The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Shimon Yiftach.md

aliases	category	tags	summary	created	updated	relations
Shimon Yiftach Shimon Yiftah Shimon Jiftach Shim'on Yiftah S. Yiftah Yiftach Yiftah Jiftach שמעון יפתח	Scientists & Researchers	Person Nuclear Israel Dimona SamsonOption Plutonium Reprocessing Argonne Technion Soreq	Israeli nuclear physicist, Atomic Energy Commission member, Technion professor and Soreq director whom Hersh identified as the defense ministry official who said in December 1963 that Israel planned no reprocessing plant.	2026-10-09	2026-10-09	type with role start fn employed_by Israeli Ministry of Defense director of scientific programs, per Hersh 1963-12 2 type with role start fn participant_in Dimona public statement on the reactor's plutonium output and on reprocessing, per Hersh 1963-12 2 type with role start fn employed_by Argonne National Laboratory author affiliation on the December 1960 report with David Okrent 1960-12 4 type with role fn member_of Israel Atomic Energy Commission member; delegate to the joint U.S.-Israel desalination board 16 type with role fn employed_by Technion nuclear sciences department; head of the nuclear science department in 1964 14 type with role fn head_of Soreq Nuclear Research Center director (reported May 29, 1975 and January 9, 1979) 18 type with role fn member_of Israel Defense Forces colonel 1

Shimon Yiftach (Hebrew שמעון יפתח; also spelled Yiftah; 1921 to 2012) was an Israeli nuclear physicist, a colonel, a member of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, a professor at the Technion and director of the Soreq Nuclear Research Center.¹ Seymour Hersh identified him in December 1963 as the director of scientific programs for the Israeli Ministry of Defense and as "one of Israel's leading experts in the chemistry of plutonium."² The library catalogues spell his name Yiftah, and Hersh spells it Yiftach.

Education and the Argonne record

He held a doctorate from the University of Paris; his 1956 book Constantes fondamentales des théories physiques was published in Paris by Gauthier-Villars with a preface by Louis de Broglie.³ Hersh wrote that Yiftach "had been trained at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois."²

A December 1960 Argonne report, "Some Physics Calculations on the Performance of Large Fast Breeder Power Reactors," lists S. Yiftah as first author with D. Okrent. The record gives Yiftah's affiliation as the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, Yavne, and Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois, and Okrent's as Argonne.⁴ David Okrent joined Argonne as an associate physicist after his doctorate and became manager of fast reactor physics and safety in 1957.⁵ The 1960 monograph Fast reactor cross sections was published under the names of S. Yiftah, D. Okrent and P. A. Moldauer; Peter A. Moldauer came to Argonne in 1957 and was appointed senior physicist a decade later.⁶

Publications

Library catalogues list nine titles under his name between 1953 and 1979. In 1953 he translated a work of Carl von Clausewitz into Hebrew, published in Tel Aviv by Ma'arachot as 'Ekronot ha-milhamah, 120 pages.⁷ Fast reactor cross sections: a study leading to a 16 group set, 130 pages, was published in New York in 1960 by Pergamon Press.³ A 29-page Hebrew booklet on nuclear weapons, Nesheq gar'ini, appeared in 1962 with the imprint of the education branch of the Israel Defense Forces General Staff.⁸

In 1965 a 36-page Hebrew pamphlet on nuclear reactors for electricity and for desalinating seawater was issued under a three-part imprint: the Ministry of Defence, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Development Enterprises (Mifalei Pituach).⁹ The 1976 book on the nuclear era in the Middle East was published by Am Oved in Tel Aviv, 160 pages.¹⁰ The 1977 compilation Nuclear data and low energy nuclear research in Israel, 58 pages, names the Israel Atomic Energy Commission as publisher and Yiftah as compiler.¹¹ Two Hebrew titles of 1979 followed, on nuclear technology in the world and in Israel and on missiles and rockets in modern warfare.¹²

His journal articles in Nuclear Science and Engineering and Nuclear Technology carry the affiliation of the Soreq Nuclear Research Center and the Israel Atomic Energy Commission in 1967 and 1975, and of the Department of Nuclear Engineering of the Technion in 1976, 1982 and 1985.¹³

