What’s Really Going On at the Israeli Institute for Biological Research?
by Saleh El-Naami
Drivers will only dart a glance at that mammoth structure nestled in
the dunes south of Rishon Litsion southeast of Tel Aviv as they speed on
their way. It is forbidden to turn off the Tel Aviv-Rishon Litsion
highway onto the side road leading up to that building, which is
barricaded by cement walls equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance
and warning systems developed by Israel’s military industries.
That fortress-like structure is the Israeli Institute for Biological
Research (IIBR) where Israel develops its biological and chemical
weapons and prepares for any eventuality of biological or chemical
warfare. It is the most top-secret military installation in Israel. So
tightly is it guarded by military censorship that the Israeli press has
to turn to Western sources for scraps of information made available to
them, very intermittently, by special contacts inside the institute.
Only once has the Israeli press been given leeway to discuss what
goes on behind those high security walls. That was last month when
Avisha Klein filed a suit against the IIBR administration for harassment
and emotional abuse. A long-term employee at the institute, Klein has
served in various positions, one of which was as part of a team to
develop an ointment to protect the skin from mustard gas. But this is
only one of the many details that have come to light in the course of
the proceedings, which have shed considerable light on the nature and
scope of the institute’s work.
The IIBR is staffed by some 300 scientists and technicians employed
in one or more of its many departments, each of which specialises in a
specific area of chemical or biological research generally aimed at the
production of chemical or biological weaponry. One of these departments,
for example, is reported to have developed the poison that was used by
the notorious Mossad assassination unit, Kidon, in its botched attempt
to eliminate Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal in 1997. Nevertheless,
if there remains some question over the accuracy of this information,
which was reported in Haaretz, no one disputes that the first time the
institute’s products were used in an assassination operation was in late
1977 when then prime minister Menachem Begin ordered Mossad to
eliminate Wadie Haddad.
A leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Haddad
was accused by Israel of responsibility for several terrorist
operations, the last of which was the hijacking of an Israeli passenger
plane en route to Entebbe in 1976. According to a recently published
book by the Israeli journalist Aharon Klein, Haddad had a great fondness
for Belgian chocolates. Mossad obtained some of these special
chocolates, coated them with a slow-acting poison, and had them
delivered to Haddad, who was then living in Baghdad, by an Iraqi
official who was a Mossad agent and who had struck up a friendship with
Haddad. Klein relates that the deadly substance was first developed in
the IIBR and that its slow-acting and undetectable properties ensured
that the agent and the instrument of death would not be discovered.
And indeed, following a gradual but severe deterioration in his
health, Haddad was flown to a hospital in East Germany where he was
diagnosed with leukaemia and eventually died on 28 March 1978. It was
not until 32 years later that the truth came to light: that the real
cause of death was a poison produced by IIBR.
It is not unlikely that Mossad conducted many assassination
operations in this way, so as not to leave its fingerprints. In other
words, the seemingly accidental deaths of many individuals that Israel
regarded as a threat may have actually been caused by substances
produced by IIBR. Most likely, the poison that Mossad agents injected
into Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai in February 2010 came from
IIBR.
According to information that has recently come out, the institute
contains a department specialising in the production of vaccines against
biological weapons. One of the chief focuses of research and
development, here, was anthrax, which Israel fears the Arabs and
resistance organisations will use against it in a confrontation. The
institute also has a department for developing remedies to minimise and
counter the effects of chemical weaponry. The whole presents a gruesome
picture of a curious chemical and biological race, with the institute
virtually competing with itself to produce antidotes to weapons that it,
itself, is producing, or that it fears others will use against Israel
in an eventual confrontation.
The IIBR works closely and in full coordination with the Israeli army
and intelligence, which furnish the institute with their lists of
priorities in light of their strategic threat forecasts. For example,
information that has come to light during the coverage of Klein’s suit
reveals that many years ago the Israeli military establishment was
concerned that Arab states might use such chemical agents as mustard gas
in an potential assault against Israel and, therefore, instructed the
institute to develop a chemical substance to minimise the effects of the
gas. Not surprisingly, the institute coordinates closely with the
Israeli army’s medical corps, which receives the antidotes and
distributes them to its branches in the military in accordance with
demand.
The institute also works closely with Mossad and Shin Bet, the
agencies primarily responsible for most of the assassination and
liquidation operations against Arab and Muslim targets. Also, since
Mossad and the military intelligence unit “Aman” are responsible for
gathering enemy intelligence and presumably monitor nonconventional
weapons programmes in Arab countries, they would instruct IIBR to
develop the necessary biological or chemical responses to these
programmes.
However, the IIBR has another purpose on top of developing and
producing biological and chemical weapons and antidotes. It is also a
major hard currency income-generator. The Hebrew Haaretz website
reports: “The institute has received a grant of hundreds of millions of
dollars to develop an anthrax vaccine.” The grant followed an attack in
the US by a home-grown terrorist group that developed a concentrated
strain of anthrax spores and delivered them to several individual
targets in US; the vaccines that IIBR was commissioned to develop were
destined for use in the US.
More importantly, we learn from the website that Israeli soldiers
have been used to test the vaccines, causing some permanent physical
damage. Reports of the internationally banned use of human guinea pigs
raised moral hackles in Israel and sharpened suspicions that the lives
of Israeli soldiers had deliberately been put to risk for the sake of
financial gain received for promoting the security of another country,
namely the US in this case.
The IIBR has a live animals department, where rabbits, pigs, monkeys
and other animals are used in experiments. And perhaps human beings as
well, judging by the suits soldiers filed against the Israeli Ministry
of Defence after they were used in the anthrax experiments. The soldiers
demand that they be officially recognised as disabled veterans and
receive compensation accordingly. The case remains in the courts, but
the IDF, caving into pressure from the families of the soldiers and
public opinion, recently announced that it would no longer conduct
experiments on soldiers.
It was Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who ordered
the construction of the IIBR on the basis of the advice of a number of
Jewish scientists. Throughout his rule, from 1948 to 1963 (with the
exception of the years 1953-1955 when ?Moshe Sharett served as prime
minister), Ben-Gurion was directly responsible for the institute and
every detail in it. The staff were forbidden to disclose to anyone even
the smallest tid-bit of data or information without first obtaining
Ben-Gurion’s approval. That continued to apply even during that
interstice when Sharrit was in power, for when this prime minister
visited the institute in 1954 scientists had to apologise for not being
able to show him the programmes they were working on at the time.
Although many scientists have taken a turn to direct the IIBR, it is
generally believed that the one to have left the greatest imprint is its
current director, Avigdor Shafferman. Shafferman, who has been named in
Klein’s suit, has the reputation of being something of a powerhouse but
also being very strict and quick to fire staff members on disciplinary
grounds.
Nevertheless, as significant as the details that have come to light
in this rare glimpse into the workings of the IIBR may be, little
attention has focussed on a larger truth. As the international community
hounds a host of countries for pursuing conventional weapons programmes
that pale in scale next to Israel’s, it refuses to budge an inch to
deter Israel, which only encourages Tel Aviv’s belligerent and
tyrannical behaviour.
Saleh El-Naami writes for Al-Ahram, where this article originally appeared.
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