Abraham Feinberg was a wealthy New York businessman and ardent advocate of statehood for [[Israel]]. By 1947, he played a major and discreet role in fundraising and White House lobbying for [[Israel]] and the Democratic Party. He would operate at the highest levels between [[Washington D.C.]] and [[Jerusalem]] for two decades.[^1] Feinberg was a close friend of [[Ernst David Bergmann]], and in the fall of 1947, Bergmann indiscreetly revealed to Feinberg that there was uranium in the [[Negev]] desert, implying a path for [[Israel]] to develop the atomic bomb. Feinberg was astonished by this talk and "shushed him up."[^1] Feinberg was recruited by [[David Ben-Gurion]] in 1945 to help raise money for guerrilla operations against the British mandatory power in [[Palestine]]. He recalled that the kibbutz's administrative building, constructed near a large British military base, was a "fraud," serving as a cover for a secret underground plant producing bullets for the Hagannah. The facility was "scooped out" in twenty-seven days, with workers alternating between farming and arms production to maintain the deception.[^2] ### Footnotes [^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 2. [^2]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 15.