Vanunu: a prophet revived

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 09:04:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: Andy Oram <andyo () oreilly com>
Subject: Vanunu: a prophet revived
To: dave () farber net

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4739
   Vanunu: a prophet revived

   Andy Oram
   Apr. 21, 2004 05:54 AM

   Early in the campaign to free Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear
   whistle-blower, I bought a T-shirt that showed Vanunu's face and
   quoted the epiphanic Biblical passage where God says to Jeremiah, "I
   gave you as a prophet to the nations." For a long time I was a bit
   embarrassed by that grandiose quotation. But today, as Vanunu is
   released from prison, I sense that it is accurate. Vanunu resembles a
   prophet in many ways: testy, unruly, over the top in his
   pronouncements, incapable of delivering a message without delivering
   discomfort as well, but ultimately, in a deep way, correct.

   The world of 1986, when Vanunu revealed that the Israeli government
   had assembled a nuclear arsenal of hundreds of weapons, is different
   from the world into which he is re-emerging (with his ultimate freedom
   still undetermined--he may be barred from meeting with journalists or
   leaving Israel). Vanunu, a principled pacifist, blew the whistle on
   the Israeli government in the hope of pushing forward disarmament the
   world over. He boldly put forward the proposition that nuclear weapons
   do not make us safer, but rather put us more at risk. The world he
   re-enters is a confirmation of his warning.

   The Israeli government was incensed that Vanunu had revealed its
   secret, but who expressed surprise at his revelations? None of the
   Arab countries batted an eyelash. Washington yