Opinion Editorials, March 1, 2010

What Alfred Nobel Might Say to the Peace Prize Committee regarding Mordechai Vanunu

By Eileen Fleming

Al-Jazeerah & ccun.org, March 1, 2010

 
“My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant, whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.”-Alfred Nobel
 
Alfred Bernhard Nobel invented dynamite and when he wrote his last will, in 1895, he left most of his wealth to the establishment of the Nobel Prize to be used to reward human ingenuity and those with moral backbones. Nobel desired to award people whose work benefited humanity in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and for those who work for peace.
Nobel clearly supported the anti-militaristic peace movement, such as the one headed by Bertha von Suttner, who in 1876, worked as Nobel’s secretary-housekeeper for one week. Suttner became a novelist, radical pacifist, and was the first woman to be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Although her personal contact with Alfred Nobel was brief, she corresponded with him until his death in 1896, and was a major influence in his decision to include a peace prize, which she won in 1905.
 
On February 24, 2010, Nobel Institute Director Geir Lundestad announced to the media that for the second year in a row, Mordechai Vanunu declined the honor of being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Vanunu has been nominated over twenty times for telling the world about Israel’s clandestine underground weapons of mass destruction facility in 1986.

The head of the Oslo-based Norwegian Nobel Institute admitted to the press that Vanunu, “has written letters to us this year and last year also, where he stated explicitly that he did not want to be a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
"The reason he gave was that Simon Peres had received the Nobel Peace Prize, and Peres he alleged was the father of the Israeli atomic bomb and he did not want to be associated with Peres in any way.” [1]
Geir Lundestad, also said, “He can write all the letters he wants. He has been proposed by people who are eligible to nominate candidates, so his name will remain on the list” and added he was unlikely to win the award. [2]


 
Norwegian journalist, Ola Karlsen, wrote Vanunu, “The director of the Nobel Institute, Mr. Geir Lundestad, tells the news broadcaster NRK that they will not remove you from the list, and he also calls you pretentious. Could you comment on the statements and judgment of the Nobel Institutes director?" [3]
 
Vanunu wrote back:
1.The committee should respect my decision, if one wants not to be nominated that is his right.

2. The Nobel award to Simon Peres, not only that it was Bad judgment, bad choice, but that award legitimized the Israel very cruel, Barbaric, hard punishment for me, with 12 years in Isolation, and full sentence 18 years, and continue until now more 6 years preventing me to go, to be free.

3. The Nobel committee in fact was saying by that award "ignore Vanunu, and Israel Nuclear policy is good, keep on cheating the world. Keep on the Nuclear Apartheid in the Middle East. Only Israel can have Nuclear Technology."

4.My target by this letter to send clear message to Norway Gov't and people, that what I want now, I need now, is freedom, passport, no any awards. This can be done by the Govt. FREEDOM NOW.NOW. Thank you, VMJC [Ibid]
 
 
In 2007, after Bishop Tutu nominated him, Vanunu told me he didn’t want the Nobel Peace Prize if Israel would not allow him the freedom to go and accept it.
Within days of the announcement for 2009’s Nobel Peace Prize, Vanunu wrote the Nobel Peace Prize Committee:

"I am asking the committee to remove my name from the nominations…I cannot be part of a list of laureates that includes Simon Peres…Peres established and developed the atomic weapon program in Dimona in Israel…Peres was the man who ordered [my] kidnapping…he continues to oppose my freedom and release…WHAT I WANT IS FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM…FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM I NEED NOW." [4]

In 1963, when Vanunu was nine years old the Zionists came to his home town of Marrakech, Morocco and convinced his Orthodox father to abandon his general store and pack up the first seven of his eleven children for the land of milk and honey. Instead, the Vanunu's were banished to the desert of Beesheva.

A few months later, Shimon Peres, then Israel's Deputy Minister of Defense met with President John Kennedy, in the White House.

Kennedy told Peres, "You know that we follow very closely the discovery of any nuclear development in the region. This could create a very dangerous situation. For this reason we monitor your nuclear effort. What could you tell me about this?"

Peres replied, "I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first."

By September of 1986, Peres was convulsing over Vanunu, who had been employed as a lowly tech in his progeny; Israel’s clandestine underground nuclear weapons centre in the Negev called the Dimona.

Peres ordered the Mossad, to "Bring the son of a bitch back here."

Peres ordered Vanunu's kidnapping that included a clubbing, drugging and being flung upon an Israeli cargo boat back to Israel for a closed-door trial and 18 years in a tomb sized cell in Ashkelon prison.
 
In April 2005, two months before my first of seven trips to Jerusalem and before I met Vanunu for the first time on June 21, 2005; I turned the TV on, which had last been tuned into the History channel. At that moment, they were broadcasting a show called, "Sexpionage" all about Russian female spies and one from the Mossad.

The clip that ran before my eyes was of Vanunu being transported to his closed door trial, of those few famous seconds of Vanunu’s inspired move to write upon his palm: "HIJACKED" and the Rome flight number he had been on. 
That clip was followed by one of Shimon Perez in 1986, claiming that Israel would never be the first in the Mid East to possess nuclear weapons.

In 1994, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres were all awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for playing a part in achieving the Oslo Declaration of Principles. According to the preamble of the DOP, peace was to be based on mutual respect and reconciliation. Ever since receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in achieving the Oslo agreement, Peres has been most instrumental in helping to destroy that agreement.
I imagine Alfred Nobel might tell the Committee to grow a backbone and award Mordechai Vanunu the 2010 Peace Prize and thus ignite the dynamite that will open the doors of the Dimona to International Atomic Agency Inspectors and blow the roof off of Israel’s hypocrisy.  
 
Learn lots more @ The Vanunu Saga: 2005-2010:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=660&Itemid=175
 
1.http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/Vanunu-wants-to-be-removed-from-Nobel-Peace-list/articleshow/5614115.cm
 
2. http://www.dispatch.co.za/article.aspx?id=383030
3.  http://vanunu.com/20100224nyheter.html
4. http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1216&Itemid=218



--
Only in Solidarity do "we have it in our power to begin the world again."-Tom Paine


Eileen Fleming,
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com
Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"  
Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"
http://www.youtube.com/user/eileenfleming