[E-rundbrief] Info 105 - Uri Avnery: Vanunu against secret Israeli Nuclear Weapons

So Apr 25 11:44:09 CEST 2004

E-Rundbrief - Info 105 - Uri Avnery: Vanunu: The Terrible Secret - Israels 
geheime Atomwaffen und die US-Politik

Bad Ischl, 25.4.2004

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

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Vanunu: The Terrible Secret

Uri Avnery

24.4.04

In the darkness of a cinema, a woman's voice: "Hey! Take your hands off! 
Not you! YOU!"

This old joke illustrates the American policy regarding nuclear armaments 
in the Middle East. "Hey, you there, Iraq and Iran and Libya, stop it! Not 
YOU, Israel!"

The danger of nuclear arms was the main pretext for the invasion of Iraq. 
Iran is threatened in order to compel it to stop its nuclear efforts. Libya 
has surrendered and is dismantling its nuclear installations.

So what about Israel?

This week it became clear that the Americans are full partners in the 
creation of Israel's "nuclear option".

How was this exposed? With the help of Mordecai Vanunu, of course. 
Throughout the week, a festival was being celebrated around the prisoner, 
who was released on Wednesday.

The Security Establishment has not stopped harassing him even after he has 
sat in prison for 18 years, 11 of them in complete solitary confinement  a 
treatment he himself described on leaving the prison as "cruel and 
barbaric". After he was "set free", far-reaching restrictions were imposed 
on him (e.g. he is forbidden to leave the country, is restricted to one 
town, cannot go near any embassy or consulate, may not talk with foreign 
citizens). All this under the colonial British emergency regulations that 
were condemned at the time by the leaders of the Jewish community in 
Palestine, as "worse then the Nazi laws".

Not, God forbid, because of any desire for revenge!

The security people declared from every podium that this is not revenge for 
all the shame Vanunu caused the security services, and is by no means just 
more persecution, but an essential security requirement. He must not be 
allowed to leave the country or to speak with foreigners and journalists, 
because he is in possession of secrets vital to the security of the state.

Everybody understands that he 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 are afraid of sounding like 
the lady in the dark cinema.

(By the way, this John Bolton is an avid supporter of the group of Zionists 
neo-cons who play a central role in the Bush theater. He opposes arms 
control for the United States and its satellites, and was installed in the 
State Department against the wishes of the Secretary of State himself.)

In the short address Vanunu was able to make to the media immediately on 
his release, he made a strange remark: that the young woman who served as 
bait for his kidnapping, some 18 years ago, was not a Mossad agent, as 
generally assumed, but an agent of the FBI or CIA. Why was it so urgent for 
him to convey this?

 From the first moment, there was something odd about the Vanunu affair.

At the beginning, my first thought was that he was a Mossad agent. 
Everything pointed in that direction.

How else can one explain a simple technician's success in smuggling a 
camera into the most secret and best guarded installation in Israel? And in 
taking photos apparently without hindrance? How else to explain the career 
of that person who, as a student at Beer-Sheva University, was well-known 
as belonging to the extreme left and spending his time in the company of 
Arab fellow-students? How was he allowed to leave the country with hundreds 
of photos? How was he able to approach a British paper and to turn over to 
British scientists material that convinced them that Israel had 200 nuclear 
bombs?

Absurd, isn't it? But it all fits , if one assumes that Vanunu acted from 
the beginning on a mission for the Mossad. His disclosures in the British 
newspaper not only caused no damage to the Israeli government, but on the 
contrary, strengthened the Israeli deterrent without committing the 
government, which was free to deny everything.

What happened next only reinforced this assumption. While in London, in the 
middle of his campaign of exposures, knowing that half a dozen intelligence 
services are tracking his every movement, he starts an affair with a 
strange women, is seduced into following her to Rome, where he is kidnapped 
and shipped back to Israel. How naive can you get? Is it credible for a 
reasonable person to fall into such a primitive trap? It is not. Meaning 
that the whole affair was nothing but a classic cover story.

But when the affair went on, and details of the year-long daily 
mistreatment of the man became public, I had to give up this initial 
theory. I had to face the fact that our security services are even more 
stupid than I had assumed (which I wouldn't have believed possible) and 
that all these things actually had happened, and that Mordecai Vanunu was 
an honest and idealistic, if extremely naive, person.

I have no doubt that his personality was shaped by his background. He is 
the son of a family with many children, who were quite well-to-do in 
Morocco but lived in a primitive "transition camp" in Israel, before moving 
to Be'er-Sheva, where they lived in poverty. In spite of this, he succeeded 
in getting into university and got a master's degree, quite an achievement, 
but suffered, so it seems, from the overbearing attitude and prejudices of 
his Ashkenazi peers. Undoubtedly, that pushed him towards the company of 
the extreme left, where such prejudices were not prevalent.

The bunch of "security correspondents" and other commentators who are 
attached to the udders of the security establishment have already spread 
stories about Vanunu "imagining things", his long stay in solitary 
confinement causing him to "convince himself of all kinds of fantasies" and 
to "invent all kinds of fabrications". Meaning: the American connection.

Against this background one can suddenly understand all these severe 
restrictions, which, at first sight, look absolutely idiotic. 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 for the prevention of nuclear proliferation.

And the lady cried: "Not you! YOU!"

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18 years ago, Vanunu joined the ranks of historic whistleblowers for peace, 
revealing to the world that Israel had a nuclear weapons program.

www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3340639.stm

From: TFF PeaceTips <TFF at transnational.org>, www.transnational.org/sitemap.html

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Matthias Reichl
Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Wolfgangerstr.26
A-4820 Bad Ischl
Tel. +43-6132-24590
e-mail: mareichl at ping.at
http://www.begegnungszentrum.at

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     M. Reichl, Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
           Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
Wolfgangerstr.26, A-4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,  fon/fax: +43 6132 24590
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