Padilla is devoid of a personality because of the cruel and inhumane treatment he endured for three and a half years. Vanunu has endured cruel and inhumane punishment for the last twenty-one years and has a challenging personality. Vanunu is justly paranoid for Israeli Security monitors his snail mail, email and telephone calls. He is justifiably angry at the injustice of being prevented from leaving Israel , which is all he has wanted for the last three years.
Speaking to Vanunu in such a place as a post office is guaranteed to gather a swarm of spies of strange kinds, people lacking finesse who would oh, so nonchalantly saunter over to a follow up meeting I requested with Vanunu after crossing paths with him in east Jerusalem . Vanunu insisted we could only meet at the Salah Adin Post Office, next door to the police station. It was not until that meeting, did I realize that this female from Florida had become a part of the Vanunu legend, for both cameras and spies occupy the Salah Adin Post Office.
During my two years of crossing paths with Vanunu scattered amongst five trips to Israel Palestine, I have found Vanunu to be articulate, funny, detached, and distant and I have never failed to ask a question which ended the conversation between us. I crossed paths with Vanunu for the first time most recently o n the third day of my fifth journey to Israel Palestine, July 16, 2007- which is also known as the 9th day of Av, the day the Jewish Temple was destroyed. I was on my way to my hotel on Nablus Road in East Jerusalem just after attending Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions media kick off day for the first of 300 homes to be rebuilt this summer, out of the 18,000 Israel has destroyed since 1967. I was witness to the pouring of the foundation of the new home of the Hamdan clan of nine who still have the deeds to their property that were filled-out during the Ottoman Empire.
In front of me I noticed an old man, hunched over as in the proverbial image of one whose back is breaking under the weight of the world, walking very slowly and talking to himself.
It was not until I passed him by and I recognized the voice that called out to me, "Hi, remember me?"
Then I realized it was Vanunu. I had never seen Vanunu wear sunglasses and he now sports big black frames. Last November, when I saw Vanunu last, he walked as fast as I, [a former New Yorker] but his gait that day, was like any other old man's on the hot streets of Jerusalem in July.
"This is the very spot where they stoned to death the first Christian martyr for freedom of speech," he told me as we had crossed paths in front of St. Stephen's Church. Saint Stephen was the first follower of Jesus to be stoned to death for speaking truth to power 2,000 years ago.
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