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An Open Letter to the People of Israel about Mordechai Vanunu
Dear friends,
I write to ask for your help in gaining the freedom of a good man, a
man of peace and a man of conscience.
In the Jewish scriptures there is great emphasis on justice and freedom and it is for such, for one man, that I write to seek your help.
He will not be aware that I am writing this Appeal, but I do so in the hope that, with your help, it will produce his freedom, and not cause more punishment and cruelty to be inflicted upon him.
I feel when I tell you the story, it will touch your hearts and there will be some among you who will be able to help him gain his freedom.
In May,2010, this man was returned to prison to serve three months for allegedly breaking his prison release restrictions and for speaking to Foreign Media. On Sunday July 11th , 2010, he had his first visit in seven weeks. His brother, Meir, was granted a 30 minute visit. There was a glass window between them and they spoke via the phone. He wore a prison uniform. He is held in the maximum security section. It holds the most notorious criminals in the country, for well known murder cases. About a dozen men are in severe isolation conditions.
He is in a cell by himself for 24 hours a day, with no window but with a small wire-covered crack at the top part of one wall. He gets an hour’s walk a day in a tiny yard. He was simply thrown into the cell by the security agents, the door was locked, and he was left there to suffer alone. He has not spoken to anyone in seven weeks and this visit was (apart from a short visit with his lawyer 6 weeks ago) the first conversation he had in seven weeks. His food is strictly limited, and he has only two books with him. Of course his spirits are down as a result of being put in such harsh, inhuman and cruel conditions.
His name is Mordechai Vanunu, and he is in an Israeli prison cell.
Mordechai is no stranger to prison. In l986 Mordechai Vanunu told the world that Israel had a nuclear weapons program and for that, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. He is the Israeli nuclear whistle blower and 24 years later, he continues to be punished for trying to warn Israelis and protect both Israel and the world from a nuclear weapons disaster.
Mordechai Vanunu served the full 18 years of his sentence. He spent eleven of those years in solitary confinement. Upon release, instead of allowing him to leave Israel, the Israeli government put severe restrictions upon him, including forbidding him to leave Israel and not to speak to foreign media.
Mordechai has now been put back in prison for three months for allegedly breaking these restrictions and speaking to the foreign media. He has 6 weeks left in these harsh prison conditions, and even upon release, he will have to remain in Israel until next April, 2011, when the restrictions will be reviewed and probably renewed yet again, as they have been renewed each year for the past 6 years.
Some people say Mordechai Vanunu will never be allowed to leave Israel, that he will die there, if indeed his spirit is not broken by his ill treatment, if he does not lose his sanity.
The Shabak continues to tell the Israeli Government that he is a security risk and must not be released. The Israeli Judiciary and government obey and keep him imprisoned.
Mordechai Vanunu is no risk to Israel’s national security. He has no nuclear secrets. I have asked some Israelis why they think Israel refuses to allow Mordechai Vanunu to leave Israel. The most frequent answer I get is that they feel that the Israeli government does not trust its citizens. They will hold Mordechai Vanunu forever if necessary to send the signal to all Israeli citizens to behave themselves.
If this is so, the strategy is working. To date only a few courageous Israeli people have raised their voices against the cruelty and injustice perpetrated upon Mordecai, and have called for him to be allowed to leave Israel.
I have met Mordechai many times since he was released from prison on April 21, 2004. He is a good man, a man of peace, with a true Gandhian spirit. Instead of punishing him, Israel should be proud of Mordechai Vanunu. I believe that future generations of Israelis will look back and realize that there lived among them a great visionary and a man of peace, not only for Israel, but for the human family.
It was with great joy that I nominated Mordechai Vanunu several times for the Nobel Peace Prize, as did many other prominent people over the last 24 years. He richly deserves the Nobel prize because he lives and acts in the true spirit of Alfred Nobel, who left his prize for those who would work for peace and disarmament.
However, it is with the deepest sadness that I acknowledge that in spite of many worldwide campaigns, Mordechai Vanunu continues, 24 years later, to be cruelly imprisoned and punished by the Israeli government.
I hope Mordechai Vanunu will be freed very soon. I place my hope in those Jewish and Israeli people who read this story and are moved to right a wrong, that they will demand that the Israeli government give Mordechai his freedom, and allow him to leave Israel.
Shalom,
Mairead Maguire
43 Comments so far
Show AllGood luck finding any kind of justice or compassion in Israel.
It's pathetic that there is no country that is "fearless" enough to grant Vanunu asylum or citizenship and facilitate his extraction from Israel. Barring more diplomatic methods, it seems it would be perfectly acceptable to "kidnap" him from Israel, since it was perfectly acceptable to kidnap him into Israel.
