interview on Channel 2, the "refusers" were not given any opportunity at all to explain their point of view or answer their detractors.

No doubt: the establishment is worried. Perhaps it may succeed in containing the protest this time and deterring other potential mutineers by spreading defamation, fear, and punishment. But the message of the 27 has been written and nothing can change that.

With this sortie the flyers have served the State of Israel better than any of the hundreds of others in the course of their army service. Some day Israel will recognize the huge debt it owes to the valiant 27.

Vanunu: The Terrible Secret

April 24, 2004

In the darkness of a cinema, a woman's voice: "Hey! Take your hands off! Not you! YOU!" This old joke illustrates the American policy regarding nuclear armaments in the Middle East. "Hey, you there, Iraq and Iran and Libya, stop it! Not YOU, Israel!"

The danger of nuclear arms was the main pretext for the invasion of Iraq. Iran is threatened in order to compel it to stop its nuclear efforts. Libya has surrendered and is dismantling its nuclear installations. So what about Israel?

This week it became clear that the Americans are full partners in the creation of Israel's "nuclear option."

How was this exposed? With the help of Mordecai Vanunu, of

course. Throughout the week, a festival was being celebrated around the prisoner, who was released on Wednesday. The Security

Establishment has not stopped harassing him even after he has sat in prison for 18 years, eleven of them in complete solitary confinementa treatment he himself described on leaving the prison as "cruel and barbaric." After he was "set free," far-reaching restrictions were imposed on him (e.g. he is forbidden to leave the country, is restricted to one town, cannot go near any embassy or consulate, may not talk with foreign citizens). All this under the colonial British emergency regulations that were condemned at the time by the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine, as "worse then the Nazi laws."

Not, God forbid, because of any desire for revenge!

The security people declared from every podium that this is not revenge for all the shame Vanunu caused the security services, and is by no means just more persecution, but an essential security requirement. He must not be allowed to leave the country or to speak with foreigners and journalists, because he is in possession of secrets vital to the security of the state.

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