Vanunu Convicted Again; Decries Israeli Apartheid by Mark Glenn

It has been three years since Mordecai Vanunu was released from prison after serving 18 years for blowing the whistle on Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Now he may be heading back to jail for violating a military court order forbidding him from speaking to foreign journalists.

On April 30, Vanunu was convicted by a lower court on 14 charges of violating the terms of his release in giving interviews with U.S., British, Australian and French media, including American Free Press. He faces a possible six months in prison.

Since his release, Vanunu has refused to remain silent on a number of issues, most notably the issue of Israel’s nuclear weapons. At issue is his fear that Israel, being the “mad dog” state that former Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan suggested it become, will wind up unleashing its nuclear arsenal against not just Arab nations, but the entire world.

Speaking with American Free Press Vanunu said:

“Israel is determined to wage genocide upon innocent civilians . . . We have seen this for the last 50 years to some degree, and it has always been part of Israel’s secret policy. Israel will use [its nuclear weapons] as a means of avoiding any kind of peace treaty with the Arabs as well as imposing her policies of occupation and of neglecting the suffering that she has caused the Palestinians for the last 50 years.”

On a more personal level, he told AFP that he wanted to leave Israel and go someplace “free” and“less brutal.”

He added: “I have seen the ugliness of Jewish society and have had my fill of it. . . . Although I was convicted, the truth is that I have won today, because I have proven once again that Israel is not a democratic country. It is a Jewish apartheid state where only Jews have rights and where non-Jews have no rights. There is no freedom of movement and no freedom of speech.”

Vanunu remarked on the hypocrisy of Israel and America when it comes to other nations possessing weapons of mass destruction. He also spoke of the fait accompli of destroying Iraq, as well as a possible war with Iran.

In addition to speaking out against Israel’s nuclear capability, Vanunu has also stated publicly on several occasions his belief that Israel was involved to varying degrees in terror attacks around the world, including 9-11, the Madrid train bombings and the bombings in London.

After obtaining his “freedom,” Vanunu has suffered a spate of verbal attacks and threats as a result of his activism from Zionists, both Jewish and Christian.

However, given the fact that Israel’s nuclear capability is no longer a secret, he feels that the attacks are personal in nature and tied to the fact that he “abandoned the tribe” by converting to Christianity.

He told AFP that this was something that was a common theme during his prison term, where he would receive regular visits from Shin Bet and Mossad agents who would dangle the bait of parole in front of him if he would just renounce his conversion and “return to the fold.” His comments concerning his conversion reveal why “interested parties” might engage in a program of vindictiveness against him:

“In the same way that Jesus criticized Judaism 2,000 years ago, I was unwilling to accept what they teach. The Jews believe that there is only one Chosen People of God and preach their superiority. I decided that after 2,000 years these ideas were nonsense. There are 6 billion people around the world, all equal, all part of the human race. There is no such thing as a super race.

“We should all respect and love each other, and that was the beginning of my rejecting Judaism and accepting the teachings of Jesus Christ and of accepting humanity. Those who teach Judaism control and ruin the lives of those under them, telling them what they must do every hour of every day, but at the same time they do not teach them to respect non-Jews as human beings. This is Judaism, a collection of primitive traditions thousands of years old that has not changed.”

He added that “the Jews came to Palestine in the name of their god and took this land and expelled the people and gave them hard, cruel, barbaric lives for the last 60 years. This way of thinking, this faith, cannot exist within this new age, and it was this that also led me to expose Israel’s nuclear secrets.”

His sentencing date is scheduled for May 18.