Atomic Energy Commission, Technion and Soreq

On February 12, 1964 the International Atomic Energy Agency asked the Technion to study the use of atomic energy for desalinating sea water; the study was to be conducted at Haifa by Fritz Ashner and Dr. Shimon Yiftah, both of the Technion's nuclear sciences department.¹⁴ On September 2, 1964 Yiftah, described as head of the nuclear science department of the Technion, was named as co-author, with Ashner and Pinhas Glueckstern of the Israel Electric Corporation, of the Israeli paper on nuclear desalination at the Third International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva.¹⁵

On January 7, 1966 Prof. Shimon Yiftach of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission was among the Israeli delegates, with Gen. Zvi Zur and Aron Weiner of Tahal, to the joint United States-Israel desalination board, which was reviewing the Kaiser-Catalytic feasibility study of a dual-purpose nuclear desalting plant.¹⁶ The board established by the two governments to oversee the study included Aharon Wiener of Tahal, Dr. Haim Cats of the Israel Electric Corporation and Dr. Shimon Yiftah of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission.¹⁷

On May 29, 1975 Prof. Shimon Yiftach, director of the Sorek Nuclear Research Center and a member of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, told a meeting of the Nuclear Science Club that the Arab states would probably have nuclear capabilities by the 1980s and that the reactors bought by Egypt and Saudi Arabia were outmoded but would be able to produce enough plutonium for atomic weapons.¹⁸ On December 5, 1977, addressing the National Committee on Atomic Energy at the Technion in Haifa, he proposed a five-point program that included a joint Israeli-Egyptian nuclear reactor and center in Sinai linked to a desalination plant, the accumulation of uranium and the possible production of uranium from the phosphates of the Dead Sea.¹⁹ On January 9, 1979, identified as head of the Israeli nuclear center at Soreq, he told the sixth annual conference of nuclear scientists at Beersheba University in Beersheba that Iraq and Libya were making substantial progress toward a nuclear infrastructure with the aid of the Soviet Union, China and France.²⁰

He died in early December 2012, at the age of 91. He had directed the nuclear research center of the Atomic Energy Commission at Nahal Soreq, worked in the nuclear engineering department of the Technion, served as scientific adviser to the minister of science and chaired the Israeli association for the nuclear sciences.¹

The December 1963 statement

Hersh wrote that in December 1963 Yiftach "publicly told a group of Israeli science writers that, as they had assumed, the advanced reactor at Dimona would produce plutonium as a by-product," and that "Yiftach insisted that the Israeli government had no plans to build a separate plant for chemically reprocessing plutonium." Hersh wrote that Yiftach "knew that French construction companies had started up once again on the underground reprocessing plant at Dimona."²

Hersh set the statement within a period of official concealment: the government of Levi Eshkol, he wrote, "worked at keeping the lid on, and had no qualms about stretching the truth to do so." On November 16, 1963 the New York Times columnist C. L. Sulzberger wrote that David Ben-Gurion "hints grimly that in its nearby Dimona reactor Israel itself may be experimenting with military atomics." Ben-Gurion wrote a letter to the editor the same day denying that he had suggested this, and the letter was published on November 20, 1963.²¹

On September 4, 1964, at the Geneva conference, Israel Atomic Energy Commission chairman Ernst David Bergmann said that a combination of natural uranium and heavy water would yield plutonium as a by-product, and the Israeli papers were to treat "the chemistry of elements higher than uranium which have become available through operation of reactors, and the theory of fast reactors fuelled with plutonium."²²

Reprocessing statements, 1961 to 1964

The National Security Archive briefing book on the 1963 inspection negotiations, by William Burr and Avner Cohen, states that the Israelis had made "contradictory statements" about the reprocessing plant: in 1961 they said they planned to build it, in 1962 they said they had no plans, and in 1964 they told U.S. inspectors they had delayed constructing a pilot plant. The January 1963 National Intelligence Estimate had "no evidence to confirm or deny the existence of separation facilities" and judged that if the reactor "operated at its maximum capacity for the production of weapon-grade plutonium," it "could produce sufficient plutonium for one or two weapons a year."²³

The briefing book records that Ephraim Katzir, whom it identifies as Eshkol's science adviser, told the American team in January 1964 that he "hopes that the plant will be built in a year or two," and that the team saw the space slated for the pilot plant, "about 50 by 50 feet with a 20-foot ceiling." Burr and Cohen wrote that "whether talk about the plans for a pilot plant was a deliberate diversion from ongoing secret reprocessing activities at Dimona remains to be learned." The Israelis told the visitors that the reactor had gone critical on December 26, 1963.²³

