'Every artifact removed from its context loses its scientific and cultural value' were found by police officers during a search of a house in Dimona on Monday and the suspect was detained for questioning at the local police station overnight According to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) which was called to assist in the unusual case the search came after intelligence indications regarding the suspect who was known to be involved in the illegal antiquities trade The case will be handled by the IAA’s legal department which will work to determine whether criminal charges can be filed The confiscated items span large parts of the Holy Land’s history from the Iron Age around the 9th century BC to the period of the early Islamic rule over the land in the 7th century AD an inspector with the IAA who was called to scene “The findings that were seized at the suspect’s home point to antiquities looting and illegal trade discovered with the help of metal detectors and uprooted from the ground apparently without a license and in violation of the law.” “Every artifact removed from its historical and archaeological context loses its scientific and cultural value It damages the historical puzzle we all share.” every item that is found is meticulously photographed in situ before it is removed to be numbered and cataloged The context of an object is crucial for its interpretation an object is often nearly useless to scientists Due to the enormous number and density of archaeological sites in Israel illegal excavations and antiquities trade is a serious problem “The Antiquities Authority is determined to thwart the illegal trade in heritage items These finds belong to the public and serve as tangible evidence of the country’s past We will not allow them to be sold for personal profit.” The All Israel News Staff is a team of journalists in Israel Have you heard about Israel’s secret nuclear weapons in Dimona Noam digs deep into how Israel’s not-so-secret nuclear program came to be does the nuclear program make Israel safer you might be familiar with Bert the Turtle the animated reptile that taught 1950s American schoolchildren “Duck and Cover” – the method they should use to protect themselves in the event of a nuclear attack figuring out how to spell hello upside down with numbers (and maybe some other choice words) instead of listening to Dr you’re hearing about it for the first time now – sorry “Duck and cover” sounds like a laughably ineffective strategy but the American kids preparing for a nuclear attack likely didn’t realize that their government had a far more reliable — and dangerous — game plan Hundreds of nuclear weapons — including bombs,  ICBM and submarines — that made the Soviets think twice about a potential nuclear war The fancy term for “Scaring off your enemies with powerful weapons” is deterrence No one wants to mess with the strongest kid on the block But this isn’t a podcast about the United States or the Soviet Union — though both will make significant cameos in this episode This episode of Unpacking Israeli History describes Israel’s attempt to become the strongest kid in a very unfriendly neighborhood Americans are gallivanting around Levittown in their Studebakers Kruschev is relaxing some of Stalin’s more repressive policies civilians and politicians alike are figuring out how to ensure their continued existence Israel had taken on five invading Arab armies — Lebanon or roughly 6,000 of their population of 600,000 That’s like losing 3.3 million Americans today You get it…it’s a lot of people and it’s a significant sacrifice only a few short years after the Holocaust; the grief and horror were still so fresh and painful.  But the war scarred more than the Israeli psyche It also devastated the young country’s economy the government entered a period of austerity and rationing Stay tuned for an episode about those reparations Israel was pretty confident that they could avoid economic collapse But the existential threat was — and is — far more tenacious Prime Minister David Ben Gurion was determined to protect his nation And what was the best way to protect yourself in 1956 What was the weapon that would make you the biggest scariest kid on the block — or in this case you probably know quite a bit about nuclear bombs just from watching the news Words like “enriched uranium” and “centrifuges” and “underground facility at Natanz” have permeated the public consciousness only three nations had nuclear weapons: the U.S. Nukes may have loomed large in American imagination bolstered by Bert the Turtle’s cheery PSAs about a “nuclear holocaust,” but in Israel — a poor unable to manufacture even transistor radios — the prospect of becoming a nuclear power was laughable he had been convinced that nuclear deterrence was the only strategy that would keep Israel safe and forestall another genocide could also be done by scientists in Israel for their own people.” This was not a mainstream position in Ben Gurion’s cabinet His Minister of Trade and Industry opposed the plan Not to mention the pushback from intellectuals and physicists many might consider pushback against nuclear weapons the more ethical or moral route by many “They’re dangerous.” “Using them is evil.” “No good can come of a nuclearized world.” no one was arguing that nukes were morally wrong the past 2,000 years of exile and displacement made it very clear that Jews needed a way to protect themselves Developing a nuclear weapon would surely alienate the US and the USSR an Israeli nuclear weapon could start an arms race in the Middle East What would happen if they attacked again – but this time and perhaps Ben Gurion fretted about them privately he sent the director general of the Ministry of Defense — the 33-year-old Shimon Peres — to Paris.  Israel and France had a pretty cozy relationship — aided in part by the Suez Crisis  Here’s a little Nerd corner on the Suez crisis which I’m 98% sure most of us forgot about even if we did learn about it at one point the Suez Canal — built in 1869 — is one of the world’s most-used shipping lanes the company that owned it — cleverly named the Suez Canal Company — was owned by the British and the French Western powers are watching the USSR very closely and they don’t like the cozy relationship between Egypt and the Soviets the US and the UK reneged on an agreement they had with Egypt and very important dam across the Nile River Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was furious transferring its ownership away from England and France Egypt controlled the flow of goods — including petroleum — across the world So the French and the British turned to Israel which was only too happy to help in the fight against its southern neighbor Egypt had attacked Israel in 1948 and continued to harry the young country throughout the 50s This wasn’t the only crisis taking place in North Africa at the time France was embroiled in a long and bloody war in Algeria was a pan-Arab party funded by many of Israel’s enemies So Israel — like most of Algeria’s Jews — sided with France providing them with intelligence gathered from Algerian Jews.  But the French had a third reason to aid the Israelis The threat of another genocide loomed large for the new Israeli state on whose soil the Holocaust had been allowed to happen the controversial journalist Ari Shavit suggests that France still burned with guilt over its role in the Holocaust.  the Nazis invaded France in the summer of 1940 with its headquarters in the resort town of Vichy Vichy France promoted an official policy of anti-Semitism rounding up and deporting thousands of Jews to Auschwitz nearly a quarter of France’s 350,000 Jews were killed.  As every Jewish and Catholic mother has said…a little guilt never hurts They agreed to supply Israel with everything it would need to build a nuclear weapon: engineers Ben Gurion had been planning for a nuclear Israel since ’49 The IDF had a secret military unit known as “Hemed Gimmel,” which had been scouting the Negev for a secret base The French and the Israelis worked together very closely It was the French who decided where to build Israel’s nuclear facility — deep in the Negev Desert which was made up largely of French-speaking Jews from North Africa it was the French who trained the Israeli engineers giving the Israelis full access to their atomic facility.  But when it came to acquiring the raw materials needed to build a bomb Producing nuclear weapons is an expensive endeavor Kladky here…Nuclear bombs are named after the center If you break a nucleus apart (also known as fission) smash it into another nucleus (also known as fusion) which you can harness to create an explosion runs on fusion.) But you can’t just split any old nucleus and expect to get a powerful reaction Only some elements — like plutonium and uranium — can undergo fission the Israelis bought 20 tons of heavy water from Norway and built an apparatus to distill it turning Israel into a leader in this field That proved almost as challenging as Dr Briefel’s class At first they extracted the uranium from the phosphate rocks in the Negev But it took years to get even a few grams — and by the time they realized they needed an alternate source France was no longer interested in selling but the important thing here is that the Israelis ended up buying uranium not from France but from South Africa and the United States.  you may have just noticed that we just mentioned the United States we haven’t really talked about the US up until now we think of the United States as Israel’s closest ally Why did Israel have to go to France for know-how to build a bomb from the moment Ben Gurion had decided to build a bomb in ‘56 he knew it would have to be constructed in secret They could not risk Israel’s enemies knowing such valuable information American leadership was not eager for Israel to get its hands on a bomb If Israel has a bomb — produced with help from a Western power — then Arab states are likely to try and get a bomb the 22 Arab nations across the Middle East and North Africa would be a major coup for the Soviets and a major blow to American interests in the region But American intelligence is a powerful entity the Americans kinda had the sense that Israel was up to something The newly inaugurated President Kennedy — who was staunchly opposed to nuclear proliferation — asked for a “post-mortem” detailing how the US could have so drastically misread Israel’s intentions titled confirmed that “information was available to some elements of the intelligence community as early as April 1958 that could have alerted … Israeli intentions… information concerning the site in the Negev came to intelligence channels from special intelligence sources in mid 1959 but was discounted because the other information in the item was demonstrably untrue.” It was around this time that Israel’s relationship with France cooled considerably President Charles de Gaulle was much more sympathetic to the Arab cause than to the Israeli one and he demanded an end to “the improper military collaboration established between Tel Aviv and Paris.” France would only support the Israeli nuclear project — and sell Israel uranium — if the Israelis promised that they were building nuclear facilities for peaceful purposes and agreed to an inspection by outside forces the Israelis were reluctant to agree to these terms France had pulled out of the project completely That’s why the Israelis had to look elsewhere for uranium.  JFK’s commitment to nuclear non-proliferation spurred a genuine crisis for the future of Dimona According to an article published in Haaretz in 2019 “The former Israel Air Force commander Maj (res.) Dan Tolkowsky… seriously entertained the fear that Kennedy might send U.S So although they had resisted France’s meddling the Israelis reluctantly agreed to Kennedy’s demand for an inspection – after all you don’t want to make the biggest superpower of the world angry especially when the other major superpower is funding your enemies the official Israeli position was that the facility at Dimona had been established for peaceful reasons And during the Atomic Energy Commission’s tour of the facility in May of 1961 Ben Gurion emphasized this in a meeting with Kennedy later that month: “for the time being … But we will see what will happen in the Middle East It does not depend on us.” Perhaps it was those four little words — “for the time being” — that aroused American suspicion the Americans kept clamoring for another visit The second visit was unceremoniously short — a 40-minute tour of some of the facility’s buildings following a tour of the Dead Sea.  A CIA document titled “The Arab-Israeli Problem” laid out the terms plainly: “if operated at its maximum capacity for the production of weapon-grade plutonium the reactor [at Dimona] could produce sufficient plutonium for one or two weapons a year.” Of course the Americans didn’t know that Israel had built a secret subterranean plutonium-processing plant at Dimona But the prospect of a nuclear Israel was scary enough to the Americans that they demanded “semi-annual visits to Dimona… perhaps in May and November with full access to all parts and instruments in the facility Ben Gurion responded to these demands with a series of highly emotional letters that sought to impress upon the Americans the absolute importance of the nuclear program He went so far as to request “a supply of U.S arms equivalent to what the Arabs were receiving from the Soviet Union the transformation of Jordan’s West Bank into a demilitarized zone and ‘a plan of general disarmament between Israel and the Arab states under a system of mutual and international inspection and control.’” He’s not around to reflect on these letters but we can perhaps surmise that such demands were calculated to remind Kennedy in no uncertain terms that Israel faced the prospect of annihilation Would the world allow another slaughter of Jews on its watch think about the geo-political realities of the region Israel was surrounded by hostile Arab countries much larger in size there was no alternative other than nuclear development Israel had been attempting to wring a security guarantee from the United States “My people have a right to exist…and its existence is in danger…” However no security guarantees from the US were forthcoming Israeli policy makers felt that in the absence of a US security umbrella Israel had no alternative but to “go its own way” in terms of nuclear strategy self-defence and self-reliance—at any cost—became the twin pillars of their national security policy So PM Levi Eshkol — Ben Gurion’s successor as you may remember from the start of this episode was quite opposed to a nuclear program — was left to deal with Kennedy’s ultimatum that Israel quit its nuclear program unless it wanted to “seriously jeopardize” its relationship with the United States Eshkol agreed to American inspections of the nuclear plant just two months after Kennedy’s assassination They bricked up the entrances to secret underground plants where plutonium was being processed even going so far as to scatter bird droppings around the facilities to make them look abandoned and the American inspections went off without a hitch If your ears just perked up at the mention of 1967 — good 1967 was a turning point in Israeli and Arab history Shortly before the fateful summer that would transform the Middle East Israel fended off five hostile nations — Egypt and Lebanon — and came out the victor stop coming at Israel…It doesn’t work… Shavit writes that “because of this decisive victory post-1967 Israel also had a new sense of omnipotence The outcome of this mixture of fear and omnipotence was technological chutzpah… The facility tripled its production capability.” And still the American visits in 1968 and 1969 were uneventful According to a 2014 article in The Guardian the director of the CIA told President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 that Israel had operational nuclear weapons given that the UN had just drawn up the Non-Proliferation Treaty How would it look if it got out that Israel had managed to build a nuclear bomb under the UN’s nose So despite the CIA’s knowledge of Dimona’s capacity And this silence became a matter of unofficial policy in 1969 when PM Golda Meir met with President Richard Nixon Both parties struck a bargain: Nixon would not force Israel to sign the NPT while Meir promised