quantity of nuclear fuel had left France on its way to Iraq. These seventy-five kilograms of nuclear material, once inside the reactor, would make it ‘hot.’ After that, the implications of an attack would be far more serious. The attack would spread nuclear contamination over a wide area. This compelled the government to decide quickly, before the material reached the reactor.”
Ivry was very well prepared. Every now and then he pulled out of his file a handwritten note and showed it to us silently, as proof. This is how secret objects began to be shown.
“Menachem Begin, the prime minister and minister of defense, required full consensus in his cabinet regarding this attack, so there were delays. Meanwhile the Iran-Iraq War went on, so every time the Iranians attacked near Baghdad, more SAM batteries were added around the Tammuz plant. More antiaircraft was deployed there, defensive walls were built around the site, and barrage balloons were anchored in the air above it. Finally, a division of mobile SAM-6s was deployed there, too. The degree of difficulty of the attack went up and up, and together with it the difficulty of deciding whether to do it or not. On January 1981, the last minister who until then had opposed the operation—Deputy Prime Minister Yigael Yadin—consented.”
When he finally agreed, the attack on the reactor was approved, and Opera was ready to go.
“After the attack, some people criticized Prime Minister Begin for arranging the attack with the elections in mind,” Ivey reminded us. “I don’t agree. Had the attack failed, it wouldn’t have helped him get reelected. In my opinion, Begin felt a genuine responsibility to the nation. He feared the next government might be too late to catch the window, before the reactor became hot. And the decision was hard. The intelligence organs opposed the attack; they argued that the Iraqis would only build another reactor within three to five years. Some thought the American reaction would be harsh. We had to prepare for a possible Iraqi military reaction as well.
“Menachem Begin,” said Ivry, “took full responsibility on himself.”
IF BEGIN TOOK ON NATIONAL responsibility, it was David Ivry who had to take on operational responsibility. Our F-16 aircraft were new in the air, with no combat record. They hadn’t even concluded their ordnance testing. The flight profiles of F-16s with two one-ton bombs—the only bombs we had that could penetrate the structure of the reactor—were not verified yet. Anyway, we began training with these bombs hanging on our wings.
One day Ami Rabin, the base’s maintenance officer, entered my office, closed the door behind him, and said: “Iftach, I don’t know what you plan to do with these Mark 84 bombs you keep training with, but if you ever intend to jettison external fuel tanks while those bombs are hanging near them, you better think twice; this configuration has not been tested yet. This can lead to serious trouble.”
We definitely intended to jettison our external tanks on the way to the target after emptying them—this was mandatory to get to Baghdad—and the bombs would be still on the wings. So what? I didn’t understand what was bothering Ami. In Phantoms and Mirages this was standard operating procedure. But Ami was an experienced aeronautical engineer, with a background in munitions, and he taught me that jettisoning empty tanks in unfit conditions might end with the tank hitting the fuselage of the aircraft and even lead to its breakup in the air. Such things had happened before. A warning light flashed in my mind and I shuddered—just imagine our eight-ship formation in a snafu like that on its way to Baghdad.
The air force didn’t have an instrumented F-16 for this kind of testing, so we had to do it “by the seat of our pants.” Within a few days the squadrons themselves conducted an experiment in a rather amateurish way. They found a set of flight conditions in which it was safe to jettison the tanks. This was one example of the uncertainties that came with the new aircraft, and luckily it was exposed in time. It was just luck that we had Ami Rabin with us—he definitely wasn’t the usual maintenance officer. Still, we didn’t know what else we don’t know. We were vulnerable to error.
AND THERE WAS THE ISSUE of the aircraft’s vulnerability to hostile ground fire. The antiaircraft defense around Tammuz was considerable. The reactor and nearby Baghdad were circled with rings of SAM batteries and antiaircraft—not to speak of MiGs from nearby airfields. The radar coverage was perhaps only equaled around Moscow. The chances of some of us getting hit were well above zero, and the F-16 carried with it many unknown factors. It was a new aircraft with a single engine, and nobody knew how durable it was under fire and for how long it would stay airborne and get its pilot out once it took a hit.
