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
Philistines whose inhabitants would have been called "Palaestīnī" according to normal grammatical practice. Allen Jones suggests that the name "Philistine" represents a corruption of the Greek "phyle histia" ("tribe of the hearth", with the Ionic spelling of "hestia"). The Table of Nations in Genesis 10 states in Hebrew with regard to the descendants of Mizraim, the biblical progenitor of the Egyptians: ""ve-et Patrusim ve-et Kasluhim asher yats'u mi-sham Plištim ve-et Kaftorim."" Literally, it says that those whom "Mizraim" begat included "the Pathrusim, Casluhim (out of whom came the Philistines), and the Caphtorim." There is some debate among interpreters as to whether