- In a 50-minute documentary reportage, the BBC World Service
Television pointed its finger on Israelâs armament with nuclear,
biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, not found so far in
Iraq. The documentary, repeatedly broadcast on Saturday, June 28, under
the title "Israelâs Secret Weapons" opened with four questions:
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- 1) Which country in the Middle East has undeclared nuclear
weapons?
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- 2) Which country in the Middle East has undeclared biological
and chemical capabilities?
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- 3) Which country has no outside inspections?
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- 4) Which country jailed its nuclear whistleblower for
18 years?
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- The last question was concerned about the fate of the
whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu who is incarcerated already 17 years, 11
of them in absolute isolation, for having warned the world about the production
of atomic weaponry in Israel, related by his American adoptive parents,
Mary and Nick Eoloff of St.Paul, Minnesota. (His biological parents declared
him dead after he was convicted for High Treason and Spying in a secret
trial, while his brother Meir Vanunu remained one of the most ardent supporters
of Mordechai.) Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician employed for ten years
in the Dimona ãAtomic Research Reactorä in the Israeli southern
desert region, revealed to a reporter of the London Sunday Times the secret
production of nuclear weapons in several subterranean storeys of that reactor.
The detailed report was published in October 1986. Vanunu was kidnapped
in Rome by the Israeli secret intelligence Mossad agency and shipped to
Israel, where he was put on trial and convicted. The London Times reporter,
now a freelance journalist, Peter Hanoun, as well as the Eoloff couple,
former Vietnam War resistors, appeared as witnesses at the BBC program.
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- What was the reaction to this broadcast by the rulers
of this, by all means presented democratic State of Israel? The Government
Press Office, a department of the Prime Minister Office, barred BBC correspondents
accredited in Israel from contacts with government ministers and officials,
as well as from official press conferences (with the exception of such
by the PM). Daniel Seaman, the head of the GPO, alleged that the broadcast
had served those who demonize Israel and anti-Semitic elements. This, he
said, a democratic State like Israel cannot tolerate. The Foreign Press
Association in Israel protested this step, seeing in it a dangerous infringement
on the freedom of the press, as well as a ãslippery slope that can
lead to the illegitimate attempts to exert pressure on news organizations
or journalists whose reporting is deemed unfavorable to the governmentâs
policyä.
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- Since already days ahead of that BBC broadcast the media
manipulated by the government and right-wing party bureaus have started
a campaign against it, the ratings of watching it was exceptionally high,
according to press reports.
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- The fact that Israel is producing and stockpiling nuclear,
biological and chemical weaponry is already known since decades to the
world at large, and to whom is interested. However, the official Israel
is still keeping the whole matter under a seal of secrecy, rejects international
inspection, and speaks only of an unnamed ãdeterrent factor against
aspirations by Arab regimes to eliminate Israel and exterminate the Jewish
citizensä.
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- What then had aroused the anger of the Israeli authorities?
The BBC report, moderated by Olenka Frenklien, was part of a critical serial,
titled ãCorrespondentä, inspired by the U.S.-British Iraq war,
started under the pretext of a need to topple the Saddam Hussein regime,
which allegedly was arming his army with weapons of mass destruction, never
found so far. It was this comparison with the Iraq war pretext, which particularly
angered the Israeli powers-that-be.
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- The main witnesses interviewed by the programâs
host, O. Frenklien, had been besides the Eoloffs, the journalist Peter
Hanoun, who brought Vanunuâs story to be pubvlished; Vanunuâs
defense attorney Avigdor Feldmann of the Israeli League for Human and Civil
Rights, as well as Israeli officials. Among the latter was most conspicuous
the Nobel Peace Price Laureate and former Prime Minister, Defense and Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres. Peres is known to be ãthe Father of the Israeli
Nukeä. Already during the early 1950âs, in his capacity of General
Director of the Prime Minister (David Ben-Gurion) office, Peres established,
first with the assistance of France, then changing the sponsorship to the
U.S., the alleged research reactor at Dimona. Too, enhancing the Israeli
Arms Industries, he already then established the Ness-Ziona research institute
for biological and chemical armament.