that Israel would not introduce nukes to the Middle East or publicly acknowledge their existence Thus began the official Israeli policy of “ambiguity,” or in Hebrew if the whole point of being a nuclear power is deterrence Wouldn’t you want to wave it in your enemies’ faces it would be pretty stupid to goad an enemy whose raison d’etre 1973 — the Arab world kept attacking hoping that this would be the war that finally made up for their humiliating losses to a tiny state made up largely of refugees no one sane was keen to facilitate the nuclearization of the Middle East Israel had been doing all it could to prevent the Middle East from going nuclear Israel took out the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq — a move for which it suffered intense criticism The Iraqis insisted the reactor had been built for peaceful purposes… a story that probably sounded pretty familiar to the Israelis Pre-emptive strikes are enshrined in Israeli military policy as “the Begin Doctrine,” which Begin himself describes as “anticipatory self-defense at its best.” After the attack on Osirak in 1981 Begin ended a press conference with the following quote: “Never again we shall defend our people with all the means at our disposal We shall not allow any enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction turned against us.” A few days later he emphasized this point in a TV interview saying: “This attack will be a precedent for every future government in Israel … Every future Israeli prime minister will act Begin took a beating in the foreign press and the UN Not that this has stopped Israel from carrying out additional pre-emptive strikes Israel destroyed a nuclear reactor in Syria — a move it did not officially acknowledge until 2018 Israel neither confirms nor denies its involvement in attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists and facilities Israel’s official policy was to remain tight-lipped on the existence — or lack thereof — of its nuclear program PM Golda Meir even had a nickname for the reactor that perfectly encapsulated the party line on nukes The Wikipedia page for varenye is full of helpful techniques for making it notes about its appearance in popular novels Absent from this crowd-sourced encyclopedia entry is this nuance: Eastern European Jews kept a jar of varenye on hand in case of a pogrom It was a humble crock of “just in case,” a last resort for lean times This is how the Israelis saw their nuclear program we’ll know — even if our enemies don’t — that we have something that can keep us alive the whole world knows Israel’s open secret… even though Israeli state policy does not allow Israelis to discuss Dimona publicly Avner Cohen — Israel’s pre-eminent nuclear historian — acknowledges that he actually got in trouble for asking questions about Israel’s nuclear capabilities He recounts “I think that my trouble with the Israel authorities started when some people who refused to talk to me felt the need to report to somebody else that somebody’s asking dangerous questions I think shortly after I started—I think it was the summer of 1992—when I started to ask the first questions I got also a call or a visit of somebody from the defense establishment Because there are consequences to spilling state secrets a nuclear technician named Mordechai Vanunu gave a detailed interview to the Sunday Times of London in which he detailed everything he had learned in his nine years at the complex He even provided photos — including some of restricted areas he was not allowed to enter.  eventually converting to Christianity.  He met a journalist who convinced him to develop the film and speak to the Times convinced he was doing a good thing for the world revealing that Israel had developed over 200 nuclear weapons Vanunu had taken the varenye out of the cupboard and offered it around to the Cossacks Though the Israelis neither confirmed nor denied Vanunu’s story they made every effort to bring him to trial in Israel A female Mossad agent named Cheryl Ben Tov claimed to be an American tourist who feigned sexual interest in Vanunu other agents drugged him and flew him back to Israel where his secret trial ended in a sentence of 18 years 11 of which were spent in solitary confinement Vanunu is not allowed to leave Israel for reasons of national security his message was the same as it was in 1986: Israel does not “need the nuclear arms especially now when all the Middle East is free from nuclear weapons… is – open [the] Dimona reactor for inspection.”  after Seymour Hersh’s 1991 book The Samson Option it’s unlikely that Israel will give up on keeping this open secret no one wants to deal with it for fear of opening a Pandora’s box It has in many ways become a burden for the US because of the fear it could compromise the very basis of the Israeli-US understanding.” Does having a nuclear bomb make Israel safer Especially now that Iran has made its nuclear ambition clear is a policy of “mutually assured destruction” enough to deter the ayatollahs gotta enter one more Nerd Corner for this one: remember that book I just mentioned that their nukes could be used as a last resort As Samson was tied in chains in a Philistine temple as well as thousands of his Philistine enemies “Let me die with the Philistines!” And there you have it Unpacking Israeli History is hitting the road Subscribe to the newsletter to know when tickets go live So is a mutually assured destruction enough Or should we heed the frightening words of former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani who said in 2001: “The use of an atomic bomb against Israel would destroy Israel completely while [a nuclear attack] against the Islamic countries would only cause damages.” Israeli leaders across the board and across the political spectrum  — who take the Iranian threat very seriously — raise another concern Former general and deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh said in a 2010 interview with the Atlantic that the threat of a nuclear Iran accelerates Israel’s brain drain savvy young person want to live under a constant nuclear threat “if Israel is no longer understood by its 6 million Jewish citizens and by the roughly 7 million Jews who live outside of Israel to be a “natural safe haven,” then its raison d’être will have been subverted.” Dimona staved off that terrifying prospect by giving Israel and the Middle East almost 50 years of relative stability Israel’s nuclear power actually brought about peace agreements During the Independence Day Parade of 1955 Ben Gurion said: “Our future depends not on what the gentiles will say but on what the Jews will do!” Or in Hebrew chashuv ma hayehudim yaasu.” Kinda like the way it sounds in Hebrew It’s debatable whether “what the Gentiles will say” matters more now But we can still make the argument that — while more relevant than it was in 1955 — the scathing op-eds and Twitter hot takes they matter a lot less than Israel’s real life We can echo Ben Gurion’s words in January 1949 — well before Israel became a nuclear power — which beautifully explain the Israeli policy of ambiguity: “Let us not be intoxicated with victory… None of us knows whether the trial by bloodshed has yet ended …As long as we cannot be confident that we have won the last battle We all hope that we will never have to break out the varenye and use Dimona But if — God forbid — Israel ever needs the varenye we’ll be incredibly thankful to the first prime minister of Israel for insisting but here’s one enduring lesson as I see it There is a line in the Haggadah that we read every year on Passover שֶׁלֹּא אֶחָד בִּלְבָד עָמַד עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנוּ אֶלָּא שֶׁבְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר עוֹמְדִים עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנוּ וְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מַצִּילֵנוּ מִיָּדָם the prevailing belief amongst the Jewish people is that while other nations may try and end us God is always there to save the Jewish people You also may be familiar with a Jewish tradition that says “we do not rely on miracles.” Ein somchin al hanes the pioneering work of early Zionist leaders was to ensure that the Jewish people had an eternal insurance policy.  and ensuring Israel has what it needs to protect the Jewish people by rating and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts I want to highlight a great letter we got from a listener named Daniel: This might be the first “fan letter” that I’ve written in 35 years but I want to let you know how much I enjoyed the Unpacking Israeli history podcast You do an excellent job of striking a balance between educating those who are hearing about the described events for the first time and providing new nuggets to those of us who consider ourselves well-versed in this area This really is one of the best Jewish podcasts that I’ve ever heard.  this particular letter felt like it was speaking to my soul My entire team and I work hard on these episodes and one of the most challenging things is speaking both to people who have a strong background in Israeli history and those who really aren’t well-versed in it at all I think I know a fair amount of Israeli history but my favorite episodes are the ones in which Send us a message at podcasts@unpacked.media Each week we bring you a wrap-up of all the best stories from Unpacked Stay in the know and 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All rights reserved for Volant Media UK Limited“Following a joint investigation by the Israeli Defense Forces in Lahav 433 and the Shin Bet a Beer Sheva resident was arrested on suspicion of initiating contact with intelligence elements in the Iranian regime and offering to sell information claiming that he had access to the nuclear research complex,” the statement from Israel Police said an Israeli citizen and resident of Beer Sheva was arrested after being suspected of having committed security offenses for several months involving contact with Iranian agents and carrying out missions including photographing installations and transmitting information for financial gain Doron Bochboza The investigation also revealed that Bukhobza initiated the contact with the full understanding that he was in contact with an Iranian operator and that it could cause harm to the state's security Israel Hayom reported that he had received 3,750 shekels ($1,000) in digital currency from an Iranian agent An indictment was filed against Buchovza on Sunday charging him with the offenses of contacting a foreign agent and passing information to an enemy state It is the latest case as dozens have been foiled since the beginning of the Gaza war while Iran steps up its operations against its archenemy the former head of Israeli Interpol and a research associate at The International Institute for Counter-Terrorism told Iran International: “We are witnessing a further escalation in Iranian intelligence activity “This is no longer a weakened population with no connection to the state this is a native Israeli who approached them on his own initiative and even carried out several missions for them This is about treason against the State of Israel Previous plots have targeted the country's military and political leaders military facilities and nuclear research centers This issue is preventing our website from loading properly. 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LOGIN Downloadable PDFs are a benefit of an FP subscription This article is an Insider exclusive Contact us at [email protected] to learn about upgrade options unlocking the ability to gift this article Iran’s nuclear activities have been on the front pages for years although it remains unclear precisely how close Tehran is to building its first bomb Iran’s relative failure in preserving the secrecy of its weapons aspirations stands in sharp contrast to the experience of Israel the first and only Middle Eastern state to acquire nuclear weapons Israel built the bomb in near-absolute secrecy—even deceiving the U.S initiated Israel’s nuclear project in the mid- to late- 1950s establishing Israel’s nuclear complex at Dimona during a period when only three countries had nuclear weapons Israel secretly assembled its first nuclear devices Israeli leaders were determined to reach their goals They saw the nuclear project as a commitment to ensure the country’s future—a “never again” pledge shaped by memory of the Holocaust and deception were key aspects of the relentless execution of Israel’s nuclear journey Last month, the George Washington University’s National Security Archive posted a new Electronic Briefing Book that includes 20 documents on Israel’s nuclear project government knew about Dimona’s secrets and how Israel concealed them Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion rides in a car in Washington during a state visit.PhotoQuest/Getty Images Israeli leaders conceived of the Dimona project as a secret within a secret The first secret was the 1957 French-Israeli nuclear agreement that led to the creation of the nuclear complex The two countries negotiated the agreement confidentially because both sides were aware of its sensitivity And then there was a deeper secret: the large six-story underground reprocessing facility often referred to as a chemical separation plant that would provide a capability to produce weapons-grade plutonium and remain concealed Very few people on both sides of the French-Israeli agreement knew that inner secret the evidence suggested that when the United States discovered the Dimona project in the final months of 1960 internal discussions focused on assessing the nature and motivation of the project While some in Washington suspected from the start that the Dimona project was about weapons production they could not prove it; there was no smoking gun government had no detailed knowledge of the secret French-Israeli nuclear deal much less that it included a French-designed reprocessing plant to produce weapons-grade plutonium using a chemical process applied to the reactor’s spent fuel enabling the separation of plutonium from other radioactive products This uncertainty was reflected in the first Special National Intelligence Estimate about Dimona issued by the CIA on Dec which included a factual determination that “Israel is engaged in construction of a nuclear reactor complex in the Negev near Beersheba.” Yet it acknowledged that “a number of interpretations of the function of this complex are possible or combinations thereof” and suggested that “on the basis of all available evidence … plutonium production for weapons is at least one major purpose of this effort.” A recently declassified report called “Israeli Plutonium Production,” created on Dec by the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee It posited not only the construction of a large reactor near Beersheba but also added that the project included a “plutonium separation plant.” A section of the opening page from the 1960 “Israeli Plutonium Production” document.National Security Archive The report did not explain how it reached that conclusion by stipulating the construction of a separation plant JAEIC indicated that Dimona’s purpose was not research but weapons This document may be the first or only U.S intelligence report that unequivocally found that the French-Israeli project included from start the two technological components required for a weapons program: a production reactor and a plutonium separation plant intelligence knew—or at least presumed—that Dimona included a reprocessing capacity policy: The Eisenhower administration raised serious questions with the Israelis about the purposes of the Dimona project But why that knowledge did not show up in subsequent intelligence products is a mystery unless it was held so closely that only a few were aware of the facts treat the separation plant issue as a matter that required a new Israeli decision both the State Department and the CIA subscribed explicitly to the view that Dimona lacked such a facility Kennedy receives a standing ovation as he walks into the State Department’s new auditorium to hold his first news conference since taking office Kennedy spoke about Geneva negotiations with Russia over a nuclear test ban treaty.Bettmann Archive/Getty Images Ambassador Ogden Reid that “we are not a satellite of America … and will never be a satellite.” Ben-Gurion’s statement became