Bolton Beats the War-Drum and Mordechai Vanunu's Third Coming

In 2006, Yossi Melman wrote:

"Vanunu was one of the very few prisoners in Israeli history whose sentence was not reduced for good behavior, nor was he given a single day's furlough. For many years, he was imprisoned in solitary confinement, which nearly drove him insane. Two years ago, he was released and asked to leave Israel. That's when the vengeful machinery of the defense establishment - Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, the Shin Bet, and Yehiel Horev, head of security for the defense establishment - went into action. They imposed a series of limitations on Vanunu, restricting his freedom of movement and his right to social contacts. The worst of these restrictions is the ban on him leaving Israel…Morally and legally, and from a democratic perspective, it is intolerable that someone who has been punished should be punished over and over again for the same sin for which he served such a heavy sentence…the man's ongoing harassment… is entirely motivated by the defense establishment's hunger for vengeance over the way he outwitted it."

This man’s ongoing harassment has also been enabled by a Media that has failed to fulfill its commission to seek and report the truth.

Vanunu Freedom of Speech May 23 2010

On July 23, 2010, the National Archives and Records Administration released declassified files from a Senate investigation into Israeli-funded covert public relations and lobbying activity in the United States.

Grant F. Smith, director of Institute for Research on Middle Eastern policy stated, "It is frightening how easily some in the American news media surrendered to a foreign public relations campaign that spent the 2010 equivalent of $36 million over two years. Time has proven most of the planted content to be misleading, if not dangerous. These historical documents hold many important lessons for Americans who have long needed—but rarely received—straight reporting on key Middle East issues."

The subpoenaed documents expose Israel's clandestine programs for "cultivation of editors" and the "placement of suitable articles in the major consumer magazines" as well as directly influencing U.S. reporting regarding the Dimona WMD facility, as "most of the press seemed to accept the thesis that the reactor was being built for peaceful purposes and not for bombs." [2]

During my 2005 interviews with Vanunu he told me:

"By the time I was twenty-three, I began working at the Dimona. It was suppose to be a textile plant, but I was hired for the control room. At the time, I had no idea what it was in control of.

"In August of 1985, I was put on a list of people who should be dismissed from the Dimona. They were laying off 10 percent, but when they told me I was going, I confronted them with ‘Why are you dismissing me? I am a good worker; you are getting rid of me for political reasons, aren’t you?’ The union protected me, and after two months, they told me they were transferring me to a less secure area.

"I told them I would stay where I was, or else I would resign. They said, ‘Okay, resign.’ And I did. I had already shot the two rolls of film. I worked the night shift and had lots of time alone. I found the keys to the restricted areas in the shower room. I left the film in my locker for a few days before taking it out of the Dimona. I knew they were watching me.

I left Israel in January of 1986, and went to search for someone to share my story with. I didn’t develop the film until six months later. I was waiting until I found a newspaper that would cover the story. I met a Canadian author on my way to Greece, but nothing came of it. I traveled to Athens, Bangkok, and then went to Russia. I was 32 years old in a Moscow hotel, wondering if I should tell my story to the Red Army. I decided to leave, instead. The reason I had arrived there was that before I left the Dimona, I had checked out the Palestinian Communist Party to see how the communists worked. I was curious and wondered if they would help me once I left Israel. But when I witnessed the poverty and nothing but military cars everywhere, I decided to get out of there.

I went to the Far East and met some people who had run away from Chernobyl, and I told them about the Dimona. Two weeks later I arrived in Sydney and stayed for six months. I went to St. John Anglican Church and became friends with the people I met there. I got a job driving a taxi and met a freelance journalist named Gervevo; I told him my story, and he was enthusiastic to help me get it out. He thought I wanted to make money on it, but I told him I just wanted to prevent a nuclear war and contribute to a positive change in the Middle East. Then I met Peter Hounam" the investigative reporter who broke Vanunu’s story on the 5th of October 1986, four days after Vanunu was kidnapped by the Mossad.

Although I was not a reporter when I met Vanunu in 2005, I knew I must and would become one after Vanunu informed me:

Eileen Fleming & Mordechai Vanunu

"Did you know that President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons? In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.’

Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection. The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona. The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out. Everything inside was written in French, when I was there.

"Back then; the Dimona descended seven floors underground. In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on. Kennedy demanded inspections. When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them. Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production.

In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.

"The only way to peace is peace; the only way is nonviolence. The only answer to Israeli nuclear weapons, their aggression, occupation and oppression, and the wall and refugee camps is to answer them with truth and a peaceful voice. When I became the spy for the world, I did it all for the people of the world. If governments do not report the truth, and if the media does not report the truth, then all we can do is follow our consciences. Daniel Ellsberg did, the woman from Enron did, and I did. The United States needs to wake up and see the truth that Israel is not a democracy, unless you are a Jew. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where America can right now find WMDs. America can also find where basic human rights have been denied Christians: right here in Israel."

1. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/709395.html
2. http://www.irmep.org/11-121960AZC.pdf

You can send Eileen Fleming an email at this address: ecumei@gmail.com