The interviewer on Israeli radio station Kol Berama asked a provocative question on Nov. 5: “Your expectation is that tomorrow morning we’d drop what amounts to some kind of nuclear bomb on all of Gaza, flattening them, eliminating everybody there?”
“That’s one way,” replied Amichai Eliyahu, a far-right member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet. Eliyahu continued, “The second way is to work out what’s important to them, what scares them, what deters them. … They’re not scared of death.” In a subsequent radio interview, he claimed that since there were “no non-combatants in Gaza,” using an atomic weapon on the Palestinian enclave was “one of the possibilities.”
“Amichai Eliyahu’s words are detached from reality,” stated Netanyahu, who, in a hand slap, suspended him from cabinet meetings indefinitely. Nevertheless, South Africa cited Eliyahu’s remarks in a motion accusing Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice.
As heritage minister, Eliyahu is not part of the three-member war cabinet that is directing Israel’s disastrous incursion into Gaza. But he comes from a line of influential rabbis and is an important voice in the Orthodox, far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, which advocates the annexation of the West Bank and expelling Palestinians.
A known political provocateur, Eliyahu backpedaled on his comments, blaming the interviewers: “They asked me if I’m in favor of nuclear weapons and I said we have to find what hurts them and will cause them to stop.” He evasively characterized his comments on nuclear use as “metaphorical.”
Eliyahu’s remarks are critical in that they represent the admission of the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons by a serving cabinet member in a time of war. Since the 1950s, Israel has engaged in a clandestine program to develop nuclear weapons as an existential guarantee in a post-Holocaust world (the so-called “Samson Option”). Government representatives systematically refuse to confirm or deny the existence of this arsenal. In a 2018 speech, Netanyahu stated cryptically: “Whoever threatens us with destruction puts himself in similar danger, and in any case will not achieve his goal.”
Early in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Israeli army came under severe pressure on both the Suez and the Golan fronts. Four days after the surprise Arab attack, Prime Minister Golda Meir gave the order to activate Israel’s nuclear weapons. Fortunately, they were not used. But the lesson learned was that Israel no longer maintained overwhelming conventional weapon superiority over its adversaries.
Since the Ford administration, official U.S. statements on the issue have reflected an acceptance of this Israeli strategic ambiguity. Yet Washington policymakers should now recognize that, in a severe crisis, an extreme-right Israeli regime might be tempted to launch a small-scale nuclear attack as a demonstration to its enemies that Israel cannot be destroyed and will, in fact, unleash the ultimate weapon. The Israelis have already pounded Gaza with the conventional equivalent of two Hiroshima-sized bombs.
Other extremist leaders in Netanyahu’s cabinet have made provocative comments. “To create a deterrent in the Middle East, Israel has got to show that it is prepared to go berserk,” declared National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of the Otzma Yehudit party. In April, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, head of the National Religious Party, used apocalyptic Biblical references to the destruction of the Amalekites, long-time sworn enemies of the Israelites in the Hebrew Bible. Smotrich sermonized: “You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven — there’s no place under heaven.”
Such Israeli nuclear saber-rattling has found at least one supporter on Capitol Hill. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) compared Israel’s war against Hamas to the U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan in World War II. During an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Graham asked rhetorically: “Why is it okay for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why was it okay for us to do that? I thought it was okay. To Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state.”
Officially, Israel contends that it will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East. However, adversaries, most recently Iran, have seen through this, and Iran has exploited the purported Israeli nuclear arsenal as the rationale for pursuing its own program. Israel’s limited conventional response on April 19 to Iran’s barrage of missiles and drones represents a signal to Iran that Israel has the capability to identify and damage Iranian nuclear assets.
Western sources estimate that Israel has about 90 nuclear warheads, with a capacity to launch from aircraft, intermediate-range ballistic missiles and submarine-launched cruise missiles. This range of delivery systems permits Israel to tailor its nuclear response to specific threats.
At a certain juncture, Israel will have to admit that it cannot totally eliminate Hamas using conventional weapons. Netanyahu is increasingly beholden to extremists like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who have threatened to destroy his coalition if the Biden peace plan is accepted. He is under severe criticism for his failed Gaza strategy and faces multiple legal prosecutions at home. With his back to the wall, like Meir in 1973, would he consider the “Samson Option”?
Robert Rudney is a retired senior adviser in the Department of the Air Force.