the basis of a deceptive cover story that Israel used for years whenever U.S. inspectors visited Dimona. According to the report from the first visit in May 1961 scientists that Dimona’s purpose was to gain “experience in construction of a nuclear facility which would prepare [Israel] for nuclear power in the long run,” based on a French-designed research reactor visitors that Dimona was a broad-based technological enterprise for training Israeli scientists with most aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle for various peaceful purposes Israel committed itself to a full deception campaign That required not only the concealment of the underground separation plant but also the camouflaging of other components at the Dimona site to provide a credible but false picture of the reactor and its use This operation was politically and technically complex Dimona personnel invested weeks of efforts to make the deception believable The new reports on the Dimona visits help us understand how that was done the United States conducted eight inspection visits at Dimona; seven of them took place after Kennedy forced Israel to accept regular visits in 1963 the value of the visits was twofold: political messaging and technical intelligence access An approximate site plan included in the 1961 Atomic Energy Commission document.National Security Archive Israel reached significant nuclear milestones Israel had completed its super-secret underground separation plant; by 1966 it started to produce weapons-grade plutonium; and on the eve of the 1967 war Israel assembled its first nuclear devices visits in this period claimed they found no direct or indirect discernible evidence of weapons-related activities teams were confident about their conclusions The key finding of the 1965 report was the team’s conclusion that while Dimona presented “no near term possibility of a weapons development program,” the reactor “has excellent development and plutonium production capability that warrants continued visits at intervals not to exceed one year.” A major question was what Israel intended to do with the irradiated fuel removed from the reactor core visitors that the spent fuel would probably be returned to France for chemical processing although he “gave the impression that no detailed consideration has yet been given to this problem.” We now know this was misleading The Israelis never returned spent fuel to France; instead they reprocessed the irradiated reactor core every six months The 1966 report and the Atomic Energy Commission’s cover letter addressed the possibility of deliberate Israeli deception and the possibility of a hidden reprocessing plant on site or another reactor elsewhere in Israel It admitted the “bare possibility that the reactor may have been operated to produce about 3 kilograms of plutonium since the time of the last visit in January 1965.” They recommended that U.S intelligence “maintain a constant surveillance of the entire country to determine whether such a plant or plants exists or are being built.” A State Department Intelligence and Research (INR) report from March 9 but the memo by INR chief Thomas Hughes disclosed that Tel Aviv sources had reported that Israel either had or was about to complete a separation plant and that the Dimona reactor had been operating at full capacity for weapons production purposes the source also indicated that Israel could assemble nuclear weapons in six to eight weeks consensus about the status of Israel’s nuclear program they suggested the existence of a full-blown deception operation at Dimona to mislead visiting U.S Hughes doubted the source’s claim that Israel could produce a weapon in six to eight weeks but allowed the possibility that France “might be willing to test an Israeli device without attributing it to Israel or that Israel on its own might assemble and stockpile a small number of untested devices.” He recommended that the next U.S inspection team try to resolve the veracity of the allegations and suggested “cultivating” the Israeli sources to see if they could obtain more information team made a visit to Dimona; what they knew about the INR report is unknown yet concerns about reprocessing were high on their mind Notes from the last page of the April 1967 “Report of the visit to atomic energy sites in Israel.”National Security Archive The language in the 1967 preliminary report was categorical and assured; it left no room for doubt about the possibility of deception On the matter of reprocessing: “There is no irradiated fuel reprocessing plant in existence or under construction at NRCN [Dimona].” Accepting Israeli assertions at face value the team affirmed that Dimona was on its way to becoming an academic and educational center for promoting science and technology they were deceived because they did not realize the extent of the complex Israeli machinations to disguise Dimona’s inner workings About a month later, as the 1967 Middle East crisis reached its climax, Israel devised a contingency plan to detonate a nuclear device as a demonstration of a new capability in the event of the “most extreme scenario,” where Israel’s existence might be in grave danger. To conduct the plan, Israel secretly assembled two or three nuclear implosion devices for the first time but the team used plutonium cores produced at Dimona No outsiders knew or suspected it at the time, and it became known only in 2017 when a key player’s testimony was published posthumously The Dimona nuclear power plant in Israel in January 1978.Francois Lochon/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images There are still many open questions about this history: How could professional and well-trained U.S government bodies and officials fooled by the deception or did some sense the truth and not acknowledge it While all other nuclear powers have made their status public President Richard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir provided a cover Opacity became the shield for Israel’s nuclear exceptionalism Israel refuses to either confirm or deny its nuclear status Both countries still prefer to look the other way as if these events had never happened president has acknowledged it or the existence of the Israeli bomb much less put pressure on Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Iran may now be emulating its arch-enemy’s strategy from the 1960s by moving close to a nuclear weapons capability without testing Tehran’s proximity to a nuclear device today may be similar to where Israel was in 1967—just weeks away While almost the whole world knows much about Iran’s production of highly enriched uranium its progress in weaponizing it and how close Tehran actually is to an assembled device is another matter The newly declassified documents from the 1960s are a sobering reminder of the difficulty in making precise estimates of any country’s nuclear weapons program This post appeared in the FP Weekend newsletter, a weekly showcase of book reviews, deep dives, and features. Sign up here Avner Cohen is a professor in the Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies (NPTS) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California. He is the author of Israel and the Bomb and The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain With the Bomb. X: @avnercohen123 William Burr is the director of the Nuclear Documentation Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University Commenting on this and other recent articles is just one benefit of a Foreign Policy subscription Join the conversation on this and other recent Foreign Policy articles when you subscribe now Please follow our comment guidelines The default username below has been generated using the first name and last initial on your FP subscriber account Usernames may be updated at any time and must not contain inappropriate or offensive language FP’s flagship evening newsletter guiding you through the most important world stories of the day Specialty rates for students and faculty. 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JC Reporter 1 min readIsrael is improving its main nuclear site in the southern Negev according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's annual armaments assessment "Israel—which does not publicly acknowledge possessing nuclear weapons—is also believed to be modernizing its nuclear arsenal and appears to be upgrading its plutonium production reactor site at Dimona," the group said in its SIPRI Yearbook 2024 with all nine nuclear-armed states continuing to modernize their arsenals and several deploying "new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems in 2023," the report stated "[T]he number and types of nuclear weapons in development have increased as states deepen their reliance on nuclear deterrence," it added SIPRI estimates that Israel has 90 nuclear warheads placing it second-to-last in terms of quantity among the nine nuclear-armed states: the United States Pakistan and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) according to SIPRI North Korea possesses fewer warheads (an estimated 50) "Countries are ordered by date of first known nuclear test; however there is no conclusive open-source evidence that Israel has tested its nuclear weapons," SIPRI explained There are 12,121 warheads in the total global inventory as of January 2024 of which 9,585 were in military stockpiles for potential use an estimated 3,904 are deployed with missiles and aircraft and the rest are in storage Around 2,100 warheads are in a "state of high operational alert" on ballistic missiles Virtually all those warheads belong to Russia or the United States "but for the first time China is believed to have some warheads on high operational alert," according to the report Dimona Israel nuclear program Israel The Dimona nuclear research center in the southern Israeli Negev desert on September 8 According to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) the number of nuclear weapons and models continues to rise globally with China's nuclear arsenal growing at a faster rate compared to other nations The report states that the nine nuclear-armed states – the United States and Israel – continued to modernize their nuclear forces in 2023 with some even deploying nuclear weapons during the year the report notes that while the country does not publicly acknowledge possessing nuclear weapons it appears to be modernizing its arsenal and potentially upgrading its plutonium production reactor in Dimona the nine nuclear-armed states possess 12,121 nuclear warheads with 9,585 of them being operational as of January 2024 approximately 3,904 warheads are deployed on missiles and aircraft – an increase of 60 from January 2023 – while the remaining warheads are held in reserve The report estimates that around 2,100 warheads are deployed on ballistic missiles and kept in a state of high operational readiness Nearly all of these high-alert warheads belong to the United States and Russia which together account for approximately 90% of the global nuclear stockpile there are indications that China has also deployed a limited number of warheads in a state of high readiness during peacetime China's nuclear warhead inventory increased from 410 in January 2023 to 500 in January 2024 Experts from the institute estimate that by the end of the decade depending on how Beijing chooses to build its military forces China could match or potentially surpass the United States or Russia in the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles it possesses "China is expanding its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country," said Hans Kristensen "But in nearly all of the nuclear-armed states there are either plans or a significant push to increase nuclear forces." the director of SIPRI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme emphasized the heightened significance of nuclear weapons in international relations "'We have not seen nuclear weapons playing such a prominent role in international relations since the Cold War It is hard to believe that barely two years have passed since the leaders of the five largest nuclear-armed states jointly reaffirmed that 'a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.'" Researchers extract powerful antibodies from an American's blood after years of self-experimentation offering hope to reduce the 140,000 annual deaths.. The House Judiciary Committee issued subpoenas last month to 15 technology companies Participants reported seeing a blue-green hue with unique saturation properties a visual experience that natural light cannot produce Analysis  Archaeology Blogpost Business & Finance Culture Exclusive Explainer Environment Features Health In Brief Jewish World Judea and Samaria Lifestyle Cyber & Internet Sports Diplomacy  Iran & The Gulf Gaza Strip Politics Shopping Terms of use Privacy Policy Submissions Contact Us The first issue of Israel Hayom appeared on July 30 Israel Hayom was founded on the belief that the Israeli public deserves better more balanced and more accurate journalism [contact-form-7 id=”508379″ html_id=”isrh_form_Newsletter_en” title=”newsletter_subscribe”] Israeli authorities have reportedly indicted an Israeli engineer for allegedly initiating contact with Iranian intelligence and offering to sell sensitive information including claims of access to a nuclear research center a 29-year-old resident of Be’er Sheva city in the southern occupied territories and an engineer at Haifa Chemicals South was charged on March 2 with contacting a foreign agent and transferring information to Iran Investigators assert Bokobza established contact with Iranian intelligence elements through Telegram messaging application over a number of months From December last year until his arrest in February he allegedly carried out various tasks for his Iranian handler He also presented himself as having access to the Negev nuclear research center and purportedly provided details about the facility Authorities allege Bokobza initiated the contact fully aware that he was engaging with Iranian intelligence operatives The Israeli technician was arrested last month following a joint investigation by the regime's so-called internal security service Bokobza has reportedly confessed to photographing “sensitive” facilities and transmitting information for “a fee” Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses: www.presstv.co.uk Click the "share" button in the bottom bar “We Are Not a Satellite of America”: Ben-Gurion’s Angry Response to U.S 1967 Intelligence Report: Was Israel Producing Weapons-Grade Plutonium and Deceiving the U.S. For more information contact:Avner Cohen at 202-489-6282 (mobile), 831-647-6437 (office) or avnerc@middlebury.eduWilliam Burr at 202/994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu Two photos of the Dimona reactor construction site taken from the roadside by U.S military attaches during August and November 1960 The second photo shows the reactor dome under construction. The images were first published in an AEC Intelligence Report An Israeli newsreel depicting a U.S Independence Day cocktail party at the Acadya Hotel in Herzliya on 4 July 1959 only two days after Odgen Reid began his ambassadorship The encounter between Ambassador Reid and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was a far happier one than their difficult meeting on 3 January 1961 (see Document 5) President Eisenhower met with Israel’s Prime Minister Ben-Gurion The meeting took place in the President's office at the White House Douglas Dillon is standing on the right. Although the construction of Dimona was about to begin Ben-Gurion told Eisenhower nothing about the project (National Park Service photo number 72-3351-4 Emmanuel “Manes” Pratt, Dimona’s legendary builder and its first director, briefing Israeli leaders on the plans for the nuclear site. According to the official caption: “A visit of senior officials at the Dimona reactor, 1960. From left: Shimon Peres, Golda Meir, David Ben Gurion.” (Photo from maariv.co) Acting as Prime Minister Eshkol’s personal representative, prominent Israeli nuclear physicist Amos de-Shalit hosted the U.S. government visitors/inspectors to Dimona in April 1966. During his short life – de-Shalit died in 1969 at the young age of 42 after a brief illness – he held the most senior positions at the Weizman Institute of Science. (Photo from Wikipedia) Floyd L. Culler, an