Brotherly love, understanding, peace, empathy. None of these words have room or meaning in NewSpeak. Those words and concepts are doubleplusungood in a world which worships blood spilled, drones, nukes, preemptive war for oil, mineral wealth and cheap labor.
Sadly, Israel is probably a forerunner of what the United States will be in a few years. We are nearly there now.
We are living Orwell's nightmare and in 2008, Vanunu emailed me:
"1984, yes I read it many times and many years ago. 1984 is here in 2008."
Every email Vanunu has ever written, snail mail received, phone call conversation and walk he has ever taken through east Jerusalem, has potentially been monitored 24/7, since his release from an Israeli prison in 2004.
During my first trip to east Jerusalem in June 2005, Vanunu told me that during the first two years of his 18 years in jail [most all in solitary confinement] a light shone above his head 24/7 in a tomb sized cell. When ever he closed his eyes a guard would come in and shine a brighter light into his face and say, "Just checking if you had committed suicide yet."
Thirty odd years from my first time, I reread Orwell's "1984" that was published in 1949.
I was struck at how much Vanunu reminded me of Winston Smith, Orwell's man with an independent thought that Big Brother; The Party incarnate found so threatening they tortured him beyond his endurance in order to break him, brainwash him and strip him of his humanity.
In Orwell's epic, Winston Smith played the role of the archetype of all threats to Big Brother; an individual with an open and free mind, independent thought, memory of history, a voice of dissent and willing to take bold action. Orwell's Big Brother tortured all threats in order to get inside their head and then to brainwash them into accepting doublethink as truth...
"Orwell meets Vanunu and The Industrial Military Media Security/Surveillance Complex" @ http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=860&Itemid=198
The only democracy in the Middle East doing this to one their own citizens!! What a beacon to the world Israel and the US are!!! Truly something for other countries to strive for!!
Israel is not-and never has been a Democracy!
In the May 28, 1993 edition of Yedioth Ahronoth, Ariel Sharon explained:
"The terms ‘democracy’ or ‘democratic’ are totally absent from the Declaration of Independence. This is not an accident. The intention of Zionism was not to bring democracy, needless to say. It was solely motivated by the creation in Eretz-Isrel of a Jewish state belonging to all the Jewish people and to the Jewish people alone. This is why any Jew of the Diaspora has the right to immigrate to Israel and to become a citizen of Israel."
Jeff Halper, American Israeli, co-founder and coordinator of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and Professor of Anthropology, explains:
"An ethnocracy is the opposite of a democracy, although it might incorporate some elements of democracy such as universal citizenship and elections. It arises when one particular group-the Jews in Israel, the Russians in Russia, the Protestants in pre-1972 Northern Ireland, the whites in apartheid South Africa, the Shi’ite Muslims in Iran, the Malay in Malaysia and, if they had their way, the white Christian fundamentalists in the US-seize control of the government and armed forces in order to enforce a regime of exclusive privilege over other groups in what is in fact a multi-ethnic or multi-religious society. Ethnocracy, or ethno-nationalism, privileges ethnos over demos, whereby one’s ethnic affiliation, be it defined by race, descent, religion, language or national origin, takes precedence over citizenship in determining to whom a county actually 'belongs.'"[6]
The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel was signed May 14, 1948 the day the British Mandate over Palestine expired and which affirms that the state of Israel:
"Will be based on freedom, justice, and peace as envisioned by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion...and will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, education and culture: it will safeguard the Holy places of all religions, and it will be faithful to the principals of the Charter of the United Nations."
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1566&Itemid=228
I don't hold out a great deal of hope for decency from a country that could do this to Vanunu yet turn around and appeal for clemency for Pollard. The petty spite of immoral nation states seems bottomless.
Vanunu represents one kind of hope for mankind.
"HOPE has two children.The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine
Because I have THAT kind of audacious hope I once again FAXED Obama, etc:
July 13, 2010
Dear Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Justice Prof. Yaakov Neeman, Attorney General Menahem Mazuz and President Obama,
Whereas in October 2009, President Obama agreed to persist in America’s four-decade-old ‘secret’ understanding that allows Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections,
Whereas in July 2010, President Obama pledged to sell Israel nuclear technology and other supplies, despite the fact that Israel is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,
Whereas there is increasing international pressure for Israel to be more transparent about its nuclear arsenal,
Whereas Israel locked Mordechai Vanunu back up in solitary 23 May, 2010 for speaking to foreign media in 2004,
Whereas on 18 June 2010, Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East Programme stated:
“Mordechai Vanunu should not be in prison at all, let alone be held in solitary confinement in a unit intended for violent criminals. Mordechai Vanunu is a prisoner of conscience. The prison authorities might claim that he has been put in isolation to protect him from the risk of attack by other inmates, but if the Israeli government is really concerned for his safety it should release him without delay. His re-imprisonment is both harsh and unjustified. The restrictions on Mordechai Vanunu arbitrarily limit his rights to freedom of movement, expression and association and are therefore in breach of international law. They should be lifted and he should be allowed to start his life again as a free man.”
