Inside Israel's ‘scientific crown jewels' bombed by Iran

Telegraph

14 hours ago

Prof Eldad Tzahor can just about make out the remains of his office, high on the top floor of the life sciences and cancer research building.
Or at least, half of it. The other half is lying in a heap of rubble and twisted metal at our feet.
We are standing in the grounds of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv, one of the pre-eminent research centres in the world and commonly referred to as Israel's scientific 'crown jewels'.
The sprawling campus set among manicured lawns and colourful flower beds suffered two direct hits from Iranian ballistic missiles, in the early hours on Sunday.
In the blink of an eye, years of cutting-edge research into human ageing, cancer prevention and regenerative medicine went up in smoke. Thousands of vital tissue and DNA samples were lost.
At least one affected academic has since said they were on the cusp of a major breakthrough.
Prof Tzahor, who was working on heart regeneration treatments, points to a sample freezer with a door hanging off, which is standing somewhat upright in the rubble.
It stands near two enormous nitrogen tanks, which started a major fire when punctured in the blast. They now lie mangled on their sides.
Mutilated extractor fans flop uselessly out of the side of the building, where they were ripped apart by the structure's collapse.
'Some of the studies we were doing take years and years of samples to build up,' he said. 'You can't restart them just like that.
'I suppose, just as we are trying to do with human tissue, we will have to regrow and regenerate.'
For Prof Roee Ozeri, a quantum physicist who has given nearly 30 years of his life to the institute, the Iranian strikes were 'ironic'.
'We're fighting cancer and heart disease here, which helps all humanity – and they go and do this.'
He points out that even Yahya Sinwar, the former Hamas leader and architect of October 7, benefitted from Israeli medicine when he had brain cancer while in prison.
But although the cost to science is undeniable, the narrative of mindless, or indeed accidental, Iranian destruction is potentially misleading.
Military sources believe the hit was a deliberate retaliation against Israel's campaign of assassination against Iranian nuclear scientists.
This is because of the Weizmann Institute's connections with the defence industry, as well as its alleged historical links to Israel's own shadowy nuclear weapons programme.
Israel has never formally admitted that it possesses nuclear weapons – some estimates put its stockpile of warheads into the hundreds – although the programme is often referred to as the worst-kept secret in the Jewish state.
Prof Ozeri, who is also the institute's vice-president for communication, smiles wryly as he denies any institutional involvement in nuclear weapons.
It is as if he gets the question a lot.
'We are a basic research institute,' he said. 'We do fundamental science for the future of humanity. There is no equivalence [with Israel's actions against Iranian scientists].'
As Israel knows better than most, facts on the ground are often swiftly obscured in the war of misinformation.
Sunday's strikes swiftly gave rise to online discussions across the Middle East as to their military legitimacy.
Ernst Bergmann, the father of Israel's nuclear programme, was the former head of the Weizmann Institute, whose scientists learnt how to extract uranium from the phosphate of the Negev desert during the 1950s.
But that is a far cry from current involvement in any Israeli nuclear weapons programme.
Even if links did exist, Israelis dismiss any argument of moral equivalence between the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and Sunday's missile strike on the basis that Israel, unlike Iran, has never declared its intention to wipe a sovereign state off the map.
Nevertheless, this is not the first time that Iran has been accused of targeting Weizmann scientists.
Last year, Israeli authorities said they disrupted an Iranian spy ring in East Jerusalem that was plotting to assassinate a nuclear scientist who worked and lived at the institute.
Much more straightforward is the Weizmann's links with various defence manufacturers, such as Elbit Systems, to collaborate on bio-materials and other tech, which are openly stated on both organisations' websites.
But Weizmann, named after Israel's first president, is not the only university to have such links, nor to operate under a veil of visible security.
Although some students live on campus, no one was injured in the missile attack, thanks to the time of night and strict adherence to the shelter protocol.
But dozens of Israeli civilians have been killed in the attacks – even those sheltering in approved bunkers.
It has left Israelis in no doubt about the missiles' destructive force. At Weizmann alone, some 45 labs were wrecked, at a potential cost of $100 million (£74 million) to replace.
Within hours of the strike, a young researcher, wearing a helmet, was filmed playing the piano amid the ruins.
It was a symbol of hope in a time of war. But no one is pretending that the loss to science here is anything short of tragic.