Mordechai Vanunu and The New Fourth Estate:
Whistleblowers and Agitators Up Against the empire

 

 

 

[Jerusalem] On July 2, 2007, the whistle blower of Israel's WMD Program, Mordechai Vanunu was sentenced to six more months in jail for interviews he gave foreign media in 2004.

 

This member of the New Fourth Estate: a civilian journalist who doesn't take assignments from editors or paychecks from conglomerates has been freely streaming video interviews of Vanunu from 2005 and 2006 on her website in the spirit of Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human rights which Israel agreed to uphold in 1948 and in fact, was contingent upon their statehood:

 

 

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." -Article 19, UN UDHR


During my five journeys to Israel Palestine since June 2005, Vanunu and I have crossed paths every time and in the spirit of Article 19 we have spoken and I have been streaming video of him on my website.

 

In 1986, Vanunu was a low tech worker in Israel's underground WMD facility in the Negev, but the sign out front back them still proclaimed it was a Textile Plant. All employees signed a secrecy agreement to never speak about what they did in the Dimona, and all jobs were compartmentalized, so very few ever woke up to the fact that they were but a cog in the making of weapons of mass destruction.

 

 Because Vanunu was a good worker, he was cross trained in many areas and then suffered a crisis of conscience about being a part of what could become a nuclear holocaust. Without consulting family or friends, he decided to document the facts underground in the Dimona nuclear weapons of mass destruction plant by photographing the evidence. 

 

Vanunu easily obtained the keys to the restricted areas after they had been carelessly left in the shower room by a supervisor. Vanunu shot two rolls of film in the underground WMD facility without detection but did not develop them until ten months later while in Sydney, Australia.

 

The photos were published in the London Sunday Times just as Vanunu was being kidnapped, clubbed, drugged and bound by the Mossad in Rome and then flung onto an Israeli ship heading home.

Instead of Israel being grateful for the alert to their inadequate security in the nuclear reactor facility, Israel tried Vanunu for treason in a closed door trial and locked him up for 18 years, most all of it in solitary. Vanunu has not set foot into the Dimona in 22 years and International Inspectors never have.

 

 

On April 21, 2004, Vanunu was released from Ashkelon Prison, but is still not free. He has lived under the draconian 1945 British Mandate State of Emergency Regulations, which forbids him from leaving Israel and speaking to media and foreigners. After WW II, Attorney Yaccov Shapiro, who later became Israel's Minister Of Justice, described the Emergency Defense Regulations which denies Vanunu the inalienable rights of freedom of speech and movement as "unparalleled in any civilized country: there were no such laws in Nazi Germany."[N.S. Ateek, Justice and Only Justice p.34]

I met Vanunu for the first time in June 2005, and was curious about his childhood and how and why he-a secular Jew existentialist became a Christian just a few weeks before being kidnapped by the Mossad. He filled me in on all of that, and during our encounters since then, he has told me much more.

Some of what Vanunu has said to me," This administration tells me I am not allowed to speak to foreigners, the Media, and the world. But I do because that is how I prove my true humanity to the world.

"The Israelis have 200 atomic weapons and they accuse the Palestinians and Muslims of terrorism. The Dimona is 46 years old; reactors last 25 to 30 years. The Dimona has never been inspected and Israel has never signed the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty but all the Arab states have."

"Twenty years ago when I worked there they only produced when the air was blowing towards Jordan ten miles away. No one knows what is happening now. The world needs to wake up and see the real terrorism is the occupation and the Palestinians have lived under that terror regime for 40 years.

"It's very sad that Hilary Clinton went to the Jewish Wailing Wall and forgot the real crying wall is the Palestinian wall; the apartheid wall, the wall is not for defense, but to keep this conflict permanent.