expert on nuclear fuels, was on the staff of Oak Ridge National Laboratory when he participated in the 1965 and 1966 visits (inspections) to the Dimona reactor. He later told journalist Seymour Hersh that he was “surprised but not shocked” by the Israeli cover-up of the reactor’s operations and the reprocessing plant. (Photo from National Academies) President Jimmy Carter meeting with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in August 1977 when the administration was trying to build support for the Panama Canal Treaty. When they met again at the White House on 25 January 1978 Kissinger may have briefed Carter on the secret understandings on the Israeli nuclear weapons program that had been reached between President Nixon and Prime Minister Meir. For this meeting (Photo from Jimmy Carter Presidential Library) Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and President Jimmy Carter meeting with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin on 18 November 1977, a few months before the FOIA disclosure of Israeli nuclear weapons that would interest Moscow. (Photo from Jimmy Carter Presidential Library) 2024 - A recently declassified Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee (JAEIC) report from December 1960 is the first and only known U.S intelligence report to correctly and unequivocally state that Israel’s Dimona nuclear project would include a reprocessing plant for plutonium production and was weapons related intelligence products treated the reprocessing issue as unsettled until the late 1960s when Israel reached the threshold of a nuclear weapons capability and the U.S and Israel reached a secret agreement to accommodate its status as an undeclared nuclear power The newly released intelligence report is one of 20 documents featured in a new Electronic Briefing Book published today by the National Security Archive the latest in a series of declassified document collections edited by Archive senior analyst William Burr and Professor Avner Cohen (Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey) concerning U.S policy toward the Israeli nuclear weapons program and the complex problems that it raised for U.S intelligence analysis revealed that several Israeli sources had informed the U.S embassy in February 1967 that Israel “either has or is about to complete” a reprocessing plant at Dimona and that “the Dimona reactor has been operated at full capacity.” The bottom line was that Israel was “6-8 weeks” from the bomb While the intelligence arm of the State Department could neither prove nor disprove those dramatic allegations it evaluated some of them as “plausible” and urged the next inspection team in April 1967 to explore them This is the first known document that treated the possibility that Israel was systematically deceiving the United States about Dimona as a factual claim Also published today are documents from the 1970s that illustrate how the U.S government accommodated itself to the reality of Israel’s nuclear weapons capabilities after the CIA mistakenly released an intelligence estimate that affirmed that Israel had produced nuclear weapons Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin asked whether it was true that Israel had such weapons Secretary of State Cyrus Vance handed Dobrynin a “non-paper” affirming that the U.S “accept[s] [Israel’s] assurances” that it did not possess nuclear weapons and “will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East.” Another document from early 1978 a State Department report on nuclear proliferation risks posed by various countries (“the Dirty Dozen”) indicated why Washington had abandoned pressure on Israel to sign the Nonproliferation Treaty: “The high US priority in finding a peace settlement in the area is overriding and inhibits effective pursuit of non-proliferation objectives in Israel.” The documents in this publication are from the U.S National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and were discovered among the records of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (RG 128) and at the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library Almost all of them are the result of Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) requests or Indexing on Demand requests filed by the National Security Archive one of the new documents is a Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee report from December 1960 Its statements that the French-Israeli nuclear project in the Negev Desert would include a “plutonium separation plant” and that the Dimona reactor was unequivocally for weapons purposes were rare claims intelligence document that categorically and explicitly maintained that the Dimona site would include a plant to separate plutonium from spent reactor fuel for the purposes of making weapons Subsequent declassified reports treated a reprocessing plant as something that did not yet exist and said that its construction would probably require a new political decision by the Israeli leadership Other new documents include the detailed reports of U.S inspection visits to the Dimona reactor in 1965 and 1966 the inspections were referred to as “visits” but were as detailed as the Israelis would permit government’s concern during the 1960s that the Israeli nuclear program was a proliferation risk that made it necessary to determine whether the reactor represented a nuclear weapons project especially whether there were any indications that the Israelis already had or were trying to build a plant for converting spent reactor fuel into plutonium for weapons Another key declassified document also shows concerns about the possibility of deception in Dimona A March 1967 State Department intelligence report that the Israelis had or were about to install a reprocessing plant to produce plutonium at Dimona and had been operating the Dimona reactor at high capacity for that purpose The drafters of the report (at least the text that has been declassified) clearly saw the new information as dramatic but were reluctant to draw strong conclusions they suggested that the next AEC visit to Dimona look closely at the problem of reprocessing But the April 1967 inspection learned nothing new The documents from the 1960s are from a period when nonproliferation concerns had a significant impact on U.S policy toward Israel although never to the point of an open clash or confrontation but that would not stop them from secretly moving forward in developing a nuclear weapons capability including the secret reprocessing of spent fuel Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and other top officials were not about to tell Washington that they were moving toward the nuclear threshold much less take any open step in that direction intelligence discerned that the Israelis were making progress “Prospects for Further Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.” One of the conclusions was that “Israel already has produced nuclear weapons,” or at least there was a “belief” that Israel had done so Embassy in Israel to ask Washington for instructions in the event of questions from the media The State Department immediately provided guidance by summarizing the “strong” statements by the Government of Israel that it “will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East” and declarations by Prime Minister Rabin in 1974 and 1975 that “we have no nuclear weapons” and that “Israel is a non-nuclear country.” According to the Department those were “authoritative statements” and “we have nothing to add.” That guidance was consistent with the Nixon-Meir understanding and the Israeli Embassy would not have taken exception to it If Kissinger did brief President Carter about the Nixon-Meir understanding it is hard to know how decisive it was The Carter administration was aware that Israel had full nuclear weapons capabilities [See Document 13] it studiously avoided any pressure on Israel any Kissinger briefing on the Nixon-Meir deal may have been a useful reminder of the importance of the issue and the approach that Carter’s immediate predecessors had taken to Israel’s nuclear program to clarify the matter: “to what extent are true [sic] the reports … that U.S government agencies came to the conclusion that Israel is in possession of nuclear weapons.” Vance observed that the Israelis had denied they had the bomb and that the CIA was divided on the matter but agreed to review the Soviet paper A few weeks later when Dobrynin asked about the State Department’s response to his query Vance went somewhat beyond the usual position by acknowledging that “our intelligence community agreed that Israel had the capability to make nuclear weapons [but] it was split on the question of whether it had already done so.” In response Dobrynin said that he “had ‘a higher opinion of the US intelligence people’ than the answer implied,” suggesting his doubts about a “split.” Vance provided Dobrynin with a non-paper that included a declaration that “we accepted Israeli assurances they had not produced nuclear weapons.” The Department also accepted Israeli assurance that they will “not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East.” Plainly skeptical Dobrynin “persistently questioned whether we really believe what the Israelis said.” Vance replied that “there was no evidence that Israeli assurances were untrue.” In this example of government-to-government dialogue about Israel’s nuclear status the Department upheld Israel’s posture of nuclear opacity This raises questions over how much information – how precise and how detailed – the U.S government itself had about the Israeli nuclear program at that time The posting concludes with a long State Department report on countries of nuclear proliferation concern “The Dirty Dozen,” (actually eleven) that included an assessment of Israel’s nuclear weapons capabilities and the policy and diplomatic issues that they raised While it is likely that the authors of the report did not know of the Nixon-Meir understanding they recognized that Israel’s nuclear program was in a special category that made it impervious to the usual diplomatic pressures not least because “the high US priority in finding a peace settlement in the area is overriding and inhibits effective pursuit of non-proliferation objectives in Israel.” Important State Department archival records from the late 1960s sit in the appeal in the queue of the overloaded Interagency Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP) and it is quite possible that ISCAP will never get to it because of insufficient staffing Also bottled up in the declassification and appeals process are the reports on the Dimona visits in 1967 Also highly relevant is that there appears to be a secret regulation warning current or previous federal government employees with disciplinary action if they release information concerning Israeli nuclear weapons activities.[8] To what extent this prohibition relates to declassification of historical archival material is not altogether clear but certainly the Defense Department is determined to raise objections to declassification of even 60-year-old or older material concerning U.S policy and the state of knowledge about the Israeli nuclear program Under the current executive order on classified national security information the Pentagon has freedom of action to do so; whether that will change in the foreseeable future remains to be seen Records of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy Before the discovery of the secret nuclear reactor at Dimona during November-December 1960 the Atomic Energy Commission had provided Israel with a small five-megawatt research reactor under the “Atoms for Peace Program,” with fuel provided by the AEC Located at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center formerly referred to as Nabi Rubin site some fifteen miles south of Tel Aviv the recently constructed reactor (designed by Philip Johnson and inaugurated in June 1960) was subject to inspection under an Agreement for Cooperation between the AEC and the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission Their report concluded that the operations of the reactor and the use of U.S fuel were in “accordance with safeguards provisions.” Discussion at the embassy a few days later indicated that the reactor could produce only miniscule amounts of plutonium Under the inspection requirements there was “no risk of material diversion except for the production of isotopes for radiological warfare.” where there was vocal support for two inspections per year The discussion quickly shifted to Israel and nuclear weapons Perhaps not wholly appreciative or supportive of the Eisenhower administration’s developing concern about nuclear proliferation Embassy officials focused on Israel’s security needs “maximum effect” weapons were the “most effective means of self-protection.” Either Israel could build nuclear weapons France may have been mentioned because embassy officials had heard “reports of a joint Israeli-French team doing something in atomic energy in or near Beersheba.” The AEC officials knew nothing about that and wanted to learn more The discussion concluded with an understanding that with “new separation techniques” (used for producing plutonium) Israel could “become a nuclear power.” Yet keeping a nuclear weapons program a secret “would be difficult .. This recently declassified intelligence report shared in December 1960 with Congress’s Joint Committee on Atomic Energy used newly acquired information to go far beyond the earlier rumors by confirming not only the joint French-Israeli construction of a large reactor in a site near Beersheba but also by noting that the joint project would include a “plutonium separation plant.” We believe this is the first – and possibly the only – U.S intelligence document that unequivocally and explicitly declared that the French-Israeli joint nuclear project included those two major components: a production reactor and a plutonium separation plant intelligence estimates treated the issue of a separation plant as an unresolved matter of concern most often taking the view that it did not yet exist and that its construction most likely would require a new political decision Yet the Committee did not explain how it reached the judgement that Dimona would include a separation plant by positing the construction of a separation plant the report assumed that the reactor’s purpose was weapons production The Committee estimated that the power of the reactor was about 200 MW (thermal) which is almost 10 times larger than the declared nominal power Tracing the construction of the site to 1959 it estimated that the reactor would be operational by mid-1961 Dimona could produce about 30 kilograms of weapons grade plutonium given they conduct their first weapons test by late 1962 or early 1963 It also speculated that the French could provide a test site but that if they provided weapons designs no tests would be necessary the French and Israelis would be making a statement in a few days This AEC intelligence report was far less categorical than the JAEIC had been about the purposes of the French-Israeli project but when the Commission’s analysts considered various interpretations they believed that the “secrecy surrounding the project suggested that the complex was intended for the production of weapons-grade plutonium whether or not generation of electric power is involved.” One of the interpretations that the purpose was a research reactor with little capacity to produce plutonium they deemed “incompatible with the security of the site and the large scale of the entire project and particularly the large size of the dome-shaped containment building.” did not specify that a reprocessing plant would be part of the Dimona complex although the weapons grade plutonium interpretation would require the availability of one The JCAE hearing on 9 December 1960 that AEC General Manager Luedecke mentioned had its contentious moments but this heavily excised account provides a little of the flavor The testimony by the State Department’s Phillip Farley conveyed the gravity of the concerns about Dimona: that the “security of the United States” was involved and that the reactor’s existence had produced “needless suspicion and risk.” Senator John Pastore (D-RI) “showed agitation” that the U.S had been “‘snooping around’ [excised] our supposed friends” and said that as soon as it had