Mordechai Vanunu’s Case in the Court of Public Opinion By Eileen Fleming

Mordechai Vanunu’s Case in the Court of Public Opinion
By Eileen Fleming
EXCLUSIVE to The Arab Daily News

http://thearabdailynews.com/2014/02/23/mordechai-vanunus-case-court-public-opinion/

I have never been Israel’s nuclear whistleblower’s spokesperson, but ever since I first met him in June 2005, I have spoken online to end US collusion in Israel’s nuclear deceptions and in support of Mordechai Vanunu’s inalienable human right to leave Israel.

On February 5th I emailed the Chairman, Publisher and Copyright Editor at I.B. Tauris:

Last week Mordechai Vanunu wrote me regarding Frank Barnaby’s The Invisible Bomb, “the chapter about Dimona facilities, all these details need to be sent to Israel’s Shaback/Mossad and to President Obama and Congress to prove that all I knew about Israel’s nuclear secrets were published in 1989.”
Yesterday I wrote for the US based TheArabDailyNews:

Message from Israel’s Nuclear Whistleblower Vanunu TO: Mossad and Obama

At the time I was willing to risk a lawsuit from I.B.Tauris for reproducing and publishing more than “brief quotations” from The Invisible Bomb: The Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East without permission for many reasons, but I will cite two:

In 2005 I met Vanunu and we began a series of interviews that culminated in my self-published Beyond Nuclear: Mordechai Vanunu’s Freedom of Speech Trial and My Life as a Muckraker 2005-2010

I am the leader of the Cause TNT/FREE VANUNU with over 21,000 international members who are gearing up for this April 21st which marks 10 years since Vanunu emerged from 18 years behind bars to 24/7 surveillance; denied the right to leave Israel as the American Government and Media ignore Israel’s nukes, etc.

May I please have permission from I.B.Tauris to republish the INTRODUCTION and 15 pages from Chapter 3?
Thank you,
Eileen Fleming,
Author, Reporter
TNT

Instead of waiting any longer for permission –or risking a lawsuit- I will instead briefly quote Barnaby:

I spent two days in September 1986 cross-examining Vanunu. I found his story totally convincing…Vanunu’s evidence, backed up by his photographs; there can no longer be any reasonable doubt about Israel’s nuclear capability…

After the Sunday Times article appeared, Shimon Peres, the then Prime Minister of Israel, repeated ‘Israel would not become the first country to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East’

Together with Ben-Gurion, Peres who had been Director-General of Ministry of Defense in the early 1960’s is regarded as the architect of Israel’s WMD program.

Barnaby argues Vanunu may have been an unwitting tool of the Mossad.

I have argued that besides America’s collusion in Israel’s nuclear deceptions it is SECURITY’S: Mossad/Shabak’s Vendetta against Vanunu that has kept him captive going on 10 years after emerging from 18 years behind bars.

Barnaby also hits a few nail on their heads:

Other governments, particularly the US Government are able to maintain the myth that Israel does not have nuclear weapons. This is important for Israel because the US Government cannot under US law, continue to give economic aid to Israel if it acknowledges that Israel has nuclear weapons.

Barnaby wrote that in 1989 and the US Government continues sending more US tax-dollars to Israel than to any other nation.

In 2004, Israeli TV-10 broadcast this 3-D imagery of the Dimona using Vanunu’s photos from 1985 that anyone in the world can view at Vanunu’s Youtube Channel.

For eight years, Vanunu worked as a technician in Machon 2, the key building at Dimona, which is supported by multiple other Machons.

The plant is controlled from level 2, which is known as “Golda’s Balcony” after Golda Meir. This was where Vanunu began his work as a controller on 7 August 1977.

Vanunu told Barnaby that Machon 2 was only known to exist by less than 150 of the 2,700 employees at Dimona and only those allowed in with a special pass knew Machon 2 extended six floors underground.

During Vanunu’s employ accidents were few but hazards to the environment were standard operating procedure, as Barnaby explains:

‘Low level’ but still dangerous, radioactive wastes, produced mainly in the reporocessing plant, has for many years been mixed with tar, sealed in 200-litre barrels and buried in the desert at disposal sites a kilometer from Dimona. There is a considerable risk that radioactivity will, in time, leak out of the barrels and contaminate the water table under the Negev desert…

The plant releases to the atmosphere airborne pollution and radioactive gases. The prevailing winds blow these contaminants across the Jordanian frontier, about 40 kilometers from Dimona.

Vanunu told Barnaby that especially toxic gases are sometimes released into the atmosphere only when the Israeli meteorological office confirms the wind is blowing towards Jordan!

If you shut up the truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.- Emile Zola

Even in 1989 it was obvious to Barnaby that “only international action can stop the spread of nuclear weapons throughout the Middle East.”

The same goes for ending the Occupation of Palestine.

Please sign and share the Petition to World Media and Israel: We are not free until Vanunu is FREE