Israel and the Bomb

Israel and the Bomb was published in New York by Columbia University Press in 1998.[1] It presents a detailed account of the political dimensions of Israel's nuclear history, based on thousands of American and Israeli government documents — mostly recently declassified and previously uncited — and more than one hundred interviews with individuals who participated in the history.[2] The book emphasizes political decisions, secrecy, diplomatic maneuvering, and the construction of nuclear ambiguity as a state policy rather than providing a purely technical account of weapons development.[2]

Unlike Mordechai Vanunu, who disclosed information as a former insider at the Dimona facility, Avner Cohen was not involved in Israel's nuclear policy at an official level.[5] His manuscript was prohibited from publication in Israel by the military censor, and the book was ultimately published in the United States.[5] A Hebrew edition, titled ישראל והפצצה, was published in Jerusalem by Schocken in 2000; the National Library of Israel catalog identifies Emanuel Lotem as the translator from English, records the edition as 557 pages, and notes a bibliography on pages 531–542.[6] The book is cited in the Foreign Relations of the United States series, including references to pages 297–298 and 421 in connection with Israel's nuclear program.[3] Cohen also disputed claims that Israel possessed usable nuclear capabilities during the 1967 Six-Day War.[7]

The institutional foundations of Israel's nuclear effort were established remarkably early. The Israel Atomic Energy Commission was created in 1952, and by 1953 the Defense Ministry's Machon 4 research center had developed a process for extracting uranium from Negev deposits and a method for producing heavy water, giving Israel an indigenous capacity to produce important nuclear materials.[2] Ernst David Bergmann, who chaired the commission, advocated an Israeli bomb as a means of ensuring that Israel would never again be defenseless.[2]

Israel's leaders in the late 1950s perceived a permanent existential threat arising from the power asymmetry between Israel and a potential combined Arab coalition, helping drive the decision to develop a nuclear option.[1] David Ben-Gurion regarded nuclear capability as an ultimate guarantee against such a threat.[1][8] In 1962, Israel decided to continue building its nuclear option while refraining from crossing the nuclear threshold; by the late 1960s, it decided to proceed further.[1]

The pivotal infrastructure decision was the 1957 French-Israeli nuclear cooperation agreement. France and Israel revised their cooperation framework on October 3, 1957; the agreement provided for a 24-megawatt-thermal reactor, with cooling and waste systems designed to handle three times that power, as well as secret protocols concerning a chemical reprocessing plant.[2] The Dimona complex was constructed secretly in the Negev by French and Israeli technicians, and the reactor went critical in 1964.[2] Ground was broken at Dimona in late 1958 or early 1959.[9]

The United States first became aware of the Dimona construction through U-2 overflights in 1958, although the facility was not identified as a nuclear site until two years later.[2] In December 1960, David Ben-Gurion publicly described the Dimona reactor as having been built for research for peaceful purposes, and in a meeting with U.S. Ambassador Ogden Reid, Ben-Gurion reportedly answered "Absolutely not" when asked whether Israel intended to develop nuclear weapons.[10] A U.S. Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee document from December 1960 was, according to William Burr and Avner Cohen, the first American report to state definitively that the Dimona reactor would include a plutonium-production facility connected to weapons development.[10]

Israel and the Bomb is repeatedly cited in accounts of the U.S.–Israeli struggle over nuclear policy. President John F. Kennedy applied considerable pressure to halt development, but by the late 1960s Israel and the United States had reached an informal understanding under which Israel could continue developing its capability provided that it did not declare or test it.[1] This arrangement became a foundation of Israel's nuclear-ambiguity policy.

