It was only in the mid-late 1980s, in part in the wake of the 1986 Vanunu Affair, that Cohen started to be intrigued by the peculiarities of the unique Israeli nuclear predicament.
[3] During Cohen's research fellowship in 1987–1988 at the Center of Science and International Affairs (CSIA, now renamed the Belfer Center) of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, he developed and coined (in collaboration with Benjamin Frankel) the concept of "opaque proliferation", originally conceptualized as a generic reference to the features of second-generation clear proliferation (the cases of Israel, India, Pakistan, and South Africa).
Cohen's seminal work, Israel and the Bomb, which chronicled the political history of the Israeli nuclear program, was researched and written while he was at MIT.
While researching for the book, Cohen encountered a series of confrontations with the Israeli security apparatus that ultimately resulted in an unprecedented criminal investigation against him.
During the research for Israel and the Bomb, Cohen conducted tens of taped historical interviews with key individuals who were involved in the Israeli nuclear program.
The transcripts of some of these interviews – including Bertrand Goldschmidt, Yitzhak "Ya'tza" Yaakov,[6] Arnan "Sini" Azaryahu, Avraham Hermoni, Edwin E. Kintner, Elie Geisler,[7] Myer Feldman, and Walt Rostow – are now part of the "Avner Cohen Collection" and were posted with annotation in the Digital Archive of the Woodrow Wilson Center.
[13] In early 2001, Cohen was invited by the Israeli Society for History and Philosophy of Science[15] to deliver the keynote speech at its annual meeting in Jerusalem.
[16] 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.
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.
"[20] 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.
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.
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.
[23] His various op-eds reveal a deep concern over the state of Israeli democracy under the Netanyahu government, citing a hubristic mishandling of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Iran nuclear deal) and a refusal to take responsibility for what Cohen calls "the recklessness that led to Hamas' massacre" on October 7th, 2023.
Cohen develops his views on the policy of opacity, or amimut, in his 2010 book The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb (Columbia University Press).
[25] As an historian, Cohen maintains, and has written about using historical evidence, that Israel has reached the nuclear threshold on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War.
Israel and the Bomb:[30] "A scholarly treatise that includes over 1,200 footnotes, yet reads like a novel.... [Cohen] analyzes in rich detail how this policy of 'nuclear opacity' evolved and what made it possible."
-Lawrence Kolb, New York Times Book Review "Cohen's work will necessitate the rewriting of Israel's history, wars, international relations, domestic political crises, economy, psychology, national pride--everything will have to be viewed in a different light."
It is the first scholarly study of the history of this project, it is richly documented, and it unveils some of the major mysteries surrounding events by tapping a large body of previously untouched sources....