By Eileen Fleming
[East Jerusalem, Israel] Today Israel’s Nuclear Whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu marked the first day into his twelfth year of open-air captivity after 18 years behind bars writing Update #18 to the Petition to World Media and Israel We are not free until Vanunu is FREE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1VOB8B3g1o
On 24 April 2004, Uri Avnery wrote:
Everybody understands that Vanunu has no more secrets. What can a technician know after 18 years in jail, during which technology has advanced with giant steps?
But gradually it becomes clear what the security establishment is really afraid of. Vanunu is in a position to expose the close partnership with the United States in the development of Israel’s nuclear armaments.
This worries Washington so much, that the man responsible in the State Department for ‘arms control’, Under-Secretary John Bolton, has come to Israel in person for the occasion. Vanunu, it appears, can cause severe damage to the mighty super-power.
The Americans, it seems, are very worried. The Israeli security services have to dance to their tune. The world must be prevented by all available means from hearing, from the lips of a credible witness, that the Americans are full partners in Israel’s nuclear arms program, while pretending to be the world’s sheriff.
Also in 2004, Haaretz reporter, Yossi Melman wrote:
This is the secret that hasn’t yet been told in the affair: the story of the security fiasco that made it possible for Vanunu to do what he did, and the story of the subsequent attempts at cover-up, whitewashing and protection of senior figures in the defense establishment, who were bent on divesting themselves of responsibility for the failure.
The 18-year prison term to which Vanunu was sentenced is almost exactly the same period as that in which Yehiel Horev has served as chief of internal security in the defense establishment [who has been] involved in the affair as deputy chief of security at the Defense Ministry, and also after Vanunu’s abduction and arrest, as a member of an investigative commission.
Shortly after taking office as chief of security at the Defense Ministry, Horev began to take punitive measures to hobble Vanunu. He is responsible for the harsh conditions in which Vanunu was held, which included [11 ½] years in solitary confinement, and the sharp limitations on the number of visitors he could have…[and has fought] a rearguard battle to prevent Vanunu from leaving Israel and to place him under supervision and restrictions that will be tantamount to house arrest.
Horev has always been considered the strictest of all the security chiefs in Israel, especially in regard to the protection of institutions such as the Dimona facility and the Biological Institute. He is apprehensive that if Vanunu goes abroad, he will continue to be a nuisance by stimulating the public debate over Israel’s nuclear policy and the nuclear weapons he says Israel possesses…all the hyperactivity being displayed by Horev and those who support his approach is intended only to divert attention from what has not yet been revealed: the security blunders and their cover-ups.
Vanunu never signed a contract with London’s Sunday Times and a total of 1,200 pages of transcript of Vanunu’s closed-door trial have been released.
Defense witness and the Sunday Times journalist who broke the Dimona story Peter Hounam stated, “We did not pay him money, but only covered his expenses…Money did not motivate him.”
Sunday Times journalist Wendy Robbins wrote, “Mordechai never asked for nor received a single penny for his information… he blurted out the whole tale without first setting out any financial preconditions. Mordechai got nothing out of the whole episode. He never `sold’ Israel’s secrets — he told them.”
Last week The National Security Archive of George Washington University published documents detailing the discovery of Israel’s nuclear deceptions, debates over Israel’s lack of candor and efforts to pressure the Israelis to answer key questions about the Dimona corroborating what Vanunu said 29 years ago about Israel’s Nuclear “Textile Plant” and Nuclear DECEPTIONS which began during Eisenhower’s administration
For twenty-nine years Vanunu has been saying, “I have sacrificed my freedom and risked my life in order to expose the danger of nuclear weapons which threatens this whole region. I acted on behalf of all citizens and all of humanity.”
For ten years I have been saying that on the day Israel lets Vanunu go is THE DAY I will stop talking/writing Vanunu’s story because 10 years ago I vowed aloud to him and committed to God that I would tell the Vanunu story UNTIL Israel allowed him his inalienable RIGHT to leave the State but I never imagined it would take ten years and counting!
In 2006, I asked Vanunu why had he disbanded his USA campaign the year before and he replied he was free enough to speak for himself and his supporters were all free to do what ever they wanted.
I have done exactly what I have wanted and so will conclude this day in history with Vanunu’s words:
The only way to peace is peace; the only way is nonviolence.
When I became the spy for the world, I did it all for the people of the world.
Daniel Ellsberg did, the woman from Enron did, and I did.
May we all!
And may God have mercy on Israel and may Israel listen to its prophets:
What does God require? He has told you o’man! be JUST, be MERCIFUL, and walk humbly with your Lord– -Micah 6:8
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