"What a great contribution we can all make to the world in helping bring peace, if we only take the message of love and non-killing seriously and live by it. Then we could with our brothers and sisters of all faiths and none, build a no killing, Non-violent Middle East and world together." [1]
On 14 September 2010, Vanunu responded to the International League for Human Rights:
I am honored to get your announcement about the FIDH award.
I will accept the award only in one condition, that I myself will be present to receive it. If it is not possible to guarantee that this condition is met then I would prefer that you do not give the award to me now, and keep the option to give it to me in time when I am free. Thank you, Vanunu Mordechai JC. FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM I NEED NOW.
When Vanunu forwarded me the above he explained, "This is my decision. If I am worthy to this award, then they wait 24 years to decide now, I can wait to be free to get it. To get it in Israel prison is to cooperate with this barbaric prison. And to play like Israel is a free democratic state, that I can get the award like I am free man while in fact I am in 24 years prison. Also remember with all the awards and public awareness, no one care or did any thing to prevent the prison sentence."
Many have indeed cared and worked for decades in respect for human rights and sharing the dream of a nuclear free world. Over the last 5 years of chronicling Mordechai Vanunu's on going saga, I met a few of them in California three weeks after first meeting Vanunu in Jerusalem in June 2005.
Many volunteers with the "US Campaign to free Vanunu" had worked for years for Vanunu's release from prison and among the very first words Vanunu spoke upon his release from 18 years in jail was to call them heroes for standing by him.
Vanunu had disbanded the campaign about the same time I first met him, but I knew nothing about it until I returned to America. Before I departed, I asked Vanunu to connect me to his supporters in America who would be able to do something with what became our first of three video interviews. He told me to "goggle" Vanunu, but he meant Google, and that was the first-but not the last- time that I wondered if Ricky Ricardo had been born in Morocco, might he have sounded like Vanunu Mordechai.
I thought it odd to have to do a search for his friends, but via an Internet search I was led to meet a few of Vanunu's heroes while I was in Berkeley at Tikkun's [Hebrew for mend, heal, transform the world] first spiritual activists conference which was three weeks after my first of seven trips to Israel [the state] Palestine [the land].
I met about half a dozen supporters of the just disbanded US Campaign to Free Vanunu, but not one was interested in my DVD copy of Vanunu's message to George W. Bush as to where in the Middle East he actually could find WMD's, nor did anyone care to hear how Vanunu's Christianity helped get him through 18 years in prison, most all in solitary confinement.
Click here to view Vanunu's Video Message on YouTube
While in Berkeley, I learned that over nearly two decades hundreds of supporters had petitioned governments, raised funds and kept Vanunu's name in the press. During his incarceration, Vanunu received thousands of cards, letters and gifts from strangers who admired his solitary action and grieved his ongoing suffering.
But, after a year of walking the streets of east Jerusalem and talking with hundreds of supporters, friends, strangers and media, Vanunu was dealt another crushing disappointment on 21 April 2005, with the announcement of another set of restrictions denying him the right to leave Israel and a few weeks later, Vanunu disbanded his US Campaign.
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