Whereas 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 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.”
Whereas, in 2005, Vanunu told me:
“President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. 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.”
Whereas if Israel had allowed Vanunu the right to leave Israel in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, or 2009 and fade into history, instead of continuing to make it, I would not have written my third book:
BEYOND NUCLEAR: Some of my Experiences of Mordechai Vanunu and the Holy Land: 2005-2010, which documents Vanunu’s FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial and acts of individual conscience vis-à-vis government policies, secret police operations and judicial decisions.
BEYOND NUCLEAR was also written as a matter of my destiny, as I was NOT a reporter until after I met Vanunu!
I established my website three weeks after my first of seven trips to Israel Palestine, compelled to do what THE MEDIA has failed at: report about life under military occupation and the reasons for the Christian EXODUS from the Holy Land.
Whereas the longer Israel denies Vanunu his full freedom, the larger his legend and greater international compassion will grow; thus the time is NOW to FREE VANUNU!
Most sincerely and in solidarity with Micah 6:8: “What does God require? He has told you o’man! Be JUST! Be Merciful! And walk humbly with your Lord.”
Eileen Fleming, Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Staff Member of Salem-news.com
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com and Dandelionsalad.wordpress.com
Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
http://www.youtube.com/user/eileenfleming
FAX Numbers:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
+972 2 566 4838
Minister of Justice Prof. Yaakov Neeman
+972 2 628 7757
Attorney General Menahem Mazuz
+972 2 530 3367
+972 2 627 4481
President Obama
1-202 456-2461
Mairead Maguire, got the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976, when it meant something.
When it was awarded to Obama, a year ago, I decided it too had been bought.
Obama was given a Mandate and he has failed miserably!
In his congratulatory message to President Obama upon being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Israeli President Shimon Peres stated:
"Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire world in such a short while with such profound impact. You provided all of humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that there is a Lord in heaven and believers on earth. Under your leadership, peace became a real and original agenda. And from Jerusalem, I am sure all the bells of engagement and understanding will ring again. You gave us a license to dream and act in a noble direction." [1]
Within days of the announcement for 2009’s Nobel Peace Prize, twenty-two time 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." [2]
In 1994, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Peres were all awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for playing a part in achieving the Oslo Declaration of Principles. According to the preamble of the DOP, peace was to be based on mutual respect and reconciliation.
Alfred Nobel’s intention was to reward people with a moral backbone and he hoped to create icons and examples to humankind. Here's hoping President Obama seizes his Nobel Prize as a mandate from Oslo and also hold Israel accountable for past sins of omission and obfuscations.
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, 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."
The rest @ http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1451&Itemid=225
Mordechai Vanunu, is being made an example of; and is clearly terrorized by his country, Israel.
In a previous imprisonment, Amnesty International called for his immediate and unconditional release, stating that "The organisation considers Mordechai Vanunu to be a prisoner of conscience." Nominated many times for the Nobel Peace Prize, Daniel Ellsberg has referred to him as "the preeminent hero of the nuclear era".
In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu traveled to Sydney, Australia, living in a hostel in Kings Cross, working as a hotel dishwasher and later as a taxi driver. While there, he met Anglican clergyman the Reverend John McKnight, a pastor who worked the streets among the homeless and the drug addicted. Vanunu began to attend his church and - though born the son of a rabbi - chose to convert to Christianity. In ceremony, Vanunu was baptized as John Crossman. At this writing, John Crossman wants to be allowed to travel away from Israel, perhaps back to Australia.
Born to a Jewish family, Leonard Cohen - Canadian poet, musician & songwriter - spent some years in a Zen Buddhist monastery. Among his later achievements was the haunting song we know as "Suzanne". In the middle of that work we find these words.
And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him,
You want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.
According to Eileen Flemming, who has interviewed him several times in recent years, he has become an atheist.
Just keeping the record straight, since he isn't free to respond at this time.
peace.
Yes, in Nov. 2009 Vanunu Youtubed messaged me his spin of 1 Corinthians 13, and edited out the word LOVE and replaced it with FREEDOM-I did not publish the entire message, but this will give you the idea and you can read more @
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1510&Itemid=227
vanunuvmjc
1 FREEDOM 13:1-13
If I speak in the tongues of men and angels,
but have not FREEDOM,
I have become sounding brass or a tinkling symbol.
And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains,
but have not FREEDOM, I am nothing.