During the 1960s, U.S. inspection teams visited Dimona repeatedly but did not discover the underground reprocessing facility.[2] Israel controlled the timing and agenda of visits, used false control-room panels, and bricked over elevators and hallways leading to restricted areas.[2] The 1964 inspection lasted approximately eleven hours; the team judged Dimona peaceful in its present state and believed it lacked plutonium-recovery and reprocessing facilities.[11] The January 1965 inspection was restricted to approximately one day despite a U.S. request for at least two full days and full access to facilities and records; the team reported nothing suggesting an early weapons-development program but recommended continued surveillance because of Dimona's substantial future production potential.[11]

A parallel diplomatic dispute concerned whether Washington should reassure Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser that Dimona was peaceful. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol argued that uncertainty about Israeli capabilities could serve as a deterrent, while U.S. officials warned that apparent movement toward nuclear weapons could encourage an Egyptian military buildup or a preemptive attack. Eshkol summarized his position by asking, "Why tell Nasser?"[11]

A 1967 U.S. government assessment stated that Israel was preserving the option to acquire sophisticated weapons, including nuclear weapons, because of concern that Arab states might eventually achieve conventional military superiority.[12] The assessment said there was no evidence Israel was actually making a bomb, but believed Israel intended to remain capable of doing so at short notice if necessary.[12] It judged that the Dimona reactor could produce enough plutonium for one or two bombs per year, while periodic inspections — the most recent on April 22, 1967 — had found no evidence of weapons activity at the site, though the assessment cautioned that inspections covered only Dimona and could not rule out a clandestine weapons program elsewhere.[12] U.S. suspicions had also been heightened by Israel's unwillingness to explain what happened to 80–100 tons of unsafeguarded uranium concentrate purchased from Argentina four years earlier, and by reports that Israel might have acquired a nuclear chemical-separation plant.[12] A February 1967 U.S. intelligence document, separately reported, assessed that Israel had either completed or was about to complete the Dimona plutonium-extraction plant and was six to eight weeks from completing a bomb.[10]

Among the most striking archival threads that Cohen pulled together concerned what U.S. intelligence believed about Israel's nuclear status by the late 1960s. The book explored whether Israel had become a "nuclear-weapon state" in 1968, drawing on physicist Edward Teller's recollections and testimony by Carl Duckett, a former CIA Deputy Director for Science and Technology.[3]

Teller stated that contacts in Israel's scientific community led him to the "personal opinion" and "conjecture" that Israel possessed nuclear weapons.[3] Teller's views informed a National Intelligence Estimate that Duckett said had been drafted by the CIA and concluded that Israel had nuclear weapons.[3] The U.S. Department of State's historical note adds, however, that no such estimate has been found in the archives.[3]

Duckett testified before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1978 that he had taken the intelligence estimate to CIA Director Richard Helms, who told him not to publish it.[3] Duckett further said that Helms later told him he had raised the matter with President Lyndon B. Johnson, who instructed him: "Don't tell anyone else, even Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara."[3] This account suggests that at the highest levels of the U.S. government, Israel's nuclear status was treated as information to be contained rather than acted upon.[3]

Cohen's research charts a series of discrete Israeli decisions about how far to advance its nuclear program. In 1962, Israel decided to continue building its nuclear option while refraining from crossing the nuclear threshold.[1] By the late 1960s, following the advanced state of Israel's nuclear development and the escalation of the conventional arms race after the 1967 War, Israel made the further decision to proceed beyond that line.[1]

The question of what Israel possessed during the 1967 Six-Day War itself is one of the book's most contested contributions. The Jerusalem Post reports that, according to testimony recorded by Cohen, Israel had a plutonium core hidden in an unassuming building near Gedera during that conflict; Elie Geisler, who was responsible for guarding the radioactive package, understood it to be the core of a nuclear weapon.[7] Separately, The Times of Israel reports that Cohen interviewed retired IDF brigadier general Itzhak Yaakov about a plan developed on the eve of the 1967 war, code-named Shimshon (Samson), which called for helicopters and commandos to transport an atomic device to a mountaintop approximately twelve miles from the Egyptian military complex at Abu Ageila; a small paratrooper force was to divert Egyptian forces while another team prepared the device, and the plan was canceled after Israel's rapid victory.[13]

Cohen himself disputed the stronger version of these claims. Ynetnews reports that Cohen rejected the assertion that Israel planned to activate a nuclear weapon in Sinai during the 1967 war, arguing that Israel did not possess nuclear capabilities at the time.[14] This disagreement — between the testimony Cohen recorded and his own scholarly interpretation of it — reflects the broader evidentiary difficulties that make Cohen's book both indispensable and contested.

