The Description of The Nuclear “Moment of Truth” during the 1973 Yom Kippur War in “The Samson Option” AND ITS PROGENY

[solutions]

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---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: The Details of Your Description of “The Samson Option” Description of the Yom Kippur War
From: Solutions
Date: Tue December 6, 2023 9:39 am PST
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
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Dear John,

I have finished reading our focus book, The Samson Option by Seymour Hersh, and am curious about his and your descriptions of the “moment of truth” about which Seymour Hersh has a chapter entitled “Nuclear Blackmail” and its immediately-preceding chapter.

Your description of The Samson Option’s “moment or truth” from your Original Topic Proposal
(viewtopic.php?f=770&t=2425&sid=35f3bf38 ... 2a5bf4a626) had said [quoting from the earliest time (4/27/2008) of the 24 times our website had referenced Hersh’s The Samson Option] –

Pulitzer-Prize winner Seymour Hersh's “The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Option and American Foreign Policy” (Random House 10/27/1991) described

(a) Israel’s nuclear-weapons program,

(b) how prior to the 1973 attack by Egypt, Israel had a policy that if it ever had fewer than 24 hours to go until annihilation it would fire its nuclear missiles which incidentally were AIMED AT RUSSIAN CITIES RATHER THAN ARAB CAPITALS,

(c) how the Israeli cabinet believed they were within 24 hours of annihilation by Syria during the 1973 war because Israel had been rationing its ammunition vis-à-vis which Henry Kissinger had been refusing to re-supply Israel for 12 months, and

(d) how the Israeli cabinet decided to fire their nuclear missiles AFTER firing a telex to Kissinger giving him a “heads up” on what would be “going down” within a matter of minutes.

Kissinger, according to Seymour Hersh, responded immediately that the Israelis should begin firing their conventional ammunition “as if there were no tomorrow” and that American re-supply planes would take off at dawn. The Israelis did, the Syrian lines stabilized, and Israel did not become the answer to a trivia question (What WAS Israel???).

So if Israel followed the philosophy of General/President Charles de Gaulle when he withdrew France from NATO and developed his own nuclear weapons that America’s nuclear umbrella is NOT credible and only French nuclear weapons would stop Russian tanks from rolling to the Atlantic, what makes Hillary*** think that the “Gulf State Six” will be more gullible than the French and the Israelis???

**********End of 4/27/2008 Quotation**********

[*** During Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential Campaign, she had advocated placing Israel and the Gulf State Six under America’s “Nuclear Umbrella.”]


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Yes, Hersh’s The Samson Option confirms the broad outlines of what you described. However –

(1) it does not claim Israel had a policy of firing its nukes if it reached the point of fewer than 24 hours to go to complete annihilation – though Hersh’s account certainly seems to describe Israel as having reached the point of fewer than 24 hours to go;

(2) it does not disclose the targets of Israel’s nuclear missiles or why those targets had been chosen;

(3) it does not describe the Israeli cabinet meeting called by P.M. Golda Meir to agree that Israel had reached the point of fewer than 24 hours to go and it was time “before turning out the lights” to fire their nuclear missiles; and

(4) it claims that the Israel government tasked its Ambassador to Washington to track down Henry Kissinger to (using Hersh’s chapter heading) engage in “nuclear blackmail” – which BTW Hersh’s account says required a day or two rather than comprising a “heads up” telex that produced an immediate decision.


***************
Could you please explain the discrepancies?

Your friend,

Solutions


---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Re: The Details of [My] Description of “The Samson Option” Description of the Yom Kippur War
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Tue December 6, 2023 3:16 pm MST
To: Solutions
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Dear Solutions,

Thank you very much for your e-mail.

The short answer???

My claim should have said that ALL OF THE DETAILS OF MY DESCRIPTION came from Seymour Hersh’s “The Samson Option” AND ITS PROGENY!!!

The “long form” explanation of what that means???

