Israel is shrouded in myths, most of which in practice turn out to be ridiculous misunderstandings. One of the myths depicts the Israeli military as wise and fearless heroes, behind whom the people feel like they are behind a stone wall. Declassified archives from 19 years ago, shedding light on the early hours of the Gulf War, show the Israeli army and military intelligence from a completely different perspective. Only now it became known that then, in the first few hours of the war, a crisis on a planetary scale broke out, comparable to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
The material was published in the newspaper "Yediot Akhoronot" on April 17, 2009 in the appendix "7 days" (p. 17). Translation from Hebrew.
Everyone who was that night in the bunker at the Kiriya base in Tel Aviv will never forget what happened there.
It was 1:45 am on January 18, 1991. In Israel, sealed bomb shelters were being built everywhere and gas masks were being stocked up, given a possible attack on Israel with the use of weapons of mass destruction. The day before, the United States attacked Iraq. The question remained open: would Saddam Hussein fulfill his threat to use missiles with chemical and bacteriological weapons against Israel?
At about two in the morning, the air raid sirens went off. The call signs "South Wind" were sent, special communications started, telephones rattled. The drama has begun.
The first missile landed in the Ha-Tikva quarter, near a public bomb shelter. As soon as the sirens sounded, the personnel of the General Staff Directorate at the Kiriya base in Tel Aviv fled in order to take places in the depths of an underground bunker equipped with protection systems against chemical and bacteriological weapons. The flight was so hasty that several people were crushed in the crowd and injured. The military intelligence officers, who have the most complete information about the possible threat, ran the fastest.
Meanwhile, a member of the border troops arrived at the site of the missile crash. Like most of the IDF servicemen, he did not have the slightest idea of the signs of destruction by bacteriological and chemical weapons. By the nature of the explosion, it was possible to determine that the charge did not contain chemical or bacteriological weapons. But the serviceman thought that the smell of burning contained impurities of unconventional weapons (all types of bacteriological and most types of chemical weapons have no smell at all). His report was transmitted over special communications to the Kiriya base, which further increased the panic and accelerated the escape to the bunker. By this time, the base command had given the order to close and block the entrance to the bunker and turn on the hermetic protection. Many of the soldiers and officers who remained outside began to knock on the closed door in despair. Participants in those events say that their fear was so great that many had involuntary discharge of urine and feces.
Those who closed the door didn't bother to check who got in and who didn't. Even Defense Minister Moshe Arens - and he stayed outside. Only a quarter of an hour later, the Minister of Defense was allowed to enter. Chief of the General Staff Dan Shomron, who rushed at great speed from his home, for a long time could not get to the base at all. The security guard, who did not recognize the chief of general staff in a gas mask, refused to let him in.
After making sure that they would not be allowed into the bunker, the employees of the base who remained outside fled, who where else to look for another shelter. The premises of the Office of the General Staff, one of the most strategically important places in Israel, were left without control. If a foreign intelligence officer were there, he could have made a brilliant career in one hour. Only one person was not afraid of gases and remained in the control room: it was the head of military intelligence Amnon Lipkin-Shahak.
However, the hysteria and panic that gripped the personnel of the Kiriya base was nothing compared to the real drama that played out 15 km away. from the base, at the Institute for Biological Research in Nes Zion.
The mobile laboratory of the Institute arrived at the site of the fall of the first first rocket, whose task was to transport the fragments of the rocket for biological examination. The anthrax test came back positive, which meant that Israel was attacked by a bacteriological weapon with anthrax spores.
The suspicion that Saddam Hussein used a bacteriological weapon had not yet been brought to the attention of the country's leadership. If this had been done, there would almost certainly have been an order to attack Iraq with weapons of mass destruction. It would completely change the nature of that war. But the Institute of Biology staff knew that the technology they used to detect bacteria was imperfect. Therefore, before notifying the government, a re-examination was carried out. A few hours later, it became clear that a charge with conventional explosives was installed on the rocket.
These dramatic events at the Kiriya base and at the Institute of Biology showed how Israel, and especially its intelligence services, were not ready for war. Many years later, when the archives were declassified, it became clear how little they knew about Iraq before and during the war, and why they were shocked by the reports of UN experts on Iraqi strategic plans.
