Well, first Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission opened a website.
Now, Israel’s censors have permitted Channel 10 to air a 14-minute video depicting wide-angle shots of Dimona (like the photograph at right), “including buses bringing staff to the site, well-ordered lines waiting to use a cash machine and a leisurely soccer game nearby.”
Get the feeling someone has a PR problem?
An older Channel 10 program has an amazing computer generated animation of Dimona based on photographs by Mordechai Vanunu.
I am still looking for a link to the Channel 10 program. Perhaps a Hebrew speaker can find it on the Channel 10 website or maybe somebody in Israel TiVo’d it.
Late Update: Reuters has a 54 second clip from the program. Thanks to ACW Reader YG.
Slightly unrelated, but I remember that a while back a video feed monitoring nuclear ballistic missiles inside a silo in the Galilee was “inadvertently” broadcast on the open airwaves during a test (it had the smoke from the liquid fuel billowing out and everything). It went through almost the entire test sequence, and then abruptly cut off.
Hizb’allah militants (and, presumably, Iranian intelligence) were able to capture the feed from installations they have in southern Lebanon. Chances are, Israel wanted them to. So one possibility is that these instances are reminders to the Islamic Republic of Iran about the technical abilities of the Jewish Republic.
It may also be that the government is laying the groundwork for becoming a declared nuclear power. The US might be offering something like that to Israel in exchange for resolution with the Palestinians (in addition to membership in the NATO alliance).
Also, there is a small clip of the Channel 10 program on the Reuters TV website. The address from my RSS feed for Reuters is
here.
If that doesn’t work just go the the main site for Reuters TV and look for the clip. I don’t know where to find the whole thing, however. Maybe there’s a bittorrent?
Nice work, man.