Defense ministry and the intelligence apparatus

Hersh wrote that Shimon Peres insisted on a new intelligence agency to provide security for the nuclear operation, initially known as the Office of Special Tasks, and that its director, "handpicked by Peres," was Binyamin Blumberg; the office was "bureaucratically placed inside the defense ministry," and Blumberg's "sole mission in the late 1950s was protecting Dimona."²⁴ Hersh wrote that the office was "widely known in the early 1980s by its Hebrew acronym, LAKAM."²⁵ Hersh placed Yiftach's post in the same ministry. The 1965 pamphlet carries the Atomic Energy Commission in its imprint alongside the Ministry of Defence, and the 1977 compilation names the Israel Atomic Energy Commission as publisher.⁹¹¹

Footnotes

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1. Bibliothèque nationale de France, authority record "Shimon Yiftah (1921-2012)," https://data.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb16647811d ; Aderet, Ofer, "Shimon Yiftah, among the senior nuclear scientists of Israel, has died" (Hebrew), Haaretz, December 9, 2012, https://www.haaretz.co.il/0000017f-f62d-d887-a7ff-feed8e910000 (died "at the end of the week" aged 91; professor and colonel; director of the nuclear research center of the Atomic Energy Commission at Nahal Soreq; worked in the Technion nuclear engineering department; scientific adviser to the minister of science; chairman of the Israeli nuclear science society; author of The Nuclear Technology in the World and in Israel, The Nuclear Age in the Middle East, Missiles and Atomic Weapon and Missiles and Rockets in Modern Warfare). ↩︎

2. Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991, chapter 10, p. 130. ↩︎

3. Open Library, work records OL6116641W (Constantes fondamentales des théories physiques, Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1956, by Shimon Yiftah, 124 pages, preface by Louis de Broglie), https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6116641W, and OL6116642W (Fast reactor cross sections, New York, Pergamon Press, 1960, 130 pages, by S. Yiftah, D. Okrent and P. A. Moldauer), https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6116642W ; Internet Archive metadata, identifier fastreactorcross0000yift, creator "Yiftah, Shimon," https://archive.org/details/fastreactorcross0000yift ; IdRef authority record 067644643, "Yiftah, Shimon," "Docteur de l'Université de Paris," https://www.idref.fr/067644643 ↩︎

4. Yiftah, S., and D. Okrent, "Some Physics Calculations on the Performance of Large Fast Breeder Power Reactors," Argonne National Laboratory report, December 1960, Office of Scientific and Technical Information record 4071059, https://doi.org/10.2172/4071059 (Crossref metadata: https://api.crossref.org/works/10.2172/4071059 ; affiliation of S. Yiftah "Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), Yavne (Israel); Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)"; affiliation of D. Okrent "Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL"). ↩︎

5. "David Okrent," UCLA Samueli School of Engineering In Memoriam notice, https://samueli.ucla.edu/in-memoriam-david-okrent/ (after his doctorate Okrent joined Argonne "starting out as an associate physicist" and became manager of Fast Reactor Physics and Safety in 1957). The National Academy of Engineering memorial tribute, Memorial Tributes, vol. 18, https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/18959/chapter/42 , lists the 1960 monograph with Shimon Yiftah and Peter A. Moldauer. ↩︎

6. Ringo, R. R., and A. B. Smith, obituary of Peter Arnold Moldauer, Physics Today, vol. 37, no. 12 (December 1984), https://physicstoday.aip.org/obituaries/peter-arnold-moldauer (came to Argonne National Laboratory in 1957; appointed senior physicist a decade later; wrote with D. Okrent and S. Yiftah the monograph Fast Reactor Cross Sections). ↩︎

7. Open Library, work record OL45809104W, Clausewitz, Hebrew title 'Ekronot ha-milhamah, Ma'arachot, Tel Aviv, 1953, 120 pages, translated by Shim'on Yiftah. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL45809104W ↩︎

8. Open Library, work record OL44285875W, Nesheq gar'ini (Hebrew, nuclear weapon), 1962, 29 pages, publisher as listed: Ma'tkal (General Staff), Ketsin Hinukh Rashi (Chief Education Officer), 'Anaf ha-Shkalah (education branch). https://openlibrary.org/works/OL44285875W ↩︎

9. Open Library, work record OL33277330W, Hebrew title Kurim gar'iniyim le-hafakat hashmal ve-hamtakat me yam, 1965, 36 pages, publisher as listed: Misrad ha-Bitahon, ha-Va'adah le-Energyah Atomit, Mif'alei Pituah (Ministry of Defence, Atomic Energy Commission, Development Enterprises). https://openlibrary.org/works/OL33277330W ↩︎

