Raid on the Sun (18 page)

The prime minister called for a top-secret security meeting on March 15, 1981, to be attended by all ten ministers. Several of the ministers, including Health Minister Eliezer Shostak and Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Tzitori, remained deeply uneasy about an attack. To convince the last of the doubters, Begin ordered Generals Eitan and Ivry to the meeting to present the IAF’s secret plan of attack. To discuss the mission in detail, General Ivry brought with him Zeev Raz. Together, Ivry and Raz outlined for the ministers in precise detail the entire raid, from takeoff to return. The exacting specifications of the plan and its exhaustive attention to every detail clearly impressed the assembled ministers. Raz confidently answered every question and put to rest any doubts. At the end of the presentation, Begin called for a vote. The mission was unanimously approved by all ten ministers. Begin then set the day of the attack: May 10, 1981, a Sunday, seven weeks before the June 30 national elections.

“What are we calling the attack?” Begin asked Eitan at the end of the meeting.

The bushy-eyed chief of staff fixed the prime minister in his stare.

“‘The noise of battle is in the land, the noise of great destruction,’ ” Eitan recited, quoting Jeremiah from the Old Testament. “‘Before your eyes I will repay Babylon and all who live in Babylonia for all the wrong they have done in Zion, declares the Lord.’ ”

Eitan smiled thinly.

“We will call it Operation Babylon.”

A week later, at Ramat David, Raz called the entire squadron into the briefing room. Nachumi, Yadlin, Yaffe, Katz, Shafir, Ramon, Falk, and Spector all took their seats.

“I know you all have been wondering for a while what our target is going to be,” Raz said evenly. “I can tell you now. On May 10 we will take off from Etzion Air Base and fly to al-Tuwaitha, a nuclear facility south of Baghdad in Iraq. There we will bomb the Osirak nuclear reactor.”

The silence in the room was deafening, as Rani Falk would think of it later. Ramon, Nachumi, and Spector had long known the destination. Katz had figured it out, but the others were clearly stunned. Later, the men would contend that they had already figured out the target. But looking around the room, Falk saw by their stricken faces that no one in their wildest imaginings had guessed the target would be a nuclear reactor.

As Raz detailed the mission and discussed the formidable AAA gun emplacements and SAM batteries surrounding the complex, the many risks involved were plainly obvious to each pilot. The fact was in 1981, Israeli Air Force tactics and weapons systems still lagged far behind the efficiency of the new Soviet antiaircraft and SAM technologies. Syria’s advanced, computerized, and radar-guided Soviet-made SAM-6s, which locked onto the exhaust heat of the fighters’ thrusters, had shocked the IAF in the opening days of the Yom Kippur War. One Skyhawk squadron lost 17 of 30 planes to SAMs in two days over the Golan Heights. Yadlin’s unit alone lost nine pilots—an unthinkable casualty rate before ’73. In the past thirty years, dating from the beginning of the Vietnam War, 90 percent of all air force kills were due to AAA fire. Much of the reason was that the now widely used heatseeking SAMs were forcing pilots to take more and more dangerous avoidance maneuvers, ultimately causing them to accidentally wind up in the AAAs’ deadly line of fire. The majority of the losses were between 1,500 and 4,500 feet—exactly the elevation of the pilots’ tracking on final. The consensus was, you had no more than ten seconds to go low to low—that is, pop-up to release—or you were a dead man.

Worse, Mossad reported that in the wake of the Iran bombing, Iraq, besides putting all units on full alert, had beefed up the number of AAA batteries and SAM emplacements surrounding Osirak. That intelligence and the images of gigantic towering tethered balloons ringing the fortresslike facility were hard to keep locked away in a pilot’s mental box.

Indeed, Operations had secretly run out the risk assessment numbers and determined that, given the mission parameters, the probability was the mission team, due to either AAA fire or mechanical failure, could expect to lose at least two aircraft. Ivry had chosen not to pass that grisly statistic on, but word of the death math had leaked out nonetheless. The pilots did not need to be told what they were up against.

A few days after Raz’s briefing, Ivry ordered Raz and Nachumi to Tel Aviv.

“We have heard from all the engineers and the experts,” Ivry told them. “Now we’d like to know what you, the pilots, think of the mission.”

“We will destroy the reactor,” Nachumi said. Then, making it clear that there was really no room for discussion of personal safety, he added: “After that, what else matters?”

SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 1981
1601 HOURS: T-MINUS 00:00
ETZION AIR FORCE BASE, OCCUPIED SINAI PENINSULA

The ordnance crew technician checked his watch, then walked in front of the F-16, making sure Raz could see him from the cockpit, then, bending deeply at the knees, ducked under the plane’s wing for a final look at both MK-84 gravity bombs. Each was secure in its release clips, fastened just in front of its tail fins, which served to stabilize the bomb and keep it from wobbling as it was lobbed forward in its downward arc to the target. The clips had to be sturdy enough to hold the two-thousand-pound bombs, which would be bounced up and down, along with the wings, during the rocky ride hundreds of miles through hot, unstable desert air. When the technician was sure the clips were secured properly, he pulled the metal safety pin from each bomb. He was amazed at how close to the ground the overloaded plane was. The intake manifold was barely twelve inches off the tarmac. Holding pins in his left hand as he ducked back out from under the port wing, careful to avoid the scalding-hot exhaust from the plane’s tailpipe, the tech signaled “all clear” to Raz. He then jogged off the tarmac, where he joined the other ordnance techs, each of whom had performed the exact same maneuver on the F-16s. He did a last-minute check of the runway for any gravel or small obstruction that could be sucked into the manifold and destroy the engine. Theirs would be the final inspections. No sooner had the techs cleared the asphalt than the first two fighters were already barreling down the runway, picking up speed. From now on, the mission was beyond the immediate help of Etzion.

CHAPTER 5

                                                                                                                                       
WHEELS-UP

A man’s character is his fate.

—
HERACLITUS

Heading back after the security meeting at the prime minister’s office that March, Ivry’s driver took the main road out of Jerusalem, down the winding brown mountain pass dotted with green Jerusalem pines that thrived in the cooler air of the elevation—a phenomenon that surprised first-time visitors to Israel expecting to see nothing but desert and wadis. Deep in thought, Ivry stared out the car window as they passed the charred, red-rusted ghosts of vintage lorries and jeeps junked by the side of the road, silent sentries that lay where they had been shelled nearly three decades before in 1948—monuments to the first Israeli soldiers who had tried to fight their way up the mountainside under murderous artillery fire from Jordan’s crack Legionnaire Brigade in their doomed attempt to capture the ancient Hebrew capital. That attack had failed in the end.

Ivry’s could not.

But within weeks the mission was threatened yet again. Israel’s neighbor on its northern border, Lebanon, had been unraveling into an anarchic feudal battlefield of warring strongmen and radical ethnic Sunni, Shia, Maronite, Greek Orthodox, and Christian Druze factions all protecting their own business interests and territories—and all kept in check by neighboring Syria, which considered the country its de facto client state. Adding to the chaos, PLO leader Yasser Arafat and twenty thousand PLO fighters had moved into Beirut after being chased out of Jordan. Begin’s government, pressured by right-wing hard-liners, began funneling support to Lebanon’s aristocratic leader Bashir Gemayel and the militant Christian Phalangists, hoping moderate Maronites would unite the country under a more benevolent and Israeli-friendly stewardship. The Sunnis, backed by Syria, rose up immediately, sparking civil war. The Phalangists appealed to Israel for support.

In February, Syria deployed SAM batteries into the Bekaa Valley to support thirty thousand troops, well within range of the Israeli border. Israel demanded that Syria pull out the SAMs or the IAF would take them out itself. Skirmishes followed. U.S. special ambassador Philip Habib, a Lebanese by birth, negotiated a fragile peace that lasted until April. It was then that Syria refused to pull back its batteries from the Bekáa, and Begin laid down an ultimatum to either evacuate the SAMs or Israel would bomb them. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, scheduled to meet with Begin at Sharm al-Sheikh as part of the Camp David agreement, was anxious to use the May meeting to diffuse the Syrian-Israeli conflict. Unfortunately, the day of the historic meeting was May 10, the day of the Osirak attack.

Israel, with a bank account of goodwill in the U.S., well-organized and powerful lobbying organizations, and a strong moral argument, figured it might get away with an attack on Osirak or the Bekáa. But no one in the government believed it could get away with attacking
both.
The prime minister called another emergency cabinet meeting. Once again Ivry saw his mission on the cutting block. Begin was forced to choose between two evils—Syrian missiles or Iraqi nukes. In the end Begin decided there was no choice, really. They would deal with Lebanon later.

