Shortly after the cabinet approves David Amsalem’s appointment as minister in charge of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, which will happen soon, he’ll head south to visit the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona.
Amsalem will be accompanied by Dr. Gil Dagan, the research center’s director, and Moshe Edri, the IAEC’s director general. They will go down a few floors, to an underground level, and arrive at the “Golda Balcony.”
Based on what nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu told the Sunday Times in 1986, this balcony is located two floors below ground level, in the research center’s Building 2. From it, senior Israeli officials can observe the center’s production facilities, which are commonly known as the Dimona nuclear reactor. Ever since Prime Minister Golda Meir visited the reactor roughly half a century ago, reactor workers have called this observation platform the Golda Balcony.
Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to appease and flatter Amsalem, who is constantly angry and bitter, by appointing him as minister in charge of the Holy of Holies of Israeli security.
Amsalem will now be able to add another perk, the most prestigious of all, to his existing string of unnecessary jobs – minister in the Justice Ministry, minister for regional cooperation and minister in charge of liaising between the cabinet and Knesset.
Even by the standards of Netanyahu’s current government, which is five months old, Amsalem’s appointment is the most insane yet. It’s an even more ridiculous appointment than those of Itamar Ben-Gvir as national security minister, Bezalel Smotrich as finance minister and a minister in the Defense Ministry, Gila Gamliel as intelligence minister or Galit Distal Atbaryan as public diplomacy minister.
It’s impossible to understand Netanyahu’s decision to appoint one of his most loquacious, loudmouthed and irritable ministers to Israel’s most sensitive position, thereby making him privy to the country’s most classified secrets. Dealing with Israel’s nuclear program requires someone with very fine tuning, who walks on tiptoe and scrupulously maintains maximum secrecy. All these are traits seemingly far beyond Amsalem’s ability. He acts like a bull in a china shop.
Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, together with a handful of scientists and aides, brought Israel to the forefront by understanding how important science was to building the country. Way back in 1952, Ben-Gurion set up the IAEC and put chemistry professor Ernst David Bergmann in charge of it. Bergmann is considered the father of Israel’s nuclear program, which, according to foreign reports, is primarily a military nuclear program.
In 1966, against the backdrop of a political crisis and a dispute with then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol over the scope and direction of the nuclear program, Bergmann resigned. After that, the IAEC’s structure was changed, and it was subordinated to the prime minister. From that day on, the prime minister has served as chairman of the commission, with a director general to run things in practice.
According to foreign reports, in 1966, Israel became the sixth country in the world to acquire nuclear weapons, following the five big powers. It did so thanks to France, which provided it with a nuclear reactor, the equipment needed to run it and the uranium needed to fuel it between 1958 and 1962.
According to those reports, Israel has at least several dozen nuclear bombs based on both uranium and plutonium, as well as planes, missiles and submarines capable of launching them. Israel, which initially agreed to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but later backtracked on this promise, also refuses to allow international supervision of the Dimona reactor.
However, it does permit annual visits by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to its smaller nuclear research reactor in Soreq, which the United States gifted it in 1960.
These two reactors aren’t the only “toys” for which Amsalem will be responsible and with which he will interact. According to foreign reports, other agencies are also involved in building Israel’s nuclear weapons, including Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which has an institute named after Bergmann – the David Institute – in one of its plants. Other agencies include the air force, whose planes, according to foreign reports, are supposed to carry the bombs, and the navy, whose submarines can also be armed with missiles carrying nuclear warheads.
Foreign reports about Israel’s nuclear program also describe a facility called Kanaf (Wing) 2, located west of Beit Shemesh, where Jericho surface-to-surface missiles armed with nuclear warheads are stored deep underground.
Amsalem, in his usual offensive language, called demonstrators against the government’s planned legal overhaul “anarchists.” These “anarchists” include reservist pilots and submariners, reservists from the air force’s special operations unit, and scientists from Rafael and the Dimona reactor who are responsible for Israel’s nuclear program. Now, when there’s no limit to absurdity, at least the official kind, he will be the minister in charge of them.
Clearly, ultimate responsibility was and remains in Netanyahu’s hands, and the powers he has granted his irascible minister are limited. Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi and everyone else privy to the secrets of Israel’s nuclear program will continue running it in practice.
Nevertheless, Amsalem’s addition to the elite circle of people in the know sends a symbolic message: Even a program viewed as insurance for Israel’s continued existence has become a cynical political tool in the hands of Netanyahu, a politician with no conscience and no compass, who is willing to traffic in any national value to placate his supporters and keep himself in power.
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