This article is a brief survey on the history of forensic research in the State of Israel. It is by no means a comprehensive review; its aim is to give the reader an idea of how a small country with limited resources can establish and maintain good quality forensic science and gain national as well as international recognition. In 1974, the author, Professor Joseph Almog, was the first scientist (Ph.D) in the National Crime Lab, and occupied the position of director between the years 1984-2000. He is currently professor of forensic science and forensic chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Last year he was appointed academic consultant to Forensic Science and Technology, a Chinese journal.

It all started as a consequence of the "Ma’ alot Massacre". On May 15, 1974, Palestinian terrorists raided a school in Ma’ alot, a small town near the Lebanese border. Military units that were called to the scene failed in their attempt to free the hostages and the operation ended with 27 dead, most of them school-children, and 68 injured. Among the decisions that were made by the government subsequent to this tragedy was the establishment of a police commando unit which would be trained to tackle such incidents, the establishment of a police bomb squad and, indirectly, the conversion of the police crime lab from a technical unit, composed mainly of technicians and laboratory attendants, into a scientific unit. The man of vision was Meyer Kaplan, the long-time director of the unit. He convinced the police command and the government of Israel of the need for qualified scientists in the police lab so as to cope with future tasks such as explosives detection and identification, ballistic analyses and disaster victim identification. He obtained the permit and with no delay started to recruit university graduates, chemists, biologists, geologists and engineers to the renewing division.

Very soon, Kaplan realized that if he wanted to maintain good scientists for a considerable period of time, he had to involve them not only in regular case-work but also in research and development; otherwise they would be bored quickly. Research and development had another merit: it could help providing solutions to certain problems in forensic investigations, which required a scientific and technical approach. As a matter of fact, there had been voices in the police command against this act. Some thought it was a waste of money: "Information in police work is open and can be obtained for free from other police forces, stronger and more financially capable than we are" was their argument. Experience has taught, however, that this is totally wrong. On one hand, there are problems unique to one law-enforcement agency while no other police has given them high priority. On the other hand, and not less important: in bilateral scientific exchange you do not get high-quality information unless you prove that you can also participate in the game and contribute similar quality information. Thank God, Meyer Kaplan won the argument. In a gradual process, veteran laboratory staff has been replaced by university graduates, most of them owning Master of Science degrees. This revolution was followed by the recruitment of young Ph.D holders from universities to become group leaders and heads of laboratories. Indeed, 1974 marked the beginning of the scientific era in the Israeli Crime Lab. Actually, research in forensic science started even earlier but it was rather sporadic and on a small scale. The first "explosives sniffer" was developed as a lesson learned from the hijacking of an Israeli aircraft to Algeria in July 1968. The inspiration came from the police crime lab but the development was done by an external company, Hydronautics. In 1972, it won the American Express Award for "the best forensic development of the year". In the same year, the Czechoslovakian-made plastic explosive SEMTEX was identified for the first time in the western world by the newly-established explosives lab. It was meant to be used in the hijacking of a Sabena aircraft by Black September terrorists, who ordered the pilot to land in Tel Aviv.

As the situation dictated, the first research projects dealt with the threat of explosives used by terrorists. There was an urgent need for the recognition and identification of military as well as improvised explosives. With the latter, it was also necessary to characterize the starting materials from which they were made in order to control their distribution, or even tag them. The need to quickly identify and characterize all types of explosives resulted in the development of a variety of sensitive analytical techniques, many of which were based on mass spectrometry. In a relatively short time, the Israeli Crime Lab has become a world authority in explosives analysis. These studies covered not only applied aspects but some dealt with basic principles such as their behavior under certain conditions ^[1], or their fragmentation in the mass spectrometric ion source ^[2-^3].

Since the beginning in 1974, research projects of two general types have been carried out by the crime lab. Short-term projects have been conducted mainly in-house, by the Division’ s staff. Long-term projects have been carried out in cooperation with universities and research institutes, but with the involvement and supervision of the lab.

In 1976, a list of unsolved problems in forensic science, which required scientific or technical solutions, was composed by the crime lab and forwarded to the scientific community in Israel ^[4]. This move initiated long-term fruitful cooperation between the Israeli Police and the Academia and resulted with solutions to some of the problems, such as the detection of explosives traces on hands of suspects or identification of recent contact with firearms ^{[5, 6, 7, 8]}. Some topics from the list were solved elsewhere, by foreign laboratories, such as the ESDA (Electrostatic Detection Apparatus) machine which provided a solution to the question of reading indented writing^[9], and first and foremost, the development of the forensic application of DNA ^{[10, 11]}. Some other problems remained unsolved up to this day.

One of the immediate lessons learnt was the understanding that good science requires "scientific climate". It is impossible to run a successful research program without the supreme command supporting it morally as well as financially. Another lesson was that effective cooperation with leading police laboratories elsewhere would require international recognition. This meant primarily the scientific publications.

