My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

by Ari Shavit

  For almost half a century, I say to my host, the three achievements were valid. The bell jar solution worked. Dimona was astounding in its existence and in its opacity, and in the quasi-normalcy it fostered. Dimona symbolized the best of Israel of the 1960s: the vision, imagination, soberness, daring, tenacity, power, restraint, and resolve. A stern rule of rationality. A security-mindedness that was not imperialistic. A patriotism that was not chauvinistic. A unique combination of diplomatic ingenuity and intelligence sophistication. And a modicum of modesty. A matter-of-factness. A concise understanding of reality and a valiant effort to manage this reality. An attempt to find a rational solution to an insane situation. Dimona gave Israel half a century of relative security and gave the Middle East forty-six years of relative stability. Because of the regional conflagrations that erupted periodically during this period, Israelis did not consider the much greater fires that could have broken out. Dimona prevented total wars. It brought about peace agreements. But after forty-six years, the question remained: Was it right? And what would happen when the Arabs possessed a demon of their own? Didn’t the engineer and his colleagues open the gates of a future hell?

  The engineer likes my analysis but dislikes my questions. He rises from his armchair and says he would like to show me something. He walks slowly to the next room and returns with an oblong album in his hands. The front cover is made of a thin sheet of copper, hammered with the likeness of a dome amid palm trees in the desert.

  The photographs in the album are almost all of the dome. The construction of the dome, 1960. The completion of the dome, 1961. Prime Minister Ben Gurion in front of the dome, 1963. Prime Minister Eshkol in front of the dome, 1965. Prime Minister Meir in front of the dome, 1970. Defense Minister Dayan in front of the dome, 1972. And the small group of nuclear engineers who led Ben Gurion, Eshkol, Meir, and Dayan on their tours of the dome. I see the exultant expression on Dayan’s face, the solemn expression on Meir’s face.

  I recognize the faces of many of the engineers, who are in their late thirties and early forties. I remember them dancing at Independence Day parties and playing with us children in the sand on summer holidays at the beach. I remember them telling jokes and performing magic tricks for the ten-year-olds we were. And here they are showing Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan the secret. Here they are displaying the quiet resolve of the 1948 generation. They are neither triumphant nor anxious, neither prideful nor fearful. But the expressions on their faces and the way they hold themselves seem to say: It had to be done, and so we did it. It was not for us to ask why.

  In many of the photos, the engineer is in the lead. Brisk and determined, he walks ahead, his bald pate shining above thick horn-rimmed glasses and thick lips. He exudes confidence and conviction. He appears proud of the Citroën D3 in which he meets the dignitaries at the helipad and in which he takes them on a tour of his desert kingdom. But the photographs betray nothing of the secret itself; even in this secret album, the secret is kept. Instead I see the heavy trucks of the Solel Boneh building company in the dust of the desert construction site, the emerging streamlined structures of sixties modernism, the palm trees and casuarinas. I see new lawns, bougainvillea plantings. And a large silver dome like a cathedral for a tragic modern age.

  And yet, one of the photographs sends a shiver up my spine. It is a photograph of an empty room. Under the dome everything works without human intervention. Everything takes place in silence. If the international publications are correct, in this silence are produced a few dozen grams of enriched uranium every day, and a few kilograms of plutonium every year. If these publications are right, the quiet and matter-of-fact Israelis of my childhood processed the plutonium and fashioned it into black metal buttons. Are these black metal buttons what Golda Meir sees as she faces the camera, terror in her eyes?

  There is only one secret the engineer is willing to divulge as he closes the oblong album. In the beginning, he tells me, Golda didn’t much like him, and she didn’t much like the facility he was in charge of. But gradually she grew to like him and began to take a greater interest in the facility. She called it varenye. Varenye, the jar of fruit preserves that Eastern European Jews kept in the cupboard for times of trouble, so if a pogrom broke out they would have something to feed their families until the fury passed. When the engineer would enter her office to report the goings-on in Dimona, the prime minister would ask, “Nu, what’s new with varenye?”

  In October 1973, it looked as if Golda Meir’s Israel might be in need of its varenye. Israel was forced to consider its Dimona capabilities, and it decided to make threatening use of them. But even then, Meir was very careful. She acted responsibly and sensibly. According to non-Israeli sources, Israel revealed its nuclear missiles for a brief moment, for Russian and American satellites to photograph, but never seriously considered using them. Immediately after the danger passed, Dimona disappeared again. But the trauma remained. The Yom Kippur War proved unequivocally that Dimona was Israel’s unseen anchor, an inseparable part of its existence. Without Dimona, Israel was like a lone tamarisk in the desert.

  But the historical respite that Dimona gave Israel is nearing an end. Israel’s nuclear hegemony in the Middle East is probably coming to a close. Sooner or later, the Israeli monopoly will be broken. First one hostile state will go nuclear, then a second hostile state, then a third. In the first half of the twenty-first century, the Middle East is bound to be nuclearized. The world’s first multirival nuclear arena might emerge in the world’s most unstable region.

  I describe my concerns to my host. At this very moment, Iranian engineers are doing exactly what you did in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, I say to him. At this very moment all kinds of mini-Dimonas are being built in Natanz and Parchin. Nuclear scientists are being sent abroad to learn everything they can from the West. Intelligence agents are stealing what they can from both East and West. The Iranians are now running the marathon you ran from 1951 to 1967. And they are not alone. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Algeria have all expressed nuclear interest, especially if Iran succeeds. They all believe that if we have a right to our Dimona, they have a right to theirs. And when other Middle Eastern nations exercise their rights, our Dimona will turn from a blessing into a curse. We will revisit Allon’s and Galili’s warnings and discover that they were right. Half a century later we will revisit the essays of the intellectuals I read in my father’s library and discover how prescient they were. The thing that allowed Israel to flourish from 1967 into the second decade of the new millennium will become the biggest threat facing Israel. It might turn the lives of Israelis into a nightmare.

  The engineer does not have an argument to refute mine. Quite the opposite. He can definitely foresee a Middle East glowing in radioactive green. He doesn’t mince words. Disparaging the Arabs in the most politically incorrect terms possible, he concludes that they won’t behave the way we behaved. They won’t act responsibly. If they acquire the capability, they’ll use it. Right here, in the skies over Tel Aviv. As far as the engineer is concerned, there is only one answer: a preemptive strike. He who comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first. Even though he believes they already have a bomb, strike them nonetheless. Strike them with everything we’ve got. Be proactive now, as he and his colleagues were proactive then. “We cannot sit idly,” he bellows. “We cannot wait until one fine spring day a white mushroom cloud rises over what is left of our homes.”

  I show the engineer parts of an article I wrote in the fall of 1999, when Haaretz newspaper hired a Defender jeep to take me to the desert to circle the secret installation in the Negev.

  From the beginning Israel well understood the dangers inherent in Dimona. It built Dimona but decided not to make irresponsible use of it. It did not use the unconventional advantage of Dimona in order to gain the upper hand in conventional diplomatic gamesmanship, conventional political gamesmanship, or conventional military gamesmanship. It did not incorporate Dimona into its day-to-day security strategy, did not base its
military assumptions on it, and did not make political capital of it. It did not calm the Israeli public with it and did not weaken the army’s readiness with it. It really kept it only as an option, as an alternative only to be thought of for the worst possible calamity. As an ultramodern answer to the fundamental, primeval anxiety of Israeli existence.

  Seemingly, opacity is a joke. An agreed-upon convention. Something that everyone knows but of which no one speaks publicly. But in truth opacity is genius. There is something profoundly wise about Israel’s desire not to know about Dimona, to see it only in the grainy photographs taken from a very great distance with a telephoto lens. To hear news of Dimona only from foreign sources and international publications. Alongside the decision that Dimona was essential, there developed in Israel an understanding that Dimona is impossible. And in order to reduce to a minimum the possibility that any use might one day be made of it, Israel understood that it could in no way rely on Dimona. Life should be lived as if Dimona does not exist.

  But Dimona is here. And when the dusty Defender climbs the hill recommended for viewing the secret and the morning fog lifts, you can suddenly see what you see in satellite photos: how the concrete and asphalt and palm trees of Dimona were laid and planted in all of this desert. How the Negev Nuclear Research Center was laid in this vast desert like a tiny square of well-organized Western outpost. Like an isolated settlement of Israeli modernism encircled by electric fences.

  I step out of the jeep and look around me at all that surrounds Dimona—the open maw of the Little Crater, the steep descent to Sodom—and think about the people who built it. Mostly, they were not comfortable with words, feelings, or insights. They were the physicists and chemists and engineers of the Jewish generation of the mid-twentieth century. They labored under the intense impression of what had happened to the Jews in the first half of the twentieth century. And so when the State of Israel reached an impasse and told them to break that impasse, they broke it. They built the reactor that in more ways than one is the core of the Zionist revolution.

  They did this without thinking too much. Without slogans or clichés or stray thoughts. They did it with the certitude of good engineers pulled by the great magnet of national commitment. And a duty to serve, for better or for worse. No questions, no qualms. Just action.

  And now when the sun rises high above the mountains of Jordan, when the desert air begins to warm and the silver dome shines in the distance, I think about its place in our lives. Because in the most basic sense, it is our real taboo. Our common secret-not-secret. It is the real thing, scientific and concrete, that embodies the root of our existence here. And the unique predicament of our existence here. That’s why we prefer to avert our gaze from Dimona. That’s why we prefer not to know much about it. That’s why we prefer to know that it is there, but not what it is. That’s why we chose to ignore the tragedy enmeshed in Israel’s great secret.

  The engineer places the article on the table in front of him, removes his glasses, and tells me affectionately that I think too much. I think of the things that he would rather not think about. This is how he and his generation were raised. Make the best of every moment so that tomorrow will be better than today and the day after tomorrow will be better than tomorrow. “If everyone spent as much time thinking as you do,” he tells me, “they would never act. If everyone had spent as much time thinking, these thoughts would have paralyzed them and kept them from building Dimona.”

  “But you invited me,” I tell the engineer. “You wanted to talk. You thought it was important to present things in the right context. You thought it important that what you did would not be forgotten.”

  The engineer fixes me with his piercing gaze. “I know my days are numbered,” he says. “Another month, another six months, another year. In a certain sense I am the last of my generation. Of those who were there in the beginning, the doers, I am truly the last. And that’s why I wanted to place in your hands a certain understanding. Not knowledge, but understanding. Through you, I wanted to ensure that your generation will know what my generation did. We never talked. We bit our lips. But it is unacceptable to me that because we didn’t talk, our part will be forgotten. That’s why, after a long deliberation, I invited you over this evening. That’s why I spoke to you as I did. I have never spoken like this before. This is my legacy.”

  The engineer is tired. We drink another whisky, the last one for the evening. In the background Daniel Barenboim plays the Kreutzer Sonata. “What a genius,” the engineer says. “A self-hating Israeli, but still a genius. Unbelievable how many geniuses this country has spawned. Unbelievable what music and literature and poetry this country has created. Here, on the edge of the desert, in the line of death, we have built a nation of talent and joy and endless creativity.”

  The engineer asks me about the book I am writing. Because he opened his heart to me, I open my heart to him. I tell him about the valley, the orange grove, Masada, Lydda, the housing estate. I tell him Dimona was the inevitable outcome of the valley, the orange grove, Masada, Lydda, and the housing estate. And I dare say to him that there is a tragedy here. We brought not only water to the Negev but heavy water. We brought not only agricultural modernity to the land but nuclear modernity. Because between the Holocaust and revival, between horror and hope, between life and death—we did the colossal deed of Dimona. And to this day it is still impossible to know if this deed is a blessing for generations to come or a malignant curse.

  Perhaps it is no coincidence that we are speaking now, I say to my host. You are a doer, a man of action, whereas I am an interpreter of actions. You are a builder, and I try to fathom the meaning of your buildings. You are experience and I am consciousness. And you need consciousness. Even your neighbors don’t know what they owe you. All around you is a hedonistic, pleasure-seeking Tel Aviv that has forgotten what it owes you. And you see how the wheels of history are starting to spin in reverse. There are the Bushehr reactor and the Natanz centrifuges in Iran. For the first time in your life, you’re not thinking only as an engineer, in terms of problems and solutions. You, too, are now consciousness. You see context. And the context fills you with pride, but it also fills you with dread. You realize what you’ve done, and it is too big for you. Too big for any human being.”

  The engineer has had enough. It’s late, and he is tired. He promises to think about what I’ve said. He rises from the armchair and leads me past the watercolors and the oil paintings of the orange groves of his childhood. When he takes me to the door, he suddenly pats me tenderly on the shoulder and tells me that this evening he has said things that he hadn’t imagined he would say, revisited places he never thought he would revisit. And he makes me promise that I’ll treat his radioactive material with care. That I’ll do him justice, and I’ll do Dimona justice, and I’ll do the State of Israel the justice it deserves.

  A month later, the engineer died.

  (photo credit 8.1)

  EIGHT

  Settlement, 1975

  ONE CANNOT UNDERSTAND THE SETTLEMENTS WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING the Six Day War. In May 1967 the Egyptian army entered the Sinai desert and blockaded the Straits of Tiran, directly threatening the State of Israel. The international community failed to respond, and many in the Jewish state panicked. They feared a Pan-Arab invasion that would crush Israel. But when Israel launched a preemptive strike on June 5, 1967, it had the upper hand. Within three hours the Israel Defense Forces destroyed the air forces of four Arab states. Within six days it conquered the Sinai desert, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. The Arab armies were overwhelmed and Arab states were humiliated as tiny Israel tripled its size and became a dominant regional power. Nineteen years after it was founded, the Israeli republic had become an empire. Nineteen hundred years after the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews were again the masters of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount on which the ancient temples once stood.

  One also cannot understand the settlements without understanding the Yom Kippur War. On Octob
er 6, 1973, when the nation was fasting to observe the high holiday of Yom Kippur, the Egyptian army caught Israel by surprise. It crossed the Suez Canal and captured the Bar Lev fortification line, which was built to defend Israel’s southern flank. Simultaneously the Syrian army crossed the northern border, crushed Israeli defenses, and occupied most of the Golan Heights. Within days thousands of Israeli soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured. The air force lost a third of its jets. At times, it seemed Israel was about to break; Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, shaken to his core, spoke in apocalyptic terms about the imminent destruction of the Third Temple. Only after ten days of bloody fighting did Israel seize the initiative. It struck the invading armored divisions, crossed the Suez Canal, and threatened the Egyptian capital, Cairo, while simultaneously closing in on the Syrian capital, Damascus. But the belated military accomplishments did not dispel the trauma of near defeat. The war was perceived as a grand failure. Faith in Israel’s leadership and army was fractured. So was Israeli self-confidence. For the first time in its history, Zionism was not a process of expansion but of retreat.