Vanunu Has Secrets the US Doesn’t Want Divulged

 

Monday  April 26, 2004

Uri Avnery, Arab News

TEL AVIV, 26 April 2004 — In the darkness of a cinema a woman’s voice is heard: “Hey! Take your hands off! Not you! You!”

This old joke contains the elements of the American policy regarding the nuclear armaments in the Middle East. “Hey, you there, Iraq and Iran and Libya, stop it! Not you, Israel!”

The danger of nuclear arms was a main pretext for the invasion of Iraq. Against Iran sanctions are enforced, and 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 Mordechai Vanunu, of course.

Throughout the week, a festival took place around the prisoner, who was set free on Wednesday.

The Israeli Security Establishment did not stop harassing him even after he sat in prison for 18 years, 11 of them in complete solitary confinement — a treatment he himself described as “cruel and barbaric” the moment he left the prison. After he was “set free”, far-reaching restriction were put on him (he is forbidden to leave the country, is restricted to one town, may not approach any embassy or consulate, may not talk with foreign citizens or journalists). All this under the colonial British emergency regulations that were condemned by the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine, at the time, as “worse then the Nazi laws”.

Not, God forbid, because of any thirst for revenge.

The security people declared from every podium that this is not a revenge for all the shame Vanunu caused the security services, and not further 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 that endanger the security of the state.

Everybody understands that he has no secrets. What can a technician know after 18 years in jail, during which nuclear science has advanced with giant steps?

But gradually it becomes clear what the security establishment really is afraid of: Vanunu is able to expose the close partnership with the United States in the development of Israel’s nuclear armaments. This worried Washington so much, that the person responsible in the State Department of “arms control”, Under Secretary John Bolton, has come himself to Israel for the occasion.

Vanunu, it appears, can cause severe damage to the mighty superpower. The Americans do not want to sound like the lady in the dark cinema.

(By the way, this Bolton is an avid supporter of the Jewish neocons who play a central role on the Bush theater. He opposes arms control for the United States and its satellites, and was installed in the State Department against the wishes of Secretary of State Colin Powell himself.)

— Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist and peace activist. His essays are included in The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent.

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