1 FREEDOM 13:1-13
If I speak in the tongues of men and angels,
but have not FREEDOM,
I have become sounding brass or a tinkling symbol.
And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains,
but have not FREEDOM, I am nothing.
Catch up:
Vanunu's Ongoing Persecution in Israel
July 21, 2010
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/072110a.html
'
Mordechai Vanunu should be nominated for the next NOBEL PEACE PRIZE...............let the world see and honor a man who has/is being tortured for revealing the TRUTH.
Let us honor and remember him now, before these Jews crucify him.
/
In 2007, after Bishop Desmond Tutu-who in 1984 received the Nobel for his courageous and fearless opposition against the South African apartheid system- nominated Vanunu for the Nobel Peace Prize, Vanunu told me he didn't want the prize if Israel refused his right to go and accept it!
Vanunu wrote:
"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."
Nobel Peace Price? Are you kidding? They only award those to warmongers, don't you know?
PLEASE listen to Vanunu speak for himself in 2005, 2006, 2008 video interviews, learn all about his FREEDOM of SPEECH Trial in the 'democracy' of Israel and WHY Israel persists to persecute him @
http://www.wearewideawake.org
THE VANUNU SAGA 2005-2010!
And then PLEASE petition your political reps to do something to help FREE Vanunu NOW and request THE MEDIA to report accurately!
Much gratitude to any who Do Something for:
Only in Solidarity do "We have it in our power to begin the world again"-Tom Paine
And people wonder why a large number of people in the world refer to the U.S. (which is the same thing as saying "Israel") as "The Great Satan."
Because it is the Truth. We ARE the Great Satan. The U.S. - and its proxy state, Israel - are the biggest evils the world has ever seen. We are the ultimate terrorist states, bestriding the globe with our militaries, our nuclear arsenals, our flouting of any and all laws, our holier-than-thou exceptionalism, our torture and rendition, our despicable "collateral damage" on a daily basis..the list is too long. i grow sick even typing it all.
Soon, hopefully, the Great Satan will be beaten down by good.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross."
Sinclair Lewis, "It Cant Happen Here", 1935
When Jesus said: "Pick up your cross and follow me," everyone back then understood he was issuing a POLITICAL statement, for the main roads in Jerusalem were lined with crucified agitators, rebels, dissidents and any others who disturbed the status quo of the Roman Occupying Forces.
Jesus also was never a Christian; in fact the term 'Christian' was not even coined until the days of Paul, about 3 decades after Jesus walked the earth as a man. Jesus was a social justice, radical revolutionary Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who rose up and challenged the job security of the Temple authorities by teaching the people they did NOT need to pay the priests for ritual baths or sacrificing livestock to be OK with God; for God already LOVED them just as they were: poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under Military Occupation.
What got Jesus crucified was disturbing the status quo of the Roman Occupying Forces by teaching the subversive concept that God preferred the poor, diseased, outcasts, widows, orphans, refugees and prisoners all living under Military Occupation above the elite and arrogant.
The early followers and lovers of Jesus were called members of THE WAY-being THE WAY he taught one should be; Nonviolent, a Peacemaker and his mother, sisters, brothers were those that did the will of the Father, and "What does God require? He has told you o'man! Be just, be merciful, and walk humbly with your Lord." -Micah 6:8
Right-on, Eileen. And thank you for the tireless work that you do!
An open letter to the people of ISRAEL:
you have been usurped by Zionism. You are not the chosen people, you are the condemned people. Leave your fascist state. Leave before it's too late.
You see clearly.
Except that a huge majority of people in Israel, as well as Jews worldwide, SUPPORT all this. There is no "usurption" by Zionism - they ARE Zionism.
What an amazing and horrific story. Israel, in its harsh dealings with Gaza, has often been compared to the former apartheid state of South Africa. After reading this account by both Mairead Maguire and Eileen Fleming regarding Israel's treatment of Mordechai Vanunu, it becomes immediately clear that comparing Israel to South Africa is entirely justified. Yet this story about Mr. Vanunu has received, as far as I can tell, almost no coverage by the corporate media and that includes the so-called liberal media which is composed of people like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.
Ms. Fleming's analogy of the treatment that Mr. Vanunu has received at the hands of the state of Israel to that of Winston Smith is also most warranted. Why has no one in the White House Press Corps questioned Obama about this? Or could this have been one of the reasons why Helen Thomas was forced to resign as the administration was perhaps terrified that Ms. Thomas may have dared to actually raise this subject to either Obama or his press secretary Robert Gibbs?
Ms. Thomas committed the 'unpardonable sins' of daring to address the fact that any Jew without any historical connection to Israel is encouraged to settle-as in colonize-upon legally owned Palestinian land.
