Michael Karpin - The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear and What That Means for the World

MUCH OF THE RESEARCH of this book was done in connection with my documentary A Bomb in the Basement , which was the first film to explore the creation of Israels nuclear program. Since it was released in 2001, the documentary has been screened in many countries. My good friend Abraham Kushnir conceived the film and produced it, and I owe him many thanks. Journalists Larry Kohler in New York and Yoav Toker in Paris did outstanding work as we gathered a broad foundation of data. I am grateful to the many people in many countries who allowed me to pester them for hours in interviews.

Ronnie Hope, chief copy editor of the Jerusalem Report magazine, was a steady source of wise counsel. He gave me invaluable advice on both language and content. Yossie Abadi, partner at the Caspi & Co. law firm in Tel Aviv, helped minimize the number and consequences of the deletions executed by the Israeli military censor. Naama Nehushtai drew the maps with consummate skill.

My sister-in-law, Shulamith Bahat, associate executive director of the American Jewish Committee, connected me to literary agent Regina Ryan in New York, who in turn guided me with great patience both before and during the writing and led the way to my publisher, Simon & Schuster. It is doubtful that this book would have been published without Reginas unflagging support, and I am especially grateful to her. My editor, Bob Bender, handled the manuscript with forbearance and professionalism, while working within a tough schedule. I am profoundly appreciative. His assistant, Johanna Li, coordinated the production stages. My appreciation goes to the copy editor, Tom Pitoniak, for his meticulous analysis of the manuscript, and to Executive Director of Publicity Victoria Meyer and Publicity Manager Rebecca Davis for organizing the promotional campaign for the book.

I was sustained throughout this project by the support and encouragement of my familymy wife, Pnina, my daughter, Maya, and my two sons, David and Daniel.

All of these people have been loyal partners in my work, but the responsibility for any flaws in the finished product is mine alone.

Jerusalem, March 2005

THE MANUSCRIPT OF THIS BOOK was submitted to military censorship for inspection, as Israeli law requires of all Israeli media, foreign journalists in Israel, academic researchers, and authors who intend to publish information about Israels security or defense matters. The chief censor, an army general, is entitled by law to block publication of anything that might, in the censors judgment, damage the State of Israel.

The censors office went over every sentence of this book carefully. A large number of passages, sentences, and words were blue-penciled. I appealed against rulings that seemed groundless to me, and many of my appeals were upheld, but in two places important information had been deleted and in some cases I was compelled to compromise on the wording of certain sentences. Nevertheless, in spite of the censors scissors, this book contains important information that has not been publicly discussed before. It presents the Israeli nuclear project from a new perspective and gives a comprehensive account of Israels bomb in the basement.

I have been engaged in the news industry in Israel for thirty-six years, often handling information related to security that entails working with the censors. I know the regulations that we journalists have to abide by. The Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that censorship is warranted only when publication would create near certainty of actual damage to the security of the state. Unfortunately, the censors have sometimes confused style with substance and have chosen to quarrel over language rather than to assess, as required, the risk of actual damage to the state. Instead of removing real classified nuclear information, the government maintains a large bureaucracy that frequently spends its time altering harmless expressions that have nothing to do with confidential intelligence. Aluf Benn, the political correspondent of Haaretz , Israels most influential daily newspaper, recently complained about this. He wrote:

Diligent workers waste their time erasing the words nuclear weapons and substituting nuclear capability, or forcing the reporters to insert the words according to foreign sources. In the eyes of the censor, any publication in the Israeli media is seen as official confirmation and exposure of the secret. Perhaps thats the way it was in the days of the [British] mandate, and Ben-Gurion. Today there is no reason for the media to serve as a means of implementing the nuclear ambiguity policy or any other governmental decisions.

Benn is right. The state has the legal authority to punish people who disseminate secrets whose publication could truly harm national security. This was apparently demonstrated in the case of Mordechai Vanunu, the technician from Dimona who was the first to blow the whistle on Israels nuclear program in spite of his oath as a government employee not to reveal official secrets. Instead the bureaucracy wastes its time quibbling with journalists over language. That is why you will not see in this book such phrases as Israels nuclear weapons or Israels atomic arsenal or any of the many equivalents of those phrases.

In accord with its policy of ambiguity, to this day the State of Israel has never confirmed that it possesses nuclear weapons, a subject that I discuss in this book, though without using forbidden phrases. The interpretations of the diary of Munya Mardor, the founder of the state weapons development authority, and of his book Rafael by the world media and foreign publications with regard to the nuclear subject were not officially approved by Israel.

SINCE THE EARLY 1970S, Israel has had the ultimate deterrent weapon, and by virtue of this fact there is virtually no one today who is not reconciled to Israels existence as a sovereign entity in the Middle East. The Arabs can no longer throw the Jews into the sea, as some of their leaders used to threaten. This book recounts the history of this development.

In attaining nuclear capability, the Israelis had to hide what they were up to from the eyes of the world, in order to avoid provoking the curiosity of the international inspection bodies whose task it is to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weaponry. This was no less difficult a task than the actual achievement of the nuclear option.