I ANALYSIS

JEWISH
111A11011AL
IFILIIIID

THE JEWISH NATIONAL FUND
COUNCIL OF MICHIGAN

Cordially invites you to attend
a Lecture by

DR. RAYMOND TANTER

Professor of Political Science,
University of Michigan

"Prospects for Peace
in the Middle East"

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1991

7:30 P.M.

ADAT SHALOM SYNAGOGUE

29901 Middlebelt
Farmington Hills

This Community Education Program
is part of the JNF's 90th Anniversary Celebration.

Admission is free

Refreshments will be served

For further information, please call JNF,

(313) 557-6644

24

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1991

Hersh's Hype?

Some experts are discounting Seymour
Hersh's new book and its assertions about
the might of Israel's nuclear arsenal.

DANIEL SCHIFRIN

Special to The Jewish News

M

ideast experts in
Washington are
reacting with skep-
ticism to Seymour Hersh's
new book, which claims that
Israel's nuclear capability is
far larger and more active
than previously believed.
The Samson Option, by
Pulitzer Prize winning au-
thor and reporter Seymour
M. Hersh, is not the first
book to suggest that Israel
has a substantial nuclear
arsenal, a charge which
Israel always answers
obliquely. The work does
offer a more detailed story of
how the program developed
from the 1950s through the
Gulf War, and how nuclear
weapons and related spying
missions have colored rela-
tionships with the United
States and the Soviet Union.
For instance, Mr. Hersh
claims that Israel has more
than 300 nuclear missiles,
land mines and artillery
shells, as opposed to the 100
weapons the United States
has believed Israel has.
Mr. Hersh writes that the
weapons have gone on full
alert twice — during the
1973 war and once during
the Gulf War, and that in
the heat of the Yom Kippur
war in 1973, Israel used the
threat of "going nuclear" to
blackmail the United States
into providing additional
arms.
The weapons have been
aimed at the Soviet Union to
get them to stop selling arms
to Arab countries, and dur-
ing the Gulf War at the Arab
nations themselves, accor-
ding to the book.
Although Mr. Hersh is a
special assignment reporter
for the New York Times and
has won numerous jour-
nalism awards, some Wash-
ington area experts dismiss
many of the book's allega-
tions as preposterous.
"The book is being receiv-
ed with skepticism. I'm very
skeptical of what I have
seen,"said Eugene Rostow,
under-secretary of state spe-
cializing in the Middle East
during the 1967 war.
Mr. Rostow, now a
distinguished fellow at the
United States Institute of
Peace, noted that many
assertions, especially that of
Jonathan Pollard transferr-

ing information from the
U.S. Navy to the Soviet
Union via Israel were
"inherently improbable."
The book claims that Mr.
Pollard, convicted of spying
for Israel in 1987, had been a
spy for much longer than 17
months and had worked
primarily to transfer
classified information rel-
evant to Israel's nuclear
program.
Some of this information
was then passed on to the
Soviet Union, in an attempt
to improve relations bet-
ween the two countries, Mr.
Hersh asserts.
Leaders in the Jewish
community, some of whom
were not familiar enough
with the book to be quoted,

"The book is
being received
with skepticism.
I'm very skeptical
of what I have
seen."

noted that many of its
allegations seemed
unbelievable.
"Mr. Hersh relies on peo-
ple who are habitual liars,
and then refers to unnamed
sources for corroboration,"
said Morrie Amitay, a Wash-
ington lobbyist and ex-
ecutive director of Washing-
ton PAC, the largest pro-
Israel PAC. "Immediately, I
think their credibility is at
stake."
Mr. Amitay noted that Mr.
Hersh's decision not to visit
Israel during his research —
on account of Israeli censor
laws concerning its nuclear
program — only hurt his
credibility further.
Concerning the reaction of
Bush administration offi-
cials to claims of Israeli du-
plicity, Mr. Amitay said they
might "take some of the
more lurid assertions lit-
erally if they are so displeas-
ed," but it would be obvious
to most that charges of an
Israeli-Soviet intelligence
network are "patently ab-
surd."
The book's title, referring
to the biblical Samson's
suicidal act in bringing a
temple down on top - of
himself and his captors, was
coined by Mr. Hersh in ref-
erence to a potential nuclear
strategy for Israel.

❑

K