Israel Atomic II.

This is coolbert:

Continuing with excerpts from the Ari Shavit book: "My Promised Land".

Here from Chapter 7. "The Project".

The Engineer!

Hemed Gimmel.

Understand that as early as 1951 the Israeli had begun the process to acquire nuclear munitions! ONLY three years subsequent to the Israeli War of Independence initial research having commenced.

A survey of the Negev desert, prospecting for those rocks containing a certain  mineral content that when processed would yield URANIUM!

That Israel special military unit referred to as Hemed Gimmel!

"After the war he worked as an engineer, and in 1951, he was called upon by Israel Dostrovsky. Dostrovsky . . . a brilliant scientist . . . he was also the commander of a secret Israeli Army unit, Hemed Gimmel. Dostrovsky appointed his new recruit as the operations officer of Hemed Gimmel. The engineer's first assignment was to conduct a mineral survey of the Negev to search for bitumen, phosphorus, and uranium."

. . . .

That search of the Negev successful, rocks with that mineral content as desired obtain, processing yielding minute quantities of URANIUM!

"Dostrovsky's team built the cumbersome Kleinschmidt apparatus that distilled heavy water in a unique process. The operation officer's team brought phosphate rock from the Negev and developed various methods to extract uranium from it in vats of solvent The distillation of water enriched with heavy oxygen (O18) was an immediate success. it turned 1950's Israel into one of the leaders in the field."

Quantities of URANIUM not adequate for a bomb but nonetheless, that effort demonstrative of a wherewithal both mental and physical!!

Chemists and chemistry vital to the research & development and production of a nuclear weapons capacity. That physics well known, but the extraction of fissionable material to produce enough bomb-making material the more difficult matter?

Yosef Tulipman  that director of Dimona by training and profession a chemist.

That moral as compared to the physical of course as three is to one!

coolbert.