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- Sh. Peres, interviewed by Frenklien, answered with the
usual phrases of a need for a deterrent factor. But when asked what might
be the reason that the U.S. Administration, so up in arms and waging a
war because of the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq, keeps mum on such weapons in the hands of Israel, Peres, obviously
in a furious mood, answered ãHow dare you to compare the dictatorial
regime of the mass killer Saddam Hussein with the democratic regime in
Israel?ä.
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- Instead of arguing with that Peres remark, the broadcast
continued to show horrible scenes of the Israeli 1982 invasion of Lebanon,
inspired by the then defense Minister (and current PM) Ariel Sharon, including
scenes of the brutal two-days bombardment of the Lebanese capital Beirut,
of massacres in different Palestinian refugee camps, including the Beirut
refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila by Lebanese fascist elements under the
supervision of Sharon.
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- The programâs host interviewed also a few of the
over a hundred former workers at the Dimona nuclear weapon production line,
who had contracted cancerous diseases from having been exposed to longtime
radioactivity, and fighting to receive compensation for it, so far rejected
to be recognized as victims of working conditions.
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- Frenklien asked defense attorney Avigdor Feldmann about
his opinion of what was the reason behind the heavy sentence of his client,
as well as having refused to release him on probation after he had fulfilled
two years ago two thirds of his term, usual given to any criminal. Feldmann
answered, that Vanunu was kidnapped and forcefully brought before a secret
tribunal not so much for his having warned the world about the nuclear
armament of Israel, or having caused the publication of the matter, but
mainly as revenge for his having broken an Israeli Taboo about it.
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- Other important witnesses at the BBC documentary, representing
the group for arousing national Israeli and international solidarity with
Mordechai Vanunu, had been the Israeli leading activists of the Committee
for Freedom for Vanunu and for a Nuclear Free Zone in the Middle East,
Rayna Moss and Gideon Spira.
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- Very impressive had been the scenes which showed the
address of the Arab Knesset deputy Issam Mahoul of the (communist led)
HADASH Front, when he three years ago raised for the first time (and meanwhile
the last time) in the history of the Israeli Parliament the matter of Israelâs
armament with weapons of mass destruction from the rostrum at a plenary
session. ãMordechai Vanunu was not the problem of the issueä,
Mahoul said. ãThe problem is the policy of the government that turned
the territory of a relatively small country into a poisoning waste bin
which could make us all disappear into a nuclear cloudä. The documentary
showed Mahoul, when he, interrupted by furious catcalls, pointed to the
fact that the whole world knows that Israel has become one vast nuclear,
biological and chemical arms warehouse, which is used as an anchor for
a nuclear arms race in the region. In further scenes, taken at a public
meeting, Issam Mahoul stated, that if asked by international inspectors,
if such would arrive, he could show them installations of nuclear, biological
and chemical weaponry not only in Dimona and Nes-Ziona, but also in the
northern Haifa Bay, in the Galilean Sakhneen and Eilabum areas, in the
Southern Yitfata vicinity, and other places.
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- The documentary closed with scenes of anti-war manifestations
in the USA, at which the Eoloff couple took part, and the latest visit
of them at the Israeli Ashqelon prison at which their adopted son Mordechai
Vanunu is incarcerated.
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- The impressive BBC documentary has given extensive answers
to all four opening questions. It should be noted, that this documentary
came intentionally in the wake of the Iraq war and the gibbering of the
Great Iraq Phyruss Victor, George W. Bush, who declared that Israel, without
mentioning its arsenal of those weaponry and its terror occupation policy
ãhas the full right for defending Israel and its citizens by all
meansä.
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- * An Israeli journalist and publicist living in Kibbutz
Beit-Oren. He can be reached at: <mailto:hlebr@trendline.co.il>hlebr@trendline.co.il
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- http://www.amin.org/eng/uncat/2003/jul/jul06.html
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