Summary
Israeli historian (1951–), specialist in Israel’s nuclear history, whose works (2000, 2005) supply Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine with its accounts of the Dimona project’s origins, the 1962 debate between the “nuclear technology school” and the “conventionalists”, and the “Policy of Opacity” (Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine, PDF p.118-129 / printed p.109-120).
Details
- On Cohen’s account the nuclear project’s fathers were Ernst David Bergman, David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres, Peres’s most important contribution being the connection to France; France’s assent to the reactor was an “additional incentive” for the 1956 cooperation, not its price (PDF p.118-119).
- Cohen labels the two 1962 schools and shows the controversy hardly qualified as a proper political debate, since neither side really objected to the other’s position and both prevailed by invoking the worst-case scenario (PDF p.121-123).
- In The Last Taboo (2005) Cohen calls the ambiguity policy the “policy of opacity”, ascribes it to taboo, censorship and strategy, and pleads for an open debate while not questioning the weapons’ necessity — he sees the endeavour’s “tremendous success” in turning Israel into a regional power (PDF p.125-126).
- Cohen also records that Peres in 1967 proposed abandoning ambiguity and that Dayan in 1973 suggested deploying nuclear weapons, and stresses Vanunu’s failure to grasp the “actual social function of opacity” (PDF p.130, 133).
Related pages
Policy of Opacity, Dimona, Vanunu Affair, Shimon Peres, Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine