Israel and the Bomb

It was during Israel’s War of Independence, almost a decade before Israel launched its nuclear program, that Ben Gurion was persuaded by Bergmann, the Katzir (Katchalsky) brothers, Dostrovsky, and others that a national nuclear project was within Israel’s scientific abilities.¹ The distance between that belief and its realization would not be easy to cover.

In his diary in late 1948 Ben Gurion mentions twice that he was told about a Jewish, Palestinian-born physicist named Moshe Sordin, who was working on the construction of the first French reactor. A few weeks later Sordin was brought to Israel to discuss the future of nuclear reactors; among the people he met was Ben Gurion.²

This anecdote reveals an important tenet of Israel’s early pursuit of nuclear energy: no opportunity to enhance Israel’s access to the nuclear field, however remote, should be ignored. In late 1948 Israel did not have a single nuclear physicist, and it was years away from initiating a dedicated nuclear project, but the vision and commitment were already there. The question was how to translate that vision into reality.

In a 1969 interview Bergmann claimed that as early as 1949–50 it was thought “at the highest political level” that France would be the logical place for Israel to look for nuclear assistance.

This statement, perhaps more of an after-the-fact rationalization than a reflection of thinking at the time, highlights another tenet of the Israeli approach to nuclear issues in the early 1950s: Israel made a commitment to nuclear energy at the highest national level before it had specific ideas about how and when it could pursue it. In order to ask other powers for scientific and technical assistance, however, Israel had to be in a position to reciprocate, and to do that, Israel had to create a national cadre of accomplished nuclear scientists.⁴

On Bergmann’s recommendation, in 1949 Ben Gurion authorized HEMED to fund the postgraduate study of six promising physics graduate students, who served in HEMED during the war. The postgraduate work would take place at the world’s best overseas universities and laboratories of nuclear physics. Professor Giulio Racah of the Hebrew University, then the only professor of theoretical physics in Israel and the mentor of the six young physicists, used his contacts to select the appropriate research site for each. Amos de-Shalit and Igal Talmi were sent to the Eidgenosse Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich, the first to study with Scherrer, the second with Wolfgang Pauli; Uri Haber-Schaim was sent to the University of Chicago to study under Enrico Fermi; Gideon Yekutieli worked on experimental physics with Professor Powell in Bristol; Gvirol (Gabi) Goldring worked on experimental nuclear physics at Imperial College in London; Israel Pelah studied at Amsterdam University in Holland.⁵

The geological survey of the Negev desert in 1949–51 was another early activity aimed to increase Israel’s access to the necessary nuclear materials. It was prompted by rumors that the British might have discovered oil fields and uranium ore deposits in the northern Negev, and was conducted by a special branch of the Science Corps, HEMED GIMMEL, headed by Daniel Sieff Institute’s physical chemist Dr. (Major) Israel Dostrovsky, shortly after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) seized the Negev during the 1948 war. A preliminary survey found no oil, but led to the decision to carry out a more extensive geological mapping of the area. This survey took two years, as new scientific instrumentation was purchased and new laboratories built for the unit in an adjunct to the Weizmann Institute.⁶ The results of the survey were disappointing—no significant sources of uranium were found, except for small quantities in phosphate deposits. Following the survey, a new government-owned organization was created in 1951 to explore Israel’s natural resources, and the nonnuclear energy aspects of HEMED GIMMEL were transferred to this new civilian body.⁷

In the spring and summer of 1951 the growing tension between Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president and the founder of the Weizmann Institute of Science, and his long time protégé Ernst David Bergmann, the scientific director of the institute, reached a final showdown. Questions involving political loyalties, disagreements over the role of the Weizmann Institute, and personal affairs combined to sour the father-son relationship between the two.

