Dear friends:
I just learned, late this New Year’s Eve, of my friend Mordechai Vanunu’s outrageous arrest, facing further imprisonment, for “meeting with foreigners” (of which I have quite openly been one, on several occasions). I plan to do whatever I can to bring international pressure to bear on the Israeli government to free him. My views about him are expressed adequately in the op-ed below which appeared in the LA Times (and elsewhere, including Common Dreams) on the day of his release having served 18 years in prison, five years ago.
Mordechai Vanunu–my friend, my hero, my brother–has again been arrested in Israel on “suspicion” of the “crime” of “meeting with foreigners.” I myself have been complicit in this offense, traveling twice to Israel for the express purpose of meeting with him, openly, and expressing support for the actions for which he was imprisoned for over eighteen years. His offense has been to defy openly and repeatedly ,conditions put on his freedom of movement and associations and speech after he had served his full sentence, restrictions on his human rights which were a direct carry-over from the British Mandate, colonial regulations in clear violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Such restrictions have no place in a nation evincing respect for a rule of law and fundamental human rights. His arrest and confinement are outrages and should be ended immediately.
My perspective on Mordechai and his behavior was expressed as well as I could do it today in the following op-ed published in 2004 on the day of his release from prison. I can only say that I would be proud to be known as the American Vanunu: though my own possible sentence of 115 years for revealing state secrets was averted by disclosure of government misconduct against me which pales next to the Israeli misconduct in assaulting, drugging and kidnapping Vanunu in the process of bringing him to trial, let alone the eleven years of solitary confinement he was forced to endure.
Nuclear Hero’s “Crime†Was Making Us Safer
by Daniel Ellsberg
[Published 4/21/04 in the Los Angeles Times — Links added not in original]
Mordechai Vanunu is the preeminent hero of the nuclear era. He consciously risked all he had in life to warn his own country and the world of the true extent of the nuclear danger facing us. And he paid the full price, a burden in many ways worse than death, for his heroic act — for doing exactly what he should have done and what others should be doing.
Vanunu’s “crime†was committed in 1986, when he gave the London Sunday Times a series of photos he had taken within the Israeli nuclear weapons facility at Dimona, where he had worked as a technician.
For that act — revealing that his country’s program and stockpile were much larger than the CIA or others had estimated — Vanunu was kidnapped from the Rome airport by agents of the Israeli Mossad and secretly transported back for a closed trial in which he was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
He spent the first 11 1/2 years in solitary confinement in a 6-by-9-foot cell, an unprecedented term of solitary under conditions that Amnesty International called “cruel, inhuman and degrading.â€
Now, after serving his full term, he is due to be released today. But his “unfreedom†is to be continued by restrictions on his movements and his contacts: He cannot leave Israel, he will be confined to a single town, he cannot communicate with foreigners face to face or by phone, fax or e-mail (purely punitive conditions because any classified information that he may have possessed is by now nearly two decades old).
The irony of all this is that no country in the world has a stronger stake than Israel in preventing nuclear proliferation, above all in the Middle East. Yet Israel’s secret nuclear policies — to this day it does not acknowledge that it possesses such weapons — are shortsighted and self-destructive. They promote rather than block proliferation by encouraging the country’s neighbors to develop their own, comparable weapons.
This will not change without public mobilization and democratic pressure, which in turn demand public awareness and discussion. It was precisely this that Vanunu sought to stimulate.
Not in Israel or in any other case — not that of the U.S., Russia, England, France, China, India or Pakistan — has the decision to become a nuclear weapons state ever been made democratically or even with the knowledge of the full Cabinet. It is likely that in an open discussion not one of these states could convince its own people or the rest of the world that it had a legitimate reason for possessing as many warheads as the several hundred that Israel allegedly has (far beyond any plausible requirement for deterrence).
More Vanunus are urgently needed. That is true not only in Israel but in every nuclear weapons state, declared and undeclared. Can anyone fail to recognize the value to world security of a heroic Pakistani, Indian, Iraqi, Iranian or North Korean Vanunu making comparable revelations?