the earliest evidence it should have “confronted Israel directly.” By contrast “for different reasons,” blamed the CIA and the State Department “for tardy action.” Committee members were generally concerned that “would be blamed because of its close economic ties” with Israel they did not want it to become general knowledge that the U.S government had known about Dimona “before it was public.” AEC Chair John McCone appeared on “Meet the Press,” where he disclosed that the U.S had “informal and unofficial” information about the reactor acknowledged that it came as a “surprise” to the U.S. and said that Washington was seeking more information from Israel Those statements incensed Ben-Gurion (See Document 5) specific questions to pose to the Israeli leadership – either Prime Minister Ben Gurion or Foreign Minister Meir – about the reactor and visits by “qualified scientists from the IAEA or other friendly quarters.” As part of the follow-up to the Department’s request Ambassador Reid was summoned to Sde Boker (Ben Gurion’s Negev’s residence) and had a lengthy discussion with the Prime Minister which he reported in a detailed five-part “eyes only” message Ben-Gurion was plainly aggravated by the publicity given to the Dimona reactor and the detailed questions about Israel’s purposes especially the demand for a categorical statement that Israel “has no plans for producing nuclear weapons.” Ben-Gurion said his answer was a “categorical yes,” that Israel had no such plans He went on to discuss at length what he thought was the “greatness” of the United States as a “refuge for tens of millions of people of Europe,” for its war against slavery and its early recognition of the State of Israel But then he went on to say that “we are equals of America in terms of moral respect.” Soon “drawing himself up in his chair,” he said “We didn't deserve it and we will not accept such treatment.” That was Ben Gurion’s irate and emotional response to the way that the Eisenhower administration had handled the Dimona issue What especially rankled him was AEC Director John McCone’s statements on “Meet the Press” on 18 December 1960 that Dimona was a “surprise” to the U.S and that Washington had asked Israel for more information Ben-Gurion did not think that such matters should be public especially after his subsequent statement to the Knesset which was as “trustworthy as any made by the highest [U.S.] officials.” Suggesting that U.S officials should not raise doubts about Israel’s purposes and will never be a satellite.” Later he observed that McCone’s comments had contributed to the “deterioration of the atmosphere in the Middle East” by increasing concern about Dimona every Jew will be exterminated in this country.” When the discussion turned to safeguards about plutonium produced from the reactor and possibilities for inspection “I refuse” because he did not want Soviet inspectors as “part of an international body,” referring to the IAEA when Reid asked why Dimona could not have inspections when Israel had accepted them for the Soreq research reactor he could not get straightforward answers from Ben-Gurion who wanted to avoid acknowledging that he wanted freedom of action for Israel to use Dimona as it saw fit Ben-Gurion allowed that “access” by a “friendly” power could be possible under some conditions Reid and Ben-Gurion discussed the “spying question.” Ben Gurion was the one who raised the issue and asked whether the U-2 flew over Dimona Reid responded that he had never been “officially informed” about U-2 flights and that the only photographs of Dimona he knew about were taken from the roadside While taking “full responsibility” for the activities of the CIA and military attaches Reid assured Ben-Gurion that “there was no spying going on.” Noting the Embassy’s efforts to establish a “working relationship” between the two countries, Reid said that Israel had not helped matters by failing to “inform us of the reactor—particularly in light of the economic assistance we had been providing.” Reid believed that point, among others that he made, “registered” with the Prime Minister. After noting the severe impact of cabinet crises and the related Lavon Affair on Ben-Gurion Reid believed that the conversation had “largely” helped clear the air although Washington would want more information in response to its questions about the Israeli nuclear project While President Johnson shared President Kennedy’s concern about nuclear proliferation he was certainly not as persistent and demanding with the Israelis as his predecessor had been Hosted by Professor Igal Talmi a prominent nuclear physicist at the Weizmann Institute the January 1965 visit was rushed; it lasted only one day The Israelis would not agree to provide more time Nevertheless the team members believed that they had seen enough to draw reliable conclusions depending upon the irradiation level desired for the plutonium.” In their assessment a chemical separation plant to produce the plutonium “could be constructed ... within perhaps two years as an internal modification within an existing building.” As long as Dimona remained a “secret facility,” the team recommended that future visits try to establish for example “whether the reactor operating schedule is indicative of ‘weapons grade’ plutonium production” and to find “any evidence of the construction of a chemical separations plant.” Another sign of weapons potential became evident from the visit to the small plutonium hot cells laboratory which included three rooms “equipped for work with dangerous alpha-active substances such as plutonium.” The lab was then working with 56 grams of the 150 grams of plutonium received from the French for research purposes the “plutonium facilities are very complete and are suitable for an extensive research or small production program.” While the glove box equipment needed for safe operations is “relatively small scale ... it would be possible ....to equip the [glove] boxes with equipment suitable for the fabrication of the plutonium components required for a nuclear weapon.” decontamination building” where a pilot plutonium separation plant “was to have been constructed.” But Director Mannes Pratt said that he doubted that “it will ever be constructed,” and the team found no evidence “that the radiochemical processing pilot plant does exist .. the Israelis maintained the narrative that despite their initial plans reprocessing capability did not exist An important issue was how Israel would handle the first reactor core that had been irradiated and removed the core would be returned to France for chemical processing but that issue had not yet received “detailed consideration.” He did not make clear exactly what would happen with the core and responded to a “direct question about the disposal of the plutonium recovered from the Israeli fuel” only by stating that it “was a question of policy.” According to Pratt the French could continue to supply small quantities of plutonium for research purposes under the same conditions that they had supplied the 150 grams When a team member “mentioned that a four-year cooling period would reduce transportation costs Pratt acknowledged that [Dimona lacked] facilities for such long cooling times” and he “worried about the consequences of an air attack” if irradiated material was onsite The uranium metal production facility that produced material used in the fuel elements was part of the visit team was informed that the plant had been shut down because of a shortage of uranium supplies one of the team members asked about Israeli procurement of uranium concentrate from foreign sources While the team did not mention uranium from Argentina it is what they had in mind when the issue was raised refused to discuss “foreign sources” declaring that it was “outside the scope of this visit.” When Howard Brown sent the report of the April 1966 visit to Dimona his cover letter considered two possibilities about the reactor’s actual operations One was the “bare possibility that the reactor may have operated to produce about 3 kilograms of plutonium since the time of the last visit in January 1965.” But the other possibility indeed what the team saw as the overall “most probable conclusion” was “that the reactor was operating as a research reactor,” since there was “no evidence of any nuclear weapons research and development work being conducted at the Dimona site.” The 17-page report did not name the team’s three members, but from other documents we know it consisted of W. Kelly Woods, a General Electric employee at the AEC Hanford works in Richland, WA; Donald E. Erb, with the Division of Reactor Development and Technology at the AEC’s Headquarters, and Floyd L. Culler, the Oak Ridge scientist who participated in the 1965 visit to Dimona.[12] In considering a theoretical possibility of deception, the report made several points. One was that the team could not affirmatively rule out whether there was a reprocessing plant in site or even another reactor elsewhere in Israel.[17] Thus intelligence needed to “maintain a constant surveillance of the country to determine whether such a plant or plants exists or are being built.” Also relevant was the need to determine “as conclusively as possible” the disposition or shipment of the irradiated fuel discharged from the reactor” to ensure that it was not used for plutonium production Another concern about the possibility of deception was that nothing could be learned about the 80 or more tons of uranium from Argentina and how Israel was using it.[18] When asked about the uranium Joseph Tulipman said he “knows nothing and acted as though it was the first time he had heard of it when asked.” In its report the U.S team correctly pointed to the risk that it “could be a supply of uranium that has been or could in the future be run through the reactor between our visits and not be detected so long as the indicated reactor utilization is low.” Israel would be doing something very much like that in its efforts to acquire weapons-grade plutonium during this period Besides the central question of whether the Israelis were using Dimona for weapons production purposes the report covered a visit to the Soreq research reactor the possibility of inspection by the IAEA or other international organizations and the intense concern for secrecy about Dimona A major worry was that the reactor’s vulnerability made the Israelis “very concerned about a possible leak to the media which again might draw Nasser’s attention to the reactor.” According to De-Shalit “Israelis fear there may be an unannounced large strike at Dimona.” Those concerns made them so apprehensive about the security of the irradiated fuel from bombing that they wanted to ship the fuel elements to France as soon as the French were ready for them to do so De-Shalit believed that “open inspection” of Dimona would be to Israel’s advantage but it could not be by the IAEA because any information its inspectors obtained would become available to Arab countries Suggesting that the visits to Dimona by U.S experts were too “unstable” with their “potential for embarrassing both parties,” De-Shalit proposed inspections by EURATOM or NATO as an alternative one cannot but wonder whether De-Shalit was fully aware of Dimona’s big secrets Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Office of the Country Director for Israel and Arab-Israeli Affairs sufficient to process material for one or two nuclear bombs a year.” If the reactor “were run at full power and the fuel elements were changed frequently maximum output of weapons grade plutonium would result.” In that scenario the “missing 80 tons of uranium concentrate reported purchased from Argentina” is very significant because it would give the Israelis the ability to use the reactor that way with a “reasonable chance of not having this detected.” Also relevant to plutonium production was that the “reactor can and has been operated at various power levels and that weapons grade plutonium can be extracted at these levels over a period of time.” Hughes’ interpretation strongly suggested that Israel had been conducting a deception operation at Dimona Hughes doubted the source’s claim that Israel could produce a weapon in six to eight weeks but he allowed the possibility that the French “might be willing to test an Israeli device or that Israel on its own might assemble and stockpile a small number of untested devices.” For Hughes inspection of Dimona was critically important to help resolve the question of reprocessing capability Hughes recommended “cultivating” the Israeli sources to obtain more details but this 11-page declassified “preliminary” summary and the conclusions indicated that U.S inspectors were categorically told that Dimona lacked a reprocessing facility and that Israel had no intention to build one at the Dimona site While the inspecting team accepted the Israeli denial of a reprocessing plant and their overall presentation of Dimona as a “research center,” the U.S team noted that as long of tons of irradiated fuel “remains in Israel Questions and comments handwritten on the back of the report possibly by National Security Council staffer Harold Saunders could Dimona "be completely divorced from military program?" "What are chances of cheating" "What questions about Israel's overall nuclear capability are left unanswered?" "Do your findings mean there can be no other plutonium in Israel?" "If fuel not shipped to France in a year When a JCAE official wrote this memorandum, Richard Nixon was becoming U.S. president. Downplaying proliferation concerns generally, in less than a year Nixon took a new approach to important regional ally Israel by accepting Prime Minister Golda Meir’s assurances that Israel would keep its nuclear status ambiguous and unacknowledged while the U.S. would end pressures for inspection at Dimona and NPT commitments.[25] After India’s “peaceful nuclear explosion” in May 1974, concern about its impact and implications put nuclear proliferation on the front burner in U.S. government policymaking. In late August 1974, the intelligence establishment published a top secret Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) “Prospects for Further Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.” The document was closely held were distributed to senior officials at the Atomic Energy Commission and probably other agencies the SNIE was substantially declassified including the section on Israel The comprehensive withholding by the CIA of the entire text of this recent release is another example of the deep secrecy surrounding information about Dimona MDR release from Access to Archival Databases 1978 most likely for use as a briefing paper for a forthcoming trip to Israel by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance Embassy provided an overview of the U.S.-Israeli nuclear relationship including a pending bilateral nuclear power agreement with the United States involving the construction by Westinghouse of two large power plants The Embassy pointed to the secrecy surrounding Dimona officials had been allowed to visit since 1969 they forbade a request for a visit by Senators Abraham Ribicoff (D-Ct) and Howard Baker (R-TN) Assuming that Israel had plenty of capability to produce nuclear weapons the Embassy left open the question of whether it had actually done so: Theoretically Israel “has the capacity to have generated the material for a dozen or so 20-kiloton nuclear weapons” since the Dimona reactor went critical in 1963 It also had the “scientific and technological capability to have developed these weapons.” Yet Israel had denied that it had nuclear weapons and the government’s “basic line” was that “Israel is a non-nuclear country” and “will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the area.” The judgement in the 1974 SNIE that Israel had the bomb became public through the CIA’s FOIA release to the NRDC. When reporters made inquiries, a CIA official stated that the release had been a “mistake” because some of the information should have remained classified. According to one account, a CIA officer had said that the error could cause an “international incident.”