Some of these issues related to Bergmann’s commitment to HEMED. As a scientific director of the Daniel Sieff Institute in 1947–50, Bergmann changed the character of the institute against Weizmann’s wishes. He converted its facilities into a HEMED base, committing the institute to meet the needs of the scientific department of the Haganah (and later the Ministry of Defense), of which Bergmann was a board member and, since 1949, chairman.⁸ Bergmann even proposed “to convert the Weizmann Institute into Israel’s national scientific center, dedicated to both civilian and military tasks.”⁹

This new reality and the idea of national science were unacceptable to the ailing Weizmann, who had returned to his institute in 1949 while serving as Israel’s first president. Weizmann did not oppose investment in military technology, but he was against using the institute for such purposes. He thought that transforming the institute’s resources and personnel into a HEMED base, as Bergmann did, undermined the ideas on which he had founded the institute and ruined its scientific credibility. Such activities, he believed, should be appropriately conducted within the government’s own research center.¹⁰ There were personal aspects to his opposition. He did not want the institute to be dependent on funds obtained from Ben Gurion’s Ministry of Defense. From Weizmann’s perspective, Bergmann, his would-be scientific heir, had betrayed him twice—once by putting his calling as a scientist aside in favor of full-time military research, and, second, by shifting his allegiance and becoming the scientific adviser of Ben Gurion, Weizmann’s arch political rival. Personal issues concerning Mrs. Weizmann, Bergmann, and his future wife, Ms. Hani Itin, who then worked as Weizmann’s secretary, only intensified the drama of the mentor and his erstwhile protégé. After eighteen years of intimate association it became impossible for the two men to talk with each other.¹¹

On 8 July 1951 Meyer Weisgal, the chairman of the Executive Council of the institute (and Weizmann’s closest confidant) wrote the following about the Bergmann affair to the American members of the council, Dewey Stone and Harry Levine:

At the end, out of concern for both the institute’s future and for Bergmann’s own life (there was a concern that he could commit suicide), certain terms of arrangement were agreed to in an exchange of letters between the two. On 2 July Weizmann wrote a letter to Bergmann in which he notified him that “after due considerations” he “relieved” him of his duties and responsibilities as scientific director of the Weizmann Institute, but Bergmann would continue his functions as the head of the Department of Organic Chemistry. “It is understood,” the letter continued, “that you will take your sabbatical leave as from [the] 15th [of] July 1951.” The next day Bergmann wrote to Weizmann, acknowledging his letter of the previous day, and taking note of Weizmann’s decision. Bergmann added, “in accordance to your wish, I shall continue in my capacity as the Head of the Department of Organic Chemistry; I shall begin my Sabbatical leave on or about the 15th [of] July 1951.” As part of that arrangement Bergmann wrote to Weisgal that he accepted Weisgal’s suggestion to resign as a governor of the Weizmann Institute, even though he saw “no logical reason” for this suggestion.¹³

This exchange of letters meant the end of the Bergmann era at the Weizmann Institute. Bergmann never returned to be the head the organic chemistry department of the institute; he left the institute for good. Meanwhile, 15 July 1951 also marked the beginning of an era at the Ministry of Defense. In another exchange of letters that day, Ben Gurion appointed Bergmann as his scientific adviser and asked the army’s chief of staff to appoint him as HEMED commander. The second appointment never materialized. Bergmann did not want to be HEMED commander, nor could he see himself functioning in uniform. But he wholeheartedly accepted his new appointment as Ben Gurion’s scientific adviser.

His idea of creating a national, defense-oriented science center, an idea Weizmann did not permit him to pursue at the Weizmann Institute, hereafter became his motto at the Ministry of Defense. Bergmann lobbied Ben Gurion to make the ministry the home for all nationally relevant scientific-technological projects. He proposed to extend and strengthen the small science department at the ministry—in 1949–51 a weak body whose function was to coordinate the scientific research conducted by HEMED—into a new division at the ministry and to transform HEMED into a civilian body directly under the new division. In a letter to Ben Gurion dated 1 July, Bergmann wrote the following:

Bergmann’s criticism of the Hebrew University and the Weizmann Institute was biased and ultimately self-serving, but he had a point. The Hebrew University reflected the German model of scientific research as practiced in the first half of the century. It promoted the notion that the purpose of research was pure, theoretical knowledge. Applied science was taken as a kind of engineering knowledge that is inferior to, and derivative of, pure science. Development-oriented research of the kind Bergmann had in mind was more appropriately pursued by industry.¹⁵

