The Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East: Opacity, Theory, and Reality, 1960-1991: An Israeli Perspective (Suny Series in Is)

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Summary: Interesting book about a secret subject in Israel
Review: Israels Nuclear Policy is not Public and has had a behind scenes effect on Israeli Politics. I studied this subject with Shlomo in 1977

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Summary: incredible Mish-Mash, totally un-academic
Review: Prof Aronson did an inormous job of compiling facts about Israel's nuclear program. He also has some interesting thesis, connecting almost anything that happened in the Middle East to that program. But that is not enough to make a good book. The reader is engulfed in a watershed of data. One reads about Israeli leaders threat perceptions as well as internal politics within the system, and much more, (he even bothers to tell us about his personal troubles as a rreporter for the Israeli radio station in Germany) and the relevance of most of it to the title subject is far from being clear. The author has very clear views about who are the good guys (Ben Gurion), and who are the bad guys (almost everybody else), and he makes no bones about it, in some very un academic language. This is also true concerning his remarks about other researchers, whose opinions happen to be different than his own. To sum up - the subject is much too important to leave it at that, and someone ought to write a GOOD book about it!! Note: The version of this book I refer to, is the Hebrew one (2 vol. Akademon Press, 1994 & 1995)