[31] Embassy in Israel asked Ambassador Samuel Lewis for guidance and instructions in the event that the Israeli Foreign Ministry brought up the matter officially It is possible that the Israelis expressed discontent about the revelations The State Department responded quickly by informing the Embassy that questions on the press stories should go to Washington It provided guidance based on the “strong” statements by the Government of Israel that it “will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East” and declarations by Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin in 1974 and 1975 that “we have no nuclear weapons” and that “Israel is a non-nuclear country.” According to the Department those were “authoritative statements” and “we have nothing to add.” the State Department was sustaining the position taken by President Nixon in September 1969 when he reached a secret understanding with Prime Minister Golda Meir that in return for continued Israeli ambiguity on the status of its weapons activities would avoid pressure on its nuclear program Although the Jimmy Carter administration had put nuclear nonproliferation at the heart of its foreign policy for broader policy reasons it spared Israel from significant pressure in that respect RG 59, Records of Marshall Shulman, box 6, Secretary- Correspondence, also published in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) a few weeks after the news stories on the CIA’s release of the SNIE conclusions Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin met with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance for a discussion of current matters including SALT Dobrynin handed Vance a “non-paper” raising questions about the press reports about Israeli nuclear weapons to clarify the matter: “to what extent are true [sic] the reports … government agencies … came to the conclusion that Israel is in possession of nuclear weapons.” Vance observed that the Israelis had denied they had the bomb and that the CIA was divided on the matter RG 59, Records of Marshall Shulman, box 6, Secretary- Correspondence 1978, also published in FRUS At an earlier meeting Dobrynin raised another nuclear proliferation issue Dobrynin asked Vance for a reply to the questions about South African and Israeli nuclear capabilities The Secretary said that a response on South Africa would be ready on 16 March and that the Department was working on a reply about Israel Vance went somewhat beyond the usual position of accepting Israeli denials by acknowledging that “our intelligence community agreed that Israel had the capability to make nuclear weapons [but] it was split on the question of whether it had already done so.” Whether there actually was a split or not Dobrynin was skeptical: he said he had “‘a higher opinion of the US intelligence people’ than the answer implied.” RG 59, Cyrus Vance Chronological Files, box 9, unlabeled file, also published in FRUS Vance provided answers to Dobrynin about Israel and South Africa They gave Dobrynin a written reply and observed that “we had no information about the additional sites mentioned by the Soviets and we would be glad to have any further information the Soviet Union wished to make available.” Smith mentioned a Pravda article claiming that NATO was providing South Africa with nuclear aid a claim that Smith said was “completely wrong.” Vance provided an oral note or “non-paper” (see document 19) in part saying that “we accepted Israeli assurances they had not produced nuclear weapons.” A skeptical Dobrynin “persistently questioned whether we really believe what the Israelis said.” Vance replied “there was no evidence that Israeli assurances were untrue.” Thus in this example of government-to-government dialogue about Israel’s nuclear status the Department formally upheld Israel’s posture of nuclear ambiguity Vance was not going to share intelligence on its weapons program with a Cold War adversary; he may well have been concerned that the Soviets would share the information with their Arab associates which would not help the Carter administration’s efforts to maintain equilibrium between Israel and Egypt position was that it shared Soviet concerns about nuclear proliferation in “volatile areas of the world.” It had seen the press reports about Israeli nuclear weapons and had raised the matter with the Government of Israel “which has denied that it possesses such weapons.” The Israeli Government had also made assurances that “it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East.” The U.S the Department formally declared its support for Israel’s position of nuclear ambiguity The last paragraph made it clear why the U.S did not expect Israel to accede to the Treaty until there was “significant progress toward a comprehensive peace settlement in the Middle East.” RG 59- Subject Files of Ambassador at Large and Representative of the United States to the International Atomic Energy Agency Israel’s nuclear weapons program was one of the topics of a lengthy report prepared by the State Department’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs Noting that U.S policy since the May 1974 Indian nuclear test had focused on checking the spread of nuclear-relevant technologies Gelb saw that approach as having “impressive if not total success” and distinct “shortcomings,” especially the narrow focus on “nuclear transfers” and the avoidance of “linkage with other aspects of bilateral relations.” Also problematic was the emphasis on “capabilities rather than motivations.” To broaden the approach Gelb presented his readers with a study that explored the “capabilities and motivations” of eleven “sensitive countries,” including Argentina Gelb put the eleven countries in two broad groups In one were those that had no “apparent interest” in acquiring nuclear weapons but that would have the means to produce them The others were those that lacked a capability but were “strongly motivated” to achieve one The coverage of Israel on pages 26-28 portrayed it as straddling the two categories in that it had an “interest” in a nuclear capability and had probably acquired one despite its “steadfast and careful ambiguity” about its status While Washington “lacked the basis” for determining whether Israel had nuclear weapons it had the means to produce them: “we believe Israel has reprocessed some spent [Dimona] fuel... if a “significant reprocessing capability exists the Israelis could produce weapons on demand.” If U.S intelligence reporting and analysis was more specific than this the drafters of this report either did not have access to it or the report’s “secret” classification prevented use of sensitive intelligence While the writers were not sure whether Israel saw an “actual demonstration of nuclear weapons to be in its self interest,” they saw plenty of motivation to have a weapons capability and to use it in a crisis: Israel’s “insecurity is profound because of its precarious location and commonality of its opponents and the intractability of the regional conflict.” With its capabilities “we judge it likely that it could and would resort to nuclear weapons if its existence as a state were threatened.” for conventional weapons support was an important aspect of the security relationship and may have been “responsible for whatever restraint Israel had exercised regarding nuclear weapons.” Yet it did not give Washington significant leverage for nonproliferation purposes because of the “unequivocal” support for Israel by U.S “domestic interests” and by the “clandestine character of the Israeli nuclear program which makes official deniability possible and shield[s] the program from attempts to verify military use.” The State Department working-level drafters of this report were most likely unaware of the Meir-Nixon agreement because of its extreme sensitivity they understood that the problem of Israel was a special case in part because of domestic political considerations as well as larger diplomatic concerns The final sentence of the section on Israel made even more explicit the point raised in Document 19: “The high US priority in finding a peace settlement in the area is overriding and inhibits effective pursuit of non-proliferation objectives in Israel.” This report’s recipients included a long list of senior officials from Ambassador Gerard C Smith and Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research Harold Saunders to Assistant Secretary for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs Patsy Mink and Policy Planning Staff director Anthony Lake Whether the recipients returned the report with comments and suggestions or whether it was subsequently revised remains to be learned [1].  For what was previously known about the Reid-Ben-Gurion meeting Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press and the corresponding endnotes on page 374 “The Nuclear Dimensions of the 1967 Middle East War: An Israeli Perspective,” Nonproliferation Review 25 (2018): 361 The Worst Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press Presidents Protected Israel’s Worst-Kept Secret: Its Nuclear Arsenal Kissinger and the Non-Proliferation Regime 1969–1977,” The Journal of Strategic Studies 40 (2017) “Israel Asks Bush to Explain its ‘Special Relationship’ with U.S Jimmy Carter’s diary entry briefly describes the conversation when he and Rosalynn Carter hosted Kissinger for lunch but does not mention the private meeting before they dined White House Diary (New York: Farrar Strauss & Giroux The meeting received no publicity and there are no White House photos of it “CIA Said in 1974 Israel Had Bombs,” New York Times “CIA Report Says Israel Secretly Obtained A-Matter,” Washington Post should start telling the whole truth about Israeli nukes,” Washington Post In Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press Avner Cohen showed how the bit of information about the joint French-Israeli project was used to develop a fuller explanation of the project in the Negev Desert [10] For further discussion see Alexander Glaser and Julien de Troullioud de Lanversin “Plutonium and Tritium Production in Israel’s Dimona Reactor 1964–2020,” Science & Global Security 29 (2021): 90-107 [11] [12] “Briefing of Dimona Inspection Team March 30 [13] For Culler’s recollection of discussions with De-Shalit during one of the Dimona visits [14] [16] The first to reveal Dimona’s biggest secret the existence of the underground reprocessing plant in site Israeli nuclear technician who turned whistleblower told the London Sunday Times about his work at Machon 2 Dimona’s secret underground reprocessing facility American journalist Seymour Hersh described in The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Option and American Foreign Policy (New York: Random House 1991) how Israel conducted complex deception operations during the visits of U.S The plant’s managers concealed the existence of the reprocessing facility and misrepresented the magnitude and operations of the reactor all to disguise the real purpose of the Dimona complex [17] that “he seemed surprised but not shocked upon being informed that his team had been duped by false control rooms.” Hersh [19]. Rusk and Davies quotations from Document 391 and accompanying footnotes [20]. It is possible that the source was Yehuda Ben Moshe, the secretary of the Committee for Denuclearization of the Middle East. His colleagues rebuked him for these unauthorized meetings with U.S. officials, forcing him to resign. He referred to this incident in an article he authored in 1986, “Twenty Five Years Before Vanunu,” Koteret Rashit [21] the Committee for Denuclearization disappeared but even before it was fading away partly due to intimidation by security forces “The Evolution and Future of Israeli Nuclear Ambiguity,” The Nonproliferation Review 29 (2022): 247-248 [22]. Avner Cohen, “Nuclear Dimensions of the 1967 Middle East War.,”. See also, Avner Cohen, “Israel’s Secret Plan to Nuke the Egyptian Desert: Fifty years ago, Israel built a nuclear device—and then had to decide what to do with it.” Politico Magazine “‘Last Secret’ of 1967 War: Israel’s Doomsday Plan for Nuclear Display,” New York Times [23] “The Nuclear Dimensions of the 1967 Middle East War,” 370 [25] [26] “Israel Denies Atom-Bomb Report; Lebanese Start to Form Cabinet,” Washington Post [27] “TV Report Of an Israeli A-Bomb Draws A Denial in Washington,” New York Times [28]. According to the AEC biographical sketch, after Fox moved to Israel he took the Hebrew name Ben Ari but that may have been an error (or he later abandoned the name) because a 2021 memorial service notice identified him as Reuven Opher [29] [30]. U.S. Embassy telegram 0040 to State Department “Clarification of Remarks by Israeli Officials to Codel Ribicoff/Baker,” 4 January 1977 [31] Israel and the Bomb The U.S. Discovery of Israel's Secret Nuclear Project Concerned About Nuclear Weapons Potential, John F. Kennedy Pushed for Inspection of Israel Nuclear Facilities The Battle of the Letters, 1963: John F. Kennedy, David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, and the U.S. Inspections of Dimona Duplicity and Self-Deception: Israel, the United States, and the Dimona Inspections, 1964-65 The Israel-Argentina Yellowcake Connection Israel Crosses the Threshold Israel Crosses the Threshold II The NUMEC Affair: Did Highly Enriched Uranium from the U.S. Aid Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program? In 1974 Estimate, CIA Found that Israel Already Had a Nuclear Stockpile Gelman LibraryThe George Washington University2130 H Street Phone: 202/994-7000Fax: 202/994-7005Contact by email     ​ support our work - donate The National Security Archive is committed to digital accessibility. If you experience a barrier that affects your ability to access content on this page, let us know via our Contact form Contents of this website (c) The National Security Archive 1985-2025For educational or noncommercial use contact the Archive using the form above for permission Please select what you would like included for printing: Copy the text below and then paste that into your favorite email application died peacefully at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston on Thursday Zachary graduated from Southeastern Regional Vocational Technical High School in Easton and attended Full Sail University in Winter Park He was grateful for the lifelong care he received at Children’s Hospital and Brigham & Women’s Hospital both in Boston.  Zachary is survived by his beloved sister and best friend A Celebration of Zachary’s Life will be held at Sociedade Filarmonica São João Stoughton on Monday December 23rd from 1-4 PM donations in Zachary’s memory may be made to Boston Children’s Hospital Trust Enter your phone number above to have directions sent via text This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply Service map data © OpenStreetMap contributors Two Israeli soccer teams set a record last week for the world’s longest penalty shootout The previous record was held by Washington and Bedlington The two teams recorded 54 penalty kicks in March 2022 during a first-round tie of the Ernest Armstrong Memorial Cup open to teams in the 10th tier of the English soccer system Washington eventually beat Bedlington 25:24.  Last week’s kickoff was part of the Third Division promotion play-off match that went to penalties after the game finished in a tie.  