Report uncovers how Israel deceitfully managed to make atomic bombs
A new report has uncovered how Israel managed to hide its activities to make nukes back in 1960s under the cover of a textile factory.
The Israeli regime’s deception was highlighted in a report published on Monday by The Washington Post. In the 1960s, Tel Aviv managed to successfully hide its nuclear warfare programs, the report said.
According to the report, Israel began the clandestine construction of a reactor with the help of France in the Dimona facility which was described to the US embassy in June 1960 as “a textile plant” and later on as a “a metallurgical research installation,” said a March 1964 memo compiled for then-National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy.
The then-Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion (pictured below), had announced to the Knesset in December 1960 that the construction of a 24-megawatt reactor, which was being carried out at Dimona in the Negev desert, would not be finished for four years.
He said that the reactor was “intended exclusively for peaceful purposes.”
The report also referred to a meeting between Ben-Gurion and then US President John F. Kennedy at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, on May 30, 1961.
During the meeting, Ben-Gurion told Kennedy that a second reactor was for the generation of electricity but Israel might in a few years build a pilot plutonium separation plant.
According to a State Department memo, he added that there was “no intention to develop weapons capacity now.”
The Bundy memo also stated that during a September 1962 visit to the facility, US scientists reported that what they found was larger than expected and “certainly not a power reactor.”
The scientists added that although they discovered no evidence pointing to the preparations for a nuclear weapon, they were “given only 40 minutes to examine the site and access [was] barred to one large building.”
Having learned that Israel was planning to build a third reactor, Kennedy met with Israel’s then-deputy minister of military affairs, Shimon Peres, who was leading the regime’s nuclear program.
According to released Israeli notes of the session, which took place in the Oval Office on April 2, 1963, in response to questions about the Dimona plant, Peres said, “I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region.”
The Israeli regime, widely believed to possess between 200 to 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenals, refuses to either allow inspections of its nuclear facilities or join the NPT.
SRK/MHB/AS
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