Israel and the Bomb [Hardcover]

Avner Cohen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0231104820 | ISBN-13: 978-0231104821 0

Until now, there has been no detailed account of Israel's nuclear history. Previous treatments of the subject relied heavily on rumors, leaks, and journalistic speculations. But with Israel and the Bomb, Avner Cohen has forged an interpretive political history that draws on thousands of American and Israeli government documents -- most of them recently declassified and never before cited -- and more than one hundred interviews with key individuals who played important roles in this story. Cohen reveals that Israel crossed the nuclear weapons threshold on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War, yet it remains ambiguous about its nuclear capability to this day. What made this posture of "opacity" possible, and how did it evolve?

Cohen focuses on a two-decade period from about 1950 until 1970, during which David Ben-Gurion's vision of making Israel a nuclear-weapon state was realized. He weaves together the story of the formative years of Israel's nuclear program, from the founding of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission in 1952, to the alliance with France that gave Israel the sophisticated technology it needed, to the failure of American intelligence to identify the Dimona Project for what it was, to the negotiations between President Nixon and Prime Minister Meir that led to the current policy of secrecy. Cohen also analyzes the complex reasons Israel concealed its nuclear program -- from concerns over Arab reaction and the negative effect of the debate at home to consideration of America's commitment to nonproliferation.

Israel and the Bomb highlights the key questions and the many potent issues surrounding Israel's nuclear history. This book will be a critical resource for students of nuclear proliferation, Middle East politics, Israeli history, and American-Israeli relations, as well as a revelation for general readers.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A scholarly treatise that includes over 1,200 footnotes, yet reads like a novel.... [Cohen] analyzes in rich detail how this policy of 'nuclear opacity' evolved and what made it possible.

(Lawrence Kolb New York Times Book Review Vol 2. 2011)

Israel and the Bomb should be required reading for those interested in nuclear issues in general and in the complexities of the American-Israeli relationship in particular. For American decision makers, the book should serve as an invaluable case-study of how not to deal with future instances of nuclear proliferation

(Michael Rubner Middle East Policy )

This important volume deserves the attention of Middle East scholars and students of foreign policy, nuclear proliferation, and Israeli politics.

(A.R. Norton Choice )

Cohen's work will necessitate the rewriting of Israel's history, wars, international relations, domestic political crises, economy, psychology, national pride--everything will have to be viewed in a different light.

(Tom Segev Ha'aretz )

For anyone interested in the never-ending struggles in the Middle East and life on the edge in the nuclear age, this book is a must-read.

(Miami Herald )

A compelling and comprehensive account of the development of what he calls Israel's doctrine of 'nuclear opacity.'

(Paul C. Warnke, former Assistant Secretary of Defense )

Cohen's book hits nations sensitivity.

(Dan Ephron Washington Times )

... Avner Cohen's book stands in a class of its own. It is the first scholarly study of the history of this project, it is richly documented, and it unveils some of the major mysteries surrounding events by tapping a large body of previously untouched sources.... It can only be assumed that when this national mood of 'nuclear' ignorance changes, Cohen's book will serve as a solid foundation for this debate.

(Uri Bar-Joseph Jewish History )

Cohen has produced another rich historical narrative that functions as a readily accessible page-turner.

(Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs )

Review

This impeccably documented history of the first two decades of the Israeli nuclear program illuminates the complex domestic and international forces that shaped the activity and gives the reader fascinating insight into the thinking of Israeli, French, and U.S. leaders on the uniquely sensitive subject that only a few participants were fully aware of at the time.

(Spurgeon Keeny, President and Executive Director, The Arms Control Association )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 470 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (October 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231104820
• ISBN-13: 978-0231104821
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #564,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am a Senior Fellow at the Washington Office of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Prior to that appointment I was a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2009-10). Since 2000 I have been also affiliated with the Center for International and Security Studies (CISSM) at the University of Maryland. I am on J-street Advisory Board and a board member of Daisy Alliance, an NGO based in Atlanta GA.

