By: Janet Aslin, Staff Writer

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, once said “If an expert says it can’t be done, get another expert.” These 11 words perfectly express the mindset held by the founders of the modern State of Israel. They faced many challenges, not the least of which were the well-equipped armies of their Arab neighbors who had vowed to destroy the young country. The Jewish state-to-be, on the other hand, was woefully lacking in weapons and facing an arms embargo which essentially cut off all possibility of obtaining them.

The situation was so dire that non-Jewish experts thought Israel’s survival was impossible. Yet Ben-Gurion called on his untried experts—students of chemistry and physics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Technion in Haifa—to produce the weapons needed to win the War of Independence. They rose to the challenge. You are about to experience a small taste of their story.