“We will destroy Osirak,” he declared. “We must delay this Satanic plan for years to come.”

The weekend of May 10, 1981, was unusually busy inside the walled compound of Etzion Air Force Base, some twenty miles inland from the Israeli resort town of Eilat. Most Israeli soldiers were routinely given the weekend off to observe the Sabbath. But this weekend all leaves and passes at the base had been canceled. The base’s telephone lines, with the exception of key operational communications, were cut off by order of the army’s Security Field Service.

Altogether, fifty aircraft, CH-53 helicopters, and hundreds of troops were mustering for the attack, though only the mission pilots and high command knew what the target was. The CH-53s carrying combat search-and-rescue crews would take off an hour before the F-16s and then hover over the eastern borders of Israel for the remainder of the mission. Eight F-15s would fly support: two two-man F-15s to follow behind the F-16s and circle high above Saudi Arabia while serving as communications relay stations, and six F-15 fighters from Squadron 133—two to provide radar jamming above the target area, and four flying at a high altitude and distance to provide air-to-air combat support if needed.

Early Sunday afternoon, in the huge hangar, hundreds of technicians were checking and rechecking the twelve F-16s, loading ordnance, and affixing air-to-air Sidewinder missiles beneath the wings. At the door of the base squadron room, dozens of F-16 and F-15 pilots, crew members, and commanding officers, having completed final briefing, were climbing the stairs from the briefing room to ground level. The men’s faces were taut, expressionless. There was no small talk. Rani Falk was as keyed up as the others. But his excitement was tempered with disappointment. After all, he had trained for this day alongside the other men from the beginning. Until recently he thought he would be going with them. Now he was a backup pilot—on hand only for the most dire emergency. He was not angry or resentful. But he felt let down. He had to keep himself ready, though. You never knew. He would fire up his F-16 and taxi it out of the hangar just like the others.

A Mossad officer, his right hand clutching a black briefcase, approached the group of pilots outside. Suddenly the snap of his briefcase popped and the bottom fell open, spilling out thousands of dollars in Iraqi dinars. The bills blew down the runway past surprised mechanics and passersby. The dinars were for the pilots in the event someone was downed behind enemy lines. The money could be used as a bribe for safety. The officer hurriedly gathered up the bills, too panicked to be shamefaced. Amos Yadlin smiled grimly. So much for any doubts about the destination of their top-secret mission.

The time just before takeoff was the worst. Once in the air the men would be busy with the job at hand. But waiting around . . . the thoughts began to creep in. The mental box opening ever so much. The doubts, though, were a fear of making a mistake, of somehow letting the team down. Few thought about personal safety.

Second team leader Nachumi had gone ahead of the others to start his plane’s engine and begin checkoff procedures with his maintenance chief. He was running over the switches, checking navigation, weapons, electrical. He looked up to see his chief standing in front of the plane gesturing to him. He was slashing one finger across his throat. Nachumi could not believe his eyes. That was a kill gesture.

“What?” he yelled into his helmet microphone over the deafening whine of the Pratt & Whitney.

He was wound up like a spring.

“It’s a ‘No go,’ ” came the crew chief’s response.

“Shit!” Nachumi exclaimed.

The pilots were given the news: The prime minister himself had cancelled the mission. It took a moment for what had been said to sink in. They were stricken. Yadlin was pumped with adrenaline, his mind and body intensely focused, coiled—as though he were in another dimension. Now suddenly the air was let out. He felt as though he had been stabbed. Spector, who’d had missions scrubbed before, immediately worried that this was it—the raid might be called off for good.

The hundreds of troops stood down, the F-15 pilots were recalled to base, the helicopters sent home. Hundreds and hundreds of man-hours, hundreds of thousands of dollars, wasted. What the hell had happened? Ivry wondered.

Several hours earlier that Sunday morning, Begin had been interrupted at his home by a special courier carrying an urgent letter from Shimon Peres, the former defense minister and the Labor Party’s candidate for prime minister. Peres had learned the date of the attack the previous evening, May 9.

Begin read the note.

May 10

PERSONAL—TOP SECRET

Mr. Prime Minister:

At the end of December 1980 you called me into your office in Jerusalem and told me about a certain extremely serious matter. You did not solicit my response and I myself (despite my instinctive feeling) did not respond in the circumstances that then existed.

