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Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Israeli Who Revealed Nuke Secrets Hailed

Anti-nuclear activists from around the world rallied outside Mordechai Vanunu's prison Tuesday, a day before his release, praising the former reactor technician as a hero for revealing Israel's weapons secrets 18 years ago. Several counterdemonstrators burned Vanunu posters nearby, but they were quickly dispersed by police. Motorists slowed down and shouted epithets at the Vanunu supporters, among them British actress Susannah York and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland. ``You feel, 'Here is a hero for our times, a man who cannot be silenced,''' York said. ``I just say, 'Welcome back to life Mordechai.''' Vanunu is considered a traitor by many Israelis, however, and his attorney expressed concern for his safety after his release. After Vanunu walks out of the Shikma Prison in Ashkelon on Wednesday, he will have to comply with travel restrictions and other constraints, or risk arrested. Israel argues he is a security threat, though Vanunu has said he has no more secrets to reveal.

In 1986, Vanunu leaked details and pictures of Israel's alleged nuclear weapons program to The Sunday Times of London. Based on his account, experts said at the time that Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. The revelations undercut Israel's long-standing policy of neither confirming nor denying its nuclear capability. Vanunu was abducted to Israel by the Mossad secret service and convict in solitary confinement. Vanunu had hoped to leave the country, but he will not be able to travel abroad for at least a year, speak with foreigners or approach Israeli ports or borders. He also will be barred from discussing his work at Israel's Dimona reactor. Vanunu was given a map of Israel marking the areas that are off-limits to him, the Defense Ministry said.

Vanunu will live in a luxury apartment complex in Jaffa, an old seaport and today part of Tel Aviv. Jaffa has both Arab and Jewish residents, and Vanunu's apartment will be near several churches. Vanunu, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew, converted to Christianity in the mid-1980s. The Andromeda Hill complex has 170 apartments, and tenants include both wealthy foreigners and local residents. It was unclear who is paying for Vanunu's apartment. Vanunu has been embraced as a hero by the anti-nuclear movement. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and was legally adopted by an American couple who mistakenly thought this would give him U.S. citizenship.

Among the 50 demonstrators Tuesday was Shinji Noma, from Hiroshima, Japan, which was hit by a U.S. nuclear bomb at the end of World War II. Noma, 41, said he has exchanged letters with Vanunu for the past five years. ``He wrote to me that his act was to stop a Hiroshima in the Middle East,'' Noma said. Other anti-nuclear activists, including British playwright Harold Pinter (politics) (War Against Iraq?) and actress Julie Christie, sent messages to coincide with Vanunu's impending release.

But there is little sympathy for him in Israel, a country obsessed with security. Defending the restrictions imposed on Vanunu, Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres, who spearheaded Israel's nuclear program in the 1950s and 1960s, said Vanunu "violated norms and betrayed his country." "This is justice,'' Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told Army Radio. Yoav Loeff, of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which is representing Vanunu, said he is worried about Vanunu's safety. Loeff said he did not know of any special safety measures planned. Police did not return a message seeking comment. Also Tuesday, authorities briefly detained a CNN crew in Dimona, site of the nuclear reactor. A CNN spokesman called the incident a "misunderstanding."

- Mordechai Vanunu: The Sunday Times articles



- Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb: "This was a difficult book for Avner Cohen to write. As an Israeli, he had to break the code of silence that surrounds the discussion of nuclear weapons in his homeland. But he has done a superb job of laying out the political history of Israel's nuclear program from its foundation in 1950 through the acceptance by the United States of Israel as a nuclear-weapon state in 1970. Cohen has achieved the impossible. With ''Israel and the Bomb,'' he has written a scholarly treatise that includes over 1,200 footnotes, yet reads like a novel." Lawrence Korb, New York Times Book Review, Nov. 1, 1998.

Posted by Nick @ 21:13 GMT

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