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The Samson Option: Was nuclear blackmail confirmed by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir?

"The Samson Option" sounds like the plot of yet another apocalyptic Hollywood movie: a group of fanatical terrorists have gained control of nuclear weapons and are threatening to destroy the world in a fit of pique. But in this case the nukes are all too real and the terrorists happen to be the wildly irrational leaders of Israel. And the story is unfortunately true: Golda Meir (known as "Mother Israel") once threatened to destroy the world with nuclear weapons during an interview with the BBC. Furthermore, Martin Van Creveld, an Israeli military expert and professor 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." Amos Rubin, an economic adviser to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, once 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." In other words, Americans can either pay billions in confidence money every year, or be wiped out. Why? So that Israeli "settlers" can continue to steal the Palestinians' ever-dwindling land in the West Bank, while the mighty IDF protects the robber barons rather than their victims. According to Israel, the laws of the jungle and the Wild, Wild West still apply in the 21st century, because "might makes right."

Will Israel treat your children, and all earth's children, with the same blood-chilling disdain it shows for Palestinian children?

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.
—Michael R. Burch, "Epitaph for a Palestinian Child"

Timeline of Israel's Nuclear Ambitions, Deceptions and Threats to Destroy the World

1948: Soon after its founding, Israel begins working on a nuclear program with the help of the US and France.
1952: Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion directs Ernst David Bergmann to secretly establish and chair the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission.
1953:  Israeli researchers perfect a process for extracting uranium, and develop a new method of producing heavy water. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be raised to build Israel's nuclear bomb over the next twenty years, mostly from American Jews; the effort is led by Abraham Feinberg, who financially backs presidents Truman, Johnson and Kennedy. (Truman and Kennedy were both incensed by pro-Israel lobbying.)
1955: Under the Atoms for Peace program, overseen by Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss, a pro-Israel American Jew who heads the Atomic Energy Commission, the US helps fund a small Israeli nuclear research reactor. (Strauss learned about Dimona and its purpose but did not inform the US government.) Shimon Peres, then Israel's Defense Minister, urges Bergmann to create a nuclear weapons project. Bergmann asks US for "something like a real reactor" but the request is denied; Bergmann and Peres then approach France.
1957: Ousted French Prime Minister Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury backdates his signature to make a letter of agreement seem valid. France then sells Israel a nuclear reactor to be installed at Dimona. Six of seven members of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission immediately resign, protesting that the reactor is the precursor to "political adventurism which will unite the world against us." France conceals its activities in Israel.
1958: Dimona construction begins in "extreme secrecy" but U-2 spy planes alert the US that reactor construction is underway. French Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle discovers and tries to end French involvement, but Shimon Peres keeps France on board the purportedly "peaceful" program.
1960: Norway sells 20 tons of heavy water to Israel; British intelligence suspects plutonium production is the goal. Israeli scientists attend the first French atomic explosion.
1961: President John F. Kennedy opposes Israel having the bomb and tells Ben-Gurion so in many letters and during a meeting in New York about Dimona; Ben-Gurion tells JFK its purpose is peaceful and refuses to allow international inspections. Israel tests its first Shavit missile; British intelligence concludes that Israel intends to build nuclear weapons.
1962: Kennedy demands inspections of Dimona; Ben-Gurion agrees in return for weaponry. US inspectors are "highly suspicious" of illicit activity but find no hard evidence. (Elevators to underground floors had been walled off and a fake control room had been created.) Dimona goes critical; a reprocessing facility becomes operational soon thereafter.
1963: Kennedy refuses to sign any security arrangement with Israel; however, the Kennedy assassination brings the very pro-Israel Lyndon Johnson to power. (There is an unproven theory that the Mossad killed Kennedy.)
1964: Dimona begins producing plutonium.
1965: Israel performs its first plutonium extraction; France assists Israel in developing Jericho missiles.
1966: The U.S. begins fighter jet and arms shipments to Israel. LBJ discourages further reports on Israel's nuclear situation from the US embassy in Israel. Israel refuses money for a nuclear desalination plant which is tied to international inspections of Dimona. Britain despite its "intelligence" nevertheless ships Israel lethal nuclear bomb materials, such as lithium-6, used in hydrogen bombs.
