The Samson Option

The Samson Option is Israel's ultimate deterrence strategy compromised of a overwhelming nuclear retaliation as a "last resort" against any nation or nations whose military attacks threaten the very existence of Israel.  The phrase also has been used more generally to describe Israel's nuclear program. 

The CIA believe that Israel possesses between 200 and 400 thermonuclear weapons, each in the multiple-megaton range. Many of these nuclear warheads can be launched from land, sea and air. This gives Israel a 2nd, 3rd and 4th strike capability even if much of the country is reduced to rubble and ruin.

Although nuclear weapons are seen as the back bone of Israel's national security, the Jewish homeland avoided building its military around them, instead it has sought to achieve superior airpower coupled with a state of the art mobilized infantry. The original conception of the Samson Option was only as deterrence. According to United States journalist Seymour Hersh and Israeli historian Avner Cohen, Israeli leaders like David Ben-Gurion, Shimon Peres, Levi Eshkol and Moshe Dayan coined the phrase in the mid-1960s. They named it after the biblical figure Samson, who pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistines with him. 

In the 1973 during the Yom Kippur War, Arab forces were overwhelming Israeli forces and Prime Minister Golda Meir authorized a nuclear attack and ordered 13 nuclear weapons be readied for use by missiles and Israeli aircraft.  The Israeli Ambassador warned President Nixon that if the United States did not airlift supplies, Israel would proceed with the Samson Option, Nixon complied immediately.

Louisiana State University professor David Perlmutter wrote:

"Israel has been building nuclear weapons for 30 years. The Jews understand what passive and powerless acceptance of doom has meant for them in the past, and they have ensured against it. Masada was NOT an example to follow—it hurt the Romans not a bit. (The ancient siege of Masada where 936 Jewish Sicarii committed mass suicide rather than be defeated and enslaved by the Romans.)  Unlike the Armenians, Tibetans, the American Indians, Afriacn slaves, World War II European Jews or Rwandans, for the first time in history, a people facing extermination have the power to take the world with them in utter annihilation.

I personally think that General Moshe Dayan statement was piercingly true...

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

The one last and most important statement that needs to be said and must NEVER be forgotten....  

Israel is the Apple of GOD'S eye. 

 Those that Bless Israel will be blessed, those foolish enough to curse Israel will be wiped from the face of the planet."