The B61-11 can penetrate and detonate below the earth's surface, creating a massive shock wave capable of destroying underground targets. In tests the bomb penetrates only 20 feet into dry earth, even when dropped from altitudes above 40,000 feet. But even this shallow penetration before detonation allows a much higher proportion of the explosion to transferred into ground shock relative to a surface burst. It is not able to counter targets deeply buried under granite rock. Moreover, it has a high yield, in the hundreds of kilotons. If used in North Korea, the radioactive fallout could drift over nearby countries such as Japan.

...took a courageous stand, which merits praise, we still have to ask how convincing their thesis is. Not very, in my opinion. I've reviewed elsewhere what the record (historical and documentary) seems to me to show about the main sources of US ME policy, in books and articles for the past 40 years, and can't try to repeat here. M-W make as good a case as one can, I suppose, for the power of the Lobby, but I don't think it provides any reason to modify what has always seemed to me a more plausible interpretation. Notice incidentally that what is at stake is a rather subtle matter: weighing the impact of several factors which (all agree) interact in determining state policy: in particular, (A) strategic-economic interests of concentrations of domestic power in the tight state-corporate linkage, and (B) the Lobby.

Christopher Lydon: How do you measure the reaction -- on American campuses, in American establishment -- when you say, "Listen here, I'm from Israel and I'm telling you that the Lobby can't be your only source here," what comes back at you?

Daniel Levy: What I'm saying to people is, don't leave your critical faculties for thought behind when it comes to Israel. If you feel passionately about Israel -- and I encourage people to get involved and get engaged and feel passionate about Israel -- then embrace what is the healthy debate that is going on in Israel and take a position on it and don't blindly follow a position that you are given.

And I'll tell you, some people kick back and say, "No, we have to support Israel. We don't wash our dirty laundry in public. That's not helpful." And some people say, "Thank you! We've been waiting for that voice. We haven't found our place and actually, we've simply turned our back on the whole debate."

What I hear from students time and again -- including last night at Yale -- there was an incredibly intelligent woman in that audience, she had been chair of the college Democrats, and she said to me, "I didn't know what to do with myself in this debate, because I felt that if I got involved, either, I had to take on board hook line and sinker the whole -- everything they were telling me -- and I didn't feel comfortable with that. And yet of course, I didn't want to join the anti-Israel brigade because I'm not there at all."

And there's a place that you can feel comfortable having a critical debate, caring about Israel, loving Israel, caring about Israel's security interests -- but following essentially what half of the Israeli public are saying and probably what a majority of the members of the next Israeli government are going to be saying, which is, this occupation is bad for Israel, it's bad for our security, it's bad for our morality, it's bad for our interests -- we need out!