1967: The Six Day War begins when Israel preemptively attacks an Egyptian military buildup in the Sinai Peninsula. Israel attacks the USS Liberty surveillance vessel, killing 34 sailors. The Soviet Union supports Arabs militarily, sends ships to the region and breaks diplomatic ties with Israel.
1968: Defense Minister Moshe Dayan orders the first Israeli nuclear missiles; the words "Never again" are reportedly welded into the initial warhead. LBJ pressures Israel to sign a non-proliferation treaty; Israel refuses.
1969: The CIA suspects Israel of stealing highly enriched uranium from the US Navy. President Richard Nixon advises Golda Meir to maintain a policy of nuclear ambiguity; Meir instead threatens to destroy the world (see the account below). A Nixon-Meir secret deal ends US inspections. Nixon and his most trusted adviser, Henry Kissinger, an American Jew, support Israeli nukes, give Israel nuclear targeting data, and send Israel advanced Phantom fighters.
1973: The first Israeli ballistic nuclear missile is produced. During the Yom Kippur war, Dayan has Israeli missiles target Cairo and Damascus for possible nuclear blackmail (see the account below). Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Simha Dinitz threatens “very serious conclusions" if there is not an immediate airlift of military supplies. Kissinger later reveals that the threat of a nuclear attack caused him to urge a massive resupply of Israel. US goes to DEFCON III status, risking a possible nuclear war with the USSR. South Africa, which is supplying Israel with hundreds of tons of uranium yellowcake, drops inspection requirements.
1974: US intelligence believes Israel has fission devices and possible thermonuclear devices. Dayan visits South Africa to discuss testing a nuclear weapon there.
1975: Israel offers to sell nuclear weapons to South Africa, according to South African government documents published by the Guardian. Israel receives nuclear-capable Lance missiles from the US, while the US government remains in official denial about Israel having nuclear weapons.
1976: South Africa's Prime Minister visits Israel to sign several nuclear and other agreements.
1977: Ex-terrorist Menachem Begin's right-wing, expansionist Likud Party takes power in Israel and is determined to reshape the Middle East to Israel's vision. Israel resorts to nuclear targeting of more cities in the Soviet Union. President Carter does not take up the issue, despite conducting Camp David peace talks between Egypt and Israel. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon says: "We are much more important than (Americans) think. We can take the Middle East with us whenever we go." and "Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches."
1979: The US Vela spacecraft detects a suspected joint Israeli/South African nuclear detonation. President Carter provides Israel access to American spy satellite photos for defense purposes only, but Israelis manages to get them for pre-emptive strikes against Middle East and Russia. 
1981: Israel, using "defense only" US spy satellite photos, launches a "Begin Doctrine" preemptive F-16 air strike against a nuclear reactor in Osirak, Iraq, in Operation Opera. US strictly limits further access to spy photos. Sharon recruits American Navy employee Jonathan Pollard as a spy to obtain satellite photos plus massive amounts of other classified information about Israel's enemies, some of which Israel turns over to the Soviet Union to try to win over its adversary. Sharon talks President Reagan into a formal Israel-US military alliance against the Soviet Union, but Defense Chief Weinberger delays and sabotages it.
1982: Under Sharon's military leadership, Israel invades Lebanon as the first stage of a plan to drive Palestinians into Jordan, using the threat of nuclear weapons to intimidate any adversaries. However, despite destroying Beirut and killing more than 10,000 Arabs and 500 Israelis, Sharon's efforts in Lebanon fail. Israel eventually withdraws and Sharon loses his position. Reagan authorizes the USS New Jersey to shell Beirut. In an eerie "harmonic convergence" on September 11, 1982 he writes in his diary that this may be seen as an act of war. Osama Bin Laden later says that when he saw American shells causing the towers of Beirut to fall, he conceived his plan to do the same thing to American towers.
1985: Jonathan Pollard is caught stealing nuclear targeting information from the U.S. military.
1986: The London-based Sunday Times reports that Israel has nuclear weapons, including thermonuclear devices, according to photographs and other evidence provided by Mordechai Vanunu, a Dimona nuclear technician. Vanunu, who also confirmed Dimona's suspected underground facilities, was kidnapped by the Mossad in Rome, brought back to Israel, and sentenced to 18 years in prison for treason and espionage. Vanunu has alleged that Israel uses its ability to "bombard any city all over the world, and not only those in Europe but also those in the United States"  for purposes of blackmail.
1987: Israel tests a nuclear-capable Jericho II missile. Israel ignores multiple calls by the UN to sign a non-proliferation treaty.
1988: Israel launches its first spy satellite into orbit.