And the world’s need for such secret-telling is not limited to citizens of what nuclear weapons states presumptuously call rogue nations. Every nuclear weapons state has secret policies, aims, programs and plans that contradict its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the 1995 Declaration of Principles agreed to at the NPT Renewal Conference. Every official with knowledge of these violations could and should consider doing what Vanunu did.
That is what I should have done in the early ’60s based on what I knew about the secret nuclear planning and practices of the United States when I consulted at the Defense Department, on loan from the Rand Corp., on problems of nuclear command and control. I drafted the Secretary of Defense Guidance to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the general nuclear war plans, and the extreme dangers of our practices and plan were apparent to me.
I now feel derelict for wrongfully keeping secret the documents in my safe revealing this catastrophically reckless posture. But I did not then have Vanunu’s example to guide me.
When I finally did have an example in front of me — that of young Americans who were choosing to go to prison rather than participate in what I too knew was a hopeless, immoral war — I was inspired in 1971 to turn over a top- secret history of presidential lies about the war in Vietnam to 19 newspapers. I regret only that I didn’t do it earlier, before the bombs started falling.
Vanunu should long since have been released from solitary and from prison, not because he has “suffered enough†but because what he did was the correct and courageous thing to do in the face of the foreseeable efforts to silence and punish him.
The outrageous and illegal restrictions proposed to be inflicted on him when he finally steps out of prison after 18 years should be widely protested and rejected, not only because they violate his fundamental human rights but because the world needs to hear this man’s voice.
The cult and culture of secrecy in every nuclear weapons state have endangered humanity and continues to threaten its survival. Vanunu’s challenge to that wrongful and dangerous secrecy must be joined worldwide.
White refugee (WR) makes some interesting comments – interesting but fundamentally wrong. I get the notion that WR left a privileged existence in Africa when the natives exerted their rights to their own land. In a similiar vein, WR now sees some “injustice” in the fact that 1.5 million Palestinians have been herded onto 100 square miles of Gaza and have the bloody cheek to not die off for the convenience of European-Jewish colonists.
On January 25, 2006, after nearly two years of speaking to hundreds of foreigners since his release from prison, Vanunu was convicted by the Jerusalem Magistrates Court of 15 violations of a military order that had prohibited him from talking to non-Israelis and because he attempted to "leave the state" by taking a cab from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to attend Christmas Eve mass at the Church of the Nativity in 2004. The original indictment included 22 different violations; Vanunu was charged with 19 and acquitted of four. He was acquitted of speaking to foreign nationals on the internet and via video and voice chats.
Just prior to the taping of "30 Minutes with Vanunu" [freely streaming @ VANUNU ARCHIVES http://wearewideawake.org/ ] on March 26, 2006, Vanunu told me, "Many journalists come here to the American Colony, from CNN and NY Times. They all want to cover my story, but their EDITORS say no…CNN wants to interview me; but they say they can't do it because they don't want problems with the Israeli censor. BBC is doing the same thing. Sixty Minutes from the United States from the beginning they wanted to do a program, but because of the censor situation they decide not to do it."
On July 2, 2007, Israel sentenced Vanunu to six more months in jail for speaking to foreign media in 2004. On September 23, 2008, the Jerusalem District Court reduced Vanunu’s sentence to three months, "In light of (Vanunu’s) ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country’s security in jeopardy."
On June 14, 2009, Vanunu told me, “The Central Commander of the General Army testified in court that it is OK if I speak in public as long as I do not talk about nuclear weapons.”
On July 6, 2009, the Supreme Court stated, "pending a review of his conduct, Vanunu will be able to ask for the restrictions to be lifted and be allowed to travel abroad…The state's representative noted that six months may be too short a time period to determine a change in Vanunu's behavior and that the state will reconsider the restrictions based not only on Vanunu's behavior but a host of other considerations, including the time that had lapsed since he divulged state secrets to the British paper." [1]
On December 14, 2009 Vanunu returned to the Israeli Supreme Court. I phoned him that day and he told me he expected their decision regarding the 3 month sentence "in a few weeks" and remained confident he will be freed as "they have no case against me."