The beginning was somewhat slow. Writing their own manuscripts in English was not an easy task for many of the newly recruited academicians, but the first articles from the forensic division, still under the name Criminal Identification Division (CID), appeared in the forensic literature in the late 1970’ s. The first articles dealt with forensic mass spectrometry of explosives and narcotics. They were written by Dr. Shmuel Zitrin, one of the pioneers in this field, who was quickly recognized as a leading authority in forensic mass spectrometry and the identification of totally unknown compounds^{[25, 26, 27, 28]}. Much of the original work in this field has been carried out in collaboration with Dr. Jehuda Yinon of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. A series of articles describing research towards the improvement of fingerprint techniques appeared between 1978 and 1982 ^{[29, 30, 31, 32]}. The perception of originality as opposed to "more of the same" was demonstrated in the design and preparation of ninhydrin analogues as potential fingerprint reagents ^[33] which, a few years later, inspired the development of the two most efficient fingerprint reagents DFO (by Grigg, in the UK ^[34]) and indanedione (by Joullié , in the USA^[35]).

It did not take long before gaining an international status, and even leading forensic laboratories such as the Metropolitan Police of London ("Scotland Yard") and the FBI and ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) in the USA initiated dialogues with us. Another activity, which stemmed from the need to resolve multiple terrorists’ incidents and therefore obtained a thorough scientific treatment, was the detection and identification of gunshot residues (GSR) on hands of suspects. Dr. Menahem Tassa and his team, together with the Institute of Chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have investigated the characteristics of the microscopic particles which are left on the hands after shooting. This resulted in a series of articles in the early 1980’ s^{[36, 37, 38]}. Dr. Arie Zeichner and co-workers (Pinhas Bergman, Nadav Levin, Baruch Glattstein and others) of the Tool-marks and Materials Lab have continued research on various aspects of firearms discharge residues such as the detection and characterization of primer GSR and gunpowder residue, bullet-hole identification, and estimation of shooting distances. They wrote a considerable number of articles on these topics (to mention but a few ^{[39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44]}) and consequently, their lab has become a recognized center of knowledge on gunshot residues. Quite a few shooting incidents have been resolved by the new Scanning Electron Microscope Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDX) technique, whose first stage was collection of evidence with a DIFS-developed device ^[36]. Their work focused not only on the technical aspects of the subject but also on some basic aspects such as a concept of uniqueness with regards to the composition of primer GSR ^[42]. Studies in this lab were also carried on other types of trace evidence such as shoe prints and tool-marks ^{[45, 46]}. Dr. Shmuel Kraus on the other hand, was a generalist. In his capacity as head of the laboratory’ s section and later deputy director of the division, he has advanced different subjects, from arson investigation and explosives analysis^{[47, 48]} to comparison of automotive paints ^[49], by applying modern instrumentation. He was also very instrumental in setting the ground for the first AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) in the Israeli Police, initiating the concept of "forensic field tests" with emphasis on diagnostic tests for explosives ^[5] and particularly, the computerization of the forensic laboratories. Terrorist activities created also the need for skilled arson investigations. Besides organizing a modern arson investigation lab, Shalom Tsaroom and subsequently Ran Shelef and Dan Muller started basic research towards better understanding of certain processes which were involved in arson incidents ^{[50, 51]}. These activities, in a relatively short period, attracted attention from other law enforcement agencies and started exchanges of forensic scientists with the USA, UK, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, France, Sweden, and Canada, and later on with Russia, Australia and eventually China. Foreign guests from several countries arrived to Jerusalem for practicing at DIFS with periods ranging from a few weeks to one year.

The involvement with foreign laboratories initiated several international meetings that were held in Israel: The Identa conference on science against terrorism, Jerusalem, 1985; the second international conference on explosives detection and identification in 1986, and the fourth in 1992; the first IFRG conference on fingerprints in Ne’ urim in 1995, with the famous "Ne’ urim Declaration" on the minimum requirements for establishing identity between fingerprints^[52], and the 10th IFRG conference in 2013; and a few more.

Quite early, it became obvious that forensic casework alone may not be sufficient to attract high quality young scientists to the police laboratories and make it their life career. A partial solution was their involvement in original research besides case work, but even that was not enough. In 1982, eight of the best mid-career forensic examiners left the unit to join Intel, the high-tech corporation, who established a considerable size venture in Jerusalem. We found out that the Israeli defense system had suffered from the same symptoms of young scientists leaving to join the private industry. We decided to try adopting their solution to the problem. With governmental consent, they created the "researchers’ scale", a special salary scale for active scientists. It was similar to the university system regarding criteria for acceptance and promotion, and with ranks equivalent to lecturers, senior lecturers, associate professors and professors. This would mean a generous allowance on the basic police salary. To obtain recognition for this privilege was not easy, but the committee which was appointed by the government to examine the justification of this request, unanimously recommended recognizing the national crime lab as a research institute which is entitled to the "researchers scale". This was the turning point. Toward the end of 1982, the government recognized the crime lab as a research institute and approved its new prestigious status. Pretty soon, the forensic lab became one of the most attractive working places for young scientists in the Jerusalem area. In 1984, the official title of the crime lab was changed from Criminal Identification Division (CID) to the Division of Identification and Forensic Science (DIFS), which reflected better the scientific nature of our work. The eligibility to the "researchers scale" challenged the staff to initiate new research projects and to publish their results in international journals. This in turn helped establishing recognition by the international forensic community. Since case-work had first priority, much of the scientific research has been often carried out after working hours, during holidays and weekends.

