&gt; They most certainly could have purified the materials themself.<p>Know how?  Yes.  Actually do it?  Likely not -- starting with
just common uranium, it&#x27;s a lot
of work and a big installation
to get to weapons grade uranium
or plutonium, and hiding that
installation would not have been
easy.<p>Easy or not, the old story was
that Israel got the bomb materials, plutonium,
from the US <i>accounting error</i>,
deliberately done and covered up
in the US.<p>My point in my post was to
suggest that the OP,
considering current and
recent events in the Mideast, was to
remind enemies of Israel
that Israel does have nuke
bombs and did get the plutonium
from the US via an effort in
Pennsylvania.  Again, that
story is old -- I heard it
long ago and saw it essentially
repeated in the movie <i>The Sum
of All Fears</i>.  That is,
my comment was to mention
a possibly curious purpose to
the OP.  This conjecture about
the purpose of the OP can
continue to stand whatever
the truth was about how
Israel got, if they 
ever did, materials for nuke
bombs.<p>Tough for me to
believe that the highly
technical HN audience
had so much difficulty 
with my post.