The Samson Option: How Israel Plans to Commit Suicide Through Its Nuclear Arsenal

“Then Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and leaned his weight against them… And Samson said: ‘Let me die with the Philistines!’ Then he bowed with all his strength, and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people who were in it.”
(Book of Judges 16:29–30)

On an extraordinary morning in the autumn of 1956, Israel — together with France and Britain — launched its assault on Egypt in what became known as the Tripartite Aggression. Yet behind the roar of fighter jets and the clash of fleets, another project was being born in the shadows. A project far more dangerous than bombing airfields or occupying the Suez Canal.

That very day, in a location far removed from the battlefield, an Israeli soldier scribbled a short phrase on a cold, metallic object: “Never again.” He wrote it not on paper, but on the body of the first Israeli nuclear bomb.

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Before Israel: The Birth of an Idea

At the heart of this nuclear ambition was Ernst David Bergmann, a frail chain-smoking scientist whose mind would orchestrate Israel’s most dangerous project. Son of a prominent Berlin rabbi and family friend of Chaim Weizmann — the Zionist chemist who later became Israel’s first president — Bergmann’s life bridged religion, science, and Zionist ambition.

Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933, Bergmann was offered a research post in Manchester through Weizmann’s connections. There he honed his nuclear expertise and came to the attention of Churchill’s top science adviser. By the late 1930s, he was deeply connected to the Zionist project, and soon dispatched to Palestine to serve the Haganah’s technical committee.

From Britain to France, from North Africa to Tel Aviv, Bergmann became indispensable. By 1949 he was leading Israel’s nuclear research, chairing its Atomic Energy Commission, and openly speaking of “peaceful nuclear energy” — while privately preparing the ground for the bomb.

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France Opens the Reactor

Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion lived haunted by the Holocaust. To him, Arab leaders were no less dangerous than Hitler, and deterrence through nuclear weapons became his obsession. “We will never again be led like sheep to the slaughter,” echoed Bergmann, justifying the drive for a bomb.

Surprisingly, the ally who delivered Israel to the nuclear threshold was not Washington but Paris. France, still locked out of the Anglo-American nuclear club and embroiled in its colonial wars, found a willing partner in Tel Aviv.

By the early 1950s, Israeli scientists were working hand-in-hand with the French. The partnership yielded breakthroughs in heavy water production and uranium extraction. By 1957, French engineers were building Israel’s Dimona reactor under the guise of a textile plant.

The design far exceeded its “declared” capacity: capable of producing more than 22 kilograms of plutonium annually — enough for four Hiroshima-sized bombs each year. Israel, under the cloak of secrecy, had crossed the nuclear threshold.

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Washington Turns a Blind Eye

Israel kept its ambitions hidden from the United States. But CIA spy planes soon exposed the sprawling Dimona facility. Reports alarmed Eisenhower’s administration, yet Washington’s response was muted — reduced to polite memos and deliberate silence.

Why? A combination of deep U.S. guilt over the Holocaust, pro-Zionist influence within American institutions, and a reluctance to confront an ally. Figures like Lewis Strauss, the Jewish head of the Atomic Energy Commission, were fully aware of Israel’s project yet refused to challenge it.

Thus, with France’s help and America’s indulgence, Israel joined the world’s clandestine nuclear powers.

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From the Temple to Dimona: The Samson Option

The doctrine that grew from this project became known as the Samson Option — Israel’s nuclear doomsday philosophy. Like Samson of the Old Testament, who pulled down the Philistine temple upon himself and his enemies, Israel’s strategists conceived a suicidal deterrent: If Israel faces annihilation, it will take the entire region down with it.

This theology of mutual destruction was wrapped in biblical imagery and Zionist trauma. For many Israeli elites, the Holocaust demanded a nuclear insurance policy: if survival is impossible, annihilation must be shared.

Inside Israel, some intellectuals decried the suicidal logic. But the dominant political current embraced it. The bomb was not just a weapon — it was a psychological fortress, projecting both strength and fatalism.

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Mordechai Vanunu and the Revelation

In 1986, former Dimona technician Mordechai Vanunu revealed Israel’s secret arsenal to Britain’s Sunday Times. He provided diagrams, photos, and detailed testimony, exposing that Israel’s nuclear capabilities went far beyond speculation.

For breaking Israel’s “nuclear ambiguity,” Vanunu was drugged and kidnapped by Mossad agents in Rome, tried in secret, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Israel’s anger was not only at the exposure of secrets, but at the challenge to its policy of “deterrence through deliberate ambiguity.”

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Israel’s Nuclear Theology and Palestinian Reality

Although the Zionist movement was founded on secular nationalism, it has long weaponised biblical myths. From Samson’s cry — “Let me die with the Philistines” — to modern nuclear doctrine, myth has merged with military strategy.

Since 1948, Israel has inflicted genocide and displacement upon Palestinians with conventional arms. But the shadow of Dimona and the Samson Option ensures that Israel’s threat is not confined to Palestine alone, but extends to the entire region.

Today, while Israel continues its massacres in Gaza broadcast to the world in real time, its nuclear arsenal remains shrouded in strategic ambiguity. Its true motto is no longer “Never again,” but rather the chilling inversion:

“We will not be victims like before — we will be the ones dropping the bomb.”