by Prof. Eldad Tzahor may look the remains of his office, high on the top floor of the building science and the cancer research building.
Or at least half of it. The other half lies in a bunch of rubble and twisted metal to our feet.
We are on the site of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot south of Tel Aviv, one of the outstanding research centers in the world and generally referred to as Israel’s scientific “crown jewels”.
The extensive campus under well -kept lawn and colorful flower beds suffered two direct hits from Iranian ballistic rockets in the early morning on Sunday.
In no time at all, for years in the latest research of man’s aging, cancer prevention and regenerative medicine were in smoke. Thousands of vital tissue and DNA samples were lost.
Since then, at least one affected academic has been impressed that they were about to be through a big breakthrough.
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Prof. Tzahor, who was working on treatments in cardiac regeneration, refers to a rehearsal cupboard with a door that is somewhat upright in the rubble.
It is near two huge nitrogen tanks that have started a big fire when they pierced in the explosion. They are now mutilated on their sides.
Conspirated extractor fans flop uselessly from the side of the building, where they were torn apart by the collapse of the structure.
“Some of the studies we have carried out need rehearsals for years to build up,” he said. “You can’t just restart it.
“I assume, as we try to do with a human tissue, we have to grow back and regenerate.”
For Prof. Roee Ozeri, a quantum physicist who gave the institute for almost 30 years of his life, the Iranian strikes were “ironic”.
“We fight cancer and heart disease here, which helps everyone of humanity – and they do this.”
He points out that even Yahya Sinwar, the former Hamas leader and architect of October 7, benefited from Israeli medicine when he had brain cancer in prison.
Although the costs for science are undeniable, the narrative of senseless or random, Iranian destruction may be misleading.
Military sources believe that the goal was a deliberate retaliation against Israel’s campaign against Iranian nuclear scientists.
This is due to the connections between the Weizmann Institute to the Defense Industry and the alleged historical connections to the Israel of its own shadowy nuclear weapons program.
Israel has never officially admitted that it has nuclear weapons-free estimates in its warning exams in the hundreds-although the program is often referred to as the worst secret secret in the Jewish state.
Prof. Ozeri, who is also Vice President of the Institute for Communication, smiles ironically when he denies any institutional participation in nuclear weapons.
It is as if he gets the question a lot.
“We are a basic research institute,” he said. “We make fundamental science for the future of humanity. There is no equivalence [with Israel’s actions against Iranian scientists]. “”
As Israel knows better than most others, facts on the ground in the war of misinformation are often quickly covered.
The strikes on Sunday quickly led to online discussions in the Middle East about their military legitimacy.
Ernst Bergmann, the father of the Nuclear program of Israel, was the former head of the Weizmann Institute, whose scientist in the 1950s extracted from the Negev Desert Phosphate from the Negev Desert phosphate.
However, this is far from the current participation in an Israeli nuclear weapons program.
Even if left, Israelis rejects an argument of a moral equivalence between the murder of Iranian nuclear scientists and the rocket attack on Sunday on the basis that Israel, unlike Iran, has never intended to wipe off a sovereign state from the map.
Nevertheless, this is not the first time that Iran has been accused of having addressed Weizmann scientists.
Last year, the Israeli authorities said that they had disrupted Iranian espionage ring in Eastern Jerusalem, who had murdered an attribute to attract and lived at the institute.
Linking the Weizmann to various defense manufacturers, such as.
But Weizmann, named after Israel’s first president, is not the only university who has such connections or operates on a veil of visible security.
Although some students live on campus, no one was injured in the rocket attack, thanks to the night time and the strict compliance with the protective protocol.
But dozens of Israeli civilians were killed in the attacks – even those that are protected in approved bunkers.
It has undoubtedly left Israelis about the destructive power of the rockets. At Weizmann alone, around 45 laboratories were destroyed, which was replaced at a potential price of $ 100 million (£ 74 million).
Within a few hours after the strike, a young researcher who wore a helmet was shot in the middle of the ruins.
It was a symbol of hope in a period of war. But nobody states that the loss of science here is something other than tragic.
