    Vanunu Interview

    By Johannes Wahlstrom

    Ten minutes stroll northward from the lively alleyways of the Old City
    and its renowned Golden Dome lays one of the Holy Land’s smallest
    parishes; the Anglican Church, with its neo-gothic St George Cathedral.
    The massive towers and defence-walls give the impression of an
    impregnable bastion, while inside one finds a green oasis of
    tranquillity. In the inner yard, surrounded by grapes, almonds, olives,
    pomegranates, sage, narcissus, cypress, oleander, roses and all other
    imaginable and unimaginable biblical plants, lays a Guesthouse. Here,
    weary Jerusalem pilgrims rest their sore feet after a long day in the
    Holy City. And here for the past four months, a fellow-Anglican, the
    nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu has taken his refuge.

    A technician at the Dimona nuclear weapons production plant, he blew the
    whistle, and revealed the Israeli nuclear arms program to the nation and
    the world; a revelation that would cost him dearly. After being
    kidnapped Israeli Mossad agents in Rome, Vanunu was sentenced at a
    secret trial to 18 years of jail, 12 years out of them he served in
    solitary confinement

    In the solitude of the jail, he wrote:

    	I am your Spy. I am the clerk, the technician, the mechanic, the driver.
    	They said: Do this, do that, don't look left or right, don't read the
    	text. Don't look at the whole machine. You are only responsible for this
    	one bolt. For this one rubber-stamp. This is your only concern. Don't
    	bother with what is above you. Don't try to think for us. Go on, drive.
    	Keep going. On, on.

    “I refused to be a bolt in the deadly machinery”, Vanunu says after his
    release in an exclusive interview. After receiving death threats from
    Jewish extremists and being placed under surveillance and travel
    restrictions by the Israeli government, Vanunu has taken refuge at St
    George Cathedral in East Jerusalem. Here Vanunu attends services, rings
    the bells, and dreams to leave the unyielding clutches of the Jewish
    state – for England or elsewhere.

    He is suntanned, his handshake is firm, and his stare is fixed. The only
    mark bearing witness to the 18 years of torment and isolation is his
    stern face. What makes a man follow his heart and beliefs and to pay so
    dearly for his convictions?

    Vanunu pours a bottle of local Palestinian beer into his glass. The
    golden label reads Taibeh, or ‘tasty’ in Arabic. “Ever since I was a
    child I have learned to be open to other views”, he says, “to criticize,
    to be independent, and most importantly to be faithful to the truth.
    This is why I have always tried to serve mankind, by contributing to
    peace and foremost to justice for the much-suffering Palestinians.”

    Vanunu has however paid the price of refusing conformity, of being
    independent. In the 70’s he supported the Palestinian cause, and lost
    his job. In the 80’s he entered the Anglican Church and was ostracized
    by his Jewish family. When he revealed the Israeli nuclear program in
    order to avert a nuclear holocaust, he was imprisoned. Now again he
    refuses to be subdued as he rejects the restrictions placed upon him by
    the Israeli government.

    “I’m being punished for no crime,” Vanunu says while cautiously
    squeezing the beer cap in his hand. “I’m not allowed to leave the
    country for a year; I have to report to the police of my whereabouts,
    and even if I want to overnight elsewhere I have to get their
    permission.” Vanunu is not allowed to talk to foreign press, to pass in
    the vicinities of embassies, borders or airports, write e-mails or chat
    by internet. He is well aware that by defying the restrictions in giving
    this interview, he can once again be incarcerated.

    The Israeli court regards Vanunu as a ‘security threat’. And although he
    has served his sentence, emergency regulations from the time of the
    British Mandate have been enforced upon him. These laws have become part
    of Israeli legal practise and can revoke the fundamental democratic
    rights of a citizen if an army general regards him as a “security
    threat”.

    What kind of security threat is Vanunu? Is he biding his time to reveal
    more nuclear secrets? “I have no secrets that I haven’t already
    revealed.” Besides, he points out, “I live among Palestinians, the
    ‘enemy’. So why can’t I speak to foreigners?”