Some protested against the use of F-16s on this dangerous and uncertain mission, and suggested sending the double-engine F-15s instead. The large F-15 seemed so much more massive and robust. A heated debate broke out in the air force commander’s office; everybody wanted the mission for himself. But Ivry knew he had bought jet fighters, not toys, and to become the backbone of our attack force they must prove themselves under fire. Ivry knew it and I knew it, and in the last discussion in his office—the two chiefs of the opposing tribes, and a few technical people participated—we both were on the same side. Ivry concluded, “This is what we bought the F-16s for. They can do it, and they will,” and I came out holding the bag.
To the delicate question the government asked him, how many of the attackers were likely not to make it back, Ivry came up with a percent “casualty estimate.” He calculated the number from past missions with limited similarities, according to the methodology of operational research. Then the term “casualty estimate” began to make the rounds, and the thinking regarding this nasty subject got to Ramat-David and the few pilots who were preparing the operation, drawing maps, calculating fuel quantities and experimenting with long-distance flight and attack profiles. These pilots began to wonder how many of them would end up staying in Iraq. Somebody estimated that we would lose just one; others put it at two. Later, the ugly question of who among the chosen eight had the best chance to be hit came up, too. Everybody thought he might be the one. There were even secret betting pools.
And all this time, above us, decisions were being made, then canceled. A few times the government decided to go for it. On one occasion we had even started our engines, and the mission was aborted.
“You don’t have the slightest idea,” Ivry told us, “of how many times we kept all that shit from falling on your heads. You had F-16 squadrons to build, and had we driven you crazy the way they drove us… ”
As an example, he presented a handwritten note sent to him by the IDF’s chief of staff, Raful, from one of the cabinet meetings.
“I told them,” wrote Lieutenant General Raful to Ivry, “it’s either-or. Either you decide to do it, or stop driving us crazy.” Raful, who sat next to me with his sturdy arms folded on his considerable belly, grunted, “Had I known you kept all my notes, Ivry, I would have written twice as much.”
Laughter filled the room.
AND THERE WAS ALSO a personal secret. Ofra, Ivry’s wife, told us that on the day before the attack she and Ivry had visited Tel Nof.
“On the way back home, right near Mughar Hill, David stopped the car.”
Mughar Hill is a high, barren, red clay hill, and everybody who grew up in the area knows it. David Ivry was a native of the nearby township of Gedera, and so was Ofra. Surely as kids they picked anemones on the hill in the winter, just the way Ali and I did. Kibbutz Givat-Brenner is on the other side.
“And standing there, David told me,” Ofra continued, “that tomorrow the atomic reactor at Baghdad would be hit.”
Ofra is a delicate woman, and excitement showed on her face. Silence fell over the big room. This operation had been absolutely top secret. Nobody was supposed to say a word about it. David brought his head closer to Ofra’s in an affectionate way and she continued, as if apologizing, “I didn’t believe it. This was the one and only time during our whole life together that David had told me about a mission. And how had it suddenly come to be the reactor? All Israel was talking about Lebanon then.”
When they went to bed, David fell sound asleep, but Ofra didn’t shut her eyes the whole night.
Nobody told Anat Shafir, Relik’s wife, about the forthcoming operation, “and just for this reason our marriage stayed intact.”
Anat is a sculptor who works in iron. The story of the attack on Tammuz, when she finally learned about it, she imagined as “a very precise and sturdy structure of iron pieces, welded into one by a superb artist.” For a moment she caused all of us to see this operation through different eyes, those of an artist. She read her comments from her notes.
“The full story got to me years later, and suddenly I realized what a risk we took there. Only then did I grasp that we all were living on borrowed time,” and here she paused, struggling with feelings brought on by her