On the NPT dimension, INSS cites Cohen's discussion of what was called "nuclear pregnancy": the concept that a state could remain a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while pursuing a nuclear program with implicit military objectives and retaining the option of producing a bomb shortly after withdrawing from the treaty. Cohen argues on this basis that "the expectation in 1968 was that Israel would sign the treaty" — a reference to page 299 of Israel and the Bomb.[15]

Israel and the Bomb is closely identified with the history and analysis of Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity, known in Hebrew as amimut. The policy is publicly encapsulated by the statement that Israel would "not be the first to introduce [nuclear weapons] into the region," a formulation that neither confirms nor denies a capability.[4] INSS describes the origins and precise nature of the policy as disputed, though the policy itself remained in place despite political and public pressure for open discussion.[4]

One strategic account describes the Dimona reactor, whose construction began in the late 1950s in cooperation with France, as the core of the ambiguity posture and as a potential retaliatory capability — a "weapon of last resort" intended to create a "balance of fear."[8] In that interpretation, ambiguity was intended to deter attacks threatening Israel's survival without requiring explicit threats, public declarations, or nuclear tests, while maintaining a low profile to reduce regional proliferation pressures and friction with the United States.[8][5]

The decisive formalization of this arrangement came in 1969. The Congressional Research Service reports that U.S. President Richard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir reportedly reached an understanding that neither government would publicly acknowledge Israel's nuclear arsenal.[16] A separately verified account states that the compromise required Israel not to declare or test a nuclear weapon and reduced friction with Washington.[8] The United States has apparently tolerated Israel's nuclear ambiguity on that basis ever since.[16]

Israel has remained outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has not officially declared itself a nuclear power.[17] There is no confirmed public evidence that Israel has conducted a nuclear test, although alleged events remain contested.[2] The Dimona complex is not included in the safeguards framework that covers the Nahal Sorek research reactor and related scientific facilities.[17] A 2022 estimate, cited by the Congressional Research Service, placed Israel's nuclear arsenal at around 90 warheads, with potential delivery systems based on aircraft, submarines, and ground-based missiles.[16]

Quantifying Israel's nuclear capability requires navigating between sources of varying reliability and chronologies that do not always agree. The Jewish Virtual Library reports that Mordechai Vanunu's 1986 disclosures indicated weapons-grade plutonium production at approximately 40 kilograms annually, while later analysis of reactor power and cooling infrastructure suggested an annual production rate of approximately 20 kilograms; on that basis, it estimates that Israel could have produced enough plutonium for at least 100 nuclear weapons but probably not significantly more than 200.[2] Vanunu's disclosures — that Israel had secretly produced 100 to 200 nuclear warheads — are also referenced in the Encyclopedia.com Dimona entry, which presents these as reported or likely conclusions rather than official Israeli acknowledgments.[18]

The chronology of when plutonium production began differs between sources. Encyclopaedia Britannica states that the first plutonium had been produced by 1965, while the Jewish Virtual Library documentary account reports that Israeli plutonium production began sometime in 1966.[9][2] On nuclear testing, the Jewish Virtual Library states that there is no evidence Israel has conducted a nuclear test, though some observers have speculated that a 1979 event in the southern Indian Ocean was a joint South African-Israeli test; the same source also reports a possible zero-yield or implosion test on November 2, 1966, while presenting that claim as uncertain.[2]

A Jewish Review of Books account of Sasha Polakow-Suransky's research adds that in 1976 South Africa lifted safeguards on yellowcake stored in Israel, enabling the production of enough reprocessed plutonium for "dozens of nuclear bombs," and that there was strong evidence Israel tested nuclear weapons in remote South African territory in the late 1970s.[19] These claims are contested and not officially acknowledged by Israel.