1991: During the Gulf War, Israel goes on full-scale nuclear alert and mobile nuclear missile launchers are deployed. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir issued veiled nuclear threats toward Iraq, saying: "all those who threaten us should know that whoever dares strike Israel will be struck hard and in the most severe way," adding that "Israel has a very strong deterrent capability."
1997: Israel Shahak writes: "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."
1998: Former Prime Minister Shimon Peres admits that nuclear weapons are used by Israel for “compellent purposes” (i.e., forcing others to accept Israeli political demands). Peres says, "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. Israeli defense analyst Zeev Schiff says: "Off-the-cuff Israeli nuclear threats have become a problem."
2000: Knesset debates Israel's nuclear weapons program for the first time. Germany sells Israel three state-of-the-art Dolphin submarines and Israel tests its first submarine-launched missile. Sharon is elected Prime Minister, still intending to use nuclear weapons to bully other nations and remake the Middle East for the benefit of Israel. George W. Bush is elected president and his neoconservative allies fully support Israel. Right-wing Israelis begin freely talking about attacking other nations, including with nuclear weapons.
2001: Bush inflames Arabs by clearly siding with Israel's expansionist aims, part of the reason for the 9-11 attacks. Bush obsesses about attacking Iraq, including the option of using nuclear weapons.
2002: While the US prepares to invade Iraq, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon threatens that if Israel is attacked “Israel will react. Is it clear?” Zeev Schiff explained: “Israel could respond with a nuclear retaliation that would eradicate Iraq as a country.”
2002: Bush gives Israel the go-ahead to use nuclear weapons against Iraq if Saddam attacks Israel before the American invasion of Iraq. Pentagon Office of Special Plans uses information from Iraqi dissidents and Israel's Mossad to convince Americans that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction that are an imminent threat against America. Israel launches Ofek-5 satellite with a powerful new inter-continental missile.
2003: David Hirst notes: “The threatening of wild, irrational violence, in response to political pressure, has been an Israeli impulse from the very earliest days,” calling Israel a candidate for “the role of 'nuclear-crazy' state.” UN General Assembly passes a resolution that Israel must join the nonproliferation treaty by a vote of 164-4. Sharon tells Israeli newspaper that Israel will not dismantle its “special measures” because the US will not remain in the Middle East forever. 
2004 Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz says that Israel will consider "all options" to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons. Rumors and warnings of an impending Israeli attack on Iran’s facilities, including possibly with nuclear weapons, have circulated repeatedly ever since.
2004: Israel buys two more German submarines for delivering nuclear tipped cruise missiles, making a total of five.
2004: Mordechai Vanunu's prison term ends but Israel keeps putting him in prison and/or under house arrest for trying to speak to others outside the country on nuclear issues and for trying to leave Israel permanently.
2006: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accidentally includes Israel in a list of the major nuclear superpowers with the US, France and Russia (see the account below).
2007: Israel carries out Operation Orchard, a preemptive first strike against an alleged Syrian reactor. Israeli officials warn Russia: "We hope they understand that this is a threat that could come back to them as well."
2008: Former US President Jimmy Carter states that "Israel has 150 or more" nuclear weapons.
2008: A "dramatic" Jericho III ICBM test gives Israel extremely long distance nuclear attack capabilities. Now no one anywhere in the world is safe. Soon after the successful test launch, Isaac Ben-Israel, a retired army general told Israeli Channel 2 TV: “Everybody can do the math and understand that the significance is that we can reach with a rocket engine to every point in the world.” The test came two days after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned that "all options were on the table to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons" and few months after Israel bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear facility, built with extensive help from North Korea
2010: After Israel killed nine peace activists of the Gaza Flotilla, including an American citizen, Dr. Norman Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, said: "Israel is now a lunatic state. It's a lunatic state with between two and three hundred nuclear devices. It is threatening war daily against Iran and against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah in Lebanon has already stated on several occasions that if Israel attacks it will retaliate in kind. Things are getting out of control. We have to ask ourselves a simple, basic, fundamental question: can a lunatic state like Israel be trusted with two to three hundred nuclear devices when it is now threatening its neighbors Iran and Lebanon with an attack?"
2012: Der Spiegel published an investigative article stating that Israel has armed its newest submarines with nuclear missiles.

