Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and US Silence

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, 4 May 2026

Fritz Pointer – TRANSCEND Media Service

30 Apr 2026 – Israel became a nuclear power in secret.  This secret was shared, sanctioned, and , at times, willfully ignored by the top political and military officials of the United States since the Eisenhower years, according to Seymour Hersh’s The Samson Option. Hersh reveals the political, diplomatic, and military repercussions that have for decades been concealed from the world. As the 2025-2026 Israeli-American war on Iran escalates, the U.S. President, diplomats and spokes-persons still refuse to mention or talk about Israel’s nuclear arsenal. While insisting that Iran have zero uranium enrichment for civilian use.

The American government and people are primed and coached not to see what they do not want to see.  Presidents and people must turn a blind eye towards Israel’s nuclear capacity while paying lip service to the goal of nuclear nonproliferation. We are to remain ignorant and oblivious of one of the classic clandestine operations of our time: Israel’s spectacular underground nuclear facility in the Negev Desert, where Israeli scientists began manufacturing nuclear warheads in the late 1969s. The money for the nuclear program was raised in the US and Europe, and the early technology was acquired with the aid of France. People in America and around the world must realize the hypocrisy of the American policy of publicly pretending that Israel’s nuclear arsenal does not exist.

US, and its allies, are also primed and coached to ignore the fact that Israel is a genocidal, illegitimate, ethno-supremacist regime which considers itself a master-race, a chosen people, and everyone else to be Goyam or subhuman.  The US regime, with the collective white supremacists allies wants to help the Israeli barbarians control the lands from the Nile to the Euphrates according to the buffoonish U.S. ambassador, Mike Huckabee.

Popular author Roald Dahl in the Literary Review, following Israel’s 1982 massacres and destruction in Lebanon, writes: “Never before in the history of man has a race of people switched so rapidly from being much-pitied victims to barbarous murders. Never before has a race of people generated so much sympathy around the world and then, in the space of a lifetime, succeeded in turning that sympathy into hatred and revulsion” (The World After Gaza p. 40). Israel, today, with its ideology of Greater Israel, should not and must not possess nuclear weapons.

A year after the Six Day War, the Israeli historian Jacob Talmon wrote: “I am not enough of a chauvinist to believe that the Jews are exempt from the snares and perversions which lie in wait for all mankind…For an Israel which lost its bearing — Jewish, liberal, and idealistic — would become repulsively similar to the arch persecutors of Jews” (The World After Gaza, p. 42). Obviously, Talmon is referring to the Israelis persecution of Palestinians. And, philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz who would win the Israel Prize in 1995, warned against the “Nazification” of Israel (p.42). Clearly, such a country should not be in possession of a nuclear bomb.

A few questions to consider. Can the world afford to pretend that Israel is not a nuclear power because to do so would raise difficult issues? Can any international agreements to limit the spread of nuclear weapons be enforced if Israel’s bombs are not fully accounted for? Can Iran and other Muslim nations truly be expected to ignore Israel’s possession of atomic weapons simply because the weapons are not publicized? Should Israel, because of its economic, military, and widespread emotional support in America, be held to a different moral standard than Pakistan or North Korea, India or Russia?

Of course, Israel has a well-thought-out nuclear strategy, and if sufficiently threatened – as they are increasingly being during the current war with Iran, they will use it.  That strategy includes what they see as “The Samson Option.” Samson, according to the Bible, had been captured by the Philistines after a bloody fight and put on display, with his eyes torn out, for public entertainment in Dagon’s Temple in Gaza.  He asked God to give him back his strength for the last time and cried out, “Let my soul die with the Philistines.”  With that, he pushed apart the temple pillars, bringing down the roof and killing himself and his enemies. For Israel’s myopic nuclear advocates, this selfish, narrow-minded disregard for others, became their way of saying “Never again.”

As if the Jewish people are incomparably unique; for example, Indigenous Americans, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the Extermination of the Herero in Namibia, Arminian genocide, Hiroshima/Nagasaki, have  all experienced their own Holocaust, In fact Zionist Israelis seem to say that “ we will mimic and inflict our experience on the Palestinians.” We cannot continue to let the crimes of the past be an alibi for current atrocities. As trite as it sounds, in the words of Desmond Tutu “There’s no future without forgiveness.” For the sake of Humanity I hope Israel can find a better Option than Samson.

We must not forget United Nations Resolution 71/258:

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) includes a comprehensive set of prohibitions on participating in any nuclear weapon activities. These include undertakings not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.

And, The Constitution for the Federation of the Earth, Article 4.2 which states:

Supervise disarmament and prevent rearmament, prohibit and eliminate the design, testing, manufacture, sale, purchase, use, and possession of weapons of mass-destruction, and prohibit or regulate all lethal weapons which the World Parliament may decide.

Sources:

Hersh, Seymour, The Samson Option, “Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American   Foreign Policy, Random House, 1991.

Mishra Pankaj, The World After Gaza, Penguin, 2025.

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Fritz Pointer is a retired professor of English and African American Studies.  He is the vice president of Democratic World Federalists and has published numerous scholarly articles such as African Oral Epic Poetry: Praising the Deeds of a Mythic Hero (2013).  Being the older brother of the popularly known singing group, The Pointer Sisters, he has co-authored Fairytale: the Pointer Sisters’ Family History. Pointer’s main interests include combating racism, advancing human rights, ending war, eliminating nuclear weapons, and nonviolent solutions to global problems.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 4 May 2026.

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