Did Israel Have Nuclear ‘Doomsday’ Plan In Six-Day War?
Image by Three Lions/Getty Images
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli government minister Michael Oren, a former ambassador to the United States, rejected a report that Israel was prepared to detonate a nuclear bomb in the Sinai to turn the tide of the 1967 war with its Arab neighbors if necessary.
The New York Times published a report on Saturday about the existence of the “doomsday” plan, based on an interview by leading Israeli nuclear scholar Avner Cohen with retired IDF Brig.-Gen. Itzhak Yaakov, who allegedly oversaw the plan.
Yaakov, who oversaw weapons development for the Israeli military, detailed the plan to Cohen in interviews in 1999 and 2000; he died in 2013 at the age of 87.
He said the plan was codenamed Shimshon, or Samson, the biblical hero of immense strength, who in a last burst of strength brought down a Philistine temple killing himself along with his enemies.
Oren, who wrote a comprehensive history of the Six Day War, responded to the Times report on Sunday, saying that thousands of declassified documents from the war do not support a plan to detonate a nuclear bomb in Egypt’s Sinai.
Israel maintains “nuclear ambiguity,” neither confirming nor denying that it has nuclear weapons.
A message from our editor-in-chief Jodi Rudoren
We're building on 127 years of independent journalism to help you develop deeper connections to what it means to be Jewish today.
With so much at stake for the Jewish people right now — war, rising antisemitism, a high-stakes U.S. presidential election — American Jews depend on the Forward's perspective, integrity and courage.
— Jodi Rudoren, Editor-in-Chief