Since the establishment of the researchers-scale status, DIFS’ scientists, in collaboration with the Academia and occasionally with foreign laboratories, have written hundreds of articles, which appeared in leading international journals. Most of them dealt with the aforementioned topics. Others dealt with subjects such as drug analysis, legal medicine, disaster victim identification, questioned documents and even modernization of police composites and line-ups^{[14, 15, 16, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68]}. Other emerging topics were tool-marks comparison, the concept of forensic field tests, forensic anthropology, and scientific lie-detection (polygraph)..

At present, about 70 (out of 400) of DIFS’ staff (including crime-scene investigators) are entitled to the researchers scale, among them 3 rank A+ (equivalent to Professor in the academia) and 9 rank A (Associate Professor). As already mentioned, acceptance and promotion in this group are judged by criteria which are very similar to those applied in the Academia.

Since the retirement of the legendary Meyer Kaplan, the man of vision and the founder of the modern crime lab, DIFS had 4 directors: Joseph Almog (1984-2000), Elazar Zadok (2000-2008), Abraham Domb (2008-2013) and (Mrs.) Myriam Azoury (2013-present). It is interesting that there has been undisturbed continuity in research and development between the generations despite the different scientific disciplines from which each one had come.

In the mid 1980’ s, DIFS’ scientists have already earned themselves a firm position among the world forensic laboratories, particularly in explosives detection and identification, latent fingerprints visualization, identification of shooters and forensic ballistics. Many received invitations to speak in international conferences, and forensic scientists from foreign laboratories started to come to Jerusalem for practicing and collaborating in research. Some of the studies have led to practical solutions which helped solving high profile crimes. Thus, in a terrorist incident in 1980, the explosives analysis lab identified for the first time in history the improvised explosive triacetone triperoxide (TATP), a highly-sensitive compound, which is easily made from acetone and hydrogen peroxide^[69]. The acquired information was of high importance not only to the Israeli Police but also to other countries which encountered this compound in criminal and terrorist activity. A high-profile extortion case was resolved by the new fingerprint reagent 5-methoxyninhydrin which was developed at DIFS ^[70] and quite a few shooting incidents have been resolved by the new SEM/EDX technique, whose first stage was collection of evidence with a DIFS-developed device ^{[36, 41]}.

A considerable part of the forensic research in Israel did not focus directly on the development of new forensic tools or the improvement of existing ones, but on basic study, attempting to obtain better understanding of certain fundamental phenomena. The perception behind this idea was that gaining more basic information at early stages could help develop improved tools later. The studies of the penetration of latent fingerprints into paper ^[71], mass spectrometric fragmentation of explosives^{[25, 26, 28, 72, 73, 74]},
the correlation between palmar moisture levels and fingerprint quality ^[75] and the decomposition mechanism of the peroxide explosive TATP ^[76] belong to this category. Research in forensic DNA, whose initial steps have been a bit slow, has become a central topic of activity ^{[17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24]}.

An important research activity stemmed from the fact that in the Israeli police, the crime-scene officers throughout the country are a part of the central forensic laboratory. Hence, it is the responsibility of the central lab to train and provide them with the best possible tools. This entailed specific effort towards developing specially-designed field tests for the crime scene investigators under the concept "forensic science does not start in the laboratory but in the field" ^[13]. Among the tests, which have been developed in this group, are the Explosives-Testing Kit (ETK) ^[5], the Bullet-hole Testing Kit (BTK) ^[36],
the BPB reagent for the enhancement of faint shoe-marks ^[46], and the UN-1 test for the improvised explosive urea nitrate ^[77]. A new concept in forensic research which started recently is "proactive forensic science" ^{[56, 78]}.

Several universities and research institutes in Israel are currently conducting their own forensic projects. To mention but a few: At Tel Aviv University: Professor Fernando Patolsky (development of ultra-sensitive detectors) and Professor Michael Gozin (improvised explosives); The Technion in Haifa: Professor Ehud Keinan (improvised explosives, particularly organic peroxides), Professor Israel Shechter (explosives detection) and Professor Avraham Marmur (explosives detection, fingerprints); Ben Gurion University: Professor Yehuda Zeiri (explosives detection); The Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Professor Ronnie Kozlov (explosives detection), Professor Itamar Wilner (development of ultra-sensitive detectors), Professor Aharon Agranat ("remote polygraph"), Professor Uzi Motro (forensic statistics) and Professor Daniel Mandler (latent fingerprints, field tests); Ariel University: Professor Eitan Elaad (polygraph).