    Vanunu speaks his mind without weighing his words; maybe this is what
    they are afraid of? “I repeat all the things that Israel wants to be
    kept silent; I remind of Israel’s nuclear weapons program, I speak of
    the barbaric treatment in Israeli prison, and I express my political
    views of the conflict,” he sums up.

    One of the most astounding revelations that Vanunu gave concerned the
    size of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. The photos he took and the
    calculations he conducted at Dimona nuclear centre showed that apart
    from manufacturing hydrogen bombs, Israel was producing 40 kg of
    plutonium yearly, and at the time had a capacity of 200-300 atomic
    weapons, sufficient for turning Europe into a parking lot many times
    over. While pondering why they needed so many bombs, Vanunu came to the
    conclusion that “it was like a factory production; while the first ones
    are expensive to make, the rest are cheap.”

    Despite of Israel’s nuclear capacity, Vanunu believes the bombs are
    useless. “It’s not an issue of UN resolutions; the world would intervene
    if Israel used its holocaust weapons.” When it comes to having them as a
    deterrent, Vanunu explains: “the problem isn’t Iran, Iraq or North
    Korea, it's Israeli aggression. Iraq didn’t have any nuclear weapons, I’m
    sure that neither does Iran. If Israel wasn’t so aggressive with its
    nuclear arms, none of the other countries would even need to get them.”
    He concludes that the international community should intervene and stop
    the Israeli aggression before it gets out of hand.

    Vanunu’s voice takes on a tense and serious tone when Israel is
    described as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’. “First they invade
    a sovereign nation while kidnapping me in Rome. Then they sentence me at
    a secret trial, where neither I nor my attorney is allowed take part of
    the evidence. They imprison and torture me for the crime of talking to a
    journalist. And still they deny me my freedom of speech and the freedom
    of movement.” He explains that the phrase may have been valid in the
    50’s. “But what kind of democracy is it now, with all these emergency
    laws? I am a living proof that Israel is not a democracy.” The anger on
    his face seems to subside; he reaches for the perspiring glass on the
    table.

    At Vanunu’s release from prison in April, he was not only welcomed by
    world media and a crowd of supporters, but equally by an angry mob
    chanting for his death. The Israeli newspaper Maariv published a census
    showing that a majority of Israelis disagreed with letting him free; 33
    percent thought he should be executed. Now he doesn’t venture into the
    Jewish-held parts of the city, the chance of being lynched is much too
    real; in a few instances he has even been assaulted by Jewish extremists
    outside of the church.

    If the Israelis were fooled about their country’s nuclear arms why do
    they consider Vanunu a traitor? “This is one of the reasons I refuse to
    speak to Israeli press,” he explains. “They played a cruel game on me
    and spread vicious lies while I was in total isolation, saying I
    celebrated suicide bombings and so on”.

    Vanunu has now filed a multimillion shekel lawsuit against the Israeli
    tabloid, Yediot Aharonot for falsely accusing him in providing nuclear
    production skills to Hamas. According to Vanunu, the media incited the
    Israeli public for they perceived him as a Christian that betrayed the
    Jews.

    He is convinced that his baptism is a greater issue than the nuclear
    revelations, where both the media as well as the court would have
    treated him differently had he not converted. “They could have lived
    with the revelations; I could even have been treated as a hero among the
    Jews,” Vanunu explains. “They are not really thinking about nuclear
    weapons, they think I’m a traitor for going to the gentiles. But I had
    to turn to the British press, since the Israeli media is completely
    infiltrated; they all work for the Mossad.” Even Vanunu’s parents are
    more concerned with his conversion, and he explains that “if there is
    one thing they can’t accept it’s the rejection of Judaism”.

    On Sundays, at the back row of St George church, Vanunu participates in
    the local Palestinian mass. One by one the members of the parish line up
    to receive the Holy Communion. From Edward VII church tower, the
    Jerusalem courthouse reminds of its presence just down the road; here
    Vanunu was sentenced 18 years ago. Opposite the courthouse is the
    ministry of Justice; two armed men in black patrol the entrance and
    guard it from intruders and curious journalists. Further down the road,
    hundreds of Palestinian women and men have gathered at the fortified
    gates of the Ministry of Interior. Today, as they do every other day,
    they stand in line to receive their mandatory ID-cards asserting which
    zones they are allowed to visit.

