Mordechai Vanunu

Israel’s Secret Nuclear Program and Its Bitter Revenge

I was fortunate to meet with Mordechai on my recent visit to Israel and to speak with him not only about his own situation but of the great dangers of a future nuclear war in the Middle East.

Mordechai Vanunu is a former Israeli and a former Jew*. As a man of great courage and integrity, Vanunu decided years ago that he could not tolerate Israel’s many and repeated violations of international law and that because of the work he had done, he had a civic responsibility to tell the world what he knew about Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program.

Consequently, Vanunu decided to become a Christian and renounce his Israeli citizenship. And, he went to London to reveal his story.

On October 5, 1986, the entire front page of the London Sunday Times was all about Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program, complete with pictures.

Mordechai Vanunu had become a “nuclear whistleblower.” Vanunu believes, and rightly so, that Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program was setting the region on a course that would eventually result in nuclear proliferation leading to nuclear war.

Israeli nuclear facility at Dimon in Negev Desert

Like other major whistleblowers to whom we owe so much (Daniel Ellsberg from the past and Sibel Edmonds more recently come to mind in our own country) Vanunu acted out of conscience and not at all for personal gain. Indeed, he was made to pay a tremendous price and he is still being forced into submission now 22 years later.

The Israelis enticed Vanunu into a “honey trap” with their American-pretending Mossad agent –– Cheryl Hanin Bentov, “Cindy,” now said to be living comfortably thanks to the Israelis and the U.S. in Florida.

After enticing him into an affair, “Cindy” convinced Vanunu to go with her on a “vacation” to Rome.

There, Mossad agents drugged and kidnapped him. In contemptuous violation of international law, they smuggled him secretly on a ship to Israel.**

In a secret trial he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. For 11 of those years Vanunu was kept in solitary confinement in conditions that Amnesty International characterized as “cruel, inhuman, and degrading.”

Finally, after protests throughout the world and Amnesty adopting him as a special “Prisoner of Conscience,” Vanunu was released in 2004.

But the Israelis then did what they seem to relish. They used various new legal tricks to make it a crime for Vanunu to speak with foreign journalists or even to travel a few miles to pray in Bethlehem at Christmas time.

Supposedly, according to the Israelis, this single man whom they kidnapped and imprisoned for 18 years, was even now so dangerous that he had to be further deprived of his basic human rights, and confined in Jerusalem where he is shunned and ostracized by most Israelis. Indeed, new efforts are underway to imprison Vanunu again after all he has already been subjected to.

Mordechai was right and he has certainly earned the right to be listened to for his heroic and continuing acts of conscience. For whatever reasons, the Israelis are the ones who introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East.

It is Israel that repeatedly violated international law and even today it is Israel that continues to lie about its nuclear weapons program and refuse any and all forms of international inspection. It is Israel, in fact, that has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the NPT. Iran has not only signed this treaty and, year after year, allowed and cooperated with international inspections. Iran, in fact, has not even been charged with violating the NPT which it has carefully lived up to.

But more than anything else the NPT is preventing nuclear war in the Middle East, which all of us should be striving to achieve. That is one of the main reasons I decided at this time to see for myself what is happening in Israel and in Occupied Palestine.

Vanunu displays copy of the original newspaper in which he revealed Israel’s nuclear secrets.

Resolving the core conflict in the region, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and then working overtime to make the entire Middle East region one free of weapons of mass destruction is a central theme in the Goals for Americans publication PLAN PALESTINE and A NEW MIDDLE EAST.

Paul with Israeli General Benzy Gruber at his home in the occupied West Bank

I have great admiration for the Israeli people and for Jewish people as a whole. Their accomplishments are many, their talents abundant, their past suffering truly horrible beyond description. 

And yet the policies of the Israeli government toward the Palestinian people are terrible, cruel, and uncivilized and, as such, unacceptable. They are abhorrent and must be changed. 

Facing such injustices, we Citizens of the United States have an obligation not just to lament and wring our hands but to insist, indeed to demand, that the Israelis change these destructive policies and that our own government assume its responsibilities to make them do so. 

The overall situation in the Middle East between Israel, the Palestinians, and much of the Arab and Muslim world is reaching what leading experts believe to be a point of no return. Too many organizations and individuals are spending their days complaining about how bad things are, lamenting what could have been, and even declaring the “Two-State Solution” dead. 

