Chapter 1: And so it began…

 

 

"If you shut up the truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way."- Emile Zola  

 

 

A few days before my first of seven journeys to Israel Palestine, a Palestinian American friend warned me, “Don’t visit Vanunu, if you see him; don’t speak to him. He’s not allowed to speak to foreigners and you could cause him trouble.”

I responded, “OK, I won’t track him down, but Jerusalem is a small town and if our paths cross, I will speak to him. What kind of government is that, that will tell a human being who they can and cannot talk with?”

 

It was while researching for my first book-KEEP HOPE ALIVE- in 2004, that I stumbled upon Mordechai Vanunu’s incredible story and wrote him into a chapter; and met him a few months after.

 

In the Chapter: “Thanksgiving Eve, 1987” Dr. Jake Hunter, a fictional character says:

“I have yet to read or heard a word from the American press about Vanunu who had worked in a very compartmentalized position in the secret underground Dimona nuclear research center in the Negev. The nuclear plant had a sign outside claiming it was a Textile factory and it seems that when Vanunu finally realized he was involved in the horrific work of manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, he shot two rolls of film inside of the restricted areas. Seems security was very lax and this low level tech was able to obtain the keys in the shower room that opened the doors to what Israel has not admitted to.

 

“Vanunu quit the job and leaves Israel and carried around the undeveloped film for nearly a year as he traveled throughout Europe. He ended up in Sydney, Australia and converted to Christianity. A few weeks after he shared his story with a British reporter and Vanunu and the reporter returned to London. While the London Sunday Times was verifying his story, Vanunu mysteriously disappeared. The photos proved the fact that Israel had become a major nuclear power, but not a word has been heard from my government or press!

“The Sunday Times reports this incredible news that Israel’s underground plutonium plant has material for two hundred nuclear warheads of advanced design, but not a word have I read about it or heard from the US media! It makes me wonder about all the iron curtains the media and government have raised as a shield from the truth.”

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 2: Irish Tempers

 

"We all need a psychiatrist, but we cannot afford one, so we do activism.”-Ashraf Abu Moch, Israeli Palestinian, ICAHD Volunteer.

 

 

Today is Saint Patrick’s Day, 2010. I am 100% USA with Irish Catholic, Polish Jew and Ukrainian DNA. I was born in Greenwich Village in 1954, a second child amongst three brothers in Levittown, Long Island. For the last four decades I have been a creature of the deep south; the last dozen on ten acres of paradise atop a Florida aquifer, nestled amongst an orange grove, pine tree forest, lake and pond. My degree is in nursing but my vocation is writing, and I have been to Israel Palestine seven times since June 2005. One reason for this book is because I am biased of the side of the voiceless and marginalized. Another reason is, I am in solidarity with Tom Paine:

 

"Soon after I had published the pamphlet "Common Sense" [on Feb. 14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion... The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."

 

 

On 3 March 2010, Representative Patrick Kennedy was lambasted by the media for “having a melt down” when his Irish temper erupted on the floor of The House over The Media's apathy regarding War, Peace, US funding and our troops in Afghanistan and its obsession with ex-Rep. Eric Massa who was facing allegations of sexual misconduct.

 

 

Kennedy’s Irish temper has nothing on mine, for I have vented greater frustration with The Media ever since 25 January 2006, while they ignored, but I stumbled into documenting the first and every court date since of Mordechai Vanunu’s Freedom of Speech trial and appeal in Israel. Vanunu is the man who told the truth in 1986 that Israel had gone nuclear and as of this writing, he continues to pay the price-denied the right to leave the state, denied the right to have a life.

 

 

Because of a serendipitous crossing of paths with Vanunu on the first evening of summer in 2005, I stumbled into being a writer who chronicled many of the stories the whistle blower of Israel’s Weapons of Mass Production Facility in the Negev, told me of his childhood, time in the Israeli army, university activism and his crisis of conscience that led him to shoot two rolls of film in top secret locales in the Dimona’s seven story underground WMD Facility located in the Negev desert.

