The Samson Option: Humanity's 'Mad Dog' Nuclear Threat

The Samson Option, Israel's Threat to Take Down the World With It - Part 1 of 2

“Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”

-- former Israeli Defence Minister, Moshe Dayan

"We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force…. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under."

-- Martin van Creveld, Israeli Historian

Imagine a country so intent on avoiding military defeat - it threatens all humanity with annihilation! Now imagine that such a country also possesses WMD, would you still dismiss their words as mere 'idle threats' or might you be a bit concerned as to whether they are crazy enough to follow through? Well the fact is that this situation is far from hypothetical - the country exists and has issued threats. While the world's attention has been skillfully turned to debating whether a certain Middle-Eastern country may one day acquire a nuclear capability, a nearby nation has been building its own deadly arsenal for over 50 years - now numbering over 300 warheads. Unlike its well-scrutinized neighbor, this non-Arab State has indeed threatened to annihilate populations that fail to support their agenda!

When a State whose leaders wish it to be seen as "a mad dog" have their finger on a nuclear trigger, when their religious leaders claim that the rest of humanity are no better than "beasts and donkeys", created for no purpose but to serve their 'chosen race', humanity has a serious problem on its hands! When a State which has a lengthy history of fabricating false flags against both friend and foe alike continues agitating for preemptive war against regional enemies, the world must take careful notice!

Yesterday, a people claiming to be chosen stole nearby lands and unilaterally declared itself a State! Today they illegally occupy and build on more stolen lands - obstructing statehood for the occupied. Tomorrow they may decide to 'pull the plug' on us "beasts and donkeys" - unless we awaken in time!

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The Samson Option - Israel's Threat to Take Down the World With It - Part 2 of 2