Bergmann was himself a product of this German academic tradition, but he believed that this tradition would be an obstacle to Israel’s transformation into an advanced technological society. His own unsuccessful experience at the Weizmann Institute, prior to his dismissal, forced him to recognize that the only solution was for the government to build a research and development infrastructure of its own, outside the normal academic channels. Bergmann, with little knowledge of American post–Second World War science, sought to imitate the French model of government-sponsored national research centers. He recognized, as his letter indicates, that only the Ministry of Defense, under Ben Gurion’s leadership, could promote the development of nationally sponsored science and technology.

Bergmann’s firing from the Weizmann Institute and his appointment as Ben Gurion’s scientific adviser came at a period of major reorganizations at the IDF and the Ministry of Defense. The ninety-thousand-strong wartime IDF was reduced to about thirty-five thousand recruits, and there was a need to refashion Israel’s military doctrine—to build a new military based on a small regular army and a large, quick-to-be-mobilized reserve force.

The role of HEMED was also under review. HEMED was still part of the IDF—although its military role was not clear to the supreme command—but the majority of its employees were civilians. The board of the Scientific Department at the Ministry of Defense was supposed to guide HEMED activities, but members of the board, all with full-time positions elsewhere, were hardly involved in the activities of HEMED centers. Each of the five HEMED centers—with some 560 employees—acted as an autonomous research unit, only loosely administrated by HEMED command. As the military budget shrunk in 1950–51, the IDF was determined to rid itself of the burden of supporting HEMED. The army was interested in acquiring complete, off-the-shelf weapon systems, not in investing scarce money in uncertain long-term research.¹⁶

Against this background, Bergmann proposed to Ben Gurion the expansion of the small Scientific Department in the Ministry of Defense into a new division that would control all the HEMED research units. This new division, in Bergmann’s vision, would be in charge of all the national research sponsored by the Ministry of Defense, possibly even all governmental research.¹⁷ In late 1951 a new civilian research branch at the Ministry was established, but with less research authority than Bergmann had proposed.

For the task of administering the new division Bergmann selected Munya Mardor, an experienced Haganah operator with a penchant for secrecy. Mardor, sensing the differences in vision between Bergmann and the heads of the Ministry about the role of the new division, was initially reluctant to take the job, but Ben Gurion persuaded him to do so. In early 1952 Ben Gurion appointed Bergmann and Mardor to lead the new R&D division. Bergmann, already Ben Gurion’s scientific adviser, was also appointed chief of research—in effect, the chief scientist at the Ministry—and Mardor was appointed the director of the new division. Ben Gurion also chose the name of the new division—Agaf Mechkar Ve’Tichun (Research and Infrastructure Division, or EMET in its Hebrew acronym). The word “emet” means “truth” in Hebrew, which pleased Ben Gurion. All HEMED research centers were transferred to the control of EMET.¹⁸

The transfer of authority over HEMED from the IDF to the Ministry also signaled a shift in military research from short-term needs to long-term planning. In 1948–49 HEMED tasks consisted primarily of quick technological responses to the challenges arising from the war, with most solutions amounting to not much more than improvised fixes restricted by the scarcity of resources. Most of the recruits were students and young faculty from the Hebrew University and the Technion, the research was simple and practical, and there was no clear boundary between development and production. The creation of HEMED GIMMEL indicated a commitment to long-term research, but it, too, operated as an autonomous unit.