Beyond the historical narrative, Israel and the Bomb opened wider debates about what Israel's nuclear posture has meant strategically. One account credits Israel's nuclear deterrent with helping limit Egypt and Syria's objectives during the 1973 war, encouraging Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to recognize that Israel could not be destroyed without risking national self-destruction, and deterring Saddam Hussein from using chemical or biological warheads against Israel during the 1991 Scud attacks.[8] These are interpretations offered by the source rather than uncontested historical conclusions.

A 2021 SAPIR Journal essay distinguishes Israel's nuclear capability as an insurance policy intended to guarantee survival rather than as a tool for regional dominance or deterring ordinary conventional attacks, and links this rationale to the policy of nuclear opacity while distinguishing it from the Begin Doctrine.[20] The Begin Doctrine holds that no state in the region maintaining a state of war with Israel should be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. In 1981, after diplomatic efforts failed, Israel attacked and destroyed Iraq's French-built Osiraq reactor; on September 6, 2007, Israel destroyed what the source identifies as a nearly completed, North Korean-built nuclear reactor in Syria.[8]

Israel also proposed establishing a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East in 1980, with conditions including recognition, peaceful relations, direct negotiations, and a fundamental transformation in relations between Israel and its neighbors.[21] During the 1990s, UN General Assembly resolutions supporting a Middle East nuclear-free zone were adopted unanimously with Israel's support.[21]

Israel and the Bomb did not merely reconstruct history; it also positioned its author within an ongoing policy debate. INSS places the book within a school of thought that criticizes Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity and favors greater openness or explicit nuclear deterrence, partly on moral and democratic grounds.[4] Cohen and Marvin Miller subsequently argued that the time had come "to take the Israeli nuclear bomb out of the basement," with their arguments focused less on strategic calculations than on concern for Israeli democracy and the accountability deficits that a policy of permanent secrecy creates.[4]

This stance set Cohen at odds with analysts who defended nuclear ambiguity as a pragmatic and durable arrangement well suited to Israel's security environment and diplomatic constraints. The INSS discussion of "The Value of Nuclear Ambiguity" engages directly with Cohen's critique, reflecting the degree to which his scholarship shaped the terms of a debate that remained alive decades after the book's publication.[4]

Israel and the Bomb operates at the intersection of official secrecy, personal testimony, and declassified documentation, and several of its most important claims rest on sources that cannot be fully corroborated. The question of whether Israel had achieved nuclear-weapon-state status by 1968 is contested; the U.S. historical record reports intelligence conclusions and the testimony of Duckett and Teller but also states that the National Intelligence Estimate Duckett described has not been found in the archives.[3]

The reported 1967 Shimshon/Samson plan is based chiefly on testimony attributed to retired IDF brigadier general Itzhak Yaakov, and Avner Cohen himself argued that Israel lacked nuclear capabilities during the 1967 war — placing the book's author at odds with some of the testimony it records.[13][14] The 1969 Golda Meir–Richard Nixon understanding is described by the Congressional Research Service as reported, not as an officially published bilateral agreement.[16] Claims about Israeli-South African nuclear cooperation, including alleged testing in the late 1970s, are contested and not officially acknowledged by Israel.[19]

Numerical estimates of Israel's arsenal, plutium production rates, and the chronology of Dimona's first operational milestones also vary among sources, with Britannica and the Jewish Virtual Library offering differing accounts of when plutonium production began.[9][2] Israel has maintained its policy of ambiguity throughout — neither confirming nor denying the existence of a nuclear arsenal — which means that the evidentiary challenges Cohen confronted in writing the book persist for anyone seeking to assess its conclusions.