Final_Judgment

721 Final Word? [623]
The bottom line is that—in 1963—the issue of JFK's conflict with Ben-
Gurion was a secret to both the Israeli public and the American public and it
remained so for more than 20 years at least and still largely remains so,
despite the release of Hersh's book, followed by Final Judgment and then
the book by Avner Cohen.
In fact, writing in The New York Times of October 31, 1998, Ethan
Bronner, describing Cohen's book on the conflict between JFK and Ben-
Gurion and the general issue of Israel's nuclear bomb program, said that all
of this was "a fiercely hidden subject."
Now that the truth is emerging, there are others who are reaching
essentially the same interpretation that I have. The librarians would have
people believe that I am alone in this interpretation. This is not the case at
all. For example, Dr. Gerald M. Steinberg, professor of political science at
Bar-Ilan University's BESA Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv has
written of JFK's conflict with Ben-Gurion over Israel's nuclear ambitions.
His essay, "Israel and the United States: Can the Special Relationship
Survive the New Strategic Environment" was published in the December
1998 issue of The Middle East Review of International Affairs published at
Bar-Ilan. Steinberg wrote:
Between 1951 and 1963, the Kennedy
administration placed a great deal of pressure on Ben-
Gurion in the effort to press for acceptance of
international inspection of Dimona and Israeli
abdication of the nuclear weapons option. This
pressure apparently did not alter Israeli policy, but it
was a contributing factor to Ben-Gurion's resignation in
1963. [Emphasis by Michael Collins Piper]
Read what Dr. Steinberg says: JFK's pressure on Israel over the nuclear
bomb was a "contributing factor to Ben-Gurion's resignation." However, to
repeat myself, JFK's "great deal of pressure on Ben-Gurion" (Steinberg's
words) was not known in general to the public at large (either in Israel or
the United States) until the release of Seymour Hersh's book which focused
on the conflict quite extensively. But that's not the end of it.
Avner Cohen's very powerful new book essentially confirmed
everything that Hersh had written, in one sense or another, but went even
further and we will be reviewing what Cohen has to say in detail later. But
for the present, let's continue to dissect what the STDL librarians did to
distort the words of Seymour Hersh. They wrote:
In fact Hersh states that domestic factors . . .
appeared to be more than enough to convince Ben-
Gurion to leave public life . . . and Ben-Gurion's
health . . . were as, or more important.