It will soon be twenty-four years since Vanunu "divulged state secrets" and as Vanunu told me, "All the secrets I had were published in 1989 in an important book, by [Nuclear Physicist] Frank Barnaby, The Invisible Bomb: Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East." [2]
A few days before Vanunu was lured from London to Rome, where he was clubbed, drugged and kidnapped by the Mossad, he spent three days being interviewed by Nuclear Physicist, Frank Barnaby. Barnaby had been employed by the London Sunday Times to review the 57 photos Vanunu had obtained at various restricted locations in the Dimona and he also went to Jerusalem to provide expert testimony at Vanunu's closed door trial.
Barnaby testified, "I found the fact that Vanunu was able to smuggle a camera and films into and out of Dimona and photograph highly sensitive areas in the establishment astonishing. I very vigorously cross-examined Vanunu, relentlessly asking the same questions in a number of different ways and at different times…I found Vanunu very straightforward about his motives for violating Israel's secrecy laws he explained to me that he believed that both the Israeli and the world public had the right to know about the information he passed on. He seemed to me to be acting ideologically.
"Israel's political leaders have, he said, consistently lied about Israel's nuclear-weapons programme and he found this unacceptable in a democracy. The knowledge that Vanunu had about Isreal's nuclear weapons, about the operations at Dimona, and about security at Dimona could not be of any use to anyone today. He left Dimona in October 1985 and the design of today's Israeli nuclear weapons will have been considerably changed since then…Modern nuclear weapons bear little relationship to those of the mid-1980."[3]
A total of 1,200 pages of transcript of that closed door trial have been released and Vanunu told the court: "I wanted to confirm what everyone knew, I didn't want Israel to go on denying that it had nuclear weapons, and Shimon Peres to go on lying to (then US president) Ronald Reagan, saying that we didn't have a nuclear arsenal. I also wanted controls to be placed on these weapons." [4]
TBC
Part 2:
A little history:
Mordechai Vanunu was released from Ashkelon prison to open air captivity in east Jerusalem on April 21, 2004 after 18 years-most all in solitary-on April 21, 2004.
In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu was clubbed, drugged, bound and kidnapped from Rome by the Mossad because he told the truth and provided the photographic proof of Israel's clandestine 7 story underground WMD facility in the Negev.
In the case of Mordechai Vanunu, please know that the restrictions that have held him captive in Jerusalem come from the Emergency Defense Regulations which were implemented by Britain against Palestinians and Jews after World War II.
After WW II, Attorney Yaccov Shapiro, who later became Israel's Minister Of Justice, described the Emergency Defense Regulations as "unparalleled in any civilized country: there were no such laws in Nazi Germany."
During one of my seven trips to Jerusalem since 2005, I asked Vanunu, "If the British Mandate has expired why not the British Mandate's Emergency Defense Regulations?"
Vaunu replied, "The reason given is security but it is because Israel is not a democracy unless you are a Jew. 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. My freedom of speech trial began January 25, 2006 for speaking to the media, the same day as the Palestinian elections…When I decided to expose Israel’s nuclear weapons I acted out of conscience and to warn the world to prevent a nuclear holocaust."
In 1963, Peres was Israel’s Deputy Minister of Defense when he met with President Kennedy at the White House. Kennedy told Peres, “You know that we follow very closely the discovery of any nuclear development in the region. This could create a very dangerous situation. For this reason we monitor your nuclear effort. What could you tell me about this?”
Peres replied, “I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first.”
TBC
Part 3:
In 2005, Vanunu told me, "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.’
"Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection. 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. Everything inside was written in French, when I was there, almost twenty years ago.
"Back then, the Dimona descended seven floors underground. In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on.
"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."
TBC
Part 4:
Regarding Israeli behavior towards Vanunu, please know that in 1986, Israel kidnapped him from Rome but Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states: "No one shall he subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention", including abduction of a person by agents of one state to another state.
Vanunu was charged with and convicted of treason and espionage. According to Section 99 of the Israeli Penal Code, treason is defined as "an act calculated to assist (an enemy) in time of war…delivering information with the intention that it fall into the hands of the enemy."
Section 113 defines aggravated espionage as "deliver(ing) any secret information without being authorized to do so and with intent to impair the security of the state" and a sub-clause provides for a penalty of seven years for the unauthorized collection, preparation, recording or holding of secret information; if this is done with intent to impair the security of the state and then, the penalty is increased to 15 years.