During the game, Dimona was trailing 1:0 until the very last minute of regular time, when Haim Bozaglo put one past Tel Aviv’s goalie to even the score. The match then went into the 30-minute extra time, where both teams shined, ending the game in a 2:2 draw. Dimona won the penalty shootout 23:22 after each side took 28 kicks. Dimona, which hosted the game, missed five penalty kicks, while the visitors missed six. The victory put Dimona within an inch of the Second Division promotion, requiring only one more win, but the Negev-based team lost 2:0 to MS Tira a few days later, dashing the hopes of their fans.  and is the emergence of the photos of a top-secret defense installation a slip-up?Photo: Flash90 Something is afoot in Israel’s nuclear weapons program An AP news report based on commercially available satellite images that made headlines last week showed the nuclear facility in Dimona undergoing its largest construction work in decades The photos show a dig about as wide as a football field and several stories deep close to the main reactor steam is seen coming from a building near the famous silver dome AP noted that the Israeli government refused to address its questions on the matter and is the emergence of the photos of a top-secret defense installation a slip-up is convinced that what’s going in is a deliberate misinformation campaign designed to convince the world that the reactor is active “The committee on nuclear energy is aware that there are satellites in space and that the pixel resolution limit of 50 centimeters was removed last year,” he says The construction of the reactor began in 1950 with French help For years Israel concealed its purpose even from the United States and pretended it was a textile factory which has now become a massive operation with over 2,000 workers At the Institute for Nuclear Research in Dimona work used to go on 24 hours a day in three shifts the work was reduced to two shifts in some stations Reactivating the reactor would demand approvals from the highest security echelons the chances that the reactor is active are small The heavy-water reactor has been operational since 1959 and if reports of Israel’s nuclear capabilities are accurate the country already possesses sufficient nuclear deterrence to guarantee its survival even if Iran does get its hand on a bomb The timing of the AP report is significant It comes as Israel and the US are set to open strategic talks on the Iran nuclear file in light of President Biden’s intention to reenter the deal So in a diplomatic world rife with signal-sending the sound of the diggers in Dimona are meant to be heard in Tehran and Washington — a reminder that Israel isn’t prepared to be sidelined again The decrease in the number of job seekers registered last week And while 730,000 Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week the number of unemployed rose by 7 million in one week Another encouraging indication is private spending which in January reached a seven-month high The expectation of a speedy return to normalcy is driving up the stocks of airline companies as well as the rest of the tourism And while it’s still unclear if this is just a mirage and the road to a health and economic recovery is long the economic numbers may mean that the worst of this year is behind us former president Trump’s first big political outing after leaving the White House was to CPAC an annual conservative meet-up that took place in Florida last week His speech at the event was closely watched as a sign of which way the winds are blowing both within the Republican Party a Trump Comeback in 2024 Is Not Going to Happen” ran a Politico headline in December after Trump’s loss His plummeting standing in the Republican Party after the Capitol riots added to the narrative that Trump was finished as well as a straw poll in which 68% supported him for a 2024 bid Trump used his speech to lay to rest the idea that he was going to create his own political party calling the notion — typically — “fake news.” But the Republican Party is a house divided against itself Bill Cassidy (R-LA) telling CNN that idolizing Trump is a path to losing elections down the line So is the GOP doomed to years of internecine fighting A look at the Democrats — where an uneasy truce between moderates and progressives got Biden elected — is a sign that even in marriages of convenience Trump’s speech — even though much of it was standard Trumpism — was a reminder of how he dominated news cycles for five years through a rapport with a crowd that other politicians struggle to generate it’s not hard to see him trying the same again at the large rallies he thrives on It’s still unclear what exactly happened on the Frontier Airlines flight from Miami to La Guardia this week in which a party of chassidim were deplaned apparently after a young child was spotted not wearing a mask The airline’s version — that it was a result of adults refusing to wear masks — was disputed by other passengers saying that flight crew had clapped when the group was taken off and one person testified that he’d heard them refer to “Jews.” whose OJPAC Twitter account was the source of many of the videos that emerged said that regardless of how the story began “Besides the fact that the airline’s account doesn’t make sense because the videos show them wearing masks the issue at hand is the alleged bigotry of the staff.” it will be hard to prove things one way or another but the story is illustration of something that is being felt by visibly frum Jews everywhere In the atmosphere of crisis fostered by Covid communities from Lakewood to London have come under unusual media scrutiny Charges of willful negligence in the pandemic have thrust otherwise-retiring communities into the spotlight and a certain Israeli-style “othering” of chareidim has appeared in media on both sides of the Atlantic it’s not impossible that flight-crew saw the black-clad travelers as a group apart subject to treatment that they wouldn’t inflict on others Yaacov LipszycOval Office TrainwreckZelensky's European allies weren’t exactly thrilled about his Oval Office performance either Yaacov LipszycBreath of Fresh Air in Belgium“Belgium hasn’t suddenly become pro-Israel but neutrality is already a significant win” Yitzchok LandaTech TakeoverPresident Trump declared a $500 billion investment from private companies in American AI infrastructure Y. DavisHow Predictions for 2024 Panned Out  Every year prominent public figures are prepared to put their credibility on the line by forecasting the future Rafael HoffmanIt’s a Bird, It’s a Plane… It’s a Drone     Even as drones with wingspans up to eight feet were sighted by law enforcement officials Plans to expand Israel's desert city of Dimona known as the cradle of the national nuclear programme are stoking fears among nearby Bedouin villagers for their traditional way of life he sees rows of identical modern apartment blocks as Dimona spreads into the surrounding Negev desert it's getting closer and closer to us," said Hawashla who himself is among the construction labourers working in Dimona His own Bedouin village of Ras Jrabah is an informal settlement of tin-roofed houses and a few concrete buildings crisscrossed by dusty dirt roads and home to about 500 people Any new construction there gets promptly torn down by Israeli authorities who object to any permanent structures being built and want to move the entire village located 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Jerusalem and with a population of about 36,000 meanwhile has ambitious plans to nearly double in size see it as yet another threat after long living on the margins of Israeli society often in poverty and with few opportunities About 30 percent of the Bedouin population live in dozens of similar villages in the Negev desert was wiped off the map last month after Israeli authorities ordered its demolition to clear space for a highway expansion originally known as the cradle of Israeli nuclear power due to its nearby Negev Nuclear Research Center but the buildings are empty," said Hawashla he said his own village receives no services from the government -- not even bomb shelters to protect it from rockets fired from war-torn Gaza Israeli authorities did not respond to AFP requests for comment by the time of publication Israeli authorities have told residents of Ras Jrabah to move across town to Qasr E-Sir a recognised Bedouin locality on the western side of Dimona But Hawashla's father Freij told AFP that the villagers do not want to move there because of strained relations with a different Bedouin group that lives there "This tribe doesn't want us and we don't want them either," said Freij who was born in 1939 before Dimona was founded when the first Jews came to the area and he was a child said his father and grandfather were born and raised in an unrecognised village before Israeli authorities forced them into Rahat Frieh now monitors cases such as Ras Jrabah and other villages through Adalah a group that fights for the rights of Arabs in Israel He said that 11 unrecognised Bedouin villages representing 6,500 people are now fighting eviction orders in courts Frieh said Israeli land policy in the region amounted to "maximum Bedouin on minimum land The Ras Jrabah community has fought in court to reverse eviction orders lost and appealed to the Beersheba district court The villagers have suggested having their community declared a new neighbourhood of Dimona who represented Ras Jrabah during the appeal last week said there was little chance for the community to win their case "The land regime in Israel in general is built in such a way that leads to a situation where the Bedouin community can't prove their ownership on the land," she told AFP The court's interpretation of a combination of Israeli British mandate era and Ottoman laws means Bedouins "are considered to be trespassers on their own lands" Israeli authorities hold that Bedouins in Ras Jrabah did not have a permanent presence on the land until 1978 said Ottoman and British laws should work in favour of Bedouins despite the fact that those villages existed before 1948 they exist on Ottoman and British records," he told AFP residents said that the issue strikes at the heart of their Bedouin identity "I'm an Israeli citizen on paper only," Hawashla said but I don't get the basic necessities that the state of Israel should give me." For subscription inquiries, please contact subscription.support@al-monitor.com For all other inquiries, please use contactus@al-monitor.com SIPRI Research Center includes Israel as ‘known nuclear power’ in its annual report Amid the current multi-front war Israel finds itself in the Jewish state has been working to modernize its nuclear weapons systems as well as its alleged nuclear reactor in Dimona according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Despite Israel’s long-standing policy of nuclear ambiguity neither denying nor affirming such capabilities the security think tank examined Israel’s capabilities as part of a group of nine known nuclear powers The process of modernizing a nuclear weapons arsenal allegedly doesn’t necessarily indicate a desire to use them as many of the required delivery systems degrade over time and have to be replaced SIPRI claimed Israel was working to upgrade its plutonium production reactor site in the city of Dimona in the Negev Desert The institute believes Israel has an arsenal of approximately 80 nuclear weapons approximately 30 are gravity bombs for delivery by aircraft,” SIPRI wrote on its website “The remaining 50 weapons are for delivery by Jericho II medium-range ballistic missiles which are believed to be based with their mobile launchers in caves at a military base east of Jerusalem The operational status of a new Jericho III intermediate-range ballistic missile is unknown In 2013 Israel conducted a launching test of a ‘rocket propulsion system’ which appeared to be for a Jericho III missile.” SIPRI also indicated that Israel’s five Dolphin-class submarines could have nuclear capabilities giving Israel the potential to launch nuclear strikes from air The latest SIPRI annual report pointed to increased nuclear dangers in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine War as well as the progress of the Iranian regime's nuclear program “We have not seen nuclear weapons playing such a prominent role in international relations since the cold war,” said Wilfred Wan director of SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme “It is hard to believe that barely two years have passed since the leaders of the five largest nuclear-armed states jointly reaffirmed that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” he said The report stated that the start of the war with Hamas last October abruptly stopped diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions between Iran and the U.S. increasing the danger of Iran’s nuclear ambitions SIPRI estimates that 9,585 of the 12,121 nuclear warheads worldwide are actively deployed by military forces and ready for potential use Around 2,100 of them are considered operational for ballistic missiles most being held by Russia and the United States China has been drastically enhancing its nuclear readiness with estimates suggesting it possesses up to 500 warheads Begining around 1958 with French assistance research reactor at Dimona in the Negev Desert about 8.5 miles from the town of the same name and some 25 miles from the Jordanian border The Dimona facility was constructed in secret and is not under international inspection safeguards The facility was first noticed by American intelligence when U-2 spyplanes overflew Dimona in 1958 It was not conclusively identified as a nuclear site until two years later The entrecne to Dimona | File photo: Pikiwiki Israel/Dr Over 70 years have passed since Israel's first Prime Minister declared the need to "make the desert bloom" by settling and developing the Negev A process that has been some years in the making now seems to be bearing fruit with Dimona – the capital of the Eastern Negev – becoming a prime destination for young couples working in and around the larger city of Beersheba and finding in Dimona a surprisingly attractive residential area where they can benefit from tax breaks Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter  Beersheba is living up to its name as the capital of the Negev with the development of the Gav-Yam hi-tech park and the arrival of many companies renting floor and office space the city continues to foster its synergetic relationship with the academic world most prominently the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev The city's satellite towns are becoming prime locations with many buyers and renters working in the hi-tech and technology fields the IDF is currently in the process of transferring its elite technological units to the Negev The widespread development of the Negev poses new challenges – a major one being finding suitable housing solutions prices in Beersheba have skyrocketed in recent years making the city less convenient for young couples This situation requires thinking outside the box to find new solutions in nearby locations which has never before been of interest for young couples as a residential hub – suffering from the migration of its younger population to the country's center or to Beersheba – has now become a destination in high demand Due to its designation as a peripheral town Dimona enjoys exemptions from various taxes of up to 16% with a maximum benefit of NIS192,600 per year (as of 2020) This is a significant benefit compared to nearby cities The younger residents of Meitar and Omer have consequently been discovering that it is much cheaper to live in Dimona and continue working in the south of the country while paying much less in addition to Dimona's relative proximity to Beersheba – a half-hour's drive on a 4-lane highway – has been attracting more and more young couples who are seriously considering raising their family there in cooperation with Minister of Transportation Miri Regev has been advancing a plan to transfer the railway station to the city's center allowing commuters to reach Tel Aviv in less than 90 minutes "Some new neighborhoods have already been built it has some of the smartest neighborhoods in the country the Shahar neighborhood and the Bne Beitcha project in the Har Nof neighborhood These are neighborhoods that are on par with any neighborhood in the center of the country so come see the capital of the Eastern Negev rise to new heights." Dimona's potential was identified by Asia Cyrus the company constructing the city's major project: the new Shahar neighborhood Half are included in the government's Buyer's Price Program; the other half will be sold on the open market The variety of apartments and prices is broad and impressive and 5-room apartments ranging between 90 and 165 sq.m All the apartments include a balcony and a parking space This is one of the most attractive locations in Israel today with an amazingly low price of NIS6,364 per square meter The Shahar neighborhood is a kind of autonomous area inside Dimona The neighborhood is situated in an excellent location Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories The careful planning ensures residents will enjoy a healthy The neighborhood includes large public spaces with playgrounds The project is one of the last opportunities for young couples in Israel to buy an apartment at a fair price as a home or for investment purposes as part of the Buyer's Price Program the idea of living in Dimona and buying a house there sounded irrelevant," recalls Avishai Cohen who bought an apartment in the