Under EMET, the HEMED centers were reorganized as civilian Machons (institutes, in Hebrew). Bergmann was determined to assert central control over HEMED GIMMEL, now renamed Machon 4, and to develop it as the center for nuclear research of EMET. After completing the geological survey of the Negev, HEMED GIMMEL continued to operate as an autonomous center, funded by governmental and academic budgets, including the Weizmann Institute. Some of the activities and individuals of HEMED GIMMEL, including its commander, Dostrovsky, were closely associated with the Department of Isotope Research at the Weizmann Institute. Given Bergmann’s relations with the institute, the question of who was to control HEMED GIMMEL was especially sensitive.¹⁹

In early spring 1952, at Bergmann’s urging, Ben Gurion created the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) (CEA, or Commissariat à l’energie atomique, as was printed then on its official letterhead)—it took two more years for the IAEC existence to become public—and installed Bergmann as its chair.²⁰ The IAEC was the vehicle for the implementation of Bergmann’s notion of nationally sponsored science. Five of the six original members of the IAEC were well-known scientists: Shmuel Sambursky (the Hebrew University; the head of Israel’s Scientific Council), Giulio (Yoel) Racah (the Hebrew University), Saul C. Cohen (the Hebrew University), Franz Ollendorff (Technion), Israel Dostrovsky (Weizmann Institute), and former chief of staff Ya’acov Dori, the only nonscientist member of the committee.²¹ This distinguished board gave the new body an appearance of scientific and political independence, but it was only a veneer. Under Bergmann, the IAEC functioned as a subsidiary of the Ministry of Defense. Bergmann turned Machon 4 into the central laboratory of the IAEC.

For Bergmann, the IAEC, like the French CEA, was a project-oriented executive body dedicated to planning and building the nation’s nuclear energy infrastructure. He wanted to launch such a national project as soon as possible. Other members of the IAEC, particularly Racah and Sambursky, saw the role of the IAEC differently. For them, the IAEC was a coordinating research agency, a national body whose objectives were to coordinate the training and research of scientists in the field of nuclear energy, mostly through academic research institutions, and to represent the nation in international forums on nuclear issues. This put Chairman Bergmann at odds with most of the academic members of the IAEC. In 1954 the debate centered on the issues of production or research.

Here is the background. In the early 1950s the working presumption within the IAEC/EMET leadership was that in order for Israel to launch a national nuclear project—building power and production reactors—it must be able to produce heavy water and extract natural uranium, the raw materials necessary to operate nuclear reactors. Because it was believed that these materials were rare, Israel could leverage access to them to get assistance in building its reactor. If Israel wanted to enter the nuclear energy field, it had to develop an indigenous capacity to produce heavy water and to extract uranium from its phosphates ore. These objectives determined the focus of Machon 4.

In 1952–53 a research team from Machon 4, led by Dostrovsky, developed a new and cheaper process to produce water enriched with heavy oxygen (O¹⁸) based on distillation rather than electrolysis.²² The idea was that a similar process could be utilized to produce water enriched with deuterium (H²)—“heavy water,” a material used in reactors. In addition, a chemical method of separating uranium from phosphate deposits was being developed. Both processes yielded results in experiments, and it was thought that they could be viable in commercial production. On 15 March 1954 Bergmann briefed Prime Minister Moshe Sharett that with these two new inventions, Israel could gain access to the basic nuclear materials—uranium and heavy water. Once Israel had access to these materials, Bergmann added, “this will enable us to build a nuclear reactor and to produce nuclear power. For the time being we are concentrating our efforts in extracting uranium.”²³

Bergmann’s report to the prime minister, however, was too optimistic, even misleading. Other members of the IAEC disagreed with Bergmann’s assessment. Sambursky, a member of the IAEC and the head of the scientific council, maintained that Bergmann’s claim that Israel could develop the capacity to produce nuclear energy was a pipe dream, and that Israel should leave the production of nuclear materials to established nuclear powers.

Bergmann, on the other hand, thought that the two processes might have the potential for commercial production and would gain Israel respect and access to the nuclear technological know-how of others, particularly France and, to a lesser degree, Norway. These were the only countries in Europe (except the United Kingdom) with operating nuclear reactors; both countries were also interested in the technology for the separation of plutonium.²⁴ Given that in 1953–54 Israel had no experts in nuclear reactor physics and also that transferring nuclear engineering and reactor technology from the United States, Britain, and Canada to foreign governments was still prohibited, Bergmann made special efforts to cultivate scientific and commercial relations with the nuclear establishments of France and Norway.