Vanunu got 18 years and was also rendered defenseless when the court ruled that his motivations were not ideological and they refused to allow Vanunu's own statements regarding his intentions to be considered in his defense.
Defense witness and the Sunday Times journalist who broke Vanunu's story, Peter Hounam, stated, "It is clear that, as far as Vanunu's accusers are concerned, the trial is not only about whether this decision to reveal the secrets of Israel's atom bomb amounted to treason and espionage, it is also about whether his decision to become a Christian was at the root of his alleged treachery".
Hounam also testified that "We did not pay him money, but only covered his expenses… Money did not motivate him." [5]
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."
In the 80's, Vanunu was transported to and from his closed door trial in a crash helmet, handcuffs and leg-irons, inside a van with blacked out windows that blasted a siren to assure Vanunu would not communicate with journalists or supporters. During the court hearings, two Israeli security agents flanked him at all times in order to be able to cover his mouth if he began to reveal anything they deemed secret. The public, the press and all observers-even Amnesty International- were excluded from the hearings and the court's judgment was censored before publication.
On January 25, 2006, the first day of his freedom of speech trial in Israel only two reporters from minor media showed up for Vanunu's historic court case. Not one was in the court room on February 22, 2006, when it was revealed that Israel had gotten Microsoft to hand over all the details of Vanunu's Hotmail account before a court order had been obtained by eluding that he was being charged for espionage.
TBC
The Rest of What the World Needs to Know About Mordechai Vanunu and 2005, 2006, 2008 video interviews with him and reports from Day One of his FREEDOM OF SPEECH TRial @
VANUNU ARCHIVES:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
so if Vanunu were a citizen of any other country and revealed state military or defense secrets- would they erect a statue to him for his courage, shoot him or imprison him?
PLEASE do not miss the point!
Vanunu paid with 18 years of his life for telling the world about Israel's clandestine 7 story underground WMD facility, which remains un-inspected by international inspectors.
The point is that because Israel has denied him the RIGHT to leave the Jewish state and have arrested him just because he has a foreign gf, while this little American citizen journalist has been streaming 2005, 2006 and 2008 video interviews with him, has interviewed him countless times, has twice snail mailed the Mossad agent who trapped him, SECURITY shoul WAKE UP that this latest bullshit just maybe the best thing that has happened to Vanunu in 24 years!
IF Israel had only been just and merciful they would have let Vanunu leave the Jewish state and fade away into history, instead of continuing to make it!
The law of Karma is what you put out, always returns to you, and I am hoping it will soon kick in.
This latest harassment has garnered Vanunu more media attention than he has had in years and as I know way more than The MEDIA does about Vanunu, tune into VANUNU ARCHIVES @
http://wearewideawake.org/
As more is on its way onto the WWW.
little sister in JC,
xoxe
ps. in hebrew mythology the number 18 represents life. "chi" so it was probably meant to be symbolic of a life sentence
Thank you and as it has been nearly 24 years Vanunu has been captive under Israeli control, it is a life time, and was the prime of his life.
It is BARBARIC that they will not let him go and have a life.
PLEASE do not miss the point!
Vanunu paid with 18 years of his life for telling the world about Israel's clandestine 7 story underground WMD facility, which remains un-inspected by international inspectors.
The point is that because Israel has denied him the RIGHT to leave the Jewish state and have arrested him just because he has a foreign gf, while this little American citizen journalist has been streaming 2005, 2006 and 2008 video interviews with him, has interviewed him countless times, has twice snail mailed the Mossad agent who trapped him, SECURITY shoul WAKE UP that this latest bullshit just maybe the best thing that has happened to Vanunu in 24 years!
IF Israel had only been just and merciful they would have let Vanunu leave the Jewish state and fade away into history, instead of continuing to make it!
The law of Karma is what you put out, always returns to you, and I am hoping it will soon kick in.