project with his wife "It's like that square on the Monopoly board where you'd rather not end up But the more we looked into it and realized that we need a residential solution that would be convenient financially and in terms of accessibility to workplaces all the question marks became exclamation points We see the investment here in infrastructure and realize that raising a family in the city is the right move for us with the development of educational facilities here and all the family-centered activities." that's clear to anyone who has eyes in his head," emphasizes Avi Tam "Many young couples are moving here and will move to the area in the coming years High-quality homes combined with tax benefits for those living in the city make it the perfect solution for those planning to work and raise a family in the Negev Dimona offers a rare combination of Zionist settlement ideals and financial profitability We are proud to be the leaders of Dimona's transformation into the most attractive residential destination of Israel's number one growth engine." This article might include sponsored and commercial content/marketing information Israel Hayom is not responsible for its nature or its credibility The publication of such content or information shall not be considered a recommendation and/or an offer by Israel Hayom to purchase and/or use the services or products mentioned in this article Menora is buying 450 Park Avenue in New York for $445 million Chairman of the Construction and Allied Industries Union: “The agreement is great news for the sector which is.. MK Eli Cohen has set his sights on becoming Minister of Finance and spares.. For travel to the United States on a temporary basis For foreign citizens who want to live permanently in the United States The Visa Waiver Program (VWP) allows citizens of participating countries* who meet all requirements to travel to the United States without a visa for business or pleasure for 90 days or less Learn more about quality higher-education opportunities in the U.S that you will not find anywhere else in the world Find the closest American Space in Jerusalem where you can connect with the U.S Ambassador Shapiro trip to Dimona began at Mayor’s Benny Biton’s office together with all municipal leaders The Ambassador then visited Appelman School and was welcomed by Chief Rabbi of Dimona Yitzhak Elefant Principal Vered Sabo and proceeded to field questions from the students Ambassador Shapiro moved on to tour Brenmiller Energy and learned about the innovative solar “parabolic” collection method as well as the thermal energy storage and flexible generation.‎ He then toured the Albaad paper hygiene product factory and was briefed on the extent of their business in and with the United States and plans for expansion The Ambassador enjoyed a working lunch with several local Mayors to discuss issues of local political import Ambassador Shapiro was welcomed at two local schools who are the recipients of Jewish National Foundation (JNF) funding he concluded his trip at the community of the African Hebrew Israelites answered questions and sampled their vegan food products https://www.flickr.com/photos/usembassyta/albums/72157672912473543 By | 22 November, 2016 | Topics: Former U.S. Ambassadors, News, U.S. & Israel We use cookies to make our website work better and improve your experience TEHRAN – The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) on Thursday dismissed as a “big lie” that the building of Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility has suffered damages in Iran’s legitimate defense against Israel on April 13 calling it a “psychological warfare” intended to deceive the public opinion In response to Israel’s assassination of seven Iranian military advisors inside Tehran’s consulate in Syria on April 1 Iran promised to “punish” Israel’s for this mistake which according to the UN charter was an attack on the Iranian territory “The Dimona nuclear facility has not been among the aims of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s penalizing measure and the publication of such a big lie is a malicious move in line with the enemy’s psychological warfare to  deceive public opinion,” IRGC spokesman Ramezan Sharif said in reaction to a report by an Israeli media outlet that the Dimona structure has suffered damages Everyone knows that Tel Aviv is the vegan capital of Israel, right? After all, it’s home to scores of vegan restaurants and many of the 5 percent of Israelis who eat a plant-based diet here’s a surprise: Long before you could get veggie shawarma in Tel Aviv a community in the desert town of Dimona pioneered the vegan lifestyle in Israel They’re called the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem and they live in a compound called Neve Shalom (Village of Peace) We’ve had 1,150 babies born in our House of Life [maternity center] since 1972 or 1973,” official community spokesman Ahmadiel Ben Yehuda tells ISRAEL21c Hebrew Israelites see themselves as spiritual descendants of the ancient Israelites but they consider the Bible their history and guidebook a plant-based diet is prescribed for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: “And God said and every tree on which is the fruit yielding seed; to you it shall be for food … everything that has the breath of life in it “That became the foundation for how we have to conduct ourselves,” says Ben Yehuda said the decision to eschew animal products didn’t come from a health perspective we found many reports and research that substantiated the reason for veganism humans are not designed to consume flesh; we are designed to consume plants.” Neither did their decision originate from a place of animal rights We have come to understand that humanity needs to take care of the creation better.” A healthful plant-based diet – whole fresh foods with little or no refined sugar or table salt — is one of several pillars of Hebrew Israelite culture “We eat foods in season and no foods that are seedless That goes back to the biblical verse about ‘every herb bearing seed.’ There’s something about the seed that makes it the proper food for our consumption and if you tamper with that it would have a negative effect,” says Ben Yehuda community members over age 13 ingest nothing but water “We’re not fasting to torture ourselves but to allow the body to relax and cleanse they can grab a piece of fruit,” explains Ben Yehuda Hebrew Israelites consume only “live” (uncooked) food for a week to cleanse their bodies dehydrated flaxseed and pumpkin-seed crackers bacon-like dehydrated squash and eggplant strips prune juice and natural fruit leather for the kids are among the foods eaten during that week Community members also have monthly massages don’t smoke and don’t drink alcoholic beverages the Hebrew Israelites could not find vegan staples like tofu and soymilk in Israel So one community member was sent to Japan to learn how to manufacture them we invested in a factory producing tofu and that led to an entire range of foods that [we] began to develop from soy and other sources,” says Ben Yehuda The factory supplied the community and a few vegan restaurants that the community opened in the 1980s around Israel In 1995, the factory rebranded as Teva Deli and grew into a national business “We didn’t start and maintain this business because we saw a market to exploit,” says Ben Yehuda “There was no demand for vegan foods We had to create the market for it!” Teva Deli has formulated many vegan products for the Israeli palate – including the cheese substitute that Domino’s of Tel Aviv used to launch the global chain’s 2013 pilot of vegan pizza and the raw ingredients for Tel Aviv’s iconic Buddha Burger Among Teva Deli’s 200 consumer products are meatless shawarma Jerusalem mix and kebabs made from seitan; and burgers made from quinoa A separate line of about 50 products for the food-service industry includes raw ingredients such as seitan tofu and dry soy chunks for preparing vegan main dishes “In many of Israel’s major restaurant chains that give a vegan option it’s private-label products coming from our factory,” factory manager Ben Koliyah tells ISRAEL21c Still based in Dimona and employing 50 workers 80 percent of whom are Village of Peace members “That is not without its challenges because the more awareness of veganism rises the more competition we have from big companies like Osem and Tivol,” says Koliyah “But we were the pioneers and gave options when no one else gave options And we are still the only totally vegan community.” The Hebrew Israelites have been working with the Ghana Ministry of Health to shift the African country’s approach to healthcare from curative to preventative Ghana’s Regenerative Health and Nutrition Program is based on the “Dimona model,” says Ben Yehuda The community has set up a vegan food production facility in Ghana Ben Yehuda says the African Union intends to recommend the Dimona model to other African nations visitors are welcome to purchase lunch or dinner at The Miznon the Hebrew Israelites’ dining hall in the Village of Peace It is certified kosher by the Dimona Rabbinate “We do like to take some credit for Israel being the No “We feel it was propelled into popularity when our children began entering the IDF and making friends with people from across Israel The army made a special effort to accommodate them with vegan options.” just finished serving in the Israel Air Force Gadiel was on the beach in Tel Aviv and saw Arab Israeli vlogger Nuseir Yassin (“Nas Daily”) filming a segment focusing on Tel Aviv as Israel’s vegan center ‘Tel Aviv is not the capital of veganism; Dimona is.’ And right then and there That’s what led him to come and visit us.” Here is the video that came out of that chance meeting with Gadiel Ben Yehuda of the Hebrew Israelites The Shocking Vegan Village! I heard about a village of 5,000 people who are entirely vegan I had to go visit and see how it's like to be them….This is what I found!I'm fascinated by the effect of food on your body But after visiting these guys…I'm not sure anymore Follow me on Instagram: @nasdaily for 1 minute videos there Posted by Nas Daily on Friday 2021Get email notification for articles from Yossi Melman FollowMar 3 2021The only surprise about the satellite photos showing extensive construction at Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor is that they were only published now The story began with photographs taken in early January by a Chinese commercial satellite which were later viewed by independent Princeton researchers known as the International Panel on Fissile Materials This matters more than in the past because Iran is threatening to attack the Dimona nuclear facility It is also tied to Tehran revealing aspects of its drone program and new technology '#' : location.hash;window._cf_chl_opt.cOgUQuery = location.search === '' && location.href.slice(0 location.href.length - window._cf_chl_opt.cOgUHash.length).indexOf('?') !== -1 '?' : location.search;if (window.history && window.history.replaceState) {var ogU = location.pathname + window._cf_chl_opt.cOgUQuery + window._cf_chl_opt.cOgUHash;history.replaceState(null "\/liveblog_entry\/51-members-of-hebrew-israelites-community-of-dimona-ordered-to-leave-by-sept-23\/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=wA0cXSsQ5T7_ZJVc58_4jtwhSMx8ic3Lt7NDWzXy.g4-1746504210-1.0.1.1-PggnJIK0iDIlIl9nJLJB.VnkB8CMKx1uluAjJivMSTQ" + window._cf_chl_opt.cOgUHash);cpo.onload = function() {history.replaceState(null ogU);}}document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(cpo);}()); Palestinian resistance group Hamas fired a volley of rockets into southern Israel on Wednesday in response to continued attacks by Israel on the Gaza Strip said in separate statements that it targeted Dimona with 15 rockets and fired 50 rockets at Ashdod It said it targeted an Israeli gas plant station near the shores of Gaza with a barrage of rockets but did not specify the number of rockets fired Israel has not reported damages from the attacks Israel continues to target Gaza with heavy bombardment bringing the death toll among Palestinians to 53 along with 320 injured in addition to heavy damages in residential areas across Gaza *Ahmed Asmar contributed to this report from Ankara 2024Get email notification for articles from Refaella Goichman FollowMar 20 2024Hackers from the Anonymous organization claim that they succeeded in stealing documents from the Negev Nuclear Research Center (the nuclear reactor in Dimona) and erasing some information in the computer systems that they hacked The video depicts a rocket targeting the Dimona nuclear facility Following a series of incidents at the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in Iran those affiliated with the regime posted a video on social media depicting an attack on Israel's nuclear research center in Dimona Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter The disturbing video was released on Friday when Tehran "celebrated" its own version of Quds Day ("Jerusalem Day,") which it instated in 1979 to express support for the Palestinians and oppose Zionism and the Jewish state is the peak of anti-Israeli propaganda in the country Iranian militia made sure inciting posters were put up in Palestinian villages its proxy militia in Iraq laid out American and Israeli flags and trampled and drove over them with their vehicles Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is scheduled to give a speech at 5:30 p.m Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories Israel has launched Operation "Port City," striking concrete plants and cargo docks at the Houthi-controlled port in coordination with.. Indications obtained by Israel Hayom suggest that in recent weeks The British police launched an urgent operation to stop Iranian terror cells operating within the country "\/israels-dimona-nuclear-reactor-isnt-chernobyl-but-does-have-vulnerabilities\/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=JxCW.2iAI0tf6xDRdqL2rIf5Ln9gd3kvEv357Jk5KNM-1746504234-1.0.1.1-QkOj27SezTWk8ZriJNgaZy_7XiVbP.EUxF8Ua5rkYt8" + window._cf_chl_opt.cOgUHash);cpo.onload = function() {history.replaceState(null Citing commercial satellite imagery of the facility the International Panel on Fissile Material (IPFM) a group of independent nuclear experts from 17 countries, reported Thursday that “significant new construction” had been underway at the Dimona complex The construction site sits “in the immediate vicinity of the buildings that house the nuclear reactor and the reprocessing plant,” the report said The IPFM’s website said the construction had “expanded and appears to be actively underway with multiple construction vehicles present.”  However It was unclear when the construction work began a researcher with the program on science and global security at Princeton University told The Guardian that the project had apparently been launched in late 2018 and 2019  “But that’s all we can say at this point,” he added Israel has tightly withheld information about its nuclear weapons program but the regime is estimated to be keeping at least 90 nuclear warheads in its arsenal according to the non-profit organization Federation of American Scientists (FAS) had been produced from plutonium obtained at the Dimona facility’s heavy water reactor which is widely believed to be key to Israel’s nuclear arms manufacturing program was built with covert assistance from the French government and activated sometime between 1962–1964 Israel has acknowledged the existence of the Dimona nuclear reactor but neither confirms nor denies the purpose of the facility which is assumed to be the manufacturing of nukes environmentalists have warned that Dimona — one of the world’s oldest nuclear facilities — could pose enormous environmental and security threats to those living in the area and to the entire West Asia region calling on the regime to shut down the complex Turning a deaf ear to international calls for nuclear transparency to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that is aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons "\/eye-for-an-eye-iran-editorial-urges-retaliatory-attack-on-dimona-reactor\/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=wW6o6Ki8.dRlAbaLa3BZdgxeZKHbSUd4vFJdarQKsqM-1746504251-1.0.1.1-b6j6.ntL9bKFDtK6PHGVLhrq7L0f42fGCLB_n2VjTaM" + window._cf_chl_opt.cOgUHash);cpo.onload = function() {history.replaceState(null