ISRAELI NUCLEAR THREATS AND BLACKMAIL The Samson Option Still Threatens the World by Carol Moore, December 2009 version The phrase the “Samson Option” is used to describe Israel’s strategy of massive nuclear retaliation against “enemy” nations should its existence as a Jewish state be jeopardized through military attack. Israeli leaders created the term in the mid-1960s, inspired by the Biblical figure Samson, who destroyed a Philistine temple, killing himself and thousands of Philistine enemies.[1][2] Israel refuses to admit officially that it has nuclear weapons - a policy known as “nuclear ambiguity” or "nuclear opacity."[3] This despite government officials inferring repeatedly - and occasionally admitting - the fact. And despite Israeli nuclear whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu making public smuggled photographs of  nuclear weapons and production equipment in the 1980s.[4] Israel now may have as many as 400 atomic and hydrogen nuclear weapons,[5][6]  as well as the ability to launch them via long range missiles, submarines and aircraft.[7] It can use them in a second strike even if its military is devastated. Originally a strategy of last resort retaliation - even if it means Israel’s annihilation - it has developed into being a nuclear bullying strategy to further Israel’s territorial goals through threats and blackmail. Israel has bullied not only Arab and Muslim nations, but the United States and Russia with its Samson Option threats.  Mordechai Vanunu has alleged that Israel uses for purposes of blackmail its ability to "bombard any city all over the world, and not only those in Europe but also those in the United States."[8] Official policy and threats During the 1960s Israel concentrated on conventional military superiority to defend lands confiscated in the 1948 and 1967 wars - and to convince Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories that they could not break free of it. However, in 1973's Yom Kippur War Israel was almost overwhelmed by Arab forces.  Prime Minister Golda Meir authorized a nuclear alert, ordering 13 atomic bombs be prepared for missiles and aircraft. Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Simha Dinitz threatened “very serious conclusions" if there was not an immediate airlift of supplies.[9]  This forced U.S. President Richard Nixon to make emergency airlifts of state of the art military supplies to Israel.[10][11] Fearing intervention by the Soviet Union, U.S. forces went on Defense Condition (DEFCON) III alert status[12], something which could have led to full scale nuclear war in case of misinterpretation of signals or hardware or software failures. Additionally, as Seymour Hersh documents in detail in his book The Samson Option, from 1973 these weapons have been used to discourage the Soviet Union - now Russia - from intervening militarily on behalf of Arab nations.[13] Obviously an Israeli nuclear attack on Russia by the United States’ great ally Israel would result in Russia sending thousands of nuclear weapons towards the U.S. and the U.S. responding in kind. Not surprisingly, no nation state has attempted to attack Israel since 1973. A former Israeli official justified Israel’s threats. “You Americans screwed us” in not supporting Israel in its 1956 war with Egypt. “We can still remember the smell of Auschwitz and Treblinka. Next time we’ll take all of you with us.”[14]  General Moshe Dayan, a leading promoter of Israel’s nuclear program[15], has been quoted as saying “Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”[16] Amos Rubin, an economic adviser to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, said "If left to its own Israel will have no choice but to fall back on a riskier defense which will endanger itself and the world at large... To enable Israel to abstain from dependence on nuclear arms calls for $2 to 3 billion per year in U.S. aid."[17] In 1977, after a right-wing coalition under Menachen Begin took power, the Israelis began to use the Samson Option not just to deter attack but to allow Israel to “redraw the political map of the Middle East” by expanding hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers into the West Bank and Gaza.[18] Then-Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon said things like "We are much more important than (Americans) think. We can take the middle east with us whenever we go"[19] and "Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches."[20]  He proclaimed his - and many Likud Party members' - goals of transforming Jordan into a Palestinian state and “transferring” all Palestinian refugees there.[21][22]  A practice known worldwide as "ethnic cleansing." To dissuade the Soviet Union from interfering with its plans, Prime Minister Begin immediately “gave orders to target more Soviet cities” for potential nuclear attack. Its American spy Jonathan Pollard was caught stealing such nuclear targeting information from the U.S. military in 1985.[23] During the next 25 years Israel became more militarily adventurous, bombing Iraq’s under-construction Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, invading Lebanon to destroy Palestinian refugee camps in 1982 and to fight Hezbollah in 2006, massively bombing civilian targets in the West Bank Jenin refugee camp in 2002 and thoughout Gaza in 2008-2009. There are conflicting reports about whether Israel went on nuclear alert and armed missiles with nuclear weapons during the 1991 Gulf War after Iraq shot conventionally armed scud missiles into it.[24][25] In 2002, while the United States was building for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon threatened that if Israel was attacked “Israel will react. Is it clear?”[26]  Israeli defense analyst Zeev Schiff explained: “Israel could respond with a nuclear retaliation that would eradicate Iraq as a country.” It is believed President Bush gave Sharon the green-light to attack Baghdad in retaliation, including with nuclear weapons, but only if attacks came before the American military invasion.[27] Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres has admitted that nuclear weapons are used by Israel for “compellent purposes” - i.e., forcing others to accept Israeli political demands.[28] In 1998 Peres was quoted as saying, "We have built a nuclear option, not in order to have a Hiroshima, but to have an Oslo," referring to imposing a settlement on the Palestinians.