Was
the First Shot in Israel’s War to Achieve Nuclear Supremacy
Fired in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22, 1963?
.
. . [John F. ]Kennedy placed the limitation of the nuclear arms
race at the center of American foreign policy. . . . Israel’s
nuclear enterprise was in direct contradiction with the principles
of his policy. . . .
The
correspondent for Ha’aretz inWashington during the Kennedy
and Johnson presidencies, Amos Elon, filed a report saying that
in a background talk with James Reston of The New York Times, Kennedy
had said that in nuclear matters [Israeli Prime Minister David]
Ben-Gurion was a “wild man.”
| |
—Israeli
historian Michael Karpin
The
Bomb in the Basement:
How
Israel Went Nuclear and
What
That Means for theWorld |
The
murder of American President John F. Kennedy brought to an abrupt
end the massive pressure being applied by the U.S. administration
on the government of Israel to discontinue the nuclear program.
[In
Israel and the Bomb, Avner] Cohen demonstrates at length
the pressures applied by Kennedy on Ben-Gurion . . . in which Kennedy
makes it quite clear to the Israeli prime minister that he will
under no circumstances agree to Israel becoming a nuclear state.
The book implied that, had Kennedy remained alive, it is doubtful
whether Israel would today have a nuclear option.
| |
—Reuven
Pedatzer in Israel’s Ha’aretz,
Feb.
5, 1999, reviewing Avner Cohen’s
Israel
and the Bomb. |