But that’s not what I think. And that’s not what I’m doing. I happen to be an action guy – and as an American Citizen, I require a certain level of performance from our government. 

I think this dangerous and dire situation has gone on for far too long, and I think it is a situation crying out for bold new leadership and new ideas. Therefore, I am focusing on crafting a better future.

Dome of the Rock: Jerusalem, Israel

Paul with Israeli soldier outside the King David Hotel in Jerusalem

More than anything else, my meetings with Israelis and Palestinians — some rabbis and generals, some ministers and elected legislators, some UN personnel and NGO specialists, men and women, students and teachers — convinced me that we owe it to them, as well as ourselves, to face the challenge head-on. It’s time the United States stops being the enabler for outrageous Israeli policies — that so clearly would be unacceptable anywhere else in our world.

We all know that many leading Israelis themselves have proclaimed their abhorrence about what their Government does.

Yet America continues to facilitate and enable this behavior with $3 billion every year plus armaments of every kind — making us more deeply involved and responsible as each day goes by.

So we need first of all to start being honest and courageous in facing today’s situation in which we are so intimately entangled. What has happened and what will happen in this small area greatly affects our country and our world.

Being politically correct and socially acceptable has overridden the greater responsibility to speak truthfully and to act forcefully. This kind of avoidance approach is what my recent visit to Israel, Occupied Palestine, and three other countries in the region has impelled me to speak up and champion what is right and just. This is not dreamy innocence or naive idealism.

This is facing up to one of the the great and perilous issues of our time. This is getting back to basics!

While the Israelis and our own government keep uttering the platitudinous words about “Palestinian Statehood” the realities on the ground are completely otherwise.

Paul with Mohammed Faraje outside the Lutheran Hotel and Boys School in Jerusalem.

Indeed more than ever in recent years, the Israelis have been rushing forward trying to make any kind of acceptable and dignified “Two- State settlement” impossible — and they have come a long way in that direction though they have not yet fully succeeded.

In this report, I offer a clear and succinct outline of specific Israeli policies that must change, what should be expected of the Palestinians, and the Arab States, and what I expect of my own country. It’s time to act and provide justice where there is none.

“Citizen Paul”

Paul Flum, President
Goals for Americans® Foundation

Listen to an Introduction from Citizen Paul

Citizen Paul and Yahav on balcony over-looking Israeli settlement

During our trip, we met Yahav Zohar, an Israeli who has worked as a journalist and translator but also commits at least one day a week to volunteering his time to work toward a just peace –– to end the Israeli occupation. Yahav was the official guide for the antidemolition group The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD), an organization that
opposes the demolition of Palestinian homes and unjust tactics taken by the military and housing authority for demolishing homes and granting permits.
 

On the day we met, we had attended a presentation by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Occupied Palestinian Territory. We were briefed on the humanitarian crisis and consequences that need to be addressed:

The United Nations deserves the World’s Support –– it has had little help and has had many obstructions from Israel!

• Lack of protection for civilians and continuing violence
• Closure, movement restrictions and lack of access
• Political geographical and institutional fragmentation
• High Food Insecurity
• Continuous Decline in the Economy and Socio-Economic Conditions
• Agricultural Livelihoods Threatened
• Health-Care Quality Deteriorating; Mental-Health-Disorder Symptoms on Rise
• Access to Quality Water and Sanitation Problematic
• Basic education standards Deteriorating
• Palestinian Civilians at Risk and in Need of Protection
• Children Exposed to Violence and Rights Violations on a Daily Basis
• Increased Humanitarian Coordination Needed
• Gender-Based Impact of the Crisis

Following the meeting, Zohar took us to some key areas where Israelis have demolished Palestinian homes and expropriated land to build new Jewish-only settlements. Despite announced agreements otherwise, this practice continues to make the prospect of a two-state solution less possible.

The UN holds the West Bank and Gaza Strip together –– almost Single-Handedly!

Zohair Shaban is supposed to be at the University of Connecticut studying for his Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering.

He is an excellent student.  In fact a few months ago he was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship, sponsored by the Government of the United States, to come and study in America.

But Zohair is a Palestinian, and he lives in Gaza.  And the Israelis have put one obstacle after another in his way.

First the Israelis told the State Department they would not even let the seven students awarded Fulbright scholars out of Gaza to simply come to the American Consulate in Jerusalem.

Unbelievably the State Department said OK and cancelled the Fulbright scholarships!

There was so much protest that the State Department changed course and then re-awarded the scholarships after the personal intervention of Secretary of State Rice herself.

Then the Israelis said they would let only 4 of the 7 Gaza Fulbrights out of Gaza to come to the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem and get their Visas.    The other 3 were refused all permissions by the Israelis and essentially imprisoned in Gaza.

So this time the State Department put its foot down and for the first time in history the Consulate sent officials to meet with the three, trapped students at what is known as “the Crossing Point”.   A few weeks later all three of the trapped Gaza Fulbrights got their U.S. visas, including Zohair Shaban.

But apparently the Israelis hadn’t given up and wanted to show what they consider their macho once again!

Somehow the Israelis managed to pressure someone in the U.S. government higher up and within days the Visas were cancelled!

One of the Fulbright scholars actually arrived at Dulles Airport, all papers in order when he departed, but upon arrival he was told his Visa was cancelled!

What an outrageous situation this is.  How embarrassed all of us Americans should be that the Israelis can push our own State Department around like this!

We spoke today by Zohair Shaban in Gaza about this ordeal:

And remember, there are many hundreds of other students who are also enrolled in foreign universities, and many more enrolled in Palestinian universities outside Gaza, who are trapped by the Israelis who refuse to let them even go to college!   Outrageous!

As an extra insight for you to hear from a Fulbright Scholar who had been denied permission to leave Gaza by the Israeli Government –

And the maddening, unbelievable response of our own American Government to “bow down” to the imperious and villainous Israeli Authorities, Imagine This – the UNBELIEVABLE:

American Officials would actually “roll over” and “play dead” to such low and disgraceful tactics by the Israeli Government Authorities. Submitting to authorities who would not even allow these marvelous, worthy students a chance to receive their deserved education – instead forcing them to live in the Virtual Israeli PRISON of the horribly deprived Gaza territory.

These are the thoughts of Citizen Paul – a man who cannot believe and will not accept this disgraceful, inhumane behavior of the Israeli’s “non-democratic” Government, the Knesset  – linked with their brutal Army and their duplicitous Secret Service, the Mossad.

This is outrageous and unbelievable behavior to expel upon decent human beings – and behavior that must be ABSOLUTELY CONDEMNED!

This horrible Israeli behavior confirms and amplifies the evidence of the brave and defiant, young Israeli Patriots who are the heroes of our new, soon to be completed Publication:

SAVING ISRAEL FROM ITSELF

A Young Israeli Who Refuses to Be Silent and Insists She Must Personally Help Palestinians

Among the many wonderful young Israelis I met during my trip to Israel and occupied Palestine, Gali Agnon stands out as a bright spot on many levels. After serving in the Israeli army, this 20-year-old Israeli felt it her obligation to speak out on behalf of the Palestinian people and to do what she could to help them.

A dedicated peace activist committed to forging a solution in her conflicted part of the world, she takes a multi-faceted approach to her mission – bringing people together for cooperative assistance and support on farms, building awareness for the plight of Palestinians in the West Bank, and organizing meetings and gatherings that bring Israelis and Palestinians together in common purpose.

Clearly one of the most tangible contributions she
makes is in her role in helping Palestinian farmers take their produce to market. The Israeli Government does not allow Palestinians to come into Israel to sell their produce, so she has devised a system, where she creates a market for them – offering their vegetables and fruits for sale to the people in Israel, and then transferring the money from her sales to the Palestinian farmers.

In fact, the extensive Israeli military roadblocks and restrictions that I saw for myself make it next to impossible to effectively get from one place to another.

Gali and Citizen Paul at Israeli settlement

Palestinians are prisoners in their own land, facing constant threats and interrogations at every turn — apartheid revisited.*

On Saturday, June 21, Gali asked some of her Israeli and Palestinian friends to spend that Sabbath day helping those Palestinians whose homes were being demolished by the Israeli Government.

Just 10 days later – July 2, a Palestinian worker went on what has been called a killing rampage in Jerusalem. Not affiliated with any Palestinian organization and acting completely on his own, this 30-year old Palestinian, who fathered a child with a Jewish Israeli woman, and drove the tractor he normally used for his job constructing Israeli projects, to kill Israeli Jews – A PERPETUATING TRAGEDY THAT SPRINGS FROM HOPELESSNESS AND DESPERATION.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

(Text from Gali’s Invitation Below)

What would you do if you found a note posted on your door that
Within the next ten days your house will be destroyed?
To build and expand a house, it is required to have a building permit.
These permits are virtually never granted to Palestinians on the basis of various pretexts.
The result is that most Palestinian homes are illegally built, and have standing
Demolition orders against them.

Abed Raba from Wallaje is one of these thousands of people who have received
An order stating that the house he is living in is illegal, and he must present himself
Before the Office of Interior in order to explain why he has built illegally.
Otherwise, judicial and/or administrative measures will be taken against him –
Read: they will demolish his house. The cave where he lives is hundreds of years
Older and is located on his own lands in Wallaje, above the checkpoint near Ein Yal.

The place is a beautiful orchard of fruit trees, also used as
A meeting point for Israeli and Palestinians who have resolved
to meet in spite of racist and segregationist policies.

Obviously, this place does serve the political and economical interest of Israel –
Lands in Jewish hands – and so they are exploiting legal measures as if desiring
to build a neighborhood in order to force him out.

Shaul is the founder, and now the Executive Director, of the organization known as “Breaking the Silence.” This organization is comprised of more than 200 former Israeli soldiers who believe that the way the Israelis treat the Palestinians in the occupied territories is unconscionable and needs to be exposed and ended. “Breaking the Silence” describes itself this way:

BREAKING THE SILENCE

Breaking the Silence is an organization of [over 200] veteran Israeli Soldiers that collects testimonies during the Second Intifadah. Soldiers who serve in the Territories are witness to and participate in military actions, which change them immensely. Cases of abuse towards Palestinians, looting and destruction of property have been the norm for years, but are still excused as military necessities, or explained as extreme and unique cases.

Our testimonies portray a different and grim picture of questionable orders in many areas regarding Palestinian civilians. These demonstrate the depth of corruption, which is spreading in the Israeli military. While this reality, which is known to Israeli soldiers and commanders, exists in Israel’s back yard – Israeli society continues to turn a blind eye and to deny that which happens in its name.

Discharged soldiers who return to civilian life discover the gap between the reality encountered in the Territories, and the silence they encounter at home. In order to become a civilian again, soldiers are forced to ignore their past experiences.

Breaking the Silence has interviewed hundreds of soldiers who served in territories and continues interviewing new soldiers daily. These interviews are published on this website, in testimonial booklets, through different media outlets, and also through lecture and tours in Hebron. The testimonies are published with minimal editing and with complete confidentiality, in order to protect the soldiers and to encourage them to speak.

Breaking the Silence says: “We demand accountability regarding Israel’s military actions in the occupied territories perpetrated by us and in our name.”

EXCERPTS FROM “BREAKING THE SILENCE” SOLDIER TESTIMONIES:

A detained Palestinian youth with soldiers in background.

Rank: First Sergeant
Place of Incident: Ramallah
August 2002

We entered Ramallah and we were told to take up positions in a building opposite the Muquatah. A day earlier, a group of soldiers from the Duchifat unit had taken the building. The Palestinian Minister of Communications used the building and it was full of photographs, tape recordings, etc. When we entered the building we noticed that all six floors had been ransacked. There were ripped up pictures and mashed television sets with shit inside them and the window of the recording room was broken.

Rank: First Sergeant (res.)
Unit: Battalion 50, Nahal Brigade
Place of incident: Hebron

Three weeks after the beginning of Homat Magen [Operation Defensive Shield]

Battalion 50 took over the city of Hebron about four months before “Homat Magen” (Operation Defensive Shield). At this time it was to be replaced by Nachal Battalion 932. The changeover started in stages and my company of March 2001 was the first to leave the front. We were replaced by the parallel unit. We went out on regular leave during which time we were called back to participate in Operation Defensive Shield. The rest of the Battalion stayed on in Hebron and that is how we found ourselves with unit 932 while the rest of our company with 932 remained in Hebron.

After three weeks we exchanged in order to reserve our original organization. Two or three days after we had returned, I went up to the “pharmacy” post, (it was near a pharmacy…hence called the pharmacy post) that was next to the Bus parking lot beside the open lot beside the tomb of the Patriarchs.

