A matter of principle

By Salama Ahmed Salama

---

Since the widespread dissemination of Zionism -- a thoroughly racist ideology -- there has been a remarkable dearth of Jewish figures willing to come forward and promote the values of equality, freedom and peace.

Mordechai Vanunnu, the nuclear technician who first brought Israel's nuclear programme to the attention of the world, is the last such figure to have emerged. He was an employee at the Dimona power plant, where he worked on the nuclear programme he would later expose. Abducted by Mossad in Italy, he was brought back to Tel Aviv for trial, and subsequently spent 18 years in solitary confinement.

Vanunnu, a member of a religious Jewish family of Moroccan origins, sought no material gains from his revelation of the extent of Israel's nuclear programme. Nor was he working for a foreign agency that had incited him to betray Israel's secrets. Rather, he acted to satisfy his conscience, and out of the conviction that Israel's possession of nuclear arms would only bring about destruction not only in Israel but throughout the region -- a conviction he was not to give up even after he was arrested and tried.

Following his abduction the progress of events served only to confirm his belief that the principles on which Israel was established -- as a Jewish, i.e. racist -- state were meaningless. A Jew, he realised, could still live in any part of the world.

Following his release Vanunnu still faces severe restrictions on his right to move freely and to communicate with others. The pretext is that he still remains in possession of secrets the revelation of which would harm Israeli security.

Yet Vanunnu says that nuclear research in Israel, and the expansion of the Israeli arsenal, especially following the installation of nuclear war heads to the three German submarines recently acquired by Israel, are no longer secret. It is enough, he says, that the whole world now knows that Israel possesses enough nuclear arms to destroy the entire Middle East. Notwithstanding its hypocritical war on Iraq, waged on the pretext of searching for weapons of mass destruction, Washington has resumed its attempts to cover up the danger posed by Israel and divert the attention of the international community away from it.

Vanunnu certainly deserves the Nobel Prize for Peace, and in my view Egypt could offer to barter him for the Israeli spy Azam Azam, whose release Israel persistently demands. Let them have Azam and free Vanunnu from any restrictions. He could then help sow the seeds of a movement opposing nuclear arms in Israel and help make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone.

It is strange indeed that Israel should be the only country in the world whose nuclear arms programme Washington covers up, working to prevent a scandal and using it as a weapon with which to threaten and blackmail the Arab world. More regrettable is that EU countries should follow the same path, calling on Syria to give up chemical weapons as a condition for economic partnership with Europe, while neither Europe, nor the International Atomic Energy Agency makes the least effort to place the Israeli arsenal under supervision.