For Bergmann to achieve his long-term objective—obtaining a nuclear reactor and more—nuclear cooperation with France was the key. Using his connections in France, Bergmann successfully negotiated with his French counterpart in the CEA the sale of the two patents for possible commercial production.²⁵ Since France did not have access to raw materials nor to American nuclear technology, the Israeli inventions seemed important to France’s nuclear program. The CEA was interested in Bergmann’s reports that Israel had found an efficient method of extracting uranium from low-grade ores and a possibly cheaper alternative to Norway’s heavy water. Bertrand Goldschmidt, one of France’s leading nuclear scientists and the director of chemistry at the CEA, remembers the positive response of the administrator-general of the CEA, Pierre Guillaumat—“They are serious people”—to Bergmann’s proposed sale. According to Goldschmidt, Bergmann asked the sum of 100 million (old) francs for the rights to the processes, and, after bargaining, “we agreed on 60 million. Within days we got five or six books explaining those methods.”²⁶ In August 1954 Minister of Defense Pinhas Lavon briefed Sharett about the successful conclusion of these negotiation with both France and the United Kingdom.²⁷

For Israel the real reward was the formation of a working relationship with the CEA. This opened the French Nuclear Research Center at Saclay and Chatillon to Israeli scientists. In late 1953 the first two Israeli physicists, Zvi Lipkin and Israel Pelah, were sent to these centers to study reactor physics (“pile physics,” in the language of the time) and engineering. Amos de Shalit, soon on his way back to Israel from MIT, stayed in Saclay for a four-month course in reactor physics.²⁸

Norway was the other country Bergmann looked to for nuclear cooperation. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, under the leadership of a young physicist named Gunnar Randers, Norway developed an extensive nuclear infrastructure, with an eye to both defense and energy.²⁹ As early as 1947 Norway decided to construct an experimental nuclear reactor funded by the Ministry of Defense from funds intended initially for the purchase of long-range artillery. The reactor was built with French assistance and went critical in 1951.³⁰ Norway was producing heavy water, but it lacked natural uranium. This was the context of Bergmann’s initiative to get Norway interested in a joint venture to extract uranium from phosphate.

On 10 May 1954 Bergmann wrote Randers that “we have now completed the development of our processes for extraction of uranium from phosphates rocks; it appears that the method is commercially attractive, although the initial concentration of uranium is low. We are now considering putting up a factory which … will produce in the first years 5–10 tons of uranium per year.” The problem was, Bergmann added, that “in the present situation of the State of Israel, we are lacking both engineering experience and money.” Given both countries’ interest in uranium, Bergmann raised the question, “in an informal manner,” whether “the Norwegian Atomic Energy Commission would be interested to participate in an uranium factory to be erected in Israel.”³¹

The two inventions turned out to be less significant than had been claimed at the time, and they were not put to commercial use anywhere. France and the United Kingdom, which bought the Israeli patents, did not use them;³² Norway turned down Bergmann’s “informal offer.”³³ Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program made these inventions obsolete by making American nuclear technology and expertise available. Nevertheless, these inventions contributed greatly to Israel’s nuclear development by leading to nuclear cooperation with France and Norway.³⁴

These efforts, however, shed light on the internal struggle within the IAEC in 1954. Bergmann was not interested in setting up a modest research and training program at the IAEC, as some of the academic members of the IAEC suggested. Instead, he was busy, at home and abroad, lobbying and marketing the chemical processes as Israel’s path to the nuclear age. The tensions between Bergmann and the opposing academic school, represented primarily by Sambursky, intensified in the summer of 1954, when the United States offered Israel a nuclear research reactor as part of the Atoms for Peace program.³⁵

In late June there was a discussion in Prime Minister Sharett’s office on the question of a national nuclear master plan. The immediate issue was Israel’s response to the American offer. Bergmann and Dostrovsky argued that Israel needed not only uranium but also technical knowledge, and that this could be acquired within a few years, rather than a generation.³⁶ Bergmann wanted the IAEC to concentrate on producing nuclear materials. Sambursky continued to advocate a more cautious view, arguing that the IAEC should focus on promoting theoretical research, not industrial production.

