September 11, 2015

'Let There Be Water: Israel's Solution for a Water-Starved World (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press; September 15, 2015) reveals the secret to Israel’s bold approach to water security and how the rest of the world can adopt these measures now, to get ahead of the looming global water crisis

The irrigation of the desert with purified seawater will appear a dream to many, but less than any other country should Israel be afraid of dreams capable of transforming the natural order . . . . All that has been accomplished in this country is the result of dreams that have come true by virtue of vision, science, and pioneering capacity.
— David Ben- Gurion (1956)

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy occurred two weeks before the Weizmann Institute’s 1963 fund- raising gala in Manhattan. Kennedy had been announced as the keynote speaker and with his sudden, violent death, the event’s organizers cancelled it. Two months later, the dinner was held. To the organization’s good fortune, Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, agreed to take the slain president’s speaking slot at the rescheduled event.

The Weizmann Institute was, and is, a leading Israeli scientific research center founded in 1934 by Chaim Weizmann, a world- renowned scientist who later became Israel’s first president. The institute was renamed in Weizmann’s honor in 1949, a year after the country was founded, when he was elected the ceremonial head of state. From its earliest days, the institute had taken on an array of scientific challenges. One of these was how to efficiently remove salt from seawater.  The desalination research was scientific, but it also had important ideological and political implications for the young country.  Success in desalination would produce important benefits for Israel in helping to fulfill the Zionist goal of building a secure, self- sufficient economy and society that would be a magnet for Jews worldwide. Lacking adequate natural water from rain and rivers, the nation’s growing water deficit would be an impediment to both its economic vitality and, as important, its ability to absorb new waves of Jews resettling in Israel. Large- scale desalination of seawater from the Mediterranean was seen as an ideal, if entirely theoretical, solution.

David Ben- Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and the moving force in building the institutions that would lead to the creation of a state, never had water far from his mind. Shimon Peres, Ben-Gurion’s close aide and himself later Israel’s prime minister and president, says Ben-Gurion talked about water all the time. Ben-Gurion, Peres says, was captivated by the idea of turning salty seawater into freshwater for homes and farms.  Lyndon Johnson shared Ben-Gurion’s deep interest in “desalting” water. Coming from a hardscrabble Texas life, Johnson’s views about water were similar to the desert- centered Ben-Gurion. A few days before his election in 1960 as Kennedy’s vice president, Johnson took time out from campaigning to help prepare a lengthy article for The New York Times’ Sunday magazine. The article advocated a national focus on developing cost- effective desalination techniques as a tool for eradicating poverty and promoting world peace. Candidates in the heat of a campaign put out many proposals, but Johnson could have placed an article in the magazine on any of several more higher profile topics. But he chose to write about what he called “desalted water,” a seemingly odd topic for water- rich New Yorkers at any time, and especially so in the closing days of a tight presidential race.  Desalination has the feel of science, engineering, and alchemy combined. The medieval alchemist tried to take lead, a product of scant value and transform it into one of great worth, gold. So, too, the desalination process tries to take seawater (or inland, brackish water), strip it of its worthless elements, and change it into a lifesaving product of enormous value.

The ancient Romans tried to purify seawater for their army, but their efforts never went far.  During World War II, American scientists also began thinking about ways to either take the salt out of the water or the water out of the salt, which sounds like the same thing, but which require completely different approaches and scientific techniques. The problem with either approach, they realized, was that it might make sense in limited military applications where expense is of little concern, but the enormous amount of energy needed to produce pure water from seawater would have made it impossibly expensive for civilian use, at least with then current technology.  Expensive or not, Johnson was sure desalination was in America’s and the world’s future. He had been instrumental as the senate majority leader in obtaining funding for federal research on the issue, most of which was allocated to the U.S. Office of Saline Water, which had been established in 1952.  Senators knew that Johnson could be counted on to support bills which included water components. And all the more so, when desalination research was included. 

“Johnson the Jew”

When Johnson stepped to the podium at the Waldorf- Astoria Hotel ballroom to greet the seventeen hundred dinner guests and Weizmann Institute donors in February 1964, few likely expected Johnson to set in motion a project that on the one hand would spark an immediate firestorm in the Arab world, but on the other would promise a significant boost to Israel’s own desalination efforts. Johnson said, “We, like Israel, need to find cheap ways of converting saltwater to freshwater, so let us work together. This nation has begun discussions with representatives of Israel on cooperative research in using nuclear energy to turn saltwater into freshwater. This poses a challenge to our scientific and technical skills. . . . But the opportunities are so vast and the stakes so high that it is worth all of our efforts and worth all of our energy, for water means life, and water means opportunity, and water means prosperity for those who never knew the meaning of those words. Water can banish hunger and can reclaim the desert and change the course of history.”  From Damascus to Beirut to Cairo, Johnson’s speech was met with fury. One Lebanese newspaper columnist addressed the Texas- born, Disciples of Christ church- president as “Johnson the Jew” and said that the speech went “beyond recognition of the birth of Israel to recognition of Israel’s future.” The Syrian government newspaper called the speech “the ultimate in American support for Israel.”  Israel’s adversaries understood what a secure water future would mean to their sworn enemy.

Although Johnson saw desalination as an essential tool in transforming the Middle East, he may have decided to reach out to Israel due to his respect for Israeli science and the country’s rapid and remarkable achievements. With uncanny intuition, Johnson saw in Israel a worthy, if junior, partner who might provide an alternative route to his longstanding dream of desalted water.

From Let There Be Water by Seth M. Siegel. Copyright © 2015 by the author and reprinted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.