BarackObamadotcom
8:13
Message RE: Mordechai Vanunu to President Peres and all of US
On 23 May 2010 Israel re-imprisoned Mordechai Vanunu for three months essentially for speaking to foreign media in 2004!
On 18 June 2010, Amnesty International nailed the Israeli authorities for subjecting Vanunu to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by holding him in solitary confinement. Amnesty International has called for his immediate and unconditional release stating:.
"Mordechai Vanunu should not be in prison at all, let alone be held in solitary confinement in a unit intended for violent criminals...He suffered immensely when he was held in solitary confinement for 11 years after his imprisonment in 1986 and to return him to such conditions now is nothing less than cruel, inhuman or degrading.
"Mordechai Vanunu is a prisoner of conscience. The prison authorities might claim that he has been put in isolation to protect him from the risk of attack by other inmates, but if the Israeli government is really concerned for his safety it should release him without delay. His re-imprisonment is both harsh and unjustified."
In April 1999, thirty-six members of the House of Representatives signed a letter calling for Vanunu's release from prison because they believed "we have a duty to stand up for men and women like Mordechai Vanunu who dare to articulate a brighter vision for humanity."
President Clinton responded with a public statement expressing concern for Vanunu and the need for Israel and other non-parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty to adhere to it and accept IAEA safeguards.
In a 2003, BBC documentary Peter Hounam stated, "Vanunu told the world that Israel had developed between one hundred and two hundred atomic bombs [by 1986!] and had gone on to develop neutron bombs and thermonuclear weapons. Enough to destroy the entire Middle East and nobody has done anything about it since."
In 2005, Vanunu told me:
"President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection.
"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."
Alfred Bernhard Nobel invented dynamite and when he wrote his last will, in 1895, he left most of his wealth to the establishment of the Nobel Prize to be used to reward human ingenuity and those with moral backbones. Nobel desired to award people whose work benefited humanity in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and for those who work for peace.
In 2007, after Bishop Tutu nominated Mordechai Vanunu he told me he didn't want the Nobel Peace Prize if Israel would not allow him the freedom to go and accept it.
Within days of the announcement for 2009's Nobel Peace Prize, Vanunu wrote the Nobel Peace Prize Committee:
"I am asking the committee to remove my name from the nominations...I cannot be part of a list of laureates that includes Simon Peres...Peres established and developed the atomic weapon program in Dimona in Israel...Peres was the man who ordered [my] kidnapping...he continues to oppose my freedom and release...WHAT I WANT IS FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM... I NEED NOW."
"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And Vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?'
"But Conscience asks the question 'Is it right?'
"And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right."-Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
Learn much more at WeAreWideAwake.org THE VANUNU SAGA 2005-2010!
And FREE VANUNU NOW!
Eileen Fleming, Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Staff Member of Salem-news.com
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com and Dandelionsalad.wordpress.com
Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
My next of CONSCIENCE is to search You Tube for the members of Congress who have spoken here and send them a message too:
http://www.aipac.org/Publications/Congressional_Statements_on_Flotilla.pdf
