The Times They Are a'Changin'- FREE Vanunu and Palestine Now!

Comment by eileen fleming on January 27, 2009 at 10:47am

"US Media is under Israeli occupation too."-Mordechai Vanunu



Why is the American media so biased in the coverage of the Israeli - Palestine conflict?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kiyyp9cZdY0&feature=email



Israel's Cold War mentality enabled them to attempt to blind the world to The War on Gaza by banning media. But the times had already changed for eye witnesses now tell their own story without editing or censoring on You Tube and Google News.



"Israel's version of events has been given so much credence by the dying Bush administration that the ban on journalists entering Gaza may simply be of little importance to the Israeli army. By the time we investigate, whatever they are trying to hide will have been overtaken by another crisis in which they can claim to be in the "front line" in the "war on terror". [1]





Another crisis of Israel's own making hit You Tube moments after Mark Regev, the Israeli Government’s official spokesman finally admitted what everyone with an Internet connection and interest already knew; which was that Hamas did not break the ceasefire. "In May there were 149 rocket attacks. In June before the ceasefire started on the 18th, there were 84. In the rest of June, three. Throughout July, August, September and October, there were just fifteen attacks and Israel agrees that none of these rockets were fired by Hamas."[2]







According to Richard Falk, the UN's special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories and professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, "There is a well-grounded view that both the initial attacks on Gaza and the tactics being used by Israel are serious violations of the UN charter, the Geneva Conventions, international law and international humanitarian law. There is a consensus among independent legal experts that Israel is an occupying power and is therefore bound by the duties set out in the Fourth Geneva Convention. The arguments that Israel's blockade is a form of prohibited collective punishment, and that it is in breach of its duty to ensure the population has sufficient food and healthcare as the occupying power, are very strong."[3]







Among the increasing crisis facing Israel are the growing numbers of global voices sending the UN messages and websites requesting you to:

Add Your Call to the list for a Creation of the Israeli War Crimes Tribunal [4]

The next crisis on the horizon and more bad PR for the sorry state of Israel, the self-proclaimed "only democracy in the Middle East" will happen by April 21, 2009 when Mordechai Vanunu's fifth year of restrictions expire.



Since April 2004, Vanunu has walked the streets of east Jerusalem and spoken with thousands of internationals in person and via the Internet. Israel, however commanded him not to speak to anyone unless they are Israeli citizens, denied him the right to leave the state, to come within 300 meters of foreign embassies, to leave Occupied Jerusalem without prior permission from security agencies; all based on the 1945 British Mandate State of Emergency Regulations, which expired and led to Israel's statehood.



The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations.- May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the Establishment of Israel





Vanunu was born in 1954, and had a second coming into the world on April 21, 2004 upon release from 18 years in Ashkelon Prison –most all in solitary-sentenced for treason. Vanunu has consistently maintained that due to a crisis of conscience and desire to prevent a nuclear holocaust, he was lead to covertly photograph inside of Israel's clandestine underground WMD facility. Vanunu's two rolls of film document the fact that Israel had manufactured upwards of 200 nuclear warheads by 1985.



Upon release from Ashkelon, Vanunu stated, "I'm not speaking in Hebrew. If Israel doesn't let me speak to foreigners I am not speaking in Hebrew…I was kidnapped in Rome, Italy by Israel's spy on 13 September and I was brought to Israel, arrived at... prison on 7 October 1986 until today…in very cruel, barbaric treatment by Israel's spy [agency] Mossad.



"I am not harming Israel. I am not interested in Israel All this bullshit, blah blah blah, about secrets, is dead. My case is dead. The article was published. There are no more secrets. All the secrets were published and is in the hand of the whole world. All the world, every state, 180 states received these secrets. I am now ready to start my life.



I am not harming Israel. I am not interested in Israel. I want to tell you something very important. I suffered here 18 years because I am a Christian, because I was baptized into Christianity. If I was a Jew I wouldn't have all this suffering here in isolation for 18 years. Only because I was a Christian man."['5]








Annually, since 1986, Vanunu has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2007, Vanunu was nominated by Bishop Desmond Tutu, who received the Nobel Prize in 1984, for his courageous and fearless opposition against the South African apartheid system.



The radical Fighting Father Dave Smith+ has known Vanunu since the Friday night when he stumbled into the coffee-shop set up outside the church in Kings Cross, where Dave had just begun working.



In LETTERS FROM SOLITARY Letters from Mordechai Vanunu, Smith wrote:





Morde just wandered in. I loved the work at Kings Cross and I loved manning the coffee stand on a Friday night. I was working with a good team and felt like I was on the cutting edge. I enjoyed meeting new people in this setting, be they street workers, back-packers or locals, and I enjoyed the opportunity to meet Morde.



Morde had coffee, he walked around the church building, and we talked. His English was not terrific, but we managed some pretty serious conversation at our first meeting. Morde had recently completed studies at university. I had completed university just before entering seminary. Morde had been studying philosophy. I had just completed my honours degree in philosophy! Morde’s interest had been in existentialism. Mine had been also! Morde’s chief figure of interest was Nietzsche – the belligerent German atheist. Mine was Kierkegaard – the eccentric Christian preacher. Morde had read Kierkegaard, and my first introduction to Kierkegaard had been in a course comparing him to Nietzsche. We found we had plenty to talk about.





It was a curious scene that developed that night. Two figures in the middle of the Cross, locked in passionate discussion about theories of meaning and existence. In Morde’s broken English we managed to discuss Nietzsche’s concept of ‘staring into the abyss’ of your life and embracing your despair, and Kierkegaard’s optimistic alternative – throwing yourself into the abyss and finding that the abyss is God and is able to support you.





It was never a purely academic discussion for either of us. At the time my own faith was deeply intertwined with these concepts. For Morde though, I don’t think I realized exactly how much was at stake in his thinking until much further down the track.