The dispute within the IAEC, and the need to respond to the U.S. offer, made it more urgent to clarify who had jurisdiction over nuclear affairs—the prime minister or the minister of defense. This issue was less pressing when Ben Gurion held both portfolios, but now the posts were held by two cabinet members. Sharett may have asked Ben Gurion for clarifications, because ten days later Ben Gurion wrote back that “it is difficult for me to answer your question because at the time I did not ask myself if I was acting in my capacity as prime minister or as minister of defense. It makes more sense to me now that I did it on behalf of the prime minister office.”³⁷

At issue in the early 1950s was the question of how to pursue nationally sponsored science programs like nuclear research. This question arose in other countries as well. In the United States most of the Manhattan Project’s nuclear physicists went back to their universities after the war. The new nuclear laboratories at Los Alamos, Livermore, Oak Ridge, and Argonne were associated with academic research, and universities such as Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Chicago, Cornell, and Caltech provided training in nuclear physics that enabled their graduates to move into positions in national laboratories. In the 1950s French universities were not in the forefront of nuclear physics research, and physics graduate students had to learn their nuclear physics and quantum mechanics abroad. When young French nuclear physicists returned home, they were taken by the CEA and given the freedom to do nuclear physics research in France’s national laboratories. They revolutionized French science by teaching nuclear physics and quantum mechanics then unavailable at the Sorbonne.

The Israeli case in the early 1950s was similar to the French. At the Hebrew University, the only Israeli institute of higher learning then offering physics, there was only one full professor of theoretical physics (Giulio Racah) and one lecturer in nuclear physics (Solly Cohen). Bergmann, who had just been expelled from the Weizmann Institute, hoped to follow the French example. He wanted the IAEC to be, like the French CEA, a national center for nuclear energy activities, not merely an administrative organ coordinating research among universities and research centers.

The group of six physicists, which had been sent abroad in late 1949, was central to Bergmann’s vision of state-sponsored science. He recognized that it was essential to maintain the integrity of the group in order to create the core of nuclear physics research in Israel, and he believed that the IAEC lab, Machon 4, was a more suitable place from which to run national science than the Hebrew University.

By late 1951 the six Israeli physicists were completing their doctoral studies and planning their return to Israel. Four of them met in Zurich early that year to discuss how the group could set up a national nuclear physics program. After the meeting they wrote a letter to Bergmann, suggesting that while they should not be separated from the planning for the reactor, it would be essential to maintain a training and research program, with some affiliation with the Hebrew University.³⁸ For them, the most urgent priority was to train a new cadre of Israeli nuclear physicists at home. In the absence of indigenous nuclear physics training, and without a new cadre of professionals, they believed that the talk about long-term nuclear projects—a reactor and subsequent military applications—was empty.

Uri Haber-Schaim returned to Israel in October 1951 to launch the physics program at HEMED GIMMEL. De Shalit and Talmi also arrived at about that time, but then left to continue their postgraduate work at MIT and Princeton University, respectively. In late 1951 Zvi Lipkin, a veteran of the MIT Radiation Lab in the Second World War and a recent Princeton Ph.D. who had immigrated to Israel a year earlier, was recruited by the physics group at HEMED GIMMEL. In March 1952 Gideon Yekutieli arrived from England and joined the group. They were committed to setting up a national nuclear physics program, but soon discovered that there was a gap between their hopes and the reality they found in HEMED GIMMEL. Moreover, Bergmann himself was seen as the problem.³⁹

On at least two occasions in 1951–52 there was an effort by the physicists to establish an academic program at a HEMED base in Jerusalem, in coordination with members of the Hebrew University faculty (Racah and Cohen), but bureaucratic opposition derailed the plan. Dostrovsky, their immediate boss in HEMED GIMMEL, opposed the division of the project between the physicists in Jerusalem and the chemists in Rehovot. Bergmann supported Dostrovsky and argued that “we cannot leave Dostrovsky without physicists.” Another effort to set up a summer seminar in Rehovot for five or six advanced students from Jerusalem also failed.⁴⁰