I learned about, Aliyah, which means ‘going up,’ during my first of seven trips to Israel and occupied Palestine in June 2005 from an American Jewess who had taken the deal and she informed me:
"I get fifteen hundred shekels or about thirty-six hundred dollars a year in increments to help with my expenses. I can apply for unemployment benefits after seven months, as long as I look for a job. I just completed Ulpan, which was five hundred hours of Hebrew language immersion studies that took five months, five hours a day, for five weeks. I get subsidized rent and just moved out of the Absorption Center Projects. All the new immigrants get room, utilities, and three meals a day for the first five months in Israel. We also receive free medical care and all the doctors here are dedicated. We can go to the university with 100 percent of the tuition paid by the government. College is much cheaper here; it’s about three thousand to four thousand dollars a year. Until I am thirty years old, I can receive up to three years of education for my master’s degree."
On February 9, 2009, Helen Thomas, asked President Obama about Middle Eastern states with nukes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3Oz8M_FnV4
Obama blew her off stating he didn’t want "to speculate" and her 'colleagues' remained mute, but the US State Department has published reams of material about President Kennedy's concern about the Israeli bomb and in 2005, Vanunu, blew my mind when he told me:
"President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection.
"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."
Three days after Vanunu emerged from 18 years in a windowless tomb sized cell, 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 for the prevention of nuclear proliferation."
PLEASE listen to Vanunu tell you more in 2005, 2006, 2008 video interviews freely streaming @ http://wearewideawake.org
The Vanunu Saga: 2005-2010
no way the killers of count folke bernadotte will show any mercy to mordechai vanunu.
PLEASE do not give up-for leaders can be lead and if everyone who reads this will please phone, email, FAX their political reps to help FREE Vanunu NOW and contact The MSM to report accurately, we all can help Vanunu, but only in Solidarity do "We have it in our power to begin the world again"-Tom Paine
PS: We the people are suppose to be the government and in 1796, George Washington warned US:
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all...and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave...a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bslmk5jipGA
I think the Palestinians are a write off. They are identical to the American Indians. Settlers keep slipping in around them, building more and more walls to box them in. One firecracker gets tossed over the wall and it's answered by F-16 dropping bombs.
For those who salivate at the demise of the USA: It's not likely; but one thing's for sure: We're all destined to be dirt poor as US citizens if we let this trillion dollar annual spending by the Pentagon go on. While the dollar is certain to eventually collapse; me thinks they'll just switch horses and create an Americo North American currency and leave all of us with dollar retirements holding the bag.
While the Empire may crumble, it's not going to collapse overnight. Not with dishonesty like the PTT (plunge protection team) that buys up stocks artificially like Bernnie Madeoff did every time the Dow sinks under 9000. Not with the Federal Reserve Bank printing fake money every day.
The Spanish Empire Lasted what? Over Four hundred years this way? We've probably got one or two hundred to go. (Except that since the Military leaves the largest carbon footprint and consumes the most petroleum, we may see a global human extinction event start about 2050-2100.)
The only hope, imho, is to re-educate Americans on their past under the weak central government which ruled from 1775-1789. Freedom and Liberty were truly available for all during this period (citizens, that is). Cut off the funding and the beast will shrink into a gecko.
Otherwise, I think we have to recognize that we're in another arms race, with IsNOTreal checking in now at number three or number five depending on who you talk to. One thing's for sure: they didn't build up this monster for defense. I fully expect both China and Israel to invade their neighboring countries in the coming decades. Brazil and Turkey are getting frisky too. Like China, they've just got too much money pouring in.
Which is bad news for the world, because as we keep permitting new entrants into the nuclear club, we enhance the risk that somebody will make a mistake and start an exchange. Even though it appears, according to Ray McGovern, Iran has no nuclear weapons program anymore, the warhawks in congress and the white house have positioned us to invade Iran.
It'll be another Iraq. A disaster for the taxpayer and for the victims who live in a country which is exporting oil too cheap, and who doesn't want to take worthless dollars for it.
That's what this is really all about, imho. The "Gunboat Dollar" is not going to stand up if an Iraq or Afganistan starts pumping cheap oil. Globalnational oil monsters like BP in the Caspian Sea, bechtel, Unocal, Haliburton, Exxon, etc, have to monopolize the distribution, otherwise oil will become almost worthless with this global depression that nobody wants to admit is going on. When you have over one-hundred bank failures a year going on for the past two years, you are in a Depression, not just a recession. When you have to start fake wars just to prop up industry and keep a few people working at home, you are in a Depression.
Our biggest problem as Homo Sapiens I think, is we lie all the time. Even to ourselves. As an example, I think most people suspect their may not be a God. But we keep paying homage to foolish superstition; we keep pretending Christianity and Islam are religions of peace and forgiveness, when history clearly shows they are anything but that.
