In discussing Israel's nuclear capabilities, even foreign publications have not gone back to 1967, to the war that transformed Israel from a state under siege and faced with annihilation into a regional empire. The international community now believes that Israel has 90-200 nuclear warheads. According to foreign researchers, some are installed on Jericho missiles, while others can be delivered by fighter jet. A few may even be carried by German-manufactured submarines. Nevertheless, no one had imagined that the story of Israel's atomic arsenal began as early as it did. Israel's nuclear option, once called the Samson option, was not even thought to have existed on the eve of the war that broke out in June 1967. As it turns out, however, it did, at least according to The New York Times.

In the early 2000s, Israel invested significant energy and no small amount of money in an effort to collect and destroy the drafts and manuscripts of personal diary entries and an ostensibly fictional memoir by Brig. Gen. (Res.) Yitzhak “Yatza” Yaakov that he had sent to several friends, publishers and members of the American news media. It now looks like Yaakov's writings included one of the most secretive and explosive stories in the history of Israel's defense establishment.

Yaakov stood at the center of the story, which was never published. Given the effort Israel exerted, it looks like the state did everything it could to keep it that way. Nevertheless, Israel's defense establishment and press spent years dealing with the “Yatza Affair,” until Yaakov's death slightly more than four years ago, in March 2013.

In 2001, Yaakov arrived in Israel from the United States to celebrate his 75th birthday and was promptly arrested. Accused of espionage, his trial was held in camera. Yaakov was eventually convicted of lesser crimes, handed a two-year conditional sentence and released from house arrest. The story he wanted to tell was censored, and a strict publication ban was imposed on it until this week. Now that Yaakov is dead, however, his supposed secrets have emerged from the shadows, published June 3 by The New York Times. The paper obtained the transcript of an interview that Yaakov had given to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman.