Det mener kommentator Yossi Melman i Haaretz 28. april 2022:
"Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower Vanunu, Eternal Prisoner of Zion"
Men han har ikke fått forlate Israel ... som han selv ønsker.
Nå skal hans reiseforbud vurderes av Israels Høyesterett.
Melman har ingen tro på dette ... det er gått 36 år siden Vanunu jobbet i Dimona-anlegget.
Skudeneshavn 28. april 2022
Jan Marton Jensen
HELE artikkelen i Haaretz 28. april 2022:
Brig. Gen. (res.) Yuval Shimoni is a sensitive, thoughtful man. Or that’s what he would like us to conclude from his recent written assessment concerning former Israeli nuclear spy Mordechai Vanunu: “His desire to leave Israel is completely comprehensible to me, and on a personal level, I can even identify with it.”
Shimoni is the chief of the Defense Ministry’s security department, known by its Hebrew acronym, Malmab. He based his opinion on a 75-minute conversation with Vanunu.
Their meeting was held at the recommendation of Supreme Court
Justice Ofer Grosskopf, who is hearing a petition Vanunu filed via his
attorney, Avigdor Feldman. But that didn’t stop Shimoni from writing,
“I’m holding this conversation with an open mind and a willing heart,
with the goal of getting a personal, unmediated impression from what he
says.”
But then come several sentences that completely contradict his
“identification” and “open mind.” Shimoni said that under no
circumstances should Vanunu be permitted to leave Israel, and that all
the restrictions imposed on him should remain in place, for the sake of
safeguarding national security.
The restrictions, which have been eased slightly over the years, were
imposed immediately upon his release from prison in 2004 after serving a
16-year sentence. Vanunu, a former technician at the nuclear reactor in
Dimona, was convicted of grave security offenses
after providing information about his work to the British newspaper
Sunday Times in 1986. On the basis of this information, the paper
concluded that Israel had a stockpile of sophisticated nuclear weapons
that included hydrogen and neutron bombs.
Perhaps
in order to maintain his facade of “sensitivity,” Shimoni noted in the
opinion that his assessment was professional, but also based on “my
personal impressions.” And talking out of both the personal and the
professional sides of his mouth, he concludes that “the information Mr.
Vanunu possesses is still extremely sensitive.” Yet his opinion is full
of logical flaws.
Shimoni’s claim that the information possessed by Vanunu is still
“sensitive” does an injustice to Israel and portrays it as a third-rate
nuclear state. According to foreign reports, Israel was the sixth
country in the world to develop nuclear weapons, 55 years ago. Vanunu
described what he saw, heard and photographed at the reactor around two
decades after that.
In other words, according to the security directorate’s logic, nothing
has changed in Israel’s nuclear program since then, despite the passage
of 36 years. Its technology hasn’t improved, its equipment and means of
production haven’t been upgraded and its knowledge hasn’t increased.
If we are to believe Shimoni’s opinion, the only possible conclusion is
that while the nuclear world has advanced, Israel has remained frozen in
time. Therefore, everything Vanunu knew then is what the scientists on
the Israel Atomic Energy Commission know today? It doesn’t make sense.
But perhaps it’s also possible that Israel has improved its nuclear
program and made it more sophisticated, obviously without Vanunu’s
knowledge, yet the Defense Ministry prefers not to say so, in part to
continue justifying its abuse of him.
In the conversation with Malmab officials, Vanunu said he didn’t intend
“to publish any information in the future about his work at the Negev
Nuclear Research Center,” meaning the Dimona reactor, “that he has no
interest in what’s being done at the research center, that he has
completed his historical role” – that is, exposing Israel’s nuclear
secrets – and that “he’s tired of the war against the state and its
institutions.” Shimoni doesn’t believe Vanunu, and to justify his
conclusion that Vanunu constitutes a security risk he cited previous
cases in which Vanunu violated the restrictions imposed on him. Once
bitten, twice shy.
In his response to the Defense Ministry’s assessment, Feldman wrote that Vanunu’s violations, for some of which he had been prosecuted, were minor. They included failing to report “that he moved from the second floor of his apartment building to the third floor,” talking to people with foreign citizenship and saying “something that was ostensibly a secret related to his work” during an interview with Israel Channel 2 television that had been approved by the military censor.
Yet none of these violations “entailed any harm whatsoever to national
security,” Feldman wrote, adding, “Even the indictment against him over
his Channel 2 interview didn’t claim that he harmed national security.”
He argued that the assessment “relies mainly on sporadic violations of
absurd restrictions.”
But let’s assume that the Malmab is right. What would actually happen if
Vanunu were permitted to leave Israel and live with his Norwegian wife,
Dr. Kristin Joachimsen, and then resumed telling what he knows? Would
Israel’s deterrence be harmed by Vanunu’s disclosures? Some people think
the opposite is true – that his disclosures would only bolster our
deterrence.
This is a Jekyll and Hyde story: Brig. Gen. Shimoni, the sensitive,
attentive man, and the hard-nosed, professional director of Malmab. In
my view, this is nothing but a sleight of hand meant to conceal the
simple fact that Vanunu will always be a prisoner of Zion. And given
that the Israeli judicial establishment always snaps to attention when
it hears the world “security,” it’s very doubtful that any judge, from
the lowest court in the land to the highest, can find the courage to
disagree with Malmab Shimoni’s contradictory logic.
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