The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy is a 1991 book by Seymour Hersh. It details the history of Israel's nuclear weapons program and its effects on Israel-American relations. The "Samson Option" of the book's title refers to the nuclear strategy whereby Israel would launch a massive nuclear retaliatory strike if the state itself was being overrun, just as the Biblical figure Samson is said to have pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistines who
Heli (biblical figure) Heli (biblical figure) Heli (, "Hēlì") is a Biblical individual mentioned in the Gospel of Luke as an ancestor of Jesus. In Luke's account of the genealogy of Jesus from David via David's son Nathan, Heli is listed before Joseph, husband of Mary and after Matthat. Heli is not mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus from David via David's son Solomon in the Gospel of Matthew, the only other canonical gospel to include a genealogy; that genealogy instead identifies "Jacob" as Joseph's putative father. Since Joseph cannot be both "begotten of Jacob", descended from Solomon (according to Matthew 1), and