A month after Iranian missiles struck the Weizmann Institute, demolishing cancer, heart research and environmental labs, repair work is fast underway.
Heaps of twisted metal and rubble still litter the ground outside demolished buildings with blown-out windows, collapsed ceilings and blackened walls that housed some of Israel’s top scientific laboratories. They seem singularly out of place in the immaculate sprawling campus with its well-kept green lawns, colorful flower beds and garden plots.
A month after two Iranian missiles struck Israel’s “crown jewel of science,” repair work is fast underway at the Weizmann Institute in the central city of Rehovot, once known as “Israel’s citrus capital,” which became renowned in the decades that followed for its prestigious center for science.
At 3 a.m. on June 15, Iranian missiles battered the research center known for its work in life sciences and physics. A life sciences lab and a chemistry building, which was due to open in November, were hit. The blast’s force impacted other buildings as well, including the Earth and Planetary Science Building, which was demolished.
Decades of research in scores of laboratories, including studies in the fields of cancer, heart disease and how particles in the atmosphere affect climate and human life, were snuffed out within minutes in the missile attack that caused massive damage but no casualties.
“It’s just like when a missile blows up your house” your life changes and you need to find new pathways and new solutions,” Professor Yinon Rudich of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and the former dean of the Faculty of Chemistry told JNS last week as he surveyed the demolished building that once housed his four laboratories.
Rudich was in his family bomb shelter when he began getting messages that the Weizmann Institute had been hit, setting off fires that burned for 24 hours.
The scientist was awarded his PhD at Weizmann and completed postdoctoral studies at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo., before returning to Weizmann. He has been running laboratories manned by 14 Israeli and international students and postdocs for nearly three decades.
“This is my home; the institute is my life,” Rudich said.
“Israeli scientists have been targeted before,” he said, referring to a foiled attack last year that was directed at a Weizmann scientist, but thwarted by Israeli security services. “We felt we were safe.”
Damage estimated at $600 million
The Weizmann Institute, which was founded in 1934 by biochemist and Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and his team as the Daniel Sieff Research Institute, and later renamed after Israel’s first president, ranks among the world’s top research institutes.
A Weizmann professor was awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry, and three of its computer scientists have won the Turing Award, considered the “Nobel of Computing.”
The damage to the institute is estimated at $600 million, Rudich said.
While some days are difficult as the 65-year-old professor tries to pick up the pieces of his life’s work’some of which are lost forever and others saved on databases”he reflects on the situation, “We didn’t lose a life, so that is the most important.”
Rudich’s brother, who works at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva, which was also hit by an Iranian missile, had his laboratory damaged as well, he recounted.
Iran fired more than 550 ballistic missiles at Israel last month, killing 29 people – including a 49-year-old Filipino caregiver working in Israel who succumbed to her severe injuries Sunday after her apartment was hit in the missile attack on Rehovot – and wounding more than 3,000.
After nearly two years of war, triggered by the Hamas onslaught on Israel, he said that it was “unbelievable” to him that the Weizmann attack had a much greater resonance within the global scientific community than the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion, which killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians and saw some 250 abducted to Gaza.
“We really had a miracle”
At Weizmann, workers are hard at work renovating as the campus reopened for the summer.
“During the first few days after the attack, I was gravely concerned,” said Dror Barzilai, 51, who coordinates logistics at Weizmann. He was worried that the mass of flammable materials on site, including poisonous gases, would ignite, causing an immense blaze. “We really had a miracle that this did not happen,” he said.
The engineer remained optimistic. “Despite everything that happened, we will do what it takes to fix everything and we will build back better.”
Published in 07/14/2025 13h02
Text adapted by AI (Grok) and translated via Google API in the English version. Images from public image libraries or credits in the caption.
Reference article:
| Geoprocessing Drone Systems HPC |
| ERP and CRM Systems Mobile Systems AI |