    Vanunu passes here every day as he ventures outside the protective keep
    of the cathedral. The constant presence of soldiers and guards checking
    on ID-cards at every corner reminds him that he is still not free. “Just
    like the Palestinians I want to have my rights and the freedom to go
    wherever I want, to do whatever I please. Israel has to become a secular
    democratic state; a state without apartheid and Jewish laws, a state
    that respects freedom of speech and other religions.”

    But Vanunu doesn’t want to talk on behalf of the Palestinians. “They
    have their own representatives. I am just a man with my views, and I
    have to be able to express them, it can’t be reasonable to be imprisoned
    for talking to journalists.”

    Out on the street, Palestinians passing by wave at Vanunu; sometimes
    they approach, press his hand respectfully and invite him for coffee or
    dinner. For many of them he is a symbol of hope and coexistence with the
    Israelis. For Vanunu it is in the Palestinian society that he feels free
    and appreciated.

    During his years of isolation, Vanunu developed an intricate friendship
    with his Palestinian inmates at the Ashkelon Prison. Although they had
    never met they would always leave him a glass of tea with mint at the
    courtyard, and during Ramadan they would give him the traditional Arabic
    sweets, baklawa. Once the prison guards forgot to bring him in and he
    got the chance to meet his benefactors. “Those twenty minutes at the
    courtyard was the only time we met. We talked and laughed, we became
    friends, and then the guards came and we parted forever.”

    In prison, Vanunu was incarcerated at the ‘Agaf seven’, a secret section
    run by the security service. Here he was tortured and abused. And even
    as the prison guards did all they could to make him aggressive, he
    refused to play by their rules. Once he couldn’t keep his temper and
    called them Nazis. “Then they got a reason to hit me. After that I
    learned not to give them any more such chances.” Instead Vanunu relied
    upon his faith and international support.

    In 1987 Vanunu was granted the “Right Livelihood Award”, better known as
    the Alternative Peace Prize. The real Nobel Peace Prize, Vanunu reminds
    bitterly, was given to Shimon Peres, the man responsible for his
    kidnapping and the driving force behind Israeli nuclear ambitions. Since
    his initial incarceration Vanunu has received numerous awards, the
    latest of which was Yoko Ono’s Lennon Peace grant. The award, given with
    the motivation that he had “spoken out for the benefit of the human
    race”, will, due to the restrictions placed upon him, be sent to the
    care of St George Cathedral rather than being delivered in person at the
    UN building in New York.

    Vanunu now pleads to the international community: “I’m waiting for the
    world to intervene, to deal with Israel.” And he adds that “the only way
    to be free is to be free from Israel.” In order to leave the country
    Vanunu is trying to cancel his Israeli citizenship, but for the
    authorities to approve of it, he needs a foreign one. While he has
    applied for Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Irish and even Palestinian
    citizenship, his application for British citizenship has yet to receive
    any clear response. Yet it was a British newspaper that published his
    revelations, and he was trapped by the Mossad on British soil.

    Vanunu moved to Israel as a 10 year old Jewish child from Morocco, now
    he indeed feels as though he has long since overstayed his welcome in
    the country. “If I where you”, he says, “I wouldn’t be here, I would
    rather sit somewhere in peace and quiet, study history and write a
    book.” In the holy city of Jerusalem, Vanunu wants nothing more than to
    get away from the constant patrolling of police and military, away from
    oppression, away from occupation and walls. As a convalescent after
    years of laying-in, he cautiously walks the streets, discovers the
    simple pleasures of a swim, of a friendly company, of a dinner with fork
    and knife.

    Outside the protective keep of the cathedral the streets are full of
    life. In the green tranquillity of the inner yard Mordechai Vanunu
    wonders whether after 18 years he will finally be free.