- 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 Israelís nuclear arms programme, while pretending to
be the worldís sheriff for the prevention of nuclear proliferation
-
- In the darkness of a cinema, a womanís voice says:
"Hey! Take your hands off! Not you! YOU!" This old joke illustrates
the American policy regarding nuclear weapons in the Middle East. "Hey,
you there, Iraq and Iran and Libya, stop it! Not YOU, Israel!"
-
- The danger of nuclear arms was the main pretext for the
invasion of Iraq. Iran is threatened in order to compel it to stop its
nuclear efforts. Libya has surrendered and is dismantling its nuclear installations.
So what about Israel?
-
- 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. Throughout the week, a festival was being celebrated around
the prisoner, who was released on April 21st. 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 ó a treatment he himself
described on leaving the prison as ëcruel and barbaricí. After
he was ëset freeí, 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 ëworse
than the Nazi lawsí.
-
- Not, God forbid, because of any desire for revenge!
-
- The security people declared from every podium that this
is not revenge for all the shame Vanunu caused the security services, and
is by no means just more persecution, but an essential security requirement.
He must not be allowed to leave the country or to speak with foreigners
and journalists, because he is in possession of secrets vital to the security
of the state.
-
- 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? But gradually it is becoming 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 superpower. The Americans are afraid
of sounding like the lady in the dark cinema. (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 theatre. 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 the short address Vanunu was able to make to the media
immediately on his release, he made a strange remark: that the young woman
who served as bait for his kidnapping, some 18 years ago, was not a Mossad
agent, as generally assumed, but an agent of the FBI or CIA. Why was it
so urgent for him to convey this?
-
- From the first moment, there was something odd about
the Vanunu affair.
-
- At the beginning, my first thought was that he was a
Mossad agent. Everything pointed in that direction.
-
- How else can one explain a simple technician's success
in smuggling a camera into the most secret and best-guarded installation
in Israel? And in taking photos apparently without hindrance? How else
to explain the career of that person who, as a student at Beer-Sheva University,
was well-known as belonging to the extreme left and spending his time in
the company of Arab fellow-students? How was he allowed to leave the country
with hundreds of photos? How was he able to approach a British paper and
to turn over to British scientists material that convinced them that Israel
had 200 nuclear bombs?
-
- Absurd, isnít it? But it all fits, if one assumes
that Vanunu acted from the beginning on a mission for the Mossad. His disclosures
in the British newspaper not only caused no damage to the Israeli government,
but on the contrary, strengthened the Israeli deterrent without committing
the government, which was free to deny everything.
-
- What happened next only reinforced this assumption. While
in London, in the middle of his campaign of exposures, knowing that half
a dozen intelligence services are tracking his every movement, he starts
an affair with a strange woman, is seduced into following her to Rome,
where he is kidnapped and shipped back to Israel. How naÔve can you
be? Is it credible for a reasonable person to fall into such a primitive
trap? It is not. Meaning that the whole affair was nothing but a classic
cover story.
-
- But when the affair went on, and details of the yearlong
daily mistreatment of the man became public, I had to give up this initial
theory. I had to face the fact that our security services are even more
stupid than I had assumed (which I wouldnít have believed possible)
and that all these things actually had happened, and that Mordecai Vanunu
was an honest and idealistic, if extremely naÔve, person.
-
- I have no doubt that his personality was shaped by his
background. He is the son of a family with many children, who were quite
well-off in Morocco but lived in a primitive 'transition camp' in Israel,
before moving to Beíer-Sheva, where they lived in poverty. In spite
of this, he succeeded in getting into university and got a masterís
degree, quite an achievement, but suffered, so it seems, from the overbearing
attitude and prejudices of his Ashkenazi peers. Undoubtedly, that pushed
him towards the company of the extreme left, where such prejudices were
not prevalent.
-
- The bunch of ësecurity correspondentsí and
other commentators who are attached to the udders of the security establishment
have already spread stories about Vanunu ëimagining thingsí,
his long stay in solitary confinement causing him to ëconvince himself
of all kinds of fantasiesí and to 'invent all kinds of fabrications'.
Meaning: the American connection.
-
- Against this background one can suddenly understand all
these severe restrictions, which, at first sight, look absolutely idiotic.
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 Israelís nuclear arms programme, while pretending
to be the worldís sheriff for the prevention of nuclear proliferation.
-
- ...And the lady cried: "Not you! YOU!"
-
- Uri Avnery is a leading Israeli writer and peace activist
and a former member of Knesset
-
- http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_30-4-2004_pg3_4
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