This latest harassment has garnered Vanunu more media attention than he has had in years and as I know way more than The MEDIA does about Vanunu, tune into VANUNU ARCHIVES @
http://wearewideawake.org/
As more is on its way onto the WWW.
little sister in JC,
xoxe
From what I understand, we should forget about Iran or North Korea or even al-Qaeda. The real danger to world peace is Israel. These guys won't stop at anything to get their ways: They bomb, torture, threaten and do anything necessary, and have turned international law into worthless scraps of paper. Even worse, the US political elite has been bought off by AIPAC to such an extent that were an independent panel ever to be set up, almost the whole Congress as well as the current and past administrations would be charged with high treason.
Hey Doug, just curious. Are ya gonna do a story on the Danish Cartoonist attacked by a Somali Muslim in his apartment in Copenhagen? He had his 5-year old grandaughter with him. Fortunately the Danish police got there in a nick of time. 3 Somali men. One of the them was wielding an axe and a knife. They escaped into a bathroom, and the Somali man tried to hack the door down kind of like in the 1970s movie The Shining.
Wonder if you'll do a story on this? It's all over the international media: BBC, Washington Post, London papers, Euro-press, NY Times…
Surely you could spare a little space over there at American Spectator and explain to us why it is that we're supposed to believe that these Radical Muslims hate us cause we have Troops stationed in their lands.
Seems like they may hate us rather cause we have Free Speech rights. Which, I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, is not a foreign policy issue, but rather an issue of civil liberties and culture.
Would you mind clearing that up for me Doug? I'd be most appreciative.
There was a time in Europe when something like this would have been unthinkable. Let's get the west out of the third world and get the third world out of the west. Disconnect.
What? You must be young. Generally Europe is defined as wholesale slaughter of populations, mainly for religious reasons (we can start at the 30-years war or earlier), colonialism and more recently for crazed ideologies issued from psychopatic brains of all kinds. How's that for karma?
An unrealistic assessment that doesn't adress the troubling issue of creating an underclass needlessly and unwisely in Europe. And by the way, I am not young. And just to bring you up to speed, the Thirty Years war ended in 1648. Wouldn't you consider the 700 year Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula and the 500 year one of the Balkans "colonialism"?
I'm flattered, Dumbdero, but my name isn't Doug,
I think its funny how you pop up from under your rock to spread your Muslim hating filth.
Someone sure is angry. Show me on the doll where the evil Muslim touched you.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/artic…
"He did not have time to collect the child from the living room before locking himself into a “panic room”, a specially fortified bathroom. He said the assailant had shouted “swear words, really crude words” and shrieked about “blood” and “revenge”, as he smashed the axe in vain against the bathroom door.
“I feared for my grandchild,” he told Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that had commissioned the cartoon. “But she did great. I knew that he wouldn’t do anything to her.” He went on: “It was close, really close. But we did it.”
"I knew that he wouldn’t do anything to her.”
"I knew that he wouldn’t do anything to her.”
"I knew that he wouldn’t do anything to her.”
…….
I hate to even think what this can do to the mind of a five year old child. But of course, the Danes are being "enriched" by diversity.
probably alot less that having an airplanes dropping huge bombs on your home and family…. maybe even enough to attack someone who appears as an "enemy propagandist"
sort of like the usa bombing al jazeera… no thats to harsh lets cut the hyperbole
its more like the us capturing an al jazeera journalist and torturing him.
i wish people could remember that eurasia is one continent and that in a "free society" i don't believe there were to many complaints about diversity when it was europeans moving to north africa
I'm not aware of Denmark dropping any bombs on Somalia Paul. Perhaps you can bring me up to speed on this? As for Eurasia being "one continent" it is composed of dozens of different states and politities all of which have the right to control their borders and exclude undesirables. Are you saying you have the "right" to live anywhere in the world? This comment borders on insanity. Its obvious you haven't travelled very much. By the way Somalia isn't in "north Africa", and what about the 1.5 million Europeans who were kidnapped into slavery there by the Barbary pirates? You think they wanted to be there? You think the European people in the Iberian peninsula wanted to be conquered by the Moors for seven centuries? Do you think the people of the Balkans enjoyed 500 years of Turkish conquest and enslavement? Do you think the Serbs, Bulgars, etc, enjoyed watching their six-year old sons being kidnapped to become Janisarries? Denmark has every right and motivation to keep itself safe from hostile outsiders. Pity you can't see that.
it was not an attack on an ethnic nation state, it was an attack on a man who's source of income could be called from an opposing veiw an "enemy propagandist"
"it is composed of dozens of different states and politities all of which have the right to control their borders and exclude undesirables"
and who decides these borders? the might of armies? and so it was totally legitimate in your view for the moors to take what they need and "exclude undesirables"
"Denmark has every right and motivation to keep itself safe from hostile outsiders."
i just say all people have that right, its just i think a person who moves to some place with their family in order to settle down and live is less and out sider than an invading army
or do you also agree that every arab now has the right duty and obligation to kill americans and british and any one else in nato or the colalition of the willing?