Yes, the face of our website section for this month’s “Original Proposal” had said –

“Unfortunately, my original 1991 copy of The Samson Option is contained in one of the zillions of storage boxes dating from my 1967-2000 marriage – the exploration and cataloguing of whose contents have always been too painful. Luckily (or perhaps due to self-discipline), I have always been blessed with a photographic memory for anything that seemed important and/or interesting. The Samson Option qualified in both categories. Accordingly, the two dozen references to it on our bulletin board going back to 2008, the earliest of which was featured prominently in the 10/15/2023 Original Proposal, were like the proverbial ‘falling off a log.’”

Even though Hersh’s The Samson Option was not published until 1991, which was nearly two decades after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, it was the first public claim that Israel even had nuclear weapons, much less had them back in 1973 and the role they had played in the Yom Kippur War.

Those revelations provoked an avalanche of investigative reporters attempting to obtain additional details concerning any and all allegations in The Samson Option which covers Israel’s nuclear program from the birth of Israel in 1948 to Hersh’s 1991 publication date.

And none of the well-known principals was willing to say anything –

(1) Henry Kissing has never said anything and is now deceased; and

(2) Even Prime Minister Golda Meir (who passed away in 1978), in her autobiography “My Life” which has a chapter on the Yom Kippur War, is extremely circumspect since, as a consummate politician, she obviously did not want to offend anyone, much less Kissinger.

HOWEVER, the investigative reporters who focused on Hersh’s account of the Yom Kippur War claimed that 3-4 attendees of that fateful cabinet meeting said “off the record” everything that was contained in my description – from the long-standing policy, Russian cities as the targets and why, the “lucky” thought to fire off a telex to Kissinger rather than proceed to fire the missiles and “turn out the lights,” Kissinger’s immediate decision/response, etc., etc.

Those claims had been published in numerous places and were readily available on 4/27/2008 when the material contained in the Original Proposal was formulated.

NEVERTHELESS, Israel has always employed a policy of “nuclear ambiguity” pursuant to which it has always denied having nuclear weapons so that its enemies cannot justify developing their own nuclear weapons because Israel admits having them.

AND IT IS OBVIOUS that the internet has been “wiped clean” of all the investigative reports of the 3-4 attendees of the fateful cabinet meeting.

At least repeated and comprehensive Google searches have failed to unearth any of them.

It should remind you of how we all remembered an MIT student designing a fully-functional nuclear weapon from publicly-available information (please see Q&A-47 from this month’s Short Quiz at viewtopic.php?f=772&t=2437&p=3254&hilit ... a626#p3254).

Because reports of the incident and all of the publicly-available information about designing a nuclear weapon had been removed from the internet.

But I told all of our members that removing any information about the incident from the internet DOES NOT REMOVE ALL OF THE HARD COPY STORIES ABOUT THE INCIDENT IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, WALL STREET JOURNAL, ETC., ETC.

So if anyone could remember approximately when the incident happened (it turned out to be 1975) – like someone remembering reading about it while in the hospital for whatever reason – so that I wouldn’t have to go through several decades worth of microfiche, I would be happy to go to a public library and “nail it down.”

After we did “nail it down,” the PBS Nova Science documentary of 3/9/1975 suddenly sprang back to life on the internet – at least in Google searches. [Though the info about nuclear-bomb design did not.]

HOWEVER, trying to “nail down” the reports about the fateful 1973 Israeli Cabinet Meeting and ensuing events is even more daunting – not because the 1991-2008 range is so expansive – but, more importantly, because there is no guarantee any of those reports appeared in the New York Times, etc., OR THAT THEY EVEN APPEARED IN THE AMERICAN MEDIA [THERE ARE, AFTER ALL, MANY CREDIBLE ISRAELI NEWS SOURCES (at least regarding “admissions against interest”) AND, INDEED, CREDIBLE NEWS SOURES OUTSIDE AMERICA AND ISRAEL].

ACCORDINGLY, I am comfortable relying on my “photographic memory for anything that seemed important and/or interesting” since it is not practical to locate any of the many investigative reports 1991-2008 that were published “only God knows where.”

BUT I APOLOGIZE for not saying “Seymour Hersh’s ‘Samson Option’ AND ITS PROGENY.”

Thank you again for your e-mail.

Your friend,

John K.