 

In 2005, Vanunu recalled the last time he was there, “At that time there were more than 200 atomic weapons, in 1986, and they started to produce the most horrible of all weapons, the hydrogen bomb in secret, in lying and in cheating the world and all of its citizens. So I said to myself it is impossible to keep these secrets. I must report about them and to try and stop it.”

 

I was more interested in learning how and why Vanunu had become Christian just days before losing total control of his life when the Mossad tracked, trapped and kidnapped him on 30 September 1986. Vanunu then endured a closed-door trial, was convicted of treason and espionage and sentenced to 18 years, most all spent in solitary confinement, in a tomb sized windowless cell in Ashkelon prison.

 

Released on 21 April 2004, to open air captivity in occupied east Jerusalem, Vanunu has been subjected to 24/7 surveillance by Israel who monitor his every email, phone call and potentially every meeting he has ever had with hundreds-if not thousands-of internationals over the last nearly six years.

 

 

“Sometimes they are long meetings. Sometimes they are short. Sometimes they are in public. Sometimes they are not,” Vanunu told me after another chance crossing of paths with him on the 9^th Day of Av, 16 July 2007.

 

The 9th day of Av is the day the Jewish Temple was destroyed, and I was on my way down Nablus Road in East Jerusalem just after attending Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions/ICAHD media kick off day for the rebuilding of the first of 300 homes to be rebuilt this summer, out of the over 18,000 Palestinian dwellings Israel had at that time destroyed. As of this writing, that number tops 24,000.

 

Under International Humanitarian Law and the Fourth Geneva Convention, the occupiers are to maintain the status quo, not pilfer the resources of the indigenous population or transfer their population into occupied territories. Israel denies the fact that they are occupiers and the American government and mainstream media have played along.

 

Indigenous Palestinians are denied building permits by Israel while USA fundamentalist Christian churches financially support and pray for the illegal settlements, which are in fact colonies erected on legally owned Palestinian land.

 

Twenty-five internationals, dozens of Israelis and scores of Palestinians had created a community upon the rocky land of the Hamdan family of nine with intent to hand the keys of the house over to Hassan Yussef Hamdan and his family fourteen days from the 9^th of Av.

The Hamdan clan has legally owned the land and has the deed that was filled-out in Hassan Yussef's great-grandfather’s name, during the Ottoman Empire. The oldest son, Mohammed’s grandmother, Um Mohammad addressed the media in Arabic which was translated into English by Nadia another ICAHD volunteer, while the foundation of the house was being poured, “We own twenty-five pieces of land, twenty-five meters is one piece. After building our home here, we received papers demanding we demolish our own home. We got a lawyer in Tel Aviv, and after paying $10,000.00 she did nothing. The soldiers came under our window and we hired another lawyer and had to pay 70,000 shekels within two hours to hold off the soldiers. The soldiers came back two more times, after more negotiations the soldiers came back a third time and destroyed our home.”

ICAHD spokesmen, Meir Margalit admitted, “We are here because we are embarrassed and ashamed of our government. A decent person cannot handle what this government puts innocent people through. We are doing this for both sides; for the innocent families and to keep the moral values of Judaism alive.”

American Israeli, Aviva Joseph wrapped it up when she informed the crowd, “We are here building on the 9th day of Av, the day the Jewish Temple was destroyed. I was born in Chile into an Orthodox Zionist home. Both my parents are Holocaust survivors. When I was ten I use to go to Bethlehem, but after the first intifada, things began closing down; physical walls and psychological walls. I lived in Gilo, some call it a settlement, some a neighborhood and I lived in a small box with my own myth. Now I live in California and things you see from there you can’t see here and other things you must come here to see what cannot be seen anywhere else. I love Israel but until I began listening to the voices of the marginalized did I see I was living my own myth. The work is not just in the head, but in the heart; opening both sides to a new paradigm with compassion. It must be like hydrogen and oxygen the sides coming together; who could have thought that would make water?”