Considering a cartoonist an "enemy propagandist" is a bit of a stretch I would think. As far as the war In Iraq goes, I opposed it from day one, as long-time readers of this website clearly know. To the extent that Americans, British, etc are killed by Arabs there, that responsibility can only be posited on the criminals who run Washington and London, etc. To the same extent that the people of Denmark are made unsafe (to say nothing of seeing their national culture diluted) by unwanted and unneeded foreigners in their midst the responsibility for this must be posited on foolish government polices that allow such arrivals in the first place. I don't see how making Denmark less Danish is a good thing for the Danish people. I guess we part company on the issue, that's fine. By the way, I would withdraw America from NATO if I could. It is an obsolete organization whose expansion has only served to futher antagonize and alienate Russia needlessly.
"I guess we part company on the issue, that's fine."
ha! well at least we stay civil about it, but indeed we have
Isn't it funny that there's Zero mention here at AntiWar.com of the biggest foreign policy story of the day: Danish Cartoon author attacked by crazed Muslim Somali.
Doesn't quite fit the template, 'eh? I thought the Muslims hated us because we had Troops stationed in the Middle East.
And those Danes? Why is it exactly that the Muslims hate them so much too? Is it because those Danes are just a bunch of "Warmongers"??
It's about the Culture Stupid!!
So you protect your culture with a better immigation policy, or no immigration, not by invading, Iraq, occupying Afghanistan etc… None of this prevented what just happened in Denmark did it? Don't invade the world and don't INVITE the world.
HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
what an ass you are!
in an article about a guy who revealed the largest secret nuclear weapons program outside the us and russia.
you come here as a "libertarian" to remind us that a single individual attacked another individual, as proof that we need to launch war on the very people who the secret nuclear weapons program in said article is being wielded against.
Perhaps a peaceful and fair partition of S.A. would have been better.
Mr.Dondero.
The heading of this post is “Daniel Ellsberg on Mordechai Vanunu’s Arrest”.
Dear "White Refugee", by what measure are your children more valuable than Palestinian children?
We're all "surplus populations" to the global oligarchs. Don't forget it. Know your real enemy.
It's DUMBDERO!!!!!!!
Ask him about Ron Paul.
And don't worry, he'll find his way back to the bottom of his bottle soon enough.
Mordechai Vanunu is the victim of massive and cruel state oppression. His case deserves far more public exposure than he has been given to date. Bravo to antiwar.com and Daniel Ellsberg for championing his case! Let's look forward to a time when Israel is compelled to comply with international law and open her nuclear weapons facilities to the IAEA – and she finally joins Iran as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"Is Israel forcing Gaza's men to impregnate their women, to procreate thousands of unwanted children? "
maybe they are to replace the "wanted children" who were killed?
the question should be why support colonial states at a time like this where demographics become the main weapon?
if you take any country in the world and import a foreign ruling minority do you not think both side would view demographics as their key to legitimacy.
how many children does the average settle family have?
i have visited a few and they were all more than six! and if you are concerned with "overpopulation" any one having more that three kids is a scourge
Ultimately, it is up to Israel to complete the job of conquest, or to keep the status quo and eventually be defeated. There is no reason to be excessively emotional about the Palestinians. If Israel wants the land for itself, it MUST remove its rival claimants by any means necessary, just as President Andrew Jackson removed the Cherokee in 1828, and numerous other conquerors throughout history have displaced native populations. If Israel allows the problem to fester so as not to upset liberal opinion, Israel will eventually be defeated and removed. And "eventually" may not be all that far away, either. Once Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by a nuclear weapons power, the game changes totally – Israel will forever lose the option of "Jacksonian" action. And this is the real reason why Israel is so concerned about Iranian nuclear weapons development.