Perhaps if we all became atheists, we might realize we have more in common with each other than we ever suspected when we were slaving to religions who all teach that only "the chosen/saved" ones deserve to inherit the Earth, and deserve to inherit some fictitious afterlife in a non- existent heaven or hell.
What a bunch of rubbish. We are on our own on this little blue-marble. No God is going to help us; because we don't deserve help. If there were more powerful forces at work in the universe, I'm sure they would have looked over here at this train-wreck called Earth, and decided to "rig for silent-running" until we destroyed ourselves and the universe was safe from far-right aggression again. If we don't control our numbers, that's what's going to happen: a Global Die off.
Passive-Religion may provide certain morality and benefits to society, it's true. But how do you stop the fundies from hi-jacking it, and beating the drums for Holy War all the time? Because that's what they want right now: Global Holy War, and I'm not sure we can stop them in 2012. A far right wing nut could start another world war if we aren't careful. And where are the so-called "Religious-Leaders" condemning war, torture, kidnapping and unconstitutional surveillance by the state?" They're mute! Every single smelly-old-man-in-a-robe, doesn't speak a word against these crimes, even as they pretend to know the will of the great bearded face in the sky...
Well, it's our blue ball and we should just take it and go home. This game is rigged for "The One-Percent-Club" and apparently they don't care how much pollution Wall-Street or the "Pentagram" produces that our posterity will have to breathe. The US was founded on the principle of "Self-Government" the opposite of Corporate Tyranny of Citizens by the likes of giants like the British East India Company and today's BP. It's time to take our government back by declaring war on the couch potatoes. Print out a copy of these CD stories and hand them to these mindless drones. Leave them laying around everywhere you go. Post em. Stick em on cars. Leave em in doctor's offices.
Do it!
TJ
The Palestinians are not a write off. There are only 8 million jews is a sea of hundreds of millions of Arabs. The worls is changing faster. Manufacturing and research and devrlopement is all going to Asia. The Jews better figure out how to corrupt the Chinese is this thing is gonna last. Israel is far weaker than you think. If Turkey, Egypt, and the Saudis decide to stand up to us it will all come crumbling down.
"The only hope, imho, is to re-educate Americans on their past under the weak central government which ruled from 1775-1789."
Who exactly is going to re-educate them? Glenn Beck? Rush Limbass? Bill O'Reilly? Sean Hannity?
dup deleted
No Reverend,
Those re-writers of history like "Faux News" won't be viewable to 150 million Americans who can't pay their power bill, or don't have a place to sleep anymore.
If you hand a dollar to a homeless person, make sure it has a CD article stapled to it. Make sure you expand the comments so they can read it.
it's time to fight fire with fire. We outnumber the elite 100 to one.
TJ
"He is in a cell by himself for 24 hours a day, with no window but with a small wire-covered crack at the top part of one wall. He gets an hour’s walk a day in a tiny yard. He was simply thrown into the cell by the security agents, the door was locked, and he was left there to suffer alone. He has not spoken to anyone in seven weeks and this visit was (apart from a short visit with his lawyer 6 weeks ago) the first conversation he had in seven weeks. His food is strictly limited, and he has only two books with him. Of course his spirits are down as a result of being put in such harsh, inhuman and cruel conditions."
Very sad; however, he's just like the 11,000+ Palestinians who also rot in Israeli jails and whose only crime is not to be Chosen People.
Israel is, without a doubt, the worst social experiment in the history of mankind.
Dear Mr. Obama....you will become PRESIDENT when Mr. Vanunu is freed.
Now, we all heard what mr. netenyahu said about the United States, "so easliy manipulated" and all.
Since you have the PEACE PRIZE, Mr. Obama please use it for something worthwhile.
It would be so easy for you to manipulate mr. netenyahu, and besides, he deserves it.
A man like Mr. Vanunu, is PRICELESS, but o.k. if I have to put a number to it....how about, say...3 BILLION?
Please act like Teddy Roosevelt; talk softly to mr. netenyahu, but remind him of that 3 BILLION dollar stick.
NO HUMANITY= no funding. Start the timeclock and that 3 BILLION loses a $500,000 every day that Mr. Vanunu stays in prison.
Yeah, I know it sounds like extortion, but Israel is the kidnaapper, and that's how kidnappers work.
Every day that the PEACE PRIZE sits idle, its value diminishes too.
In my second book, I wrote:
On February 22, 2006, in a Jerusalem court it was revealed that Israel had asked Microsoft to hand over all the details of Vanunu's Hotmail account before a court order had been obtained, while eluding that Vanunu was being investigated for espionage.
