VANUNU FOR RECTOR

“They said I am the clerk, the technician, the mechanic, the driver.
They said. Do this, do that, don’t look left or right, don’t read the text. Don’t look at the whole machine.”

Mordechai Vanunu – who blew the whistle on Israels nuclear programme and has been paying the penalty ever since – has been put forward as Rector of Glasgow University. Is this a move away from the infantilism of student politics?

Israel continues to enforce Vanunu's silence, as it has done for 18 years. Vanunu has already endured almost two decades in an Israeli prison, twelve of them in solitary confinement, for revealing Israel's illegal and dangerous nuclear arsenal. For the brave act of whistleblowing on a programme of weapons of mass destruction, Vanunu has paid, and is continuing to pay, a huge price.

Vanunu remains in great danger: the Israeli mass circulation daily, Ma'ariv, canvased its readers on what should be done with Vanunu, giving them a fifth option of 'kill him'. 33% chose this option. He has been assaulted by Jewish extremists outside his place of sanctuary, St George's Anglican cathedral in Jerusalem..

During July of this year, Vanunu agreed to a request by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign to be filmed reading the poem for peace he wrote in the bleak solitude of the dozen years he was tortured in solitary confinement.

The organisers say a vote for Vanunu will:

• register your opposition to a world of war and weapons of mass destruction
• support the human rights of the Palestinian people under the control of Ariel Sharon
• support a brave whistleblower who stood up for his beliefs
• pressurise the Israeli regime to release a very brave man
• pressurise the UK government into giving Vanunu asylum
Glasgow University Palestine Solidarity Campaign
glapss@blueyonder.co.uk

Mordechai Vanunu is still deprived of his freedom in Israel for whistleblowiing in the cause of peace, and his opposition to WMD. Vanunu was a technician at Israel's nuclear weapons production plant. After he revealed Israel's huge nuclear arms program to the world, he was entrapped by Israeli Mossad agents in London, kidnapped in Rome and sentenced at a secret trial to 18 years of jail, 12 of which he served in solitary confinement. "I refused to be a bolt in the deadly machinery." After his release from prison, Vanunu was given refuge at St George Cathedral in East Jerusalem.

In the 70's he supported the cause of the violated Palestinian people, and lost his job as a result. "Ever since I was a child I have learned to be open to other views", he says, "to criticize, to be independent, and most importantly to be faithful to the truth. This is why I have always tried to serve mankind, by contributing to peace and foremost to justice for the much-suffering Palestinians."

"I'm being punished for no crime. I'm not allowed to leave the country; I have to report to the police." Bizarrely, Vanunu is not allowed to talk to foreigners, or
to go near any embassy, border or (air)port, or write e-mails. He knows that his defiance of these restrictions can land him back in the Israeli gulag, the vast prison system of abuse and torture of Palestinians and which so cruelly tortured him for almost two decades

Why can't I speak to foreigners? I repeat all the things that Israel wants to be kept silent; I remind of Israel's nuclear weapons program, I speak of the barbaric treatment in Israeli prison, and I express my political views of the conflict."

"Iraq didn't have any nuclear weapons, I'm sure that neither does Iran. If Israel wasn't so aggressive with its nuclear arms, none of the other countries would even need to get them." He concludes that the international community should intervene and stop the Israeli aggression before it gets out of hand.

Robert Fisk on Vanunu:

Palestine Monitor
Counterpunch

Herald on Vanunu

Mother Earth