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On Jan. 25, 2006, Vanunu's FREEDOM OF SPEECH TRIAL began the same day as the Palestinian’s democratically elected Hamas to represent them as Fatah had become just another layer of The Occupation of Palestine.
On July 2, 2007, an Israeli court sentenced Mordechai Vanunu, to six more months in jail for violating the unenforceable ban imposed in 2004. Since his release from Ashkelon Prison on April 21, 2004, Israel has denied Vanunu the right to leave the state and has forbidden him the right to speak to foreigners. Two days before President Bush's first trip to Israel Palestine and a day before Vanunu's appeal was to begin, Israel sentenced him to community service instead.
On Feb. 5, 2008, Vanunu met with prison officials to arrange community service and learned that to his "surprise they say there is no community service in East Jerusalem. I told them the agreement for community service was on this condition that it will be only in the East Jerusalem. They say no one told them about this… I will do community service in the East Jerusalem or the appeal begins and may be the prison sentence."
Since his release from 18 years in Ashkelon Prison on April 21, 2004, Vanunu has only lived in East Jerusalem:
"I went three times to West Jerusalem by taxi because I had to go to the Supreme Court. All three times some right wing extremist Jews shouted and threatened me. My community is the Lutheran Church in the Old City, the Palestinians on the streets and internationals. I have met with hundreds, thousands- probably even five thousand people since 2004."
Everyone who talks with Vanunu on the street, on the phone, email, snail mail or anywhere at all in occupied east Jerusalem, understands that they are potentially being monitored by cogs in the industrial security-surveillance complex. Israel had hoped that the world would forget about Vanunu.
The martyrdom of Vanunu is also about the Christian persecution inflicted by the Jewish State. When he emerged from his windowless tomb sized cell on April 21, 2004, Vanunu said:
“I am not harming Israel. I am not interested in Israel. I want to tell you something very important. I suffered here 18 years because I am a Christian, because I was baptised into Christianity. If I was a Jew I wouldn't have all this suffering here in isolation for 18 years. Only because I was a Christian man.”
From interviews with Vanunu 2005-2008:
“My human rights have been denied me because I am a Christian. When I was on trial, I was treated just like a Palestinian: no human rights at all, and cruel and unusual punishment, all because I told the truth. The government spread slander about me, that I was a homosexual, that I hated Jews, that I wanted fame and money. What I did was sacrifice my life for the truth. In prison, I really began to feel like Jesus and Paul. When Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple, it was like me in Dimona, exposing the Israelis' dirty secrets. I felt like Paul, being thrown in prison for speaking the truth.
"The only real way to worship is in loving one's enemies. It was not easy to love my tormentors; it was only because I felt so much like Jesus crucified on the cross, and as if I was crucified in prison, that I could do it. It was not ever easy. I have forgiven but not forgotten anything, and I never will.
“In Israel, a life sentence is twenty-five years. Even murderers go free after seventeen. They imposed the same restrictions on me that Palestinians receive: no human rights at all; no phone; no visitors, except family, and only through an iron grill; no vacation; no holidays; and no gifts. Even murderers get out for vacations! I was locked up for eighteen years and still cannot go on vacation; I cannot leave, and that is all I am asking for, just to leave here.
“For eighteen years in prison, they even attempted to control my thoughts on paper. I would write exactly what I wanted and they would censor words like kidnapped and atomic bomb. They would show me how they chopped up my letters, but I continued to write exactly what I wanted. They held my body, but never my spirit or mind.
“I really had no clue what I was doing by getting baptized a Christian; I just felt like I had to do it. It was my way to become a new being. It wasn’t until after my trial that I started to read the New Testament. While I was in prison, I would read aloud for a half hour, twice a day. I would read the entire New Testament and begin it again when I finished the Book of Revelation. I did this for myself, as well as for my captors--not so much the prison guards, but the ones who watched me on camera twenty-four hours a day.
“Once I covered up the camera that spied on me and was punished with one month in solitary, without any books or radio; no contact with anyone anywhere was allowed. It was just them, watching me, constantly watching me. The Shen Beet, you know, like the FBI and the Mossad, like your CIA— they were watching me. They tortured me by keeping a light on in my cell constantly for two years. They told me it was because they were afraid I would commit suicide, and the oppressive camera was for my safety. They recruited the guards and other prisoners to irritate me. They would deprive me of sleep by making loud noises near my cell all night long.
“I chose to read them 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8, instead:
