Former IDF chief reveals new details of Israel's nuclear program

In the tense period at the end of May and the beginning of June 1967, with Israel feeling choked in a tightening siege, Lt. Gen. Dov Tamari was summoned urgently to a meeting with a senior figure from the General Staff. As a former commander of Sayeret Matkal, the elite commando unit, "Dovik" Tamari was experienced in conducting covert cross-border operations. For the special mission, Tamari was appointed operational deputy of the senior General Staff officer. The mission? To fly to a high place in the Sinai desert, unload a certain object from the helicopter, activate it and get out fast. While the troops, who did not know exactly what kind of risk they faced, were training and readying themselves for the mission, it was canceled.

Few people were privy to the secret of the episode; among them was Lt. Gen. Tzvi (Chera ) Tzur, Israel's sixth chief of staff and, at the time, the civilian assistant to Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. Tzur died seven years ago, an unknown figure to those who arrived in Israel or grew up in the country in the past few decades.

---

His job description, which he chose himself, was "assistant to the defense minister." For all practical purposes, he was a deputy minister with broad powers, above the ministry's director general, like the powers held by Peres from 1959, when he ceased to be the centralist director general, was elected to the Knesset and served as deputy minister to Ben-Gurion. Tzur was not an MK and was forbidden by law to be Dayan's deputy even in principle. His modest title echoed a previous post, from the beginning of the 1950s, which he was the first General Staff officer to hold, and made it a springboard for major generals: assistant to the head of the Operations Branch.

In his seven years with Dayan, from June 1967 until June 1974, Tzur was one of the three most important individuals in the defense establishment, after Dayan and alongside the chief of staff - Rabin at the end of his military career, followed by Haim Bar-Lev and David Elazar and finally Mordechai Gur. In the 1980s, he received an important security instrument, a plastering trowel, when he was appointed (together with attorney Yehoshua Rotenstreich ) to investigate aspects of the activity of the Scientific Liaison Bureau in the Defense Ministry, which entangled Israel - under the political responsibility of Rabin, Peres, Moshe Arens and Yitzhak Shamir - in the affair involving the running of the spy Jonathan Pollard in American naval intelligence. The investigative appointment was not a random one: during Tzur's period in security, the head of the SLB was accountable to him.

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/former-idf-chief-reveals-new-details-of-israel-s-nuclear-program-1.384889