As part of the procedures, we would go up to the roof of the building in order to watch over the roads coming into the crossroad. While going up to the watch, I noticed that one door was broken into and I remembered that it hadn’t been like that when we had left…We opened the door and viewed a horrific sight…the place was a doctor’s clinic and what we saw were wooden doors that had been completely smashed and glass showcases had been destroyed. Syringes scattered all about along with documents, drawers that had been upended and smashed, and the worst was the used toilet paper scattered all about the two piles of shit smothered on the floor.

Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: Battalion 50, Nahal Brigade
Place of Incident: Ramallah, Bitonia
April 2002

During Operation “Omat Magen” [Defensive Shield], our unit ended up going through and staying in various houses of Palestinians who had been temporarily removed to another place. In just about every place we entered, we did so with good intentions of not taking advantage or destroying, but over the course of a couple or three days, soldiers found themselves resting on the sofas watching television, the furniture was broken. People would wipe their asses with towels from the bathroom, making use of personal computers in the house. It is impossible to point out only one house because this happened to everyone in every house.

To learn more about Breaking the Silence, visit www.breakingthesilenceexhibit.org.

Click Here to see read about last week’s Champion, Hagit Orfran.

During his visit to the Middle East, Citizen Paul had the opportunity to meet and speak with many young dedicated Israelis that are determined to correct the errors of their Government.

In the following weeks, we will feature each of these individuals for you, in addition to wonderful Palestinian citizens, who are all dedicating their best efforts to bring peace and hope to their homelands.

Listen to an Introduction from Citizen Paul

OUR CHAMPION OF THE WEEK:

HAGIT OFRAN – Settlement Watch

Despite damning details of Israel’s ever-expanding Israeli settlements, this valiant young woman brings us Hope for the Future.

Hagit Ofran is a young Israeli who feels it is vital to expose what the Israelis are really doing to the Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank.

Hagit’s work is a kind of mission she has set for herself. Even as she realizes that the “Two State Solution” may be dissolving from possibility because of the Israeli “facts on the ground,” she nevertheless continually works to expose the facts and offer an alternative future.

She always carefully documents her case: “Israel has tragically continued to break agreement after agreement building more and more Israeli settlements, taking more and more Palestinian lands and resources, perpetrating more and more repression and violence – and now there is the damning nearly 800-kilometer-long ‘Wall’ snaking everywhere unlike anything anywhere else in the world.”

At this point in time, Hagit is in essence a one-woman “Settlement Watch” truth-squad. Her association is with the Israeli group known as Peace Now; but often times it’s clear that she is far out front and pretty much on her own. She provides Israelis and people throughout the world truthful information about how the Israeli Government continues unrelentingly – despite repeated promises otherwise – to expand Israeli settlements, to confiscate more and more Palestinian lands, and to apparently work toward creating “facts on the ground” that may soon make the “Two State Settlement” no longer viable.

At the time I met Hagit, I wasn’t aware of this important cover article that appeared in the National Journal about her in March 2008. Here are some of the telling excerpts – as Hagit puts it:

“The de facto policy of Israel is a quiet transfer of land to settlers and the expulsion of Palestinians. They don’t accomplish that by force, nor do they roll up with trucks to take Palestinians away. 

“The central problem is you cannot really reconcile occupation with the rule of law. If we were serious about obeying the law, we wouldn’t lay so much as a brick in this land. So we go through all these linguistic acrobatics to avoid an unpopular truth.”

Asked why she braves the shouting soldiers, the irate settlers, and the suspicious Palestinians to bring back to Israel news that the public would just as soon not know, Ofran considers the question. Then she answers with a world-weariness heard in the voices of many Israelis: 

Fathi Abdel Majid al-Rajabi holds a demolition order from the Jerusalem Municipality for his home in East Jerusalem.

 
“I was born into occupation in 1975, so it is the only reality I know,” Ofran says. 

“At that point, I might have to find a better place in the world to be a Jew, because it would mean we lost the state of Israel.*

The central problem is you cannot really reconcile occupation with the rule of law. If we were serious about obeying the law, we wouldn’t lay so much as a brick in this land. So we go through all these linguistic acrobats to avoid an unpopular truth.

Find more Hagit Ofran content below:

• Her telling article, “Hope out of Despair”
• An in-depth interview with Ofran about the efforts and project of Peace Now
• Video of Ofran as a featured speaker at the New America Foundation
• An Audio Interview from Peace Now, detailing a trip she took to the Gaza Trip to educate Israelis on the spiraling settlement activity.