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For Whom the Bells Toll by Uri Avnery
Taheri
was acclaimed a hero throughout the world. A number of organizations
nominated him for the Nobel Peace Price. President Bush praised his
courage. Ariel Sharon invited him to come and live in This
is, of course, an entirely fictitious story. But it corresponds exactly
to the story of Mordechai Vanunu, who is considered by almost all
Israelis as a despicable traitor--proving once again that treason, like
pornography, is a matter of geography. This
week I used my privilege as a former Member of the Knesset to attend a
session of the Knesset Committee for "the Constitution, Law and
Justice," in which the Vanunu affair was discussed. In the course
of the session, Knesset members cursed each other in the language of
fishmongers (by which I mean no offence to fishmongers). Two Likud
members, Ronie Bar-On (who once served for several hours as Attorney
General before being ignominiously removed) and Yehiel Hazan shouted
that Vanunu had no human rights, since he was not a human being. It
should be mentioned in all fairness that the chairman of the committee,
Michael Eytan, also a Likud member, strongly condemned these utterances. Vanunu,
who in 1986 disclosed to a British newspaper some of Israel's nuclear
secrets, was kidnapped soon after by the Mossad, smuggled back to Israel
and put on trial. He served his sentence: 18 years in prison. For most
of the time he was held in total isolation. (He told me that, in order
to keep his sanity, he would read the New Testament in English out loud,
over and over again, and in this way improved his command of this
language, which he now insists on using instead of Hebrew.) On
his release, he was placed under severe restrictions: He is forbidden to
go abroad, forbidden to move inside the country without prior
notification of the authorities, forbidden to speak with foreigners,
forbidden to give interviews. The Supreme Court has upheld these
constraints. Vanunu has violated most of them, and some weeks ago he was
indicted for these violations. The
restrictions were initially imposed for one year, which came to an end
this week. The Knesset committee was about to discuss the possibility of
their being extended, but a few hours before the session, the Minister
of the Interior, Ophir Pines (Labor Party) signed an order extending for
another year the prohibition of leaving the country, and the Army
Commander of the Home Front signed an order to extend the other
constraints (under Emergency Regulations). At
the committee meeting, the representative of the Attorney General set
out the government arguments for this extension: (a) Vanunu still
"holds in his head" dangerous secrets, (b) He has a
"phenomenal" memory, (c) If given the opportunity, he will
disclose these secrets abroad. What
is the evidence to support this? (a)
In one of the letters he wrote in prison, Vanunu told his correspondent
abroad that he was in possession of many more secrets, which he had not
yet disclosed. He announced his intention of revealing these secrets at
the first opportunity. (b)
Two years before his release--that is to say, 16 years after his work in
the nuclear installation--he drew in his cell, purely from memory,
detailed and amazingly exact blueprints of the production process. These
drawings were found among the more than a thousand documents seized in
his cell. These
facts are more than strange. An inmate who sends letters from prison
knows, of course, that they are censored. Vanunu was bound to know that
not only the prison authorities, but the intelligence services, too,
would read them. When he made the blueprints, he certainly knew they
would be seized. All
this indicates that he intended to provoke his tormentors and show them
that he was not broken. It is difficult to take the documents seriously,
as the Supreme Court did, eight months ago, when it confirmed the
restrictions. A person who intends to disclose dreadful secrets does not
announce this in advance to the authorities, and does not prepare
blueprints for his persecutors. Concerning
the matter itself: (a)
Does he "hold in his head" secrets that he has not disclosed
in the past? Unlikely.
First
of all, Vanunu's knowledge concerns processes as they were 18 years ago.
Can such knowledge be useful today? Hard to believe. As Knesset Member
Zehava Galon (Yahad) remarked at the session: "It is terrifying to
imagine that nothing has changed in Secondly,
before the British paper published his disclosures, Vanunu was
cross-questioned for two whole days by one of the world's leading
nuclear scientists. It is hard to believe that after that he still had
any undisclosed secrets left. Thirdly,
it borders on paranoia to think that he was so sophisticated as to
decide, 18 years ago, to "hold in his head" secrets in order
to publish them 20 years later. Fourthly,
Vanunu is no scientist. He worked at the reactor as a technician. Even
if he has a "phenomenal" memory, and even if his blueprints
are uncannily exact, it is hard to believe that they have any remaining
significance today. If
this is the case, how to explain the renewal of the restrictions? The
Attorney General's representative insisted that their purpose is not to
punish him for things he has done in the past, which would be illegal
(since he has already been tried and served his full sentence), but to
prevent new crimes (the disclosure of further secrets). I
doubt this. One cannot silence Vanunu. The whole world is interested in
him, and the more he is persecuted, the more this interest will grow.
Vanunu cannot be deterred--he is simple undeterrible (to coin a word).
Quite the contrary. Also, it is impossible to prevent him from coming
into contact with foreigners. (Some
months ago, I was sitting in the evening in the garden of the fabulous
American Colony hotel in There
remains only one explanation: Revenge. Yehiel Horev, the chief of the
Internal Security Division of the Ministry of Defense, cannot forgive
Vanunu for making a mockery of his security arrangements by wandering
around the parts of the installation in which he had no business to be,
freely taking photos in The
more so as the Attorney General's man, answering a query from Knesset
Member Etti Livni, admitted that the same arguments voiced now will also
be valid in another year's time, as well as in five and ten years. In
other words, the constraints may be life-long. As
for my personal opinion about the substance of the matter: Nuclear
weapons are a threat to all of us. It is impossible to prevent
indefinitely the acquisition of nuclear weapons by more countries in the
For
years, Now,
the aim must be to free the whole region from weapons of mass
destruction, under strict international and mutual inspection, as part
of a comprehensive peace settlement. That is both possible and
practical. When Vanunu rings the bells, he contributes to the public
awakening. His
action is also important for another reason: for the first time, he has
drawn the attention of the Israeli public to the real danger inherent in
the old reactor, which is now more than 40 years old. Several former
employees have now sued the government, claiming that they have
contracted cancer (and some have died) because of safety failures. What
will happen in the case of a Chernobyl-like disaster? Or an earthquake,
or a missile strike? Who is thinking about this? Whose responsibility is
it? Who oversees those responsible? Vanunu
rings the bells to call attention to a real danger. The question is not
whether he is a pleasant person, whether his views are popular or what
he thinks about the State of Israel, after 12 years of solitary
confinement. The question is whether he is doing a good job. I,
for one, believe he is.
discuss this column in the forum Uri Avnery is a peace activist.
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