Some months later Morde would embrace the Christian faith, and let go of much of his former life. At an academic level he was also very self consciously embracing Kierkegaard and rejecting Nietzsche. This is significant, for Kierkegaard was always on about taking ‘risks’, or ‘leaps of faith’, as he would call them.





The one complete work of Kierkegaard that had been translated into Hebrew, and which Morde had read, was his eulogy on Abraham, entitled ‘Fear and Trembling’.



In it Kierkegaard reflects on Abraham’s call to go and sacrifice his son Isaac. How can this be right, when it seems to be a betrayal of his family, and is contrary to his reason and even to his conscience? Yet Abraham knows that this is what he has been called to by God, and so he sets out upon his task, albeit with ‘fear and trembling’.



Morde would make his own leap of faith. He would come to the front of St John’s church and say out loud ‘Now I give myself to God. Now I do what I must do.’ True to the Kierkegaardian spirit, Morde made his decision alone."[6]





Another solitary decision Vanunu made was on January 13, 2009, when he put the breaks on the first annual Global V Day: April 21, 2009 with gratitude and a joke:



I want to thank you for the group Free Vanunu Now. But I don't want any international day. My target is to remind Israel to let me go free now. I am alive here, waiting to be free, only Dead Saints have special day. NO NEED NOW FOR SPECIAL DAY, ONLY FREEDOM NOW. Thank you. [7]







In preparation for the canceled commemoration, on January 9, 2009 Father Dave Smith wrote, "The ongoing restrictions of movement on Mordechai Vanunu amount to his virtual imprisonment, and they serve no purpose beyond satisfying the vengeful appetite of a corrupt government. Vanunu's struggle for freedom has become symbolic of the broader struggle of oppressed persons across Israel/Palestine.



"Surely the time has come to recognize Mordechai Vanunu's basic human rights, along with those of the Palestinian people of Gaza and the West Bank and of all Arabic persons living in Israel."







On February 27, 1987, Vanunu wrote to Father Dave from prison:



I am remembering the first Friday night when we were in the church and we spoke about Kierkegaard, and this conversation opened my mind to a new life. I want to thank you for this honour, and I pray for you to succeed to use Kierkegaard’s philosophy…This period in the prison I want to use to develop my knowledge and my faith in Christianity, because now I know that my task in this world is to devote myself for working and helping other people…By God’s will I’ll be free…and pray and speak to all the people and to open their hearts for the love of God. [8]







One of the most famous Jewish converts to Christianity, Vanunu also represents "at a critically important moment in the history of the Middle East that Israel is a nuclear power and that its warheads stand ready to be fired from the Negev desert. [Vanunu] will also remind the world that the Americans, despite battering their way into Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, continue to give their political, moral and economic support to a country that has secretly amassed a treasure trove of weapons of mass destruction.





"How can President Bush [and President-elect Obama] remain silent on Israel's nuclear power when he has not only illegally invaded an Arab state for allegedly harbouring nuclear weapons and condemned Iran for the same ambitions, but also praised--along with Tony Blair's government--Colonel Gaddafi of Libya for abandoning his nuclear pretensions? If the Arab states are being "defanged"--always supposing they had any real fangs in the first place--why should Israel not be "de-nuclearised"? Why can't the United States apply the same standards to Israel as it does to the Arabs? Or why, for that matter, can't Israel apply the same standards to itself that it demands of its Arab enemies?"[9]







If Israel had allowed Vanunu to leave the state before June 2005, this citizen journalist would not have crossed paths with him nor taped the 2005, 2006, 2008 Vanunu video interviews that illuminate the lunacy of Israel's delusion that they can control 21st century technologies means and ways to transmit the free flow of information; such as Vanunu stating:



"Israel is only a democracy if you are a Jew…Thanks to Jesus Christ I survived…This US media who are here in Jerusalem are afraid of Israel. Because I am under orders and they don't want trouble, they cooperate with Israel. A good example is the US media who talk about freedom of knowledge, freedom of information like CNN, ABC, 60 Minutes. In this case they are all silent and cooperate with Israel; they fear the Israel lobby and the Israeli authority here. My view is the US Media is totally under the Israeli control. Very sad, very bad that US Media is not free. The Zionist lobby in Washington decides what people in the US should know and hear about. Not just the West Bank is under occupation, but the US Media is under Israeli occupation too."[10]



In July 2007, Israel convicted Vanunu on 14 [out of over a hundred interviews with foreign journalists] counts of violating the order prohibiting him from speaking to any foreigners.



He was sentenced to six months in jail and on the first appeal; his time behind bars was reduced to three months. The date for Vanunu's Supreme Court appeal has not yet been announced, but if Israel hopes to maintain the intention of being a democracy and avoid another crisis, mercy and justice will rule and allow Vanunu the right to leave a country that is not his home.















+ Meet Father Dave:

http://www.fatherdave.org



1 http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-keeping-out-the-cameras-and-reporters-simply-doesnt-work-1225800.html

2 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SILJxPTqjAM

3 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/14/israel-gaza-un-court-palestine

4 http://windowintopalestine.blogspot.com/2009/01/add-your-call-to-li...
5 http://www.publicenemy.com/pb/viewtopic.php?p=76&sid=e8249e55b6dc2b68545b99665985c426

6 LETTERS FROM SOLITARY Letters from Mordechai Vanunu to David Smith written during his 11 years of solitary confinement Edited and annotated by Samuel H. Day, Jr. with forward & afterword by Rev. David B. Smith

7 http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=798919682#/group.php?gid=527...

8 LETTERS FROM SOLITARY

9 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=5222

10 "30 Minutes with Vanunu" freely streaming @

http://www.wearewideawake.org/

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