My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (28 page)

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photo credit 7.1
)

A
T THE AGE OF SEVEN
, I
ALREADY SUSPECTED THERE WAS A SECRET
. No one told me what it was or uttered the actual words. But because I was a curious child, I liked to listen to the grown-ups’ conversations. And in the scientific community of Rehovot in the 1960s, those conversations revolved around mysterious if not downright sinister-sounding places like the Hill, Machon 4, and Hemed Gimmel. My father was a promising young chemist at the Weizmann Institute, and many of his colleagues, who assembled often in our living room, were among Israel’s prominent scientists. They would often discuss what Israel (Dostrovsky) was working on, what Ernst (Bergmann) was up to, what Shalhevet (Freier) was absorbed in, and what Amos (de Shalit) was trying to do. And they would always circle back to the big and nameless thing happening in the Negev, the big, baffling thing that required my fathers’ friends and the fathers of my friends to travel down there. In Rehovot itself there was an urgent sense of purpose. On the quiet, manicured lawns of the Weizmann Institute of Science there was a hushed air of anticipation. Although nothing was said, it was somehow evident that the physicists and chemists upon whose knees I was being raised were expected to save our lives.

My uncle, too, went down to the desert in the early 1960s. The
neighborhood of square, concrete, flat-roofed villas on the outskirts of Beersheba where he lived with his family was built by the government on the edge of the desert. The engineers left their neat, dim, quiet homes every morning and boarded a gray bus that took them to the secret. In the afternoon the bus brought them home. Children like me knew not to ask what they were actually doing down there. But at the age of eight I understood that Gideon and Roberto and Mishka and Uncle Zeki and Yoskeh did more than just gather together on hot summer nights to sing folk songs and tell funny stories as they ruffled my hair and treated me to thick watermelon slices. I knew that beyond the villas and their well-tended gardens something huge was taking place. Something was happening in the desert that would change everything forever.

At the age of nine, I already knew the secret. One of the first books I pulled down from my father’s shelves was
Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists
, the story of the Manhattan Project. Another book I took an interest in was a collection of articles by Israeli academics and intellectuals who opposed the building of an Israeli atomic bomb. I knew to connect the two books, and I knew to connect them to the anticipation at the Weizmann Institute and the solemn mystery surrounding the villa neighborhood in the desert. I realized that I was probably growing up in an Israeli Manhattan Project, surrounded by people who were probably the Robert Oppenheimers, Edward Tellers, and Lesley Groves of Israel. At the age of ten I already knew that the bespectacled engineers and diffident physicists around me were in their own way part of a mythic undertaking.

Half a century later, the secret is still a secret, but in reality, almost everything has been written about in the international media: Why Israel built Dimona, how Israel built Dimona, and what Israel does there. Officially, however, the nuclear reactor of Dimona is still shrouded in ambiguity. Israeli state policy does not allow Israelis to discuss Dimona publicly. I respect this policy and I obey it, and I cleared this chapter with the Israeli censor. And yet, even when wrestling with this haze of mystery, it is clear that Dimona is still very much at the center of Israel’s story.

According to nuclear experts such as Frank Barnaby, the Dimona complex is basically rectangular. Close to the entrance are the administrative offices, the classrooms, the canteen, and the library. To the south are Machon 4 (a treatment plant for the radioactive effluent from plutonium extraction), Machon 8 (where uranium is enriched by gas centrifuges), and Machon 9 (which houses a laser isotope enrichment facility). The central area lies beyond Machon 5 (where uranium fuel rods are coated with aluminum before insertion into the reactor). This central area is bisected by lawns and rows of palm trees that pass by Machon 3 (where uranium is produced from yellowcake) and Machon 2 (the main production facility where plutonium, lithium compounds, and beryllium are machined into components for nuclear weapons) and lead to Machon 1, the reactor itself, with its grand dome, 18 meters in diameter and 25 meters in height. The silver dome is the central commanding structure of Dimona. The hub. The core. The center of gravity of the Middle East.

