Abraham Feinberg

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