[29] In her book Israel’s Sacred Terrorism Livia Rokach documented how Israelis have used religion to justify paramilitary and state terrorism to create and maintain a Jewish State.[30]  Two other Israeli retaliation strategies are the popularized phrase “Wrath of God,” the alleged Israeli assassination of those it held responsible for the 1972 killings of Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics[31], and the “Dahiya doctrine” of destruction of civilian areas to punish Palestinians for supporting their leaders.[32] Israeli Israel Shahak wrote in 1997: "Israel clearly prepares itself to seek overtly a hegemony over the entire Middle East...without hesitating to use for the purpose all means available, including nuclear ones."[33] Zeev Schiff opined in 1998 that "Off-the-cuff Israeli nuclear threats have become a problem."[34] In 2003 David Hirst noted that “The threatening of wild, irrational violence, in response to political pressure, has been an Israeli impulse from the very earliest days” and called Israel a candidate for “the role of 'nuclear-crazy' state.”[35] Noam Chomsky said of the Samson Option “the craziness of the state is not because the people are insane. Once you pick a policy of choosing expansion over security, that's what you end up getting stuck with.”[36] Efraim Karsh calls the Samson Option the “rationality of pretended irrationality,” but warns that seeming too irrational could encourage other nations to attack Israel in their own defense.[37] Samson Option Supporters Two Israel supporters are frequently quoted for their explicit support of the Samson Option.  Martin Van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has been quoted as saying: "Most European capitals are targets for our air force....We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under."[38] In 2002 the Los Angeles Times, published an opinion piece by Louisiana State University professor David Perlmutter in which he wrote: "What would serve the Jew-hating world better in repayment for thousands of years of massacres but a Nuclear Winter. Or invite all those tut-tutting European statesmen and peace activists to join us in the ovens? For the first time in history, a people facing extermination while the world either cackles or looks away--unlike the Armenians, Tibetans, World War II European Jews or Rwandans--have the power to destroy the world. The ultimate justice?"[39] Two influential Israel supporters advocate more active use of the Samson Option threat. Louis René Beres, a professor of Political Science at Purdue University and an Ariel Sharon advisor, recommends Israel use the Samson Option threat to support conventional preemptive attacks against enemy nuclear and non-nuclear assets, discouraging conventional retaliation.[40]  Jerome Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D. in political science and author of two books encouraging Israel to use nuclear weapons[41], writes that “Israel's Samson Option” could be “a preemptive strike against Iran.”[42] The Israelis also are egged on in its nuclear threats by "Christian Zionists" like Hal Lindsay who believe Israel must expand its control of territory to its Biblical borders in order to bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus Christ.[43]  Some suspect that former President George W. Bush holds such beliefs,[44] especially after his November 2007 statement "If you want to see World War Three, you know, a way to do that is to attack Israel with a nuclear weapon."[45]    Israeli Threats Against Iran Israel’s threats to use nuclear weapons, including preemptively, have increased greatly since the revelation in 2002 that Iran was building uranium enrichment facilities. That year Prime Minister Ariel Sharon demanded that the international community target Iran as soon as it was finished dealing with Iraq.[46] Unlike Israel, Iran has accepted supervision of its nuclear program under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Iran claims its program is only for production of nuclear power as oil becomes more scarce and expensive, and not for nuclear weapons. However, Israel opposes any challenge to its nuclear hegemony since not only would it be less able to use its nuclear threat to keep confiscated lands, but fear of Iran actually might cause citizens to leave Israel and investment to dry up.[47][48]  Israel also must worry about other “enemy” Arab nations which already are seeking or soon may seek nuclear energy.[49] In 2004 Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that Israel would consider "all options" to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons.[50] Rumors and warnings of an impending Israeli attack on Iran’s facilities, including possibly with nuclear weapons, have circulated repeatedly since that time.[51][52] Meanwhile, Israel still considers Russia a target because of its technical assistance to Iran’s nuclear program and its continued arms sales to Iran and other “enemy” nations.[53] [54][55] In 2007 Israeli officials warned Russia: "We hope they understand that this is a threat that could come back to them as well."[56] In 2005 George Bush admitted that the U.S. would support an Israeli attack on Iran.[57] Soon after his election President Barak Obama seemed to accept the inevitability of an Iranian nuclear bomb.[58] However, in early 2009 Likud Party hawk Benjamin Netanyahu was elected Israeli Prime Minister. Netanyahu already had threatened that Israel would attack Iran to stop its nuclear program if Obama did not do so.[59] Considering Iran’s threats to retaliate, this easily could lead to a “Samson Option” scenario.[60][61]  After May[62] and September meetings with Netanyahu in 2009, Obama threatened Iran with attack if it did not “come clean about” and curb its nuclear program.[63][64] This statement came a day after Netanyahus’ speech to the United Nations where he invoked the memory of Auschwitz and family members slain by Nazis.[65] Obama also has suffered constant pressure to take a more belligerent stand against Iran from neoconservatives and the “Israel lobby.”[66][67][68][69] Too few peace or political activists, left or right, are willing to challenge Israel’s Samson Option threats or even to make a nuclear free Middle East a central demand.[70] Until military and political leaders, as well as activists, are willing to change U.S. policy of defacto support for Israel’s Samson Option the whole world remains a potential victim of this horrific strategy.