In basic terms, it may be put as follows: In order to create and uphold a Jewish state in the Middle East, a protective umbrella had to be unfurled above the fledgling endeavor, a structure that would protect the Jews from the animosity they provoked when they entered the land. A bell jar had to be placed over them to shield them from the predators that lay in wait.

The first such bell jar was provided by the British. Only within the strong walls of the British Mandate could the plant be built without scrutiny. But even after the British left, Western hegemony in the Middle East provided the Jews with protection from the hostility and malevolence of the Arab-Muslim expanse in which they had elected to build their national home. But in the mid-1950s, Israel’s leaders discovered that the protective umbrella of the West was slowly furling. The colonial era was coming to an end, Europe was in retreat, and Israel was left on its own in a hostile desert. At the same time, Arab nationalism was coalescing, being transformed by rapid modernization and swift military buildup.

Israel’s leaders panicked. The basic conditions upon which the Zionist endeavor was founded, and within which the Zionist miracle occurred, no longer existed. Although the young state was flourishing,
rapidly absorbing immigrants and tripling its population, it was now completely exposed.

By 1955, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion had made up his mind: the old protective umbrella of Western colonialism had to be replaced with a new one. Instead of relying upon the West’s hegemony over the Middle East, an Israeli hegemony had to be established. In the summer of 1956, during many hours spent with his advisers, Ben Gurion honed the view that had begun to crystallize for him in 1949. Now he stated explicitly: Israel must go nuclear.

In 1956, only three nations possessed nuclear weapons: the United States, the USSR, and the United Kingdom. Even France would produce and assemble a nuclear bomb only four years later. In contrast to those wealthy countries, the Israel of 1956 was a fragile immigrant state of 1.8 million people not yet capable of manufacturing even transistor radios. The mere thought that this tiny, weak nation would succeed in obtaining nuclear capabilities seemed audacious, megalomaniacal, even unhinged. And yet the founder of the Jewish state was adamant: Israel must acquire a nuclear option. Ben Gurion believed that the Arab-Israeli conflict was deep and irresolvable. He worried that in the long run Israel’s military supremacy would not hold. He felt the stress of bearing personal responsibility for his small nation. In closed-door meetings, he analyzed the strategic threats Israel faced and arrived at the conclusion that its ultimate security might very well rest on the existential insurance policy of nuclear deterrence.

Many senior cabinet members and politicians opposed him: Minister of Trade and Industry Pinchas Sapir, Foreign Minister Golda Meir, Minister of Education and Culture Zalman Aran, Leading Member of Parliament David Hacohen, and from time to time Finance Minister Levi Eshkol. So did many physicists (especially Amos de Shalit), senior army officers (chief among them Yitzhak Rabin), and many intellectuals (most prominently, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Ephraim Auerbach, and Eliezer Livneh). But the debate was neither moral nor ethical. In the Israeli siege-republic of the 1950s and early 1960s, the memory of the Holocaust felt very close, as did the existential threat. Both of these factors underpinned the generally agreed-upon moral justification regarding
the right to acquire a nuclear option. Those who opposed articulated realpolitik arguments: some feared economic bankruptcy, others feared diplomatic bankruptcy, and still others feared military bankruptcy; some warned that the nascent alliance with France would dissolve, while others warned against American anger and Soviet wrath. Still others pronounced the whole idea a pipe dream. There was no way a small nation, poor and only partially industrialized, could take upon itself a scientific-technological feat that most great nations had yet to attempt.

The comprehensive, methodical argument against the nuclear option was put forward by two renowned military strategists, Yigal Allon and Israel Galili. Both men were prominent territorial hawks who had now become nuclear doves. Their position was that the prime minister was consumed with historical pessimism regarding Israel’s chance to survive in the Middle East and technological optimism regarding Israel’s scientific ingenuity, while they were consumed with the exact opposite: historical optimism and technological pessimism. The Allon-Galili argument against the bomb was threefold: In the Middle East there was no possibility of fashioning a stable regime of mutual deterrence. And if no such regime existed, then Israel would be the party most exposed to the horror of a nuclear attack. Therefore, to guarantee its own security, Israel should not acquire a nuclear capability that would initiate a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Because if such a race was launched in such a volatile region, it would endanger the very existence of the Jewish state.