To my knowledge, Israel wasn't giving Jackson 3 billion dollars a year to do it.
the analogy to the united states is informative, but falls short, primarily do to geography.
the continental united states provide for one a settlement was founded and defend, near endless expansion.
israel on the other had is on a tiny strip of fertile land, and all though the myth of "making the desert bloom" is in certain area's technically true but at an extreme cost both in capital and infrastructure.
but the question i have for you is, what is this end game you speak of by "…..to complete the job of conquest"
do you mean in the south to take gaza, the sinai, or suez… at which point you may as well say they need to occupy cairo to defend against Egyptian extremist who for some reason want to attack israel. and once you have troops in cairo you may will need to occupy all the delta.
to the east will they stop at the Jordan? i assume that any large scale displacement will lead to huge refugee camps just over the Jordan, so for the peace and security of israel, Amman will need to be occupied.
to the north, where will the army have to hold before they have security? beirut? i doubt it, damascus? nope once your past the antilebenon mountains its open plains to the Euphrates and we all know that israel need defensible borders (once it decides to enunciate them)
so at what point in this "job" of conquest do you break down the monolith of islam or "arabs" and say "hey these people are the ones fighting for their right to exist?
"Once Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by a nuclear weapons power,"
hamas and Hezbollah are local government/liberation movements.
the more they are governments the weaker they are the less any other state will provide them support, the more they are liberation movements the stronger they are. neither exist with out Israeli occupation.
the atomic bomb was developed over 60 years ago with chalk boards and adding machines…
at one point do those who are actually threaten with extinction, get the right to "defense" and "deterrence"
or do you just think the savage arab must be remove for a little more "lebensraum"
BULL SHIT peacegeek!
I read this same recycled piece some where else.
Ellsberg has become a LAZY journalist.
He NEVER BOTHERED to check Vanunu's WIKI page to learn ANYTHING new. I have been updating it for years-ever since I first Xed paths with Vanunu, in June 2005.
READ that story on my site June 18, 2008: 16 Days in Israel Palestine
Check Vanunu's WIKI page as most updates from 2006 are linked to MY WORK, which is all published first @ VANUNU ARCHIVES
http://wearewideawake.org/
Only in Solidarity do "we have it in our power to begin the world again."-Tom Paine
Eileen Fleming,
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com
Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"
pardon me peacegeek, i apologize for lambasting you for my righteous anger at Ellsberg, who claims Vanunu is his "hero, brother, friend" but didn't mention anything about his FREEDOM OF SPEECH TRIAL.
Otherwise, i agree with ALL you said; it has been my song too.
xoxe
As usual the US goevernment ,media, and comenntators are all silent about the imprisonment of some one who has told truth about the Israel’s possession of nuclear and mass destruction weapons which the US and Israeli governmewnts wish the American public not know about.Does not Vannu deserves the same attention from as Aung San Suu Kyi ?
Obama tells Burma junta to free jailed activist
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-11-15-burma-prisoner_N.htm
Three days after Vanunu emerged from 18 years in a tomb sized cell, On 24 April 2004, Haaretz correspondent, Uri Avnery wrote:
"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.
"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'.
"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?
"…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…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 2005 Vanunu told me:
"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.’
"Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection. 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. Everything inside was written in French, when I was there, almost twenty years ago.
"Back then, the Dimona descended seven floors underground. In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on.
"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."
LEARN MORE @ http://wearewideawake.org:
July 7, 2009: " Eileen Fleming is NOT on Facebook since she was Deactivated and VANUNU'S ONGOING ORDEAL"
http://wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_co…
America has protected Israeli nuke program for 40 years!
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/06/america-has-protected-israeli-nuke-program-for-40-//
I'm sure the Israelis view Vanunu as a traitor who should have been executed. If he had been an American, revealing classified details about our own US nukes, he would have got life imprisonment. If he were Russian or Chinese, he would have been shot. If Israeli law is deficient in not holding him for life, so be it, but the Israeli's are fully justified in preventing him from revealing any additional details that could enable an enemy to attack Israeli facilities. I'm sure that Vanunu knows plenty, too. Good info that would make it easier for Iran or others to destroy or raid various sites, or even attack in some way that all of us outsiders are unaware of. If you want to support a foreign traitor, go ahead, but at least recognize him for what he is.
