US think tank: Israel had plan to use atomic bomb in 1967

[Igel]

2. Seems a stretch.

The criticism seems well founded.

In this case, a website that seems to be built entirely upon one source, a retired general in his 70s about a plan he said he came up with for depositing something he'd just have been told about, with everything remembered from 32 years earlier.

Building a nuclear bomb is easy. Get 11 kg or more of plutonium 239, piddle with it, and boom! Building an easily transportable nuclear bomb, one that can be stored and deployed as necessary, that's a bit harder. Making it efficient by reducing the amount of Pu, even harder.

Just the presence of nuclear weapons in Israel in early '67 would be justification for a pre-emptive war, I'd venture to add. Remember, it was perhaps 10 miles from Jordan to the sea, cutting Israel in half. If subject to a surprise attack on all sides, the nuclear weapons could easily have been acquired by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, or Lebanon's military. Would they have just returned them to their countries central military organization or used them to help further their goal of ethnic cleansing or at least returning Jews to their very much subordinate status? Got me. Of the countries in the region, Jordan and Israel are the most stable, and Jordan had the whole Palestinian quasi-civil-war thing.