10. Open Library, work record OL6116643W, ha-'Idan ha-gar'ini ba-Mizrah ha-tikhon, 'Am 'Oved, Tel-Aviv, 1976, 160 pages, by Shimon Yiftah. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6116643W ↩︎

11. Open Library, work record OL6116645W, Nuclear data and low energy nuclear research in Israel, Israel Atomic Energy Commission, [Tel Aviv], 1977, 58 pages, compiled by Shimon Yiftah. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6116645W ↩︎

12. Open Library, work records OL6116644W (Tilim ve-raketot ba-lohama ha-modernit, 1979) and OL18718834W (ha-Teknologyah ha-gar'init ba-'olam uve-Yisra'el, 1979), both under Shimon Yiftah. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6116644W ; https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18718834W ↩︎

13. Crossref metadata for S. Yiftah / Shimon Yiftah: "The Effect of Plutonium Isotopic Composition on the Doppler Coefficient in Fast Reactors," Nuclear Applications, April 1967 (Soreq Nuclear Research Center, Yavne); "Practical Preprocessed Nuclear Data Files for Fast Reactor Calculations," Nuclear Science and Engineering, May 1975 (Soreq Nuclear Research Centre, Israel Atomic Energy Commission, Yavne); "Analysis and Comparison of Plutonium-238 Nuclear Data," January 1976 (Technion, Department of Nuclear Engineering, Haifa); "Application of a Time-Dependent Approach to Burnup Calculations for Pressurized Water Reactor Cores," October 1982 (Technion, Department of Nuclear Engineering); "A Combined Hydro-Nuclear-Solar Project for Electric Power Production," August 1985 (Technion, Department of Nuclear Engineering). https://api.crossref.org/works?query.author=Yiftah ↩︎

14. "U.N. Atomic Energy Agency Asks Haifa Technion for Desalination Study," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 12, 1964. https://www.jta.org/archive/u-n-atomic-energy-agency-asks-haifa-technion-for-desalination-study ↩︎

15. "Israel in Prominent Role at U.N. Conference on Atoms for Peace," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, September 2, 1964. https://www.jta.org/archive/israel-in-prominent-role-at-u-n-conference-on-atoms-for-peace ; see also "Israeli Nuclear Scientists Acclaimed at Geneva International Parley," September 10, 1964, https://www.jta.org/archive/israeli-nuclear-scientists-acclaimed-at-geneva-international-parley ↩︎

16. "American-Israel Discussions on Desalination Started in Washington," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 7, 1966. https://www.jta.org/archive/american-israel-discussions-on-desalination-started-in-washington ↩︎

17. "Washington Provides Egypt with Israeli Study on Desalination," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 12, 1966. https://www.jta.org/archive/washington-provides-egypt-with-israeli-study-on-desalination ↩︎

18. "World News Briefs," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 29, 1975. https://www.jta.org/archive/world-news-briefs-62 ↩︎

19. "Propose Building Joint Israeli-Egyptian Nuclear Reactor in Sinai," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, December 5, 1977. https://www.jta.org/archive/propose-building-joint-israeli-egyptian-nuclear-reactor-in-sinai ↩︎

20. "Warn of Nuclear Capability Lag," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 9, 1979. https://www.jta.org/archive/warn-of-nuclear-capability-lag ↩︎

21. Hersh, The Samson Option, chapter 10, p. 130 (the Sulzberger column and the Ben-Gurion letter to the editor), and notes to chapter 10, p. 327 (Ben-Gurion's letter to the Times "was published November 20, 1963"). ↩︎

22. "Israel's Atomic Chief Reveals Details About Nuclear Research," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, September 4, 1964. https://www.jta.org/archive/israels-atomic-chief-reveals-details-about-nuclear-research ↩︎

23. Burr, William, and Avner Cohen, "The Battle of the Letters, 1963: John F. Kennedy, David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, and the U.S. Inspections of Dimona," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, May 2, 2019. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2019-05-02/battle-letters-1963-john-f-kennedy-david-ben-gurion-levi-eshkol-us-inspections-dimona ↩︎

24. Hersh, The Samson Option, chapter 5, "Internal Wars," p. 62. ↩︎

25. Hersh, The Samson Option, p. 289 (the passage on Binyamin Blumberg and the Office of Special Tasks, "widely known in the early 1980s by its Hebrew acronym, LAKAM"). ↩︎