In a 1952 meeting with the nuclear physicists, Bergmann made clear the reasons behind his opposition, setting the project’s priorities as follows: “First, the reactor, then nothing, then education, and at last your research.”⁴¹ Bergmann’s attitude bred little confidence among the nuclear physicists. He considered the IAEC as a project-driven administration, but at the time there was no project-oriented activity taking place in HEMED GIMMEL. The reactor was Bergmann’s priority, but in 1952 there were no reactor physicists in Israel. Haber-Schaim began to look into the physics involved in a reactor project, and in the spring of 1952, together with Yekutieli, proposed a series of experiments that could be used to train new physicists in the field. They proposed building a small, subcritical, reactor for basic training and research, but the uranium needed to start the program was not available.

With no opportunity to set up a training program or to start physics reactor experiments, Haber-Schaim and Yekutieli returned, in mid-1952, to their earlier work in high-energy (cosmic radiation) physics. Bergmann, who was fond of flowery titles, insisted that the two physicists’ institutional affiliation should be the “Cosmic Ray Section, IAEC.”⁴² This research was not related to the nuclear project and was unclassified, but when Haber-Schaim and Yekutieli published a paper in September without obtaining a security clearance from Bergmann, and with the Weizmann Institute as their institutional affiliation, Bergmann reprimanded them.

In late November 1952 Haber-Schaim and Yekutieli wrote a letter of resignation to the IAEC.⁴³ Dostrovsky promised to protect them and urged them to stay on, and they agreed.⁴⁴ It was not long, however, before Bergmann and Haber-Schaim clashed again,⁴⁵ and Haber-Schaim left Israel for a physics position in Switzerland and, later, in the United States. The incident typified the deterioration in relations between Bergmann and the nuclear physicists who resented Bergmann’s and Mardor’s management style and view of the project’s purpose.⁴⁶

The Haber-Schaim affair, and the way he was fired by Bergmann, taught the physicists a lesson and strengthened their determination to end their formal relations with the IAEC under Bergmann. In December 1952 de Shalit wrote to Haber-Schaim that he was eager to leave the IAEC for the Weizmann Institute: “I do not want any contact with Bergmann or dependence on him,” he wrote. “[Bergmann] knows exactly what I think of him and my views about how the way things should be managed. I do not see any reason why the [IAEC] should have labs of its own, and in my opinion it would fulfill its mandate if it would take care to meet the needs of the existing labs.”⁴⁷

De Shalit, an internationally known physicist, formed an alliance with Meyer Weisgal, the chancellor of the Weizmann Institute, to establish a home there for the whole nuclear physics group. Weisgal found de Shalit a natural ally in his campaign to build the Weizmann Institute as the nation’s preeminent science center. Weisgal was eager to expand the Weizmann Institute by adding a Department of Nuclear Physics, with the de Shalit group as its core; de Shalit and his colleagues, who wanted to build a national nuclear physics program, preferred to do so at the Weizmann Institute, rather than as Bergmann’s pawns at the Ministry of Defense.⁴⁸

The political timing of the de Shalit-Weisgal alliance was excellent. In the summer of 1953 Ben Gurion announced his retirement from his posts of prime minister and minister of defense, and appointed Pinhas Lavon acting minister of defense. On 7 December 1953 Ben Gurion formally resigned and moved to kibbutz Sdeh Boker in the Negev desert.⁴⁹ Lavon became minister of defense, and Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett became prime minister. The hawkish and inexperienced Lavon and the experienced dovish diplomat Sharett survived in power for barely a year, leaving the Israeli leadership in disarray.⁵⁰

Nuclear research, too, was affected by the changes in the Ministry of Defense. Lavon’s interest in organizational changes and budgetary cuts allowed de Shalit and Weisgal to pursue their own plans. Lavon was known to entertain all kinds of wild ideas, including the use of unconventional weapons against the Arabs,⁵¹ but he had little faith in Bergmann’s nuclear vision. Lavon agreed with de Shalit that Israel was not yet ready to build its own reactor, and decided to postpone the reactor project. He was persuaded that the national focus should be on setting up a training and research program in nuclear physics, and that the natural setting for such training was in academia, not in the Ministry of Defense. With the Weizmann Institute’s interest in setting up a modern national nuclear physics program, it made sense to move the entire physics department of Machon 4 to the Weizmann Institute. De Shalit made it clear that the physicists would remain committed to contributing to national needs in nuclear energy, but that their work would be done for the IAEC on a contractual basis.⁵²