The Meir Affair

Fact can be stranger than fiction. In an interview with Alan Hart of the BBC, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir actually threatened the entire world with nuclear Armageddon. She verified the "Samson Option" without batting an eye, much less flinching ...

Hart: "I recall the words spoken to me many years ago by Golda Meir, Mother Israel, when she was prime minister. At a point during an interview I did with her for the BBC’s Panorama programme, I interrupted her to ask, “Prime Minister, I want to be sure I understand what you’re saying … You are saying that if Israel was ever in danger of being defeated on the battlefield, it would be prepared to take the region and the whole world down with it?"

Meir "without the shortest of pauses for reflection, and in the gravel voice that could charm or intimidate American Presidents according to need" replied: “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Hart: "Within an hour of that interview being transmitted at eight o’clock on a Monday evening, the Times (pre-Murdoch and not then a cheerleader for Zionism) had changed its lead editorial. Its new editorial quoted what Golda had said to me, [adding] its own opinion: 'We had better believe her.' I did, and still do."

Should we believe Alan Hart and share his conviction that Mother Israel meant exactly what she said? Yes, because we have similar reports from other reliable sources. For instance, I remember reading Robert Fisk's book The Great War for Civilisation in which Fisk, a keen-eyed and objective observer, mentioned watching high-ranking American diplomats like Colin Powell and Madeline Albright acting deferentially, even fearfully, around Israeli leaders. If we consider the normal operating mode of American politicians—hubris—that seems hard to believe, unless Israel was threatening to use nuclear weapons. When I put two and two together, it seems to me that Israel may have warned American diplomats, "Unless we are allowed to have our way with Arabs, and the world acquiesces to our brutal, unjust treatment of them, we are willing to unleash a nuclear Armageddon on the world."

And it seems those American diplomats also believed the threat of the Samson Option.

Yom Kipper Madness

Alan Hart also reported that during the "early panic" of the Yom Kippur war in 1973, on the orders of Israel's one-eyed warlord Moshe Dayan, two Israeli missiles were armed with nuclear warheads were targeted on Cairo and Damascus. It is known that the US rapidly re-armed Israel at that time. Did Israel resort to nuclear blackmail, threatening to nuke Cairo and Damascus, unless the US provided Israel with the weapons it demanded?

Is Alan Hart an anti-Semite and an enemy of Israel? It seems that Mother Israel herself didn't think so. Here is how Hart defends himself on his website: "I think I am the only person in the world who enjoyed intimate access to, and on the human level, friendship with arguably the two greatest opposites in all of human history – Golda Meir, Mother Israel, and Yasser Arafat, Father Palestine. The first picture in my epic, three-volume book ZIONISM: THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS is of Golda Meir when she was prime minister. It is inscribed in her own hand 'To a good friend, Alan Hart.' On lecture and debating tours across America I used this picture as a weapon of self defense when I was falsely and maliciously accused of anti-Semitism. I would hold up the picture, read out the inscription, and say to my accuser, 'Do you think that old lady was so stupid that she couldn’t have seen through me if I was anti Jew?!' Everywhere I went that had the effect of turning audiences against my accusers."

The Olmert Affair

In a German TV interview on December 11, 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert included Israel in a list of the major nuclear powers, saying of Iran: "Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel and Russia?" He immediately attempted to backtrack, insisting that Israel's doggedly held position of nuclear weapons ambiguity had not changed. He nonetheless came under harsh criticism from both ends of the Israeli political spectrum due to the perceived threat to Israel's policy of ambiguity.

Opinions

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.”

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.

Martin Van Creveld, an Israeli military expert and professor 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."

Louis René Beres, an Ariel Sharon advisor, recommends that Israel use the Samson Option threat to support conventional preemptive attacks against enemy nuclear and non-nuclear assets, discouraging conventional retaliation.

 Jerome Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D. in political science and author of two books encouraging Israel to use nuclear weapons, writes that “Israel's Samson Option” could be “a preemptive strike against Iran.”

Israelis also are egged on in their 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. 

Former US President George W. Bush may holds such beliefs, as November 2007 he said: "If you want to see World War Three, you know, a way to do that is to attack Israel with a nuclear weapon."

