The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear and What That Means for the World

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Reviewed by Lydia Millet

Until recently there were five declared nuclear powers in the world: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China. Israel has never admitted to possessing a nuclear arsenal, pursuing a policy of "ambiguity" and refusing to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but for decades it has been recognized internationally as a nuclear state.

Israeli journalist Karpin's groundbreaking new book, following in the wake of a documentary of the same name he made in 2001, offers an in-depth look at Israel's acquisition of nuclear arms technology and at the ideology and politics driving it. The stories of the men who played major roles in bringing the bomb to Israel—longtime prime minister David Ben-Gurion, scientist Ernst Bergmann, diplomat and intelligence operative Shalhevet Freier, future Nobel laureate Shimon Peres—are compelling and finely drawn. That Israel's technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons should have come through backdoor negotiations with France, rather than from its richer and more powerful American ally, will come as a surprise to many readers not familiar with this complex and intriguing history.

Karpin's strength lies in tracing material detail rather than in speculation of a more abstract kind. He avoids exploring the philosophical and moral dimensions of Israel's deployment of nuclear weapons or of its policy of official denial, tending to invoke the horrors of the Holocaust as inspiration for defense of the Jewish state rather than to examine the specific reverberations of the official choice to embrace and hide weapons of mass destruction. The irony that Israel—a state created with a very special mission as a utopian refuge for Jews escaping persecution and genocide—has chosen to base its security on a weapons system historically used exclusively for the mass killing of civilians is barely examined.

This is hardly surprising, since such a discussion could amply fill a second volume; nonetheless, the author's conclusion that achieving the nuclear option, though possibly a "great mistake," did have a "certain justification," namely the threat of the destruction of Israel by neighboring Arabs, is conceptually underwhelming. Still, for all those interested in understanding how Israel's idealistic origins dovetail with its hawkish position in the game of nuclear deterrence and fraught relationship with other countries in the Middle East, this well-researched study is a must-read. (Jan.)

Lydia Millet's most recent novel, Oh Pure and Radiant Heart (Soft Skull), brings atom bomb physicists Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard back to life in modern-day Santa Fe.