Vanunu wrote:
"Microsoft obeyed the orders and gave them all the details…three months before I was arrested and my computers were confiscated. It is strange to ask Microsoft to give this information before obtaining the court order to listen to my private conversations. It means they wanted to go through my emails in secret, or maybe, with the help of the secret services, the Shaback, Mossad.”
Vanunu's attorney also proved that the police had misled the judges who gave the orders to arrest him, to search his room, to go through his email, confiscate his computers and that the police also misled Microsoft to believe they were helping in a case of espionage.
Vanunu explained, “The State came to the court with two special secret Government orders; Hisaion [documents or information that are deemed confidential by the government and kept from the court, the defendant, and lawyers.] This allows the prosecution to keep documents related to my court hearing secret. One was from the Minister for Interior Security and one from the Minister of Defense."
When I questioned Vanunu, regarding his Attorney, Michael Sfard’s requests to Police Representative Mr. Peterburg, to specifically state what type of espionage activity the police alluded Vanunu was being accused of, Vanunu replied in an email:
"The policeman did not have any answers and said that he brought all the evidence to the court. When Sfard asked him again about any material related to the 'espionage' [charge] Peterburg had no answers. Sfard proved that the police had misled the judges who gave the orders to arrest me: to search my room, to go through my email, to confiscate my computers and [that they] misled Microsoft to believe they are helping in a case of espionage."
Shortly after being released from 18 years in a tomb sized cell, Vanunu said, "I am the same man as I used to be in the prison, defending my right to freedom of speech. That was my fight for 18 years, all the time demanding the right to speak. That’s what I did and continue to do now that I’m free. The Israel government continue to pursue me, don’t want to let me go free after 18 years. I don’t have any more secrets, so the Israeli government should realize this case is over, dead --they should let me go.”
The day before Vanunu returned was sent back to 3 months in solitary confinement he emailed me:
From: Vanunu Mordechai J C.
To: [me]
Date: Sat, May 22, 2010 at 5:10 AM
Subject: SHAME ON YOU
SHAME ON YOU.
ISRAEL VERY STUPID SPIES.
MOSSAD SHABACK FOR PUTTING ME BACK IN PRISON AFTER 24 YEARS FOR SPEAKING THE TRUTH.
SHAME ON YOU. ISRAEL MEDIA STUPID SPIES, HAAREZ EDIOT AHARONOT MAARIVE FOR SELF DECEPTION.
SHAME ON YOU. ISRAEL DEMOCRACY, KNESET=BET KNESET=SINAGOUGS DEMOCRACY FOR NOT LEARNING IN 2000 YEARS THAT THE BASIC RIGHT IN DEMOCRACY IS FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
SHAME ON YOU. ALL WORLD MEDIA BBC PPC CNN ABC CBS NBC FOX SKY HERALD TRIBUNE NEW YORK TIMES AND ALL THE WORLD MEDIA NRK NHK STA WD ZDF 24 FRANCE ALZAJJIRA SUNDAY TIMES FOR LET SUCH CASE HAPPENING AND NOT PROTECT FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
SHAME ON YOU ALL THE ARABS STUPID SPIES FROM EGYPT TO DUBAI SAUDI,LEBANON.JORDAN FOR LET ME GO BACK TO PRISON.
SHAME ON YOU. US SENATE CONGRESS WHITE HOUSE. UN IAEA MOHAMED ELBARADY FOR NOT PROTECTING MY FREEDOM.
SHAME ON YOU ALL THE RELIGIOUS STUPID SPIES JEWS, CHRISTIAN, MUSLIMS, BIG SHAME ON YOU FOR NOT BRINGING MY RELEASE IN 24 YEARS, RELIGION IS BIG BULLSHIT SHOW,
SHAME ON YOU.ALL THE WORLD STUPID SPIES CIA FBI MI5 MI6 AND ALL THE STUPID SPIES OF EVERY STATE WHO WANT ME BACK IN PRISON YOU WILL NOT GET ANY THING FROM ME.
FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM WILL SURVIVE AND CONTINUE FOR EVER,
VMJC FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM I NEED NOW.
VANUNU MORDECHAI John Crossman.
KIDNAPPED IN ROME SEP' 30 TH'-1986.
18 YEARS IN ISRAEL PRISON.OUT IN APR'-21-2004.
Waiting In East Jerusalem. To Be Free, To Leave.
In his congratulatory message to President Obama upon being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Israeli President Shimon Peres stated:
"Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire world in such a short while with such profound impact. You provided all of humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that there is a Lord in heaven and believers on earth. Under your leadership, peace became a real and original agenda. And from Jerusalem, I am sure all the bells of engagement and understanding will ring again. You gave us a license to dream and act in a noble direction."
