speaking about the americans giving supplies to israel during the yom kippur war – one of the other reasons US started giving supplies was because israel threatened to use nuclear weapons on its neighbors if it felt threatened enough. they went as far as to actually unfold the weapon in dimona so it could be visible from space to the american sattelites in the region, which naturally caused the US to panic about it, and was the confirmation that israel is a nuclear power.
Anon doesn't 'know' anything they didn't get from TikTok dis/misinformation.
The Dimona thing is just made up
No half-reputable source on this - not even Seymour Hersh or Avner Cohen (who literally wrote the book on Israeli nuclear history) describes anyone unfolding anything at Dimona for American satellites.
The actual alert involved aircraft at Tel Nof airbase and missile launchers at Hirbat Zachariah. Those are military bases, Anon.
The "visible from space" detail is pure fiction.
What does this tell us, though, about the sources from which you draw your understanding?
Yes, there was a nuclear alert - and Golda Meir overruled it
Dayan pushed to escalate the nuclear posture and Meir shut him down. Avner Cohen documented this from primary sources.
"Threatened its neighbors" is completely backwards
The alert that did happen wasn't pointed at Egypt or Syria. It was a signal to Washington. Israel was three days into a war going badly on two fronts after a surprise attack on Yom Kippur. The nuclear posture was a desperate SOS to an ally, not a threat to its attackers. Reframing that as aggression means taking the target of a surprise attack and casting them as the villain.
The "America panicked and sent weapons" story erases the entire Cold War
The resupply was the subject of an administration's internal disagreement. Defense Secretary Schlesinger was actively arguing against it.
"Our shipping any stuff into Israel blows any image we may have as an honest broker."
The administration was weighing Soviet resupply of Egypt and Syria, superpower escalation risks, Arab oil politics, and the possibility of an ally's military collapse.
Collapsing all of that into "Israel threatened nukes so America caved" doesn't simplify the history. It replaces the history with a racist story about Jewish coercion of American power.
That framing has a pedigree, Anon. It's not a good pedigree. It says a lot about you.
The timeline is just wrong
Nixon and Meir reportedly reached a secret understanding about Israel's nuclear status in 1969. Four years before the Yom Kippur war. The Americans weren't finding out anything new in 1973.
What does Anon offer?
Invented detail, misread event, backwards causality, Cold War context replaced with an antisemitic trope, and an incorrect wrong timeline.
Your contribution, Anon, demonstrates your aversion to actual history and your confused belief that watching a couple of hateful TikTok videos will educate you.
A country using its deterrent posture to signal desperation to an ally while fighting not to be destroyed is not a nuclear aggressor. Framing it that way turns the victim of a surprise attack into the villain.
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When Israel did made peace with Egypt, it handed back the entire Sinai Peninsula - 23,000 square miles.
Israel itself is 8,500 square miles.
This means Israel gave back land nearly three times the size of their entire country.
Nuclear aggressors don't do that.
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Based on this research effort, we conclude that there is no solid basis for Seymour Hersh’s report that Israel, through its ambassador in Washington, Simcha Dinitz, “blackmailed” the United States by threatening to escalate the war with its nuclear weapons. We assess this for several reasons. First, both the American and Israeli participants and those who would have had reason to know of such a threat vehemently deny that there was an attempt at nuclear blackmail. Knowledgeable Israelis also reject this story. Second, given the tremendous gravity that such a threat would entail, one would expect to see at least some documentary evidence of deliberations following from its issuance; yet we found none. In contrast, there were extensive discussions in the sessions of the Washington Special Actions Group (WSAG), the working principals level national security policy making body during the Nixon Administration, later in the month concerning perceived Soviet threats to escalate the conflict and the U.S. decision to alert its nuclear forces to warn Moscow against unilateral intervention in the conflict. Third, Hersh’s account has evident inaccuracies, suggesting that it is of imperfect reliability. Finally, there is a plausible alternative account of events that fits the available evidence more tightly – specifically, that the “blackmail” Kissinger refers to in his memoirs was Dinitz’s proposal that Prime Minister Meir visit Washington in the midst of the war in order to plead for U.S. resupply, a move that Kissinger recognized would place inordinate pressure on the Nixon administration to cave in to Israel’s requests. Based on these factors, we assess that Hersh’s account of a formal, coordinated Israeli attempt to “blackmail” the United States using its nuclear forces is without foundation.
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