Conscientious Objector to Israeli WMDs

Nuclear whistleblower Mordachai Vanunu will be released from Israeli prisons in a month’s time, so I’ll repost this entry from last August:

The recent U.S. war in iraq was justified in large part by fear that iraq was researching and perhaps building weapons of mass destruction. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair could stand resolutely before the T.V. cameras and pronounce that this was unacceptable and that weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) are wrong.

Of course, WMDs are possessed by many countries in the world, in the form of nuclear weapons. Now is as good a time as any to review the case of Mordechai Vanunu , an Israeli technician who worked on his country’s nuclear weapons program. Troubled by his work, he left the nuclear research center and eventually made his way to England, where he told the London Sunday Times of his work with the program. Before the newspaper articles hit the streets, Israeli agents lured him to Italy, kidnapped him there and smuggled his drugged body back to Israeli. There they charged him with treason in a secret trial. Every year activists have marked the date of his imprisonment with vigils. This September 30th will be the seventeenth anniversary. Fortunately it might be the last one, as Vanunu’s prison term is expected to end next April.

The issue of weapons of mass destruction is a very real concern, no matter who’s finger is “on the button.” We now pretty much know for certain that iraq had no program through the 1990s. But a dozen countries are known or suspected of having nuclear weapons and we must be as concerned with their stockpiles as we were with the mirages of the iraq desert.