Analysis

In this case, the catch is that the fanatical terrorists are actually running the state of Israel and the nuclear weapons are, alas, all too real and far too numerous. If the Deep Throats who revealed the Samson Option are correct, the terrorists' nefarious plan goes something like this: "If we, the Grand Wizards, er, democratically elected leaders of Israel, are not allowed to steal land we really don't need, while abusing innocent Palestinian women and children and stripping them of their human rights and dignity, we'll just blow the whole fucking world to smithereens! Nanny-nanny-boo-boo!"

I know. I know. It sounds too fucking insane to be true. But then again, insanity seems to reign in the Middle East these days. What's even more insane, if that's possible, is that our government has poured hundreds of billions of tax dollars and advanced weapons into Israel, making Armageddon possible, while calling Palestinian farm families living on the margins of existence "terrorists." It seems the only people more insane than Israel's leaders are ... our own. How did a tiny nation like Israel, with a relatively miniscule population, come to possess the fourth most powerful military on the planet, after those of the U.S., Russia and China? Well, gulp, duh, we paid for it.

With so much firepower provided at the expense of American taxpayers, why the hell does Israel need hundreds of nuclear weapons? Can it be that if Israel is so much as threatened with having to behave civilly, its government intends to threaten the world with nuclear blackmail?

If we recognize and properly appreciate the fear and paranoia running rampant in certain Jewish circles, the Samson Option suddenly doesn't seem so far-fetched. Suppose for a moment that you and I had kicked sand in the face of certain ninety pound weaklings, only to discover their friends included Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Hamas ... well ... we just might start circling the wagons too. When Israeli Jews decided to either subjugate or expel Palestinians, circa 1948, then drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinian farmers and their families from their ancestral land, they didn't plan for the eventuality of a billion Muslims uniting and saying, "Hey, those are our brothers and sisters you're fucking with!" Now, rather than admitting they miscalculated, and giving the Palestinians the land they need to rebuild their shattered lives, it seems Israelis may be playing a zero sum game, with the world as the booby prize.

I emphasize the word "may." I don't pretend to understand the minds of men like Ariel Sharon and Benyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu. How do men with more land and power than they know what to do with decide they must have more, at the expense of the human rights, dignity and wellbeing of innocents? Well, Andrew Jackson forced my Cherokee ancestors to walk the Trail of Tears. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson lived in mansions and spoke glowingly of the "self evident" human rights of all men ... while owning slaves until the day they died. Jefferson even raised his children by Sally Hemmings as slaves in his own house. Anything, it seems, is possible, because the lunacy of power-mad men knows no earthly bounds (unless of course, we impose them).

Fortunately, there is something we can do about the situation in Israel/Palestine today, if only we act before the final curtain falls. But first let's take a closer look: is there a method to any of this surreal madness?

I first heard about the Samson Option in an unusual, "off the beaten path," way. Way, way off the beaten path. Please allow me to explain ...

After agreeing to do a radio show about equal human rights for Palestinians, I had asked about the location of the radio station several times and had received only noncommittal replies, which struck me as mildly odd at the time, but then I'm the trusting sort. Finally the woman who hosted the program (I'll keep her name confidential; better safe than sorry) asked me to meet her at her house well before the show. I assumed this was so we could go over the questions I'd be asked, but it turned out there was an entirely different reason: the radio station was some sort of underground affair, and I never would have been able to find it without a "navigator." Even with her assistance, finding the station was like finding a needle in a haystack (emphasis on "haystack," as in "excessively rural").

(I must admit my naïveté: I had no clue what I was getting into. My only prior experience with the American Underground, if that's what it's called, was at a peace rally where various superannuated flower children and pallid "anarchists" had shaken my hand with hands so limp I was afraid they might atrophy completely before I unclasped them, which out of concern for my being the proverbial bull in a china shop, I did with all due haste. The thing I remember most vividly about the meeting was being chastised (albeit mildly) for wearing the colors red, white and blue at the same time. It seems such things are not done in anarchist circles, although the anarchists were surprisingly meek and unfailingly polite in expressing their tepid distaste for anything smacking of patriotism. I had arrived with the misguided notion that we were all Americans intent on making America a better, safer, more just place to live. But that was merely a pipe dream on my part. Anarchists brook no such jingoistic nonsense. They demand the immediate demise of civilization as we know it, in between sips of lukewarm tea and woebegone hangdog expressions of general disfavor. I believe I attack hotdogs with considerably more relish than they show for their primary occupation, but be that as it may, it was obvious that they would end my world before I helped mend theirs, if only the universe would cease to exist on its own. But I digress . . .

When we finally reached the station, after crossing who-knows-how-many boondocks dirt roads, I was in for a shock. The people running the radio station seemed to know what they were doing, but they were obviously operating clandestinely on a shoestring budget. The "station" was run out of a "control room" half the size of the phone booth Clark Kent used to squeeze into, to change into his Superman duds. I could barely accordionize my six-foot-two, two-hundred-twenty pounds into the requisite position of "interviewee." The microphone summarily thrust into my face found me uncomfortably contorted over it, like a hunchback, because there was only a nanometer between my hindquarters and the back wall. I consoled myself with the thought that Palestinian children were suffering far more than I was, but even so I was no happy camper.

The interview went reasonably well, all things considered, although the host waved her finger at me furiously—No! No! No! What are you thinking?—when I said the Obama administration had done the right thing by requiring Israel to end the "natural growth" of its colonies in the West Bank. Words like "good" are obviously not used in conjunction with governments, however liberal, in anarchistic circles.

In any case, when the interview was over, the host mentioned that the station manager had heard about an Israeli plot to blackmail the world, called the Samson Option. We then chatted amiably for a minute or two about various ways the earth was certain to be destroyed, but it was getting late and it seems even anarchists require their beauty sleep, so it was soon time for us to make our way stealthily back to whatever remained of a civilization so worthless it hardly merited saving. Once I had made it back home alive and had removed my blindfold (just kidding!), I googled "Samson Option" and found its Wikipedia article (which is, of course, not to say that my worst fears had been confirmed, exactly).

Samson was the Jewish "judge" who consorted with Palestinian (then called Philistine) prostitutes, while regularly slaughtering Palestinian men. This of course made him the greatest of all Jewish heroes. (Well, at least until Ariel Sharon and Bibi "rhymes with fibby" Netanyahu appeared on the scene.) Samson's greatest "victory" occurred when he committed Hari Kari by "bringing down the house" on himself and thousands of Philistines. So the name "Samson Option" makes sense, if there is a plan for Israel to destroy its enemies (the rest of the known world) if it isn't allowed to steal land it doesn't need while oppressing Palestinians to its heart's content.

The first extensive details of the weapons program came in the London-based Sunday Times on October 5, 1986, which printed information provided by Mordechai Vanunu, a technician formerly employed at the Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona. For publication of state secrets Vanunu was kidnapped by the Mossad in Rome, brought back to Israel, and sentenced to 18 years in prison for treason and espionage. Although there had been much speculation prior to Vanunu's revelations that the Dimona site was creating nuclear weapons, Vanunu's information indicated that Israel had also built thermonuclear weapons.

As I mentioned before, there is a way to save the world, if only we act soon enough. While Israel is hardly a "democracy" (true democracies don't allow machinegun-toting soldiers to spit on and curse minority schoolchildren, while invading colonialists demolish their parents' homes on the flimsiest of pretexts), Israel is just enough of a democracy for its citizens to vote out the fanatics and vote in new leaders amenable to peace. How can the world encourage Israel to abandon its teenagerish petulance and act with a degree of civility? The answer is exceedingly simple: we can have a new UN resolution based on the American creed of equal rights, fair laws and fair courts for all human beings. How can the Obama administration veto the American Creed? So someone should propose a new UN resolution calling for Israel to unconditionally grant the Palestinians their self-evident rights to fair laws and fair courts. Of course the term "fair" must be defined, but suffice it to say that blatantly racist laws and courts are not "fair." The courts should be subject to peer review by judges appointed by the UN and must be able to set legal precedents. If Israel complies, then peace through justice becomes possible, and the Samson Option will not be needed. If Israel refuses to comply, the UN can impose economic sanctions, which will compel Israeli citizens to "vote their pocketbooks" (a worldwide democratic phenomenon) and elect sane leaders.

Well, there it is: I just told you how to save the world. Will you heed my good advice? Probably not. Who ever takes good advice to heart, much less actually follows it? But if not, at least my friends the anarchists will soon see their fondest dream realized.

The HyperTexts