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MORDECHAI VANUNU -
ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR PRISONER
OF CONSCIENCE
MER - Washington - 20 March
1998:
While the Americans
force disarmament on Iraq --
with sponsored client-regimes controlling the region
while boycotts and embargoes are
used to constrain
all who refuse to submit -- Israel remains the regional
Goliath. Indeed, Israeli military power is said to be
more than 7 times greater than all of the Arab armies
combined; and that's before
the ever-present backup of
the American superpower!
Of course it
is precisely Israel's super weapons of
mass destruction that are at issue. No country has
violated more U.N. resolutions,
defied the international
community, and refused to sign international treaties
and allow international inspection than Israel. American
hypocrisy and duplicity are overwhelmingly obvious
After 12 years Mordechai
Vanunu remains imprisoned in
Israel after being internationally seduced and kidnapped
by the Mossad. The fact that he is no longer held totally
in solitary confinement is positive, but only a very small
victory in the struggle to free Vanunu.
It was back in 1986
that Vanunu first told the world
about Israel's then secret arsenal of nuclear weapons.
In the article below, Peter
Hounam of THE SUNDAY TIMES in
London, recalls what happened.
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Last year, MER-TV made a
series of programs specifically
about Mordechai Vanunu.
These programs show the yearly
Vanunu demonstration at the
Israeli Embassy for Vanunu,
scenes from a BBC documentary
about Vanunu, and exclusive
interviews with the leaders
of the free Vanunu movement
in the U.S., Europe and Israel.
For information how to obtain these videos:
http://www.MiddleEast.org/vanunu.htm
or
Email to INFOCURRENT@MiddleEast.org
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London Sunday Times - March
15, 1998
Peter Hounam recalls how and why
Vanunu broke the story to him
WHISTLEBLOWER WITH A CONSCIENCE
THE tragedy of Mordechai
Vanunu began on the other side of the world,
when he made the fateful
decision to disclose details of his
country's clandestine
nuclear program.
Shaking with trepidation,
he recounted to me how he had worked in
Israel's most secret
military establishment, making nuclear warheads
in an underground
factory. The account suggested that Israel had
become the world's
sixth biggest nuclear power. But was it true?
Exhaustive checks
confirmed that Mordechai was a classic dissident -
motivated partly by
dissatisfaction with the way he had been
dismissed from his
job, but mostly by a conviction that his country
had taken an insane
course.
He eventually paid
a terrible penalty for warning the world but, even
today, his correspondence
shows he is unrepentant. He firmly denies
that he was a spy
or a traitor.
"The truth is important,"
he told me in a recent letter. "I will not
let them change my
mind."
As the facts unfolded
in our initial conversations, it grew easier to
comprehend Mordechai's
decision to become a whistleblower. He said he
would have understood
if, back in the 1960s, his country had decided
it needed a small
number of atomic bombs - perhaps half a dozen to
deter the hostile
Arab states on its borders.
Instead, it established
a nuclear plant near Dimona in the Negev
desert including a
state-of-the-art, French-supplied plutonium
separation plant in
a building that extended six floors underground.
Here the weapons-grade
material for making bombs was chemically
separated from the
fuel rods of a nearby reactor. As he was often in
charge of supervising
this immense and complex process, it was
evident to him that
its purpose was to build several hundred
warheads.
Over and over again,
he said to me: "Why do they want all these
bombs. Are they
planning to fight with them and destroy the Middle
East?"
During his shifts,
Mordechai pondered these issues, pacing the floor
of a control room
with instrument panels stretching 30 yards. He was
often alone. During
quiet periods in the dead of night he explored
other floors and found
rooms in which the plutonium was machined into
bomb parts. He knew
this meant Israel had taken the ultimate step. It
was making thermonuclear
weapons capable of destroying a city.
On October 5, 1986,
Mordechai's testimony was published in The Sunday
Times across pages
one, two and three, with the headline "Revealed:
the secrets of Israel's
nuclear arsenal".
Israel immediately
adopted a posture of no comment, as did France.
The United States,
Israel's ally, came under hard questioning from a
number of Arab states,
but Mordechai's reaction was impossible to
gauge. He saw The
Sunday Times article while manacled in an Israeli
cell, following a
calamitous error of judgment on his part.
One day, while walking
in London, he had met an American tourist
called "Cindy". Five
days before the story was published, she
persuaded him to fly
to Italy. He realised she was a Mossad agent
only when he entered
a flat in Rome and was thrown to the floor by
two men.
They chained him up and he was injected with a sedative.
Several days later
he was "home" in Israel. Within weeks, he had been
charged with "helping
the enemy" and espionage, and branded his
country's worst-ever
traitor.
It was this cataclysmic
development that put him on the front pages
of newspapers around
the world and prompted a campaign by a small but
dogged group of supporters
to secure his release. The news that the
nightmare of his solitary
confinement had ended brought the first
glimmer of hope that
he may soon be a free man.
Israel, however, must
be concerned about how he will react on his
release, and what
further light this might shed on the nuclear issue.
The Dimona plant is
still functioning, with the capacity to produce
scores of nuclear
weapons every year. Unlike Iraq, Israel seems
immune from any sanctions
or even pressure. Mordechai's letters make
it clear he will not
be silenced until this issue is resolved.
M
I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S
(202)
362-5266, Ext 638 Fax: (202) 362-6965 MER@MiddleEast.Org
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