In considering the ongoing Judeo-crucifixion of Mordechai Vanunu by the Israeli secret services, I’m reminded of the infamous Peter Brook Broadway production from the 1960s: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. Of course, in this case the title would be: The persecution and character assassination of Mordechai Vanunu as performed by the inmates of the asylum of Israel under the direction of the Marquis de Shin Bet.
Vanunu worked at the Dimona nuclear reactor from 1976 to 1985, where he was a nuclear technician. He was born to a poor Orthodox Jewish family in Marrakesh, Morocco. After an outbreak of anti-Semitism, his father decided to make aliyah and move the family to Israel in 1963. The government sent them to the then-small, impoverished Negev town of Beersheva, where in the first year it lived in a wooden hut without electricity.
Eventually, he served in the IDF, reaching the rank of sergeant major and serving in 1973 War.
Later, after he began working at Dimona, he also decided to enroll in Ben Gurion University in order to complete his undergraduate degree. In the course of his studies, interactions with other students, and travels abroad, Vanunu developed decidedly left-wing views and formed a peace activist group on campus. This led to several investigations against him by security personnel and one attempt to lay him off, which failed. In 1985, the plant announced a staff reduction and he was once again laid off. But before his job ended he smuggled a camera into the plant and took 58 photos of the equipment and facilities.
He left Israel and traveled to the Far East, where he met a journalist who persuaded him to tell his story publicly. Eventually, the Sunday Times agreed to publish it, offering the world the first glance behind the walls of the Dimona nuclear reactor. Israeli security services were shocked and dumbfounded that an Israeli would betray the nation’s golden treasure to foreigners.
In 1986, Vanunu was lured by a female Mossad agent in a honey pot operation to Italy, where he was kidnapped by the Mossad, which drugged him and spirited him off to Israel secretly. As I’ve noted here before, there have been numerous other similar kidnapping operations of high level Israeli targets including Adolf Eichmann and Alexander Israel. Palestinian targets like Khaled Meshal and Mahmoud al-Mabouh aren’t as lucky. They’re simply poisoned to death.
Vanunu was secretly tried, convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Eleven of those years he was in solitary confinement. The prison regimen was so strict that he never saw another human being, not even prison personnel. When he took exercise in the prison yard there were not only no other people about, all the windows were covered so no one could see him and he couldn’t see anyone else.
He completed his sentence eleven years ago. But the terms of his release are ridiculously punitive. He may not speak to journalists. He may not meet more than two people at a time. And he may not meet with anyone for longer than 20 minutes. He also may not leave the country, despite the fact that he married a Norwegian woman three months ago and wishes to emigrate to Norway.
Clearly Vanunu hasn’t seen the inside of a secret Israeli facility in 30 years. He has no secrets that he hasn’t already revealed. Nor has he been charged with any new offenses (other than breaking terms of his release). Security officials claim that he is a grave danger to the security of because he may reveal secrets that he doesn’t even know that he knows. This may sound bizarre to the uninitiated in the strange ways of the Israeli secret police, but the same argument was offered against permitting Marcus Klingberg, another infamous Israeli “traitor” who spied for the Soviet Union for nearly three decades.
The difference between the two men: Vanunu, the Mizrahi, was denied the right to leave Israel. Klingberg, the well-educated Ashkenazi who served his country as an expert in biological weapons, was released and emigrated to Paris, where he now lives.
Vanunu, unrepentant and unvanquished (Gil Yochanan)
Another disgusting element of Israeli coverage of Vanunu’s story is that he’s consistently called a “spy.” Klingberg was a spy. He spied for a foreign country. Vanunu was not a spy. He received no financial benefit for what he did (as he makes clear in the interview above). He had no foreign master, spied for no intelligence agency. He exposed Israel’s nuclear secrets because he believed Israelis should know what their state was doing in their name. He believed Israeli nuclear weapons would endanger the Middle East and the world. He determined to blow the whistle on this project. We have a name for this: whistleblowing. We call Snowden and Assange (though less so) heroes for their courage in exposing dirty secrets. Vanunu deserves no less credit. He is not a traitor or spy. He is an Israeli hero. As another famous Jew said: “A prophet is not without honor” except among his own countrymen and women.
When Vanunu’s lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, agreed to a proposal by Channel 2 to interview him for the first time before an Israeli audience, he thought it would “crack open the iron mask that they’d placed on him.” The interview was filmed and then submitted to the Israeli military censor. Some material was cut by the censor and the approved material was aired last week. The interview caused a sensation: first, because Israelis had never heard him speak before. To them, he was a the devil painted by the security services: a cranky, angry, mentally ill traitor. Despite a querulous, clueless interviewer who asked largely inane questions, when viewers saw him, they realized he was a man who held to simple, stubborn beliefs of right and wrong. A man who disdained all the material comforts other Israelis chased after; and who was willing to suffer for those beliefs. The public may not have become fans, but at the least they understood his motives better.
The Shabak, of course, didn’t see it that way. The day after the broadcast they stormed into his home and confiscated his computer. He was brought in for interrogation, though a judge eventually released him to house arrest, which will remain in force for a week. The State prosecutor has demanded all the raw video footage of the interview. This is unprecedented in the history of media relations with the secret services and Channel 2 has refused the demand.
The spooks cannot arrest him for the interview because nothing in it violated government secrecy. So they need the raw footage to find what the censor deleted. Then they can say: the censor prohibited it because it contained secrets. Now we’ll nail you to the wall for once again endangering the security of the state.
They hate Vanunu. He is, as I wrote, stubborn. He is not repentant. He is not broken despite the best efforts of his jailers and all the others persecuting him. If he would only express remorse like those Chinese or Iranian sacrificial lambs whose “confessions” are aired on national TV. Then they could tell the world they beat him. But he won’t let them win. And this enrages them no end.
Now, the goons have upped the ante. They’ve leaked a story (Hebrew) to Mako, a news portal affiliated with Channel 2, claiming a Palestinian prisoner personally witnessed notes that Vanunu wrote offering the names of the Dimona plant workers and blueprints of the facility. He allegedly passed these notes on to the Palestinian security prisoners who likely spirited them off to the Hamas Politburo, I presume. The reporter claims the prisoner is a “highly reliable source,” but offers no name nor any bona fides that confirm his authenticity.
There are numerous holes in this story wide enough to drive the proverbial Mack truck through. First, the reporter confirms Vanunu was in solitary confinement during the period when the prisoner saw the notes. There is no possible way he could’ve written notes, let alone smuggled them to Palestinians. Further, if a Palestinian prisoner knew about these written notes the prison authorities would’ve known of them as well. And even if they didn’t know at the time, they certainly would’ve learned about them before Mako’s reporter did. As Avigdor Feldman notes, Vanunu has never been questioned or charged in connection with these alleged documents.
Feldman believes that there is no Palestinian prisoner, but that this story is a direct leak from the Shabak, seeking to further impeach Vanunu in the court of public opinion. In the mindset of the security goons, Vanunu made a favorable impression on TV and the security state must strike back any way it can to put things in balance.
The problem with the Shabak’s approach is that its smears have become worse than any crime Vanunu may’ve committed. As Avner Cohen argued in the interview featured here, the ex-Dimona technician has paid his price. If Israel is a democracy that believes in the rule of law, then once freed a prisoner must be allowed to resume a normal life. A state can’t imprison a citizen forever simply because security officials wish it. That, I remind readers, isn’t a democracy, it’s a police state.
In October, the Israeli Supreme Court will hear Vanunu’s appeal of the decision to deny him the right to emigrate. This Court is no longer the bastion of human rights it once was. So I’m dubious that justice will be done. But I plan on doing everything in my power to ensure that the justices understand that the world is watching. And that the world expects real justice, as opposed to security dictat, to be done.
NOTE: My latest Mint Press News story deals with the Jewish Forward editor who visited Iran last month and wrote a riveting, unvarnished story about life there.
“He believed Israeli nuclear weapons would endanger the Middle East and the world.”
I believe that ISIS, global warming, overpopulation and economic inequality are the world’s great dangers.
Nuclear proliferation isn’t even on my list.
History has shown us that Vanunu’s core belief, supra, has been proven to be illusory.
His choice to become a whistleblower hasn’t made the world a safer place. It’s really had no effect at all, other than to ruin his life.
That’s a little odd. When global warming starts generating political instability ( and the Syrian civil war might be our first example) and massive refugee flows and terrorism, it would be at least a little helpful if the resulting chaos doesn’t include a plethora of countries with nukes.
That seems shortsighted. Some think the war in Syria is the product of drought– with global warming such wars may become common. Now imagine the Syrian civil war if there were nuclear weapons in Syrian bunkers–even if you don’t think Assad would use them what might ISIS do if they thought they could acquire one? What would Israel do at the mere thought? Hell, what would America do?
Global warming may give us a century of wars, massive refugee flows, and vengeful terrorist groups. It’d be better not to add nuclear weapons to that mix.
@Donald
Israel is no more immune to global warming and drought than any other Middle East country.
Unlike Israel, Syria mismanaged their agricultural sector and the drought proved to be a tipping point.
“Now imagine the Syrian civil war if there were nuclear weapons in Syrian bunkers–even if you don’t think Assad would use them what might ISIS do”
I seem to remember Israel bombing a suspected Syrian nuclear site several years ago. I seem to remember some North Koreans being counted among the dead.
Yes I remember too. I was trying to make the point that nuclear proliferation would make an already terrible situation even more dangerous. I’m surprised anyone would disagree.
Mitcheell – nuclear proliferation you say isn’t even on your list. So you regard the hullaballoo Netanyahu is making about Iran’s alleged nuclear activities a matter of mistaken priorities I take it.
As to Vanunu ruining his life, you forgot to specify that it was ruined for him – by the Israeli Secret Service. That Vanunu’s show of courage and determination has had no effect at all you simply don’t know. I believe that any example of that nature will have a positive effect as it will encourage other people to stand up for what they believe is right. Also, the whole story of his kidnapping (on foreign soil) and its aftermath has highllighted the lawlessness and vengefulness of the Israeli spy masters. There is ultimately a price to be paid for that. To limit myself to this part of the world: New Zealand jailed some Israeli agents, downgraded diplomatic relations with Israel and cancelled a visit by the then Israeli president in retaliation for the forgery of New Zealand passports (and Israel’s refusal to apologise for that). Australia too expelled an Israeli diplomat when it turned out that some of the forged passports used in the bungled plot to murder Meshal were Australian. The then Australian foreign minister said that he did so “more in sorrow than in anger”. Ultimately there will only be anger.
@ Mitchell: I’d feel a whole lot more confident if you stuck to evaluating things you know–like your own life and choices. As for evaluating those of Vanunu, you’re about as trustworthy as a broken clock.
The fact that Israel has 200 nuclear weapons & you don’t give a flying fig about nuclear proliferation–well, those are total coincidences.
Okay. How have Vanunu’s revelations made the world a safer place?
Answer. They haven’t made the world a safer place. His efforts were futile.
@ Mitchell: You’re both obtuse & an idiot. Your arguments, such as they are, repeat themselves and you never offer any evidence to support your claims.
Vanunu’s revelations have exposed Israel’s nuclear secrets and penetrated the opacity of the system. Nuclear secrecy is terribly dangerous to the world. Transparency is always a positive related to nuclear weaponry. It if wasn’t then there would not be any nuclear agreements between the U.S. & RUssia and the NPT would not exist.
That’s why the Iran nuclear deal is a good thing. Because the world will have a much better idea of what Iran is doing and Iran will be offering this information to the world to reassure it.
You may continue in your obliviousness & obtuseness. But I have a limit to my patience & you have stretched it. You stand a hair’s breath from being moderated. Please give a signal to the next hasbara flight that you may be landing imminently & it should prepare to take your place.
On a tangential note, earlier this year, you wrote about the new Israeli documentary “The Dark Secret of the Dimona Reactor”: http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/dimona-israel-s-little-hiroshima-1962915520
Of the 2 links to the documentary provided in that article, one is dysfunctional and the other is in Hebrew. Is an English-translated copy of that documentary available? If not, any chance you might be able to produce one? (If I recall correctly, in the past, you have translated some videos that were in Hebrew.) I’d be surprised if nobody has bothered to translate that film for an international audience.
@ Richard
“Palestinian targets like Khaled Meshal and Mahmoud al-Mabouh aren’t as lucky. They’re simply poisoned to death.”
Error of inattention: al-Mabhouh died but Meshal is still alive.
I know you know but for people who might have missed it: the Mossad agents who tried to kill Meshal in Amman were caught, and Israel was forced to deliver the anti-dote to get them freed.
@ Deir Yassin: Meshal would’ve died had King Hussein not intervened. And the Mossad intended him to die. That’s what I meant.
In 2005, this American was writing her first historical fiction while in east Jerusalem. I became a reporter after Vanunu told me:
“The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona. The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out. President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.’
“When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.
“Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.”
View “30 Minutes with Vanunu” which NOT go through Israeli Censors and was taped a few weeks after Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial began in 2006 and culminated in 78 days back in solitary in 2010 essentially because he spoke to foreign media in 2004:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwdz6dLbfok
View Vanunu’s 1985 photos of the Dimona:
@ Eileen: One of my comment rules is that you must write original comments. Don’t cut & paste things you’ve written & published elsewhere here. I can understand your wish to promote your work on this subject. But you’ve published this exact comment a number of other places. That’s a no-no here.
[Comment deleted: my editorial decisions are not meant as grist for a debate with you. Another comment rule here is that you may not post more than three comments in any 24 hour period. This permits a fair, balanced discussion & prevents some from monopolizing the threads. You may follow rules everyone else follows or you won’t participate.]
Dear Richard, I understood that when you wrote “I plan on doing everything in my power to ensure that the justices understand that the world is watching” you were interested in learning about my 10 years of activism in support of a free Vanunu and what I have learned about USA Govt. and Media collusion in Israel’s Nuclear DECEPTIONS, so it is disheartening to read your judgement against me as if promoting my work/THE TRUTH deserved a ‘no-no’ anywhere!
@ Eileen: You apparently have an ego issue thinking that things I write are directed for, at you personally. My statement was not a personal invitation. It was meant to outline my own personal intentions & goals.
I ask everyone here to follow the rules including you.
Eileen provides a valuable service in providing these details on international collaboration in Israel’s nuclear bomb-making, which are almost unknown around the world. Further documentation may be seen in an Israeli film of a dozen or so years ago: “The Bomb in the Basement.”
BTW, why does this story describe the import Vanunu’s revelations as only “offering the world the first glance behind the walls of the Dimona nuclear reactor”? Only in the 11th paragraph do Israel’s nuclear weapons come up — and then as if they’ve already been mentioned.
Otherwise it’s an important and well-written story. Thank you.
@ Eric: Israel’s nuclear weapons are discussed here hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. Do a search of my posts & you will find full, extensive discussion of the subject.
We have a disagreement about the value of Eileen’s service. I have no doubt that her heart is in the right place. But her reporting sometimes leaves much to be desired. Having a good heart or good intentions doesn’t necessarily make a good reporter.
Nothing about this in the NYT unless my search skills are lacking. So that part of the world may not be watching, at least so far.
I may email Margaret Sullivan ( the public editor) about this later.
Dear Donald,
I have been contacting The NYT Editors and Ms. Sullivan for the last 10 years regarding Israel’s draconian restrictions on Vanunu’s human rights and USA collusion in Israel’s Nuclear DECEPTIONS, but this reporter has only received the “auto-reply” that my email was received and would be read.
Risking a ‘no-no’ here is a copy and paste regarding the claim of the “Palestinian prisoner personally witnessed notes that Vanunu wrote offering the names of the Dimona plant workers and blueprints of the facility.”
On 22 March 2015, Vanunu wrote in an email to a few of his friends and me:
“Dear Friends, Just to let you know the latest news in my case. The small change they give me in these restrictions few months ago, (30 minutes to speak to some one in the streets), it did not make any real change. And my main target is to leave Israel, not meeting any one here. The time of meeting foreigners is over. So I am ready to leave, whenever they will end these restrictions.
“But before I am going to leave I discover by chance, they had prepared another block for my leaving, I found that I owe 100.000 Shekels to the Israel main news paper Yediot Aharonot, because I lost a Libel suit against them in 2005…not only they are allowed to publish lies about me, (that I am sending from prison instructions to the Palestinians how to make bombs,) but I also should pay them, because the lies come from the head of Shaback they can publish them….”
BACKGROUND:
Mordechai Vanunu sued Yedioth Ahronoth [Israel’s largest newspaper by way of sales and circulation] over a front-page lead article it published in November 1999 [while Vanunu was in his 13th year behind bars for telling London’s SUNDAY TIMES everything he knew as a mid-level technician within Israel’s WMD Facility at Dimona.]
Yedioth Ahronoth’s headline read: “Vanunu gave Hamas activists information on bomb assembly in prison” and a second-page insert entitled, “He’s done it again”, claimed Vanunu sent messages containing bomb-making information to incarcerated members of Hamas.
Avigdor Feldman, Vanunu’s defense attorney argued the report was fabricated.
The article was never verified and neither the reporter nor Yedioth Ahronoth asked Vanunu for his response to the claim of the Shin Bet.
The reporter of the piece was Ben Yishai who admitted the information he received came from Ami Ayalon, a head of the Shin Bet security services who spread the story to a group of nearly a dozen journalists at the end of 1999.
Five months after that meeting Ben Yishai published the only article furthering the fabrication which coincided with Vanunu’s request for an early release from 18-years behind bars.
Not only was Vanunu denied an early release from prison, the restrictions denying him the right to leave Israel have been renewed annually with the latest to expire in May 2016.
In his March 22nd email, Vanunu explaining that his Lawyer Feldman and the Lawyer for the Newspaper agreed to reduce the amount Vanunu ‘owed’ to 10,000 USA dollars!
Vanunu also wrote, “So now I have to pay this amount before any future leaving Israel, any help from you are very welcome.”- excerpted from “Heroes, Muses and the Saga of Mordechai Vanunu” by Eileen Fleming
Eileen Fleming, You are boring with your endless rambling about Vanunu anywhere you can cut and paste.
This video of Vanunu’s recent marriage brought tears to my eyes. I wish him and his wife a lot of happiness.