Free the Negev One

Mordechai Vanunu is an Israeli engineer who worked on Israel's illegal nuclear weapons programme. His conscience moved him to reveal the existence of the nuclear arsenal to the world, and he served 18 years, 11 in solitary confinement, after being lured from Britain to Italy and then kidnapped by the Israeli Secret Service, possibly acting on information received from the British intelligence service and disgraced mega-thief Robert Maxwell, who owned the Daily Mirror at the time.

After his release, the country which bills itself as the Middle East's only democracy restricted his freedom of movement, banned him from leaving the country and barred him from any contact with foreigners. Vanunu has now been returned to prison for this latter 'offence'. One of these foreigners was… his girlfriend.

He is now an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. Please write to your Israeli Embassy requesting his release. Don't give them too many personal details or you'll find an assassin using your passport.

Update: What were the Israelis going to do with their nuclear weapon? (Apart from threaten their neighbours, of course). Why, sell it to Apartheid South Africa. What a charming bunch of people. 


In the end, Israel 'only' helped with nuclear technology for SA to build its own nukes (which it later renounced when the ANC took power) in return for uranium for its own weapons of mass destruction. Here's Gary Younge's view:

 Israel was South Africa's principal and most dependable arms dealer. As we learn elsewhere in the Guardian today, it even offered to sell the South African regime nuclear weapons.

"Throughout the 70s and 80s Israel had a deep, intimate and lucrative relationship with South Africa," explains Sasha Polakow-Suransky, author of The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship With Apartheid South Africa. "Israel's arms supplies helped to prolong the apartheid regime's rule and to survive international sanctions."

Of course, there's no point complaining. Yes, the US has a law against funding countries with illegal WMDs, but realpolitik always, always, trumps morality and the law. Israel can do whatever it wants, to whomsoever it wants - witness the extremely muted UK, Irish and French response to the discovery that Israel used the passports of citizens for assassinations. Imagine the reaction if Iran did that…