US think tank: Israel had plan to use atomic bomb in 1967

[TexasTowelie]

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel had a secret plan to detonate an atomic bomb in Egypt in the event that it faced defeat during the 1967 Middle East war, a leading American think tank said Monday, citing newly released documents.

The operation was never carried out, as Israel swiftly vanquished its enemies in six days. But details about the doomsday scenario, in which Israel planned to set off a nuclear weapon atop a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula, shed new light on the fearful climate at the time. It also could undermine Israel’s decades-long policy of nuclear ambiguity.

The Nuclear Proliferation International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington unveiled a website Monday devoted to “Operation Shimshon,” the codename for the hastily arranged contingency plan of placing an improvised nuclear device in Sinai to be detonated upon the prime minister’s orders.

The operation’s name, Hebrew for Samson, invoked the biblical figure of great power and aimed to scare Arab armies into quitting their offensive should Israel face what was feared to be an existential threat.

Read more: http://www.pjstar.com/news/20170605/us-think-tank-israel-had-plan-to-use-atomic-bomb-in-1967

[ornotna]

1. We were living in Riyadh SA at the time

There was a lot of concern in the American community and the talk was we would have to evacuate. Next thing you know it was over and life carried on as usual.

[Igel]

2. Seems a stretch.

The criticism seems well founded.

In this case, a website that seems to be built entirely upon one source, a retired general in his 70s about a plan he said he came up with for depositing something he'd just have been told about, with everything remembered from 32 years earlier.

Building a nuclear bomb is easy. Get 11 kg or more of plutonium 239, piddle with it, and boom! Building an easily transportable nuclear bomb, one that can be stored and deployed as necessary, that's a bit harder. Making it efficient by reducing the amount of Pu, even harder.

Just the presence of nuclear weapons in Israel in early '67 would be justification for a pre-emptive war, I'd venture to add. Remember, it was perhaps 10 miles from Jordan to the sea, cutting Israel in half. If subject to a surprise attack on all sides, the nuclear weapons could easily have been acquired by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, or Lebanon's military. Would they have just returned them to their countries central military organization or used them to help further their goal of ethnic cleansing or at least returning Jews to their very much subordinate status? Got me. Of the countries in the region, Jordan and Israel are the most stable, and Jordan had the whole Palestinian quasi-civil-war thing.