On 20 January 1954 Lavon made the decision to transfer the physics department of Machon 4 to the Weizmann Institute. Mardor met with the physicists in a last-minute effort to change their minds, but to no avail.⁵³ In late April the nuclear physics department of Machon 4, its personnel and its scientific equipment, was moved to the Weizmann Institute at the cost of half a million Israeli pounds. On 1 May 1954 the Department of Nuclear Physics of the Weizmann Institute came into being, with Amos de Shalit, the architect of the deal, as its first head.

Lavon’s decisions to terminate the reactor project and move the IAEC nuclear physicists shattered the ambitious vision of Bergmann and Mardor. Their anger was directed at Lavon, Weisgal, and de Shalit and his colleagues.⁵⁴ In his book Rafael, Mardor explained that the transition from HEMED to EMET meant a move toward “long-term” planning. EMET was committed to “the establishment of infrastructure in the areas of science and technology [that] will allow independent research and development of weapons systems that will be in the future vital to the security of the state and its existence.”⁵⁵ Lavon’s decision was a retreat from this vision, bringing to an end an era that had hardly begun.⁵⁶

For the leaders of EMET, the de Shalit-Weisgal deal was a betrayal and a theft. The nuclear physicists were sent overseas by Bergmann to fulfill a national mission; now they appeared to have abandoned that mission.⁵⁷ For Bergmann the affair must have been reminiscent of the past. In 1951 Weisgal was at the center of the rift between Bergmann and Weizmann, and was the architect of Bergmann’s removal from the institution he had helped to build. In the three years since he had left the Weizmann Institute, Bergmann devoted himself to building a national science institution within the Ministry of Defense, especially in the area of nuclear energy. He founded the IAEC in 1952 with the hope of creating an alternative to the Hebrew University and the Weizmann Institute. The nuclear physics group was his greatest hope. Now Weisgal had again intervened and taken the physicists away.

The physicists, as we saw, perceived things differently. As Lipkin recalls:

Was Lavon right to cut the budget for nuclear research? Lavon made the right decision, regardless of his motives. The fact was that without substantial foreign assistance, Israel was not capable of launching the reactor project. Bergmann’s vision was, to the physicists, an “expression of ignorance and arrogance.”⁵⁹ Lavon accepted the judgment of de Shalit and his colleagues that Israel was not yet in a position to build a reactor without foreign assistance. In 1952–54 such assistance (from France or elsewhere) did not appear to be forthcoming. Lavon also accepted de Shalit’s argument that a training and research program was what Israel needed most, and that the Weizmann Institute was the right setting for that. Instead, the IAEC should contract out jobs for the nuclear physicists at the Weizmann Institute when the time was right, but it should not employ them.

De Shalit and Weisgal thus reversed Bergmann’s effort to follow the French model of science, preferring the American model instead. De Shalit and his group also did not believe that the IAEC, under Bergmann’s leadership, was qualified to develop the foundations for nuclear energy in Israel.

Most of the EMET chiefs who opposed the move of the nuclear physicists—among them Shalheveth Freier, then the acting director of EMET—eventually concluded that the move was inevitable, good for Israeli nuclear physics, and even beneficial for the national nuclear project. The negative reaction of the leaders of EMET to the departure of the nuclear physicists was unwarranted.⁶⁰

Within a year the situation changed. In early 1955 Ben Gurion returned to power, first to the Ministry of Defense and later to the prime minister’s office. The nuclear pursuit was first priority again. Abroad, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program made possible the first Geneva Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. Nuclear technology and know-how, classified since the days of the Manhattan Project, was being declassified and released. Most significant, during the next two years unique political circumstances arose in France. A nuclear project was ready to be born.