WAWA/WeAreWideAwake is my Public Service to America as a muckracker who has journeyed seven times to Israel Palestine since June 2005.
WAWA is dedicated to confronting media and governments that shield the whole
truth.
We who Are Wide
Awake are compelled by the "fierce urgency of Now" [Rev MLK, Jr.] to raise
awareness and promote the human dialogue about many of the crucial issues of our
day: the state of our Union and in protection of democracy, what life is like
under military occupation in Palestine, the Christian EXODUS from the Holy Land,
and spirituality-from a Theologically Liberated Christian Anarchist
POV.
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all...and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave...a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils." George Washington's Farewell Address - 1796
"My aim is to agitate & disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast." Unamuno
"Imagine All the People Sharing All the World." John Lennon
"If enough Christians followed the gospel, they could bring any state to its knees." Father Philip Francis Berrigan
"You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won't back down." Tom Petty
"If I can't dance, it's not my revolution." Emma Goldman
"We have yet to begin to IMAGINE the power and potential of the Internet." Charlie Rose, 2005
Only in Solidarity do "We have it in our power to begin the world again" Tom Paine
"Never doubt that a few, thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead
"You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free." John 8:32
DO SOMETHING!
Photo of George shown here and in web site banner courtesy of Debbie Hill, 2000.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. -July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence
February 26, 2010: What Alfred Nobel Might Say to the Peace Prize Committee regarding Mordechai Vanunu
“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.
"HOPE has two children.The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine
"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust." - Aquinas
Everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions
without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
" In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."-Mother Teresa
“You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased...to obey the laws of life.”- Lewis Mumford, 1946
The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership....a leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures." - William Fulbright
“Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death.” - Rev. MLK
Establishment of Israel
"On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations." - May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the Establishment of Israel