 

 

God's Side and The 9th of Av: Number 9, Number 9, Number 9

As I made my way back to my hotel imagining jumping in the pool but still in awe of the selflessness of the community of internationals, Palestinians and Israelis I had just left who were building a home under a cloudless sun, when I was jolted from my reverie by the unmistakable voice of Mordechai Vanunu.

 

In front of me I had noticed an old man, hunched over shoulders, walking very slowly and muttering to himself, but not until I passed him by and I recognized the voice that called out to me, "Hi, remember me?"

 

That I realized it was Vanunu.

 

Three weeks previously, Vanunu had received a six-month jail sentence as outcome to his freedom of speech trial. We had crossed paths in front of St. Stephen’s Dominican Church on Nablus Road.

Photo of Vanunu by Meir Vanunu, Nov. 2007 in front of statue of St. Stephen

Vanunu smiled when he said, "This is the spot where they stoned to death the first Christian martyr for freedom of speech."

St. Stephen was indeed the very first Christian martyr to be stoned to death for speaking truth to power and Vanunu had quit giving interviews, as he said, “Because the media has never helped me.”

Amy Goodman’s interview with Vanunu in 2004 was used as major testimony against him in his freedom of speech trial that began the same day Hamas was democratically elected on 25 January 2006.  

Amy Goodman was a 2008 recipient of The Right Livelihood Award, known as the Alternative Nobel, which Vanunu was awarded in 1987, and received at a belated ceremony in Jerusalem in 2005. Vanunu wrote in his acceptance speech from Ashkelon prison:

“The passive acceptance and complacency with regard to the existence of nuclear weapons anywhere on earth is the disease of society today.

 “This struggle is not only a legitimate one - it is a moral, inescapable struggle. What we who are opposed to nuclear arms are saying is this: it is not we who broke the law, who violated human and civil rights, but the governments which chose to create the greatest threat to human life that ever existed. Never in human history was there such a threat to the very existence of mankind and to all life on earth.

“And no government, not even the most democratic, can force us to live under this threat. No state in the world can offer any kind of security against this menace of a nuclear holocaust, or guarantee to prevent it.

“By returning to the pre-nuclear era we are the sane civilians, we want to live - and we say to the governments, "no nuclear arms!"

“We must arouse people and warn them. Ours is the role of the angry prophet.

“A person who refuses to accept the existence of this suicidal type of arms is a mentally healthy person, who does not want to be expelled from this earth as Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden.

“Already now there are enough nuclear missiles to destroy the world many times over.

“Nuclear weapons are means of extermination, and cannot protect any country, including Israel.

“A state that lives in fear of destruction must not threaten the whole world with annihilation. The people who experienced a holocaust must not bring a holocaust upon another people.

“Moreover, a nuclear war is worse than the holocaust of World War II. A single bomb can eliminate a whole city, destroy half a million people in one blow, including women, children and old people, and everything that lives in it, and even the very infra-structure of the city.

“The effects could last for hundreds of years - and yet it is so easy to do. That is the real holocaust. That is the real enemy, and not as the Israelis imagine.

“This issue should unite us all, because that is our real enemy.

“Any country, which manufactures and stocks nuclear weapons, is first of all endangering its own citizens. This is why the citizens must confront their government and warn it that it has no right to expose them to this danger.

“Because, in effect, the citizens are being held hostage by their own government, just as if they have been hijacked and deprived of their freedom and threatened. Therefore, when a man is held hostage by his own government, the least he can do is resist it and its nuclear policy. He must do this in self-defense, which is a basic civil right.

“Indeed, when governments develop nuclear weapons without the consent of their citizens - and this is true in most cases - they are violating the basic rights of their citizens, the basic right not to live under constant threat of annihilation.

“Is any government qualified and authorized to produce such weapons?

