The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy

The Samson Option

Author	Seymour Hersh
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Non-fiction
Publisher	Random House
Publication date	1991
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	362 pp
ISBN	0-394-57006-5
OCLC	24609770
Dewey Decimal	355.8/25119/095694 20
LC Class	UA853.I8 H47 1991

The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy is a 1991 book by Seymour Hersh. It details the history of Israel's nuclear weapons program and its effects on Israel-American relations. The "Samson Option" of the book's title refers to the nuclear strategy whereby Israel would launch a massive nuclear retaliatory strike if the state itself was being overrun, just as the Biblical figure Samson is said to have pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistines who had gathered to see him humiliated.

According to The New York Times, Hersh relied on Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli government employee who says he worked for Israeli intelligence, for much of his information on the state of the Israeli nuclear program.^[1] Hersh did not travel to Israel to conduct interviews for the book, believing that he might have been subject to the Israeli Military Censor. Nevertheless, he did interview Israelis in the United States and Europe during his three years of research.^[1]