This is absurd"….Iran has not been repeatedly bombing innocent human beings in other countries, it is Israel that has. It's been said, the whole show there is based on theft and murder & deception. If Israel Govt. stayed within reasonable borders or came to a FAIR deal with the Palestinians (that they have been murdering to steal more land) there would be NO TERRORISM whatsoever.
I have no problem recognizing him as a traitor to the Israeli regime- in the same way those involved with the plots to kill Hitler or spy on the Nazi regime were traitors. On the same vein then I hope you recognize all those who aid the US in any fashion in their occupations as traitors and collaborators- because- that is what they are and one doesn't have to be a "jihadist" or an "Al Qaeda" to want to kill such traitors to their countries.
"I'm not a traitor. I'm a man with a conscience who did what he did out of a deep belief after much thought and many doubts. But I knew that I had to do it, that I had no choice…somebody had to do it…I contributed my share by making public what the public ought to know and they shut my mouth behind the prison walls." -Mordechai Vanunu
THE REST of "What the World Needs to Know About Mordechai Vanunu"
Published first @ http://wearewideawake.org December 14, 2009:
http://wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_co…
“But the apparent mass murder of Afghan school children, including one as young as 11 years old, by a US-led group of troops, was pretty much blacked out in the American media. Especially blacked out was word from UN investigators that the students had not just been killed but executed, many of them after having first been rousted from their bedroom and handcuffed.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff01042010.html
An American soldier yesterday pleaded guilty to the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the killing of three members of her family in a village near Baghdad in March in one of the most brutal examples of attacks on civilians in Iraq.
The soldier, Specialist James Barker, also agreed to testify against three other accused soldiers. ”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/nov/16/usa.iraq1
“
You can be sure these rape/murder stories are but the tip-top of the iceberg. No US parent teaches their little boy "when you're a soldier overseas, don't rape the women!"
Vanunu is a traitor who should be hung from the highest tree in Israel.
This is what one gets for speaking the truth about Israel. I reckon it's about silencing dissent.
Within days of the announcement of a record 205 nominations for 2009’s Nobel Peace Prize, [one of several prizes endowed by Swedish industrialist and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel] perpetual nominee Mordechai Vanunu declined the honor in a letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Oslo:
I am asking the committee to remove my name from the nominations…I cannot be part of a list of laureates that includes Simon Peres…Peres established and developed the atomic weapon program in Dimona in Israel…Peres was the man who ordered [my] kidnapping…he continues to oppose my freedom and release…WHAT I WANT IS FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM….FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM I NEED NOW.
Peres and Machiavelli
In 1963, when Vanunu was nine years old the Zionists came to his home town of Marrakech, Morocco and convinced his Orthodox father to abandon his general store and pack up the first seven of his eleven children for the land of milk and honey. Instead, the Vanunu's were banished to the desert of Beesheva.
A few months later, Shimon Peres, then Israel's Deputy Minister of Defense met with President John Kennedy, inside the White House.
Kennedy told Peres, "You know that we follow very closely the discovery of any nuclear development in the region. This could create a very dangerous situation. For this reason we monitor your nuclear effort. What could you tell me about this?"
Peres replied, "I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first."
By September of 1986, Peres was convulsing over Vanunu, who had been employed as a lowly tech in his progeny; Israel’s clandestine underground nuclear weapons centre in the Negev called the Dimona.
Peres ordered the Mossad, to "Bring the son of a bitch back here."
Peres ordered Vanunu's kidnapping that included a clubbing, drugging and being flung upon an Israeli cargo boat back to Israel for a closed door trial.
THE REST of The Martyrdom of Vanunu: Machiavelli and Peres
http://wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_co…
The best blog always in th? nh?a serves information regarding products ads
thanks for aware us from this situation.Please update from more information, that will helps you us more.
Keyless entry locks also known as electronic door locks add an additional level of security for both homeowners and business owners.Keyless entry is the preferred and usual mode of dealing with door locks nowadays.