“The United States developed its atom bomb during World War II, without giving much thought to the long-term effects and consequences - and the rest of the world has followed it to this day.

“Only peace between states can promise real security to each state and to every citizen. No force in the world can provide security or ensure survival.

“It was not force which spread the word of Jesus through the world.

“Children are brought into this world to live in it, not to fight. It is not true that war is an inevitable state of affairs - on the contrary, what is essential is peace.

 “It is a question of listening to your conscience, to the voice of Jesus telling you, yes, this is what you must do--sacrifice yourself, your personal freedom: in the nuclear era, and with the nuclear threat hanging over us, the answer to this challenge is obvious, one may not evade such a responsibility, one must accept the mission in order to warn against the danger.” [1]

At that point in Vanunu’s 1987 statement the Israeli censors: censored the rest.

Amy Goodman was awarded the Alternative Nobel, for "developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media."

In reply, Amy affirmed, "I strongly believe that media can be a force for peace. It is the responsibility of journalists to give voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken and beaten down by the powerful.  It is the best reason I know to carry our pens, cameras and microphones out into the world. The media should be a sanctuary for dissent. It is our job to go to where the silence is." [2]   

Exactly my sentiment and a major reason for producing and streaming three video interviews on my site with Vanunu from 2005, 2006 and 2008 and reporting on his historic trial.

I saw Vanunu for the last time in June 2009, and a few weeks there after; he posted on his website- and added to his email signature: “FROM NOW ON, FOR $1,000,YOU CAN MEET ME HERE, VANUNU.”

How fortunate for me that a few weeks prior, Vanunu was open to meeting with the press, friends, supporters and strangers. We had attended a chamber music performance, two church services where Vanunu had been a member for 3 ½ years, and all it cost me was lunch and a Taybeh beer, which is produced in the last remaining self-sufficient and Christian village in the entire West Bank.

I ordered a Vodka tonic at the American Colony garden restaurant after we attended a reading by a Palestinian poet, just a few hours before I departed Jerusalem for America for the seventh time.

Vanunu warned me, that I should never have more than one shot a day. I replied, it was only my first and I had my last in the taxi on my way to Ben Gurion Airport. I knew it would be hours before I cleared SECURITY and the game we played had gotten tiresome for me, and I imagine it a death unto them who make a paycheck for interrogating those who tell the truth at Ben Gurion.

For the first eight days of my seventh trip to Israel Palestine, I was embedded with USA CODE PINK activists, who joined with Women for Peace and the Israeli Coalition of Women for Peace and over 100 who had been invited by the United Nations to build pink playgrounds in Gaza.

I had previously made it as far as Erz Checkpoint, which is a quassam throw away from Sdeot.

On 18 November 18, 2008, I was one among forty seven international ecumenical Christians and other people of faith who rolled out of bed before 5 AM to travel from Jerusalem to the Erez Crossing to stand up as a united people of conscience in NONVIOLENT Solidarity with the people of Gaza and in support of all the NGO’s that have been denied access into the Gaza Strip.

We went in love and for love of all of God’s children; 
Be they the oppressed or the oppressors
Those imprisoned by walls and those who erect them,
Those who are denied clean water and their deniers,
Those whose fears rule their hearts and the heartbroken,
Those whose ideology, greed, apathy, and power blind them to their culpability, responsibilities and obligations.
We went with hope to arouse the consciences of the leaders of the world to seek peace through justice; equal human rights for all.

What I learned in Sderot from the residents I spoke with; was that they would be just as happy to live in Las Vegas as Israel. A five-minute car ride from the Erez Checkpoint is Sderot, where bomb-shelters are more common than gas stations.

Across from the cinema was a crowded open-air community center, furnished with beanbag pillows and padded benches. As I passed by many people made eye contact and smiled. I stopped aside a plump 53 year old Russian immigrant who did not want to give me her name but smiled all the time we conversed via my English-Hebrew-Russian speaking translator who introduced me as an American reporter wanting to know about life in Sderot.

