[19] Cohen and Burr likewise characterized the debate over the Vela satellite incident as "open, somewhat inconclusive."[13]

Cohen's 1998 book drew on a reported CIA estimate concluding that Israel had nuclear weapons; however, the U.S. State Department's historical editorial note states that no such estimate has been found in the archives.[4] Together, these disputes reflect the dependence of parts of Cohen's research on interviews, incomplete archives, and records that remain contested or unavailable.