The preliminary work that would eventually become Israel and the Bomb began in 1991–1992, shortly after Cohen's arrival at MIT. Traveling back and forth from the United States and Israel to conduct historical interviews on the formative years of the Israeli nuclear program, Cohen was eventually confronted by auxiliaries of the Israeli Military Censor. In the revised introduction to the French edition of Israel and the Bomb (2020) and in a lengthy interview with the
Atomic Heritage Foundation, Cohen describes the complex tale of the struggle over the publication of Israel and the Bomb. He states, "…to do work on the Israeli case was not a simple thing. I had to struggle and to address very powerful forces that did not want the story to be out…some top bureaucrats." Cohen initially (1993) submitted a short manuscript, the precursory document of
Israel and the Bomb, to the Israeli Military Censor. After rounds of back-and-forth disputes about what details could have posed a breach of security, Cohen eventually filed a formal petition (BAGATZ) in 1994 with the
Israeli Supreme Court against the Israeli Chief Military censor, Brig. General Yitzhak Shani, and Israel's Minister of Defense,
Yitzhak Rabin. The Supreme Court had one closed-door session on the case in September 1994, in which at its end the three justices pleaded both sides to find a compromise. The two main Israeli security institutions that were opposing the research and publication of Cohen's work were the
Military Censor, known in Israel as the censora, and the
Office of Security of the Defense Establishment, also known by its Hebrew acronym, MALMAB. In 1995, Cohen eventually withdrew his Supreme Court BAGATZ as it became evident that no practical compromise was acceptable to the security establishment, concerned that a verdict striking down the manuscript could have set a dangerous legal precedent and may have decreased the likelihood of eventual publication of the work. Cohen continued working on his research at MIT, determined to publish it as a book in the United States. The English edition was ultimately published in 1998 by
Columbia University Press, and soon after Israeli publisher
Schocken Publishing House purchased the rights to publish the book in Hebrew in Israel. Meanwhile in Israel, the security chief of MALMAB, Yechiel Horev, was building a case against Cohen, insisting that he should be arrested and stand trial if he returned to Israel. It has been suggested that Horev raised the Cohen case with at least four prime ministers:
Yitzhak Rabin,
Benjamin Netanyahu,
Ehud Barak, and
Ariel Sharon, claiming that
Israel and the Bomb signified a direct affront to Israel's policy of nuclear opacity, and therefore the state must take legal action against Cohen. to deliver the keynote speech at its annual meeting in
Jerusalem. Unsure of what might transpire upon his arrival, Cohen decided to accept the invitation and face the challenge of a criminal investigation, risking a possibility of arrest and trial. Despite warning, Cohen was not detained at the
Ben Gurion Airport upon his arrival in March, 2001, as had happened on a previous trip, but was summoned to face a criminal investigation, conducted by both MALMAB and the Israeli police, regarding whether the publication of Israel and the Bomb in the United States was indeed a violation of Israel's national security laws, especially Israeli Espionage act(113/c). That investigation included nearly 60 hours of interrogation in March and April 2001. In 2004, the case against him was officially closed. Because the research for the book was based, in part, on hundreds of oral interviews – with Israeli, American, French and Norwegian sources – some of the book's contents were never in the public domain before. In his 2020 introduction to the French edition of
Israel and the Bomb, Cohen adds that "…the writing of the book was not just the intellectual issue of doing history, but it was also struggling with institutions and forces who were committed to do their best not to let the story come out." The book's 1998 (American) publication was notable, perhaps unprecedented, because it was the first time in Israel's history when a product of legitimate academic historical research that had been banned in its entirety by an administrative ruling of the Israeli military censor was defied and published in the United States. Once the book was published in the United States, the Israeli Military Censor had no mandate to ban its Hebrew translation. It was also the first time in Israel's history that a criminal investigation was initiated for alleged espionage charges against a legitimate academic researcher who had never been a government employee. Cohen attributes the extreme conduct to Israel's interest in preserving its biggest national taboo – its nuclear program. Specifically, the Israeli security authorities saw this book as a direct threat against the country's untouched policy of nuclear opacity which relies heavily on that national taboo. Comprehensive accountings of the struggle against the censor are available in the French edition of
Israel and the Bomb, in a C-SPAN interview, and the aforementioned Atomic Heritage Foundation interview. ==Views==