After undergraduate study at Tel Aviv University in Philosophy and History (1975), I earned his M.A. in Philosophy at York University (1977) and Ph.D. from the Committee on History of Culture of the University of Chicago (1981). I was a member of the philosophy department at Tel Aviv University from 1983 to 1991 and have held various visiting academic positions at a number of American universities. In 2005 I was the Forchheimer Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University. I am now an adjunct professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies which has become in 2010 the graduate school of Middlebury College,

I was awarded twice the research and writing award of the MacArthur Foundation (1990, 2004). In 2007-08 and 1997-98 I was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). I was was co-director of the Project on Nuclear Arms Control in the Middle East at the Security Studies Program at MIT for five years (1990-95).

I am the co-editor (with Stephen Lee) of Nuclear Weapons and the Future of Humanity (Rowman & Allanheld, 1986), The Institution of Philosophy (Open Court, 1989), and the author of The Nuclear Age as Moral History (in Hebrew, 1989. My most recognized book, Israel and the Bomb, was published in 1998 in its English version and in 2000 in its Hebrew version. The Worst Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb, which came out this month by Columbia University Press is my most recent book

I have published dozens of articles and chapters in academic journals and books, as well as over a hundred of op-ed pieces in major newspapers in the United States and Israel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Strange World of Nuclear Politics, May 7, 2004

By 

Omer Belsky (Haifa, Israel) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Israel and the Bomb (Paperback)

A (long) waiting for the latest shipment of books from Amazon has an upside - I'm left to read books purchased in Israeli bookstores, often in Hebrew, and obviously, often about Israel or Israeli politics.

Avner Cohen's "Israel and the Bomb" is such a book, and, despite some structural flaws it is a well written one. The main focus is not really Israel's Weapons of Mass Destruction, but Israel's nuclear policies, particularly vis a vis the United States. This is the story of Israel's responds to US pressure with two similar but distinct strategies, which Cohen designates "Ambiguity" and "Opacity".

In late 1960, the US government came to realize that Israel was constructing in Dimona a large scale nuclear reactor. The uncovering of that Israeli state secret led to various Israeli announcements that Israel had no intention of building Nuclear WMDs. On the 21st of December, 3 days after a New York Times front page story about Israel's Reactor in Dimona, David Ben Gurion made what is still the only Prime Ministerial speech in the Knesset (Israel's parliament) about its Nuclear Policies, stating that the Reactor is meant for peaceful uses only (p.128).

The Eisenhower administration seemed initially unwilling to pressure Israel about its nuclear facilities, but following the exposure it did demand answers about Israel's plans. In a meeting with US Ambassador Ogden R Reid, David Ben Gurion stated that the Plutonium from the reactor will be returned to the manufacturing country, that Israel will allow visits of scientists from friendly countries in the reactor, but not international inspections, and that Israel did not plan to construct a third nuclear reactor. He also denied any intentions to construct a nuclear bomb (pp. 130-133).

When John F. Kennedy became the 35th president of the United States, US policy became hostile to Nuclear Proliferation, and Kennedy started a drive that ended in the 1968 Non Proliferation Treaty. Therefore, his policies towards Israel were meant to assure that Israel was not constructing Nuclear weapons. Since Israel was doing just that, the clashes were all but inevitable.

US Scientists started to inspect (the US's term; Israel preferred "visit") Dimona in 1961. Despite the US demand for 2 such visits per year, Israel's duck-and-weave policy never allowed more then one single day visit per year.

The US continued to pressure Israel, especially towards the end of Kennedy's administration. In April of 1963, Kennedy arranged an unplanned meeting with Shimon Peres, the architect of Israel's reactor in Dimona and then the deputy minister for defense, in which Peres first articulated (apparently spontaneously) Israel's formula about Nuclear weapons "Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the middle east" (p. 159). Towards the end of Ben Gurion's prime ministry, and Kennedy's presidency, the ground rules for the "ambiguity" policy of Israel were set: Israel stated that it had no intentions to construct nuclear weapons, and it allowed US visitors, albeit in a lesser frequency then the US desired. Ben Gurion's resignation and the assassination of Kennedy meant that their predecessors would have to continue, and refine, "ambiguity" as Israel's policy and US's response.

The main change in subsequent US-Israeli relationship was Israel's increased interest in purchasing conventional weapons from the US. Strangely, Israel and the US switched roles in these two dialogues. Regarding Nuclear weapons, the US kept pressuring Israel to allow more inspections, and to authorize the US to share its belief in Israel's peaceful intentions, while Israel evaded. In the weapons front, Israel kept asking to buy weapons, while the US tried to evade and delay. Neither side wanted to connect the subjects, because Israel was anxious not to disclose its intentions, while the US feared that pressuring Israel by withholding conventional weaponry would only further commit it to the nuclear option (p. 272). Unlike the Kennedy administration, Lyndon Johnson seems to have been willing to accept Israel's nuclear plans, as long as they were not public. Thus "ambiguity" started to give over to "opacity" (p. 276).

Chiefly, "Opacity" meant the acknowledgement of Israel as a de-facto Nuclear power, provided that Israel made few outspoken references to its nuclear capacities. Late in the Johnson administration, the President was unwilling to tie the sale of Phantom jets to Israel to Israel's signing the Non-Proliferation Treatment. Israel's then ambassador to the US, Yitzhak Rabin, defined Israel agreement not to "introduce" nuclear weapons to the Middle East as an agreement not to test it (p. 409). By then Israel clearly possessed nuclear weapons. Under Nixon, the US effectively gave up contesting that definition, and gave up the increasingly embarrassing inspections of the Dimona reactor. On the 18th of July, 1970, the New York Times announced that Israel was a nuclear power, and although both Israel's official spokespersons and the State Department denounced the article as "speculative" and "inaccurate", neither denied it (p. 434).

Avner Cohen's book tells the story of the creation of the Israeli bomb, and the relations between Israel and the US is just one part of this story. Yet it was the Israeli-American relationship that above all defined Israel's continued policy of Opacity, still intact almost 35 years after that New York Times news story. In the afterwards, Cohen calls for a reconsideration of Israel's nuclear policy, and is encouraged by the new openness of public discourse about it. Yet even if Israel's policy was chiefly designed in response to US pressure, the bomb was build because of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In that conflict, it often seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating description of Israel's nuclear history, March 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Israel and the Bomb (Hardcover)

For me, as an Israeli, this book is formally contraband, but thanks to amazon.com, I was able to get it. Although it contains no classified material, the Israeli government banned its publication in Israel and the courts chose not to intervene. It is one of the few scholarly books that reads like a detective novel and as an Israeli who lived through the era up to 1970 depicted in the book, I found it fascinating. The description of the fandango danced by Israel, France and the US through the 1950's and 1960's including the original texts of the diplomatic correspondence provides insight into understanding today's configuration as well as that of the past. Cohen's recommendations for future Israeli nuclear policy and his critique of "opacity" should be considered seriously by Israel's policy makers. I think Cohen did us all a great service by writing it and also by showing up the idiocy of the political establishment and its "security" concerns. I also think that it should be translated into Hebrew and made required reading in Israeli civics classes.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting study in nuclear policy, May 14, 2000

By 

Andrew D. Kennedy (Monterey, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Israel and the Bomb (Hardcover)

You don't have to be particularly interested in Israel to enjoy this book. What is interesting is that Israel's posture of "nuclear opacity" (as described by the author) is unique in the world. No where has Israel's nuclear policy been studied so extensively, and explained forthrightly. While the showing of arms was conducive to the ambitions of the "great" nuclear powers, Israel had no such ambitions, and thus developed a unique posture. Fascinating for those interested in nuclear policy (for whom I would suggest comparing with South Africa's nuclear program, which was eventually shut down), as well as for those interested in the emergence of Israel.