Ben Gurion remained undeterred. In the summer of 1956, he sent his sorcerer’s apprentice, Shimon Peres, to Paris to wield his wand. Improbably, the director general of the Defense Ministry got what he came for. He deftly manipulated the anti-Arab sentiment of the Suez era and the pro-Jewish sentiment of a decade after Vichy, and he appealed to the bruised patriotic ego over Algeria, the demise of colonialism, and the decline of Europe. In a very short time, the thirty-three-year-old graduate of the Ben Shemen Youth Village School—a student of the pacifist Siegfried Lehmann—pulled off one of the greatest strategic feats of the postwar years, persuading a major European power to give a minor Middle Eastern nation its own nuclear option. The option Peres received was all-inclusive, providing engineers, technicians, know-how, and training. According to international publications, it comprised a
nuclear reactor, a facility for separating plutonium, and missile capabilities. Ben Gurion’s vision, Peres’s cunning, and the diligent work of a few other Israelis who joined Peres in Paris convinced France to place in Israel’s hands the modern age’s Prometheus’ fire. For the first time in history, the Jews could have the ability to annihilate other peoples.

In his book
Israel and the Bomb
, Dr. Avner Cohen provides the following details: In September 1956, an initial understanding was agreed upon for the construction of a small model EL-3 reactor. On October 3, 1957, the dramatic agreement for the construction of a large G1 reactor and a secret plutonium separation plant was signed. In the beginning of 1958 a huge hole was dug in the Rotem Plateau, 14 kilometers southeast of Dimona, and work on the reactor began. In February 1959, twenty tons of heavy water were purchased from Norway. In the early 1960s, uranium was extracted from local phosphate rock as well as purchased clandestinely from America and South Africa. In April 1963, an agreement was signed with the French armament manufacturer Dassault for the purchase of MD-620 missiles. On December 26, 1963, the Dimona reactor went critical. In 1964, the underground plutonium separation plant was completed. At the end of 1965, plutonium was produced. In March 1965, the Jericho missile system was tested. By 1967, Israel had reached the capability to assemble its first nuclear device.

On an early summer evening, I park my car on a quiet side street of Tel Aviv’s affluent suburb Ramat Aviv. I locate the apartment building, ring the intercom, and take the elevator to the eighth floor, where a tall, broad-shouldered man in his early eighties awaits me. His handshake is firm, his tone gruff. “Come in,” he commands. “I’ve been waiting for your visit for a long time.”

The furnishings in the living room are simple and homey: blond wood Scandinavian sofas and armchairs, a worn Persian rug, walls hung with watercolors and oil paintings—lively landscapes of Israeli orange groves painted by my host himself. A bottle of Chivas Regal and a bowl of salted almonds have been placed on the table. The television murmurs in the corner, talking heads discussing yet another snippet of news about the Iranian nuclear threat. “Bullshit, it’s all bullshit,” my host says. “The Iranians already have a bomb. A bomb is no big deal. If a
country has the desire and the means, and minimal engineering capabilities, it will have a bomb. If you’re determined to build a bomb, you’ll build a bomb.”

He should know. Avner Cohen claims that Israel indeed built its first atomic bomb in late 1966 and early 1967. My host was the director general of Dimona at that time. He was the man in charge. I look him over as he regards me. I know, he knows that I know, and I know that he knows that I know, but we do not say a word about it. My host pours whisky into two tumblers and raises his glass toward mine to wish us a productive evening. After decades of silence, he would like to say his piece while somehow still abiding by the official vow he has sworn to the State. He is willing to circle the secret, come very close, but not reveal it or his part in it. He asks me to omit his name as long as he is alive. But even the euphemisms he uses cannot obscure the great drama to which he bore witness, and in which he played a critical role.