She responded, "America needs to we want peace on this planet. My destiny brought me to Sderot fifteen years ago and I don't feel much different except the quassams make me nervous and anxious, but this is still a great place to live. I couldn't find an apartment to rent anywhere when I arrived except in Sderot. There had been a huge Aliyah and only in Sderot could I find a place with an apartment to rent. The important thing is to have a roof over my head."

During my 2005 trip to Jerusalem, I learned about Aliyah from an American who was in the midst of it and she informed me, "My friends got so tired of me complaining about my political frustrations over the last election; they said, ‘If you don’t like it here, just leave!’ I had already been considering joining the Peace Corps, and when I got turned down because of a medical problem, I explored the possibility of going to Israel. I learned about, Aliyah, which means ‘going up,’ and the deal was hard to pass by. I get fifteen hundred shekels or about thirty-six hundred dollars a year in increments to help with my expenses. I can apply for unemployment benefits after seven months, as long as I look for a job. I just completed Ulpan, which was five hundred hours of Hebrew language immersion studies that took five months, five hours a day, for five weeks. I get subsidized rent and just moved out of the Absorption Center Projects. All the new immigrants get room, utilities, and three meals a day for the first five months in Israel. We also receive free medical care and all the doctors here are dedicated. We can go to the university with 100 percent of the tuition paid by the government. College is much cheaper here; it’s about three thousand to four thousand dollars a year. Until I am thirty years old, I can receive up to three years of education for my master’s degree.”

I moved among the crowd in Sderot and spoke with Fortuna, an affable widow with four children who had migrated from Tunius to the colony in 1956, "It was all desert here, just a few mobile trailers were here. When I first came here there was nothing at all but sand and a few cheap house trailers, one medical clinic with one doctor, but no shopping at all.

"Eight years ago the quassams began coming and all I could do was think about the next one. Two years ago while I was in my bathroom one exploded in front of my house and I thought I was dying. The explosion broke the glass windows but the municipality repaired it quickly.

"I am always waiting to hear 'Zeva Adom-Zeva Adom' [red alert-red alert] announcement that warns the rockets are coming at us. I am nervous all the time, I never leave my home and am only here today because my neighbor took me shopping and then brought me here. I am always afraid to go out of my house, but days like this it is like a party, everyone comes outside. The last rocket came over about a month ago and I am out here now only because my friends give me courage to come here and sit.

"I have not met any Arabs but there are a lot of them here. They are lucky the municipality lets them live and work here. There is an Arab neighborhood close by, but I do not know where it is and I never talk to any of them because I am afraid of them. The only way to stop the rockets are to annihilate all the Arabs in Gaza."

On my last day in June 2009 with the Code Pink activists, I returned for the fourth time to the agricultural village of Bil'in in the West Bank and got gassed.

Billin, is a rocky dusty bus ride from Ramallah where villagers, Israelis and Internationals have been nonviolently and creatively resisting the route of Israel’s wall, which has annexed more than half of their land. In Billin, the Green Line is five miles from the thirty-foot high steel fence with rolls of barbwire, sensors and cameras erected upon Palestinian land, which has eaten up 1.5 million USA tax dollars and is illegal under international law.

The indigenous peoples began nonviolently resisting the route of the wall/fence in 2004 with weekly Friday afternoon nonviolent marches that begin with prayers at the mosque. The villagers are then joined by hundreds of resisting locals, Israelis and internationals, many of whom have been injured, arrested and more than a few killed by Israeli forces.

My first visit was in January 2006 and I met locals, internationals and Israelis who had created their own facts on the ground with an outpost where the held their ground 24/7, inside the 10x10 brick house on sleeping bags on top of dirt floor for weeks at a time. The outpost was erected a few hundred yards from where the new settlement of 700 upscale apartments was being built for Israelis only on legally owned Palestinian property.

