An Appeal for Shimon Perez and the Israeli Government to Do the Right Thing and Free Vanunu
NOBEL LAUREATES, 14 Sep 2015
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service
Mairead Maguire
Peace People Press Release – 11 Sep 2015
Today an Israeli court decided to keep nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu under house arrest for giving an Israeli media interview. Vanunu’s appeal against house arrest in connection with this interview has been denied. This adds to the unjust and inhuman treatment he has received for revealing in 1986 that Israel was building nuclear bombs. He has served 18 years in prison, including eleven in solitary. Since his release he has been a virtual prisoner within Jerusalem, unable to leave the country, use internet, speak to journalists, foreigners, etc., all actions against international law as he is a prisoner of conscience.
Maguire said,
‘After 31 years of punishment, Mordechai should be allowed to leave Israel, he is no threat to Israeli security, and it is wrong of the Israeli government to continue to punish him in this way. Few years ago, after nominating Vanunu for the Nobel Peace Prize, I met with Shimon Perez to personally ask for Mordechai’s freedom (and to ask Shimon Perez to sign the Nuclear Peace Treaty) but sadly he and the Israeli government refused to do so. I again appeal to Shimon Perez to do what he can to help secure Vanunu’s freedom, in the name of justice and what is right…’
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Mairead Corrigan Maguire, co-founder of Peace People, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book The Vision of Peace (edited by John Dear, with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available from www.wipfandstock.com. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See: www.peacepeople.com.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 14 Sep 2015.
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In 2005 I was just an American in east Jerusalem writing my first historical fiction. I became a reporter after Vanunu told me:
“The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona. The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out.
“President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.’
“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.”
Today Vanunu is getting more attention than ever because of Israel’s latest torturing of him and as the only way Vanunu can harm Israel is with BAD PR, Godspeed on other Nobel Peace Laureate and all people of conscience to demand Israel FREE Vanunu and open up the Dimona to international inspectors!
“You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased to obey the laws of life.”- Lewis Mumford, 1946
VIEW Vanunu’s 1985 photos of Israel’s WMD facility at Dimona:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nSOlG6Wpr8
“30 Minutes with Vanunu” was taped a few weeks after his freedom of speech trial began in 2006 -and which culminated in 2010 with 78 days back in solitary because he dared to speak to foreign media in 2004 after emerging from 18 years behind bars to 24/7 surveillance ever since:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwdz6dLbfok
Dear Eileen, thanks for your comments. Would you be willing to write an article for TMS? Your arguments and experience are compelling enough.
Take care,
Antonio, TMS editor
Dear Antonio, Yes and thank you I will do so because ever since I met Vanunu in 2005 and learned about Israel deceiving JFK, LBJ and Nixon setting the precedent of nuclear DECEPTIONS, I knew I would have to tell Vanunu’s story UNTIL Vanunu is FREE to leave Israel.
Today I am responding to Bernie Sanders speech at Liberty University with hope to engage a civil discourse regarding USA’s role in the 67 years of illegal and immoral occupation of the indigenous Palestinians, so give me a day to pull together 10 years of work in support of a FREE Vanunu but the latest IMPORTANT details in the Vanunu saga are reported in the first 5 articles here:
http://thearabdailynews.com/author/eileen-fleming/