COVER STORIES
Israel blasts Iraq's reactor and creates a global shock wave
Quietly, he made intricate arrangements for the meeting. By Sunday, June 7, his chief military attaché, Brigadier General Efraim Poran, had called all 14 members of the Israeli Cabinet, asking each if he could come to a special 5 p.m. session with Prime Minister Menachem Begin at his Jerusalem home on that day. Each man thought that he was the only one invited and that a private chat about politics and policy would follow. It was a privilege to accept, and they did, though a few of the more orthodox Cabinet members grumbled that the appointed hour was dangerously close to the beginning, at sundown, of a major Jewish celebration: Shavuot, the Feast of Pentecost.
As each minister drove up to Begin's stone residence in the city's Rehavya district, his car was whisked away by a security man. One by one, the unknowing politicians were ushered into a ground-floor reception area, only to discover that the place was filling up with colleagues.
At 5:15, a shirtsleeved Begin emerged from his book-lined office and broke some staggering news with characteristic lack of ceremony. "Well," he said, "six of our planes are now on their way to their target in Iraq. I hope our boys will be able to complete their mission successfully and return to base."
There was stunned silence. Thinking of the still explosive Israeli confrontation in Lebanon over Syrian SA-6 missiles, one minister muttered: "You mean Syria."
Begin did not. He meant the French-built Tammuz 1 nuclear reactor at El-Tuwaitha, 10½ miles southwest of Baghdad. Begin straightway launched into his real reason for calling the meeting: to ponder what Israel should do in the event that the attack taking place 515 miles away should fail. Half an hour later, after several options had been considered, a telephone call interrupted the Cabinet meeting. It was Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff, Lieut. General Rafael Eitan. He tersely informed Begin that the attack had been a total success. For a further 70 minutes, the Cabinet considered how Israel should cope with the lesser danger of one of the Israeli warplanes being shot down or crashing on its return journey. A little before 7 p.m., another telephone call announced the safe return of all aircraft. Jubilantly, the gathering celebrated the event, and the meeting broke up. Begin had only one other chore to perform. At 7 p.m., he called U.S. Ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis with news of the successful raid. Lewis' laconic reply: "You don't say."
Begin's Cabinet may have been merely surprised, but the world was shocked when it learned the news. Using high-powered U.S. military technology with awesome efficiency, Israel had taken Iraq totally by surprise and destroyed that country's technological centerpiece, its nearly completed, $260 million nuclear-research reactor. The surgical strike, reminiscent of the pre-emptive air raids against Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War, was based on an Israeli perception that one of its most implacable foes would soon be making nuclear bombs. But, in removing that threat, the Israelis had done more than simply take international law into their own hands. They had dismayed their friends, increased their isolation and vastly compounded the difficulties of procuring a