The indigenous people of Bil'in had brought their case against the settlement to the Municipal Court and that Court agreed the building of the settlement dwellings was illegal and ordered construction to cease. But, building has continued and the day I was there, a half dozen USA made Caterpillar tractors were moving earth for the anticipated paved road that only Jewish colonists- most of them from the USA-will be allowed to travel upon.

Eyad, landowner and leader of The Popular Committee in Billin explained to me, "A few weeks ago we brought in a caravan [trailer] on our land close to where the settlers apartments are being built. While we were inside the IDF [Israeli Defense Force] sawed the door open and pulled us out and roughed us up.

"So, we brought in another caravan and during the night we built a concrete brick building within four hours. All day and all night people stay here to resist the wall and occupation. People come and go; they are from all over the world. They support our nonviolently resisting the wall that is clearly stealing our land. This electric wall and the IDF are not allowing us onto our land to care for our olive trees. They confiscated our land and impose military law upon us and claim we are trespassing on our legally owned land."

Abdullah, Coordinator of Against The Wall in Billin told me that there were 1,600 people who call home Billin and legally own 4,000 dunums of property. The Israeli government confiscated 2,003 dunums of agricultural land and is building apartments that Palestinians are forbidden to approach. The Israeli government continues the building of the illegal electric fence that prevents the indigenous landowners from accessing what is legally theirs.

A twenty-year-old activist from New York told me, "We are fighting an important struggle. If America would only learn the truth about what is happening here, they would stop their blind support of the Israeli government that denies people basic human rights."

It was after the outpost was demolished that the people began the weekly ritual marches every Friday afternoon after prayers at the mosque. On my last visit to Bilin in 2009 with Code Pink activists, the Israeli forces had taken to blasting the nonviolent demonstrators with tear gas, rubber bullets and sound bombs the moment we approached the Wall/Fence which is on legally owned Palestinian property. On my previous demonstrations to the Wall/Fence, there had at least been a few minutes of dialogue between the Palestinians and Israeli forces, but the times had changed.

The day after getting gassed again in Bilin, I saw Vanunu for the first time in seven months and was struck that he had let his hair grow so long and how his pants had gotten so worn. It was good to reconnect after suffering another major failure of communication month’s prior. It hadn’t been our first communication break down nor was it our final. I am writing this on Palm Sunday 2010, and Vanunu is not speaking with me at this time again and he officially returned to atheism on 22 November 2009.

But, on that Sunday in June in 2009, Vanunu and I attended the English and German services at the Lutheran church where Vanunu has been a member for three and a half years, and afterwards he admitted, "I was isolating myself from my supporters."

I took comfort that he was however active and engaged with his local community, and every day Vanunu walked for hours to the furthest points of east Jerusalem and weekly played volleyball, shared a dinner and attended a Bible study with his church friends.

Vanunu was confident he would soon be released from open-air captivity and traveling the world. In particular he mentioned going to Ireland and staying a while with Mairead Maguire the Nobel Peace Laureate. He intended to travel to London, America and Norway before settling down.

As we sat in the garden restaurant at the American Colony, Vanunu told me that Tony Blair had rented the entire second floor for one million a year and Jimmy Carter was at that moment having a meeting with Israeli peace activists, Uri Avnery and Adam Keller.

Vanunu was smiling but hesitant when he said, "I have to ask you something that I thought sometimes. That you were FBI or CIA. With all these things you write, I thought someone else is telling you to write all these things."

I laughed, but not surprised, for we had been through this before but I replied, "In a way, someone does tell me what to write down. I only write what I hear in my heart and that is where I hear God; what ever He-She is, I don't know, but I have no doubt That Mystery is guiding me. Everything is connected and God is within every situation."

Vanunu leaned back and scanned the garden, then leaned in and said, "I don’t really know you."

I laughed again and said, "Anyone can. Just read KEEP HOPE ALIVE..."