Within days of the announcement for 2009’s Nobel Peace Prize, twenty-two time 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."
In 1994, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Peres were all awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for playing a part in achieving the Oslo Declaration of Principles. According to the preamble of the DOP, peace was to be based on mutual respect and reconciliation.
Alfred Nobel’s intention was to reward people with a moral backbone and he hoped to create icons and examples to humankind. Here's hoping President Obama seizes his Nobel Prize as a mandate from Oslo and also hold Israel accountable for past sins of omission and obfuscations.
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, 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."
On April 5, 2009, President Obama stood on the world stage in Prague and admitted, "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act…When we fail to pursue peace, then it stays forever beyond our grasp. We know the path when we choose fear over hope. To denounce or shrug off a call for cooperation is an easy but also cowardly thing to do. That’s how wars begin. That’s where human progress ends…the voices of peace and progress must be raised together…Human destiny will be what we make of it…Words must mean something."
Obama's Mandate from and Vanunu's letter to: 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Committee @
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1451&Itemid=225
PLEASE phone, email, fax Obama and your reps to help FREE VANUNU Now!
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
Any Senator
(202) 224-3121
Any Representative
(202) 225-3121
E-Mail Congress:
http://www.congress.org
FAX:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
+972 2 566 4838
Minister of Justice Prof. Yaakov Neeman
+972 2 628 7757
Attorney General Menahem Mazuz
+972 2 530 3367
+972 2 627 4481
Snail Mail:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
Office of the Prime Minister
3 Kaplan St.
Hakirya,
Jerusalem 91950
Israel
Email: bnetanyahu@knesset.gov.il
Minister of Justice, Prof. Yaakov Neeman
Ministry of Justice
29 Salah al-Din Street
Jerusalem 91010
Israel
Email: sar@justice.gov.il , neeman@hfn.co.il
Attorney-General, Menahem Mazuz
Ministry of Justice
29 Salah al-Din Street
Jerusalem 91010,
Israel
Other email addresses to Israel that I have been using:
minister@mod.gov.il,
zlivni@knesset.gov.il,
adichter@knesset.gov.il,
aatias@knesset.gov.il,
binyaminb@knesset.gov.il,
eyishay@knesset.gov.il,
gezra@knesset.gov.il,
iherzog@knesset.gov.il,
yedri@knesset.gov.il,
mshitrit@knesset.gov.il,
gmagadla@knesset.gov.il,
ravraham@knesset.gov.il,
ssimhon@knesset.gov.il,
shaulm@knesset.gov.il,
zaevb@knesset.gov.il,
reitanhantman@knesset.gov.il,
rbaron@knesset.gov.il,
ybenyizri@knesset.gov.il,
izchakec@knesset.gov.il,
ytamir@knesset.gov.il,
mwahaba@knesset.gov.il,
matanv@knesset.gov.il,
mnahari@knesset.gov.il,
Dover@court.gov.il,
dover@mfa.gov.il,
dover@mod.gov.il,
Know this:
This morning I updated Vanunu’s WIKIPEDIA page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu
Under IMPRISONMENT, I posted:
On 21 July 2010, regarding Mordechai Vanunu’s three month sentence in solitary it was reported that “Some Israeli journalists suspect that the harshness of Vanunu’s treatment was, in part, a reprisal from powerful figures in Israel who were embarrassed by the breach in security that Vanunu’s action had revealed…[and] Vanunu also complained about the unwillingness of powerful U.S. news organizations to present his case to the American people.”[1]
The link led to:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/072110a.html
A few hours later I checked WIKI and the above had been deleted-and this is NOT the first time my work has been censored by WIKI-Learn much more @
Mordechai Vanunu, Mainstream Media, Wikipedia and a PS: To the Book Publishing World
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1762&Itemid=234
Eileen Fleming, Producer “30 Minutes with Vanunu” and “13 Minutes with Vanunu”
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Staff Member of Salem-news.com
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com and Dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/
Author of “Keep Hope Alive” and “Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory”
http://www.youtube.com/user/eileenfleming
Only in Solidarity do “we have it in our power to begin the world again.”-Tom Paine
I laughed aloud with uncontainable joy at Mairead's letter. Her history makes me believe the reality of what she describes, and that she would tell the truth so simply and the conclusions of her heart so hopefully gives me hope.
I laughed aloud with uncontainable joy at Mairead's letter. Her history makes me believe the reality of what she describes, and that she would tell the truth so simply and the conclusions of her heart so hopefully gives me hope.
"HOPE has two children.The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine
PLEASE Do Something: phone, email, fax your political reps to Help FREE VANUNU and alert the corporate MEDIA your read/watch to learn the facts @ http://wearewideawake.org/ THE VANUU SAGA 2005-2010!