I feel this morning that it is my supreme civic duty to advise you, after serious consideration and in weighing the national interest, to desist from this thing. I speak as a man of experience. The deadlines reported by us (and I well understand our people’s anxiety) are not the realistic deadlines. Materials can be changed for materials. And what is intended to prevent can become a catalyst.

On the other hand Israel would be like a tree in the desert—and we also have that to be concerned about.

I add my voice—and it is not mine alone—and certainly not at the present time in the present circumstances.

Respectfully,
Shimon Peres

The letter, stiff and awkwardly worded, was purposefully oblique in case it fell into the wrong hands—especially the Israeli press. “Material” that could be changed referred to the so-called caramelized uranium. “What is intended to prevent can become a catalyst” reiterated Peres’s fears that bombing Osirak would only intensify Arab efforts to achieve a nuclear bomb. “Present time” and “present circumstances” referred to Peres’s conviction that the French elections, being held that very week, would sweep his close friend, socialist François Mitterrand, into the presidency. Mitterrand, far ahead in the polls, had openly opposed Chirac and Giscard d’Estaing’s decision to supply Iraq with uranium.

Peres pleaded for Begin to delay the raid. In truth, his letter had already accomplished that purpose. Top-secret plans had been leaked, the attack compromised. Deputy Prime Minister Yadin, convinced Baghdad would sniff out their plans, had earlier warned the cabinet: “They’re ready for us.” That prediction could be all too true now. Begin had been convinced all along that Labor would find some way to sabotage any raid on Osirak. Peres’s claim that his objection was only to the “timing” was a red herring.

“Mark my words,” Begin had told Sharon after the March cabinet meeting. “They would never accept such a decision. All the responsibility of doing this will be ours.”

Begin was furious. Who had leaked? And how many others knew? He called Eitan, Sharon, and Shamir. All agreed: the mission had to be scrubbed. Begin called Ivry at IAF command at Etzion and ordered the pilots to stand down.

He would bitterly resent Peres’s May Revolt for the rest of his life. He set about immediately to discover the source of the leak, the “betrayer.” Though it could not be proved, Begin and his supporters were convinced that former defense minister Ezer Weizman had tipped Peres and Labor leader Mordechai Gur the day before. Weizman, in on the planning from the earliest days, had bitterly opposed the attack. He had many friends within the military and in Begin’s government. Learning details of the attack would have been easy for the politician.

Begin vowed not to make the same mistake twice. From that day on, he announced, any decision on an attack on Osirak would be made by just three men: himself, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, and Agriculture Minister Ari Sharon.

The following week the French duly elected François Mitterrand their president, and he indeed responded to Israel’s objection to France’s nuclear treaty with Iraq. France would no longer engage in the sale of nuclear technology to Iraq, Mitterrand declared. But, regrettably, the country was bound to honor its present agreements with Saddam Hussein. Iraq would receive full delivery of all seventy-two kilos of enriched weapons-grade uranium.

According to Mossad, it already had.

A week later Begin met secretly with Sharon and Shamir. Eitan and Ivry were informed that the attack was set for Sunday, June 7, 1981. Ivry felt a great weight taken off his chest. For months, week after week, he had been edgy, ping-ponging mentally: Was the attack on or off? Would this be the Sunday?

The friction between the two team leaders, Raz and Nachumi, rubbed even rawer under the stress of waiting. Indeed, Raz had begun picking up strange signals from Nachumi. Two days after the mission had been canceled, back at Ramat David, he had been called to Spector’s headquarters. Raz walked across the base and quickly mounted the few steps into the long barrackslike structure housing the command and administrative offices. He passed various open doors and entered the outer vestibule of Spector’s headquarters. A frequent visitor, the squadron leader did not bother to wait for a formal announcement of his arrival. Instead, nodding to the secretarial staff and assistants manning the desks, most of whom were young college-bound kids doing their mandated military service, Raz strode directly into Spector’s inner office and was surprised to discover he already had a visitor. Nachumi stood beside Spector’s desk, leaning in toward the commander. The two of them had been talking softly, careful that their voices did not carry. As Raz entered the room, Spector and Nachumi looked up surprised—and, Raz realized—embarrassed. Neither man had expected to see Raz, that was clear. Raz knew immediately he had interrupted a very delicate conversation. He knew also, with a certainty he might not have been able to readily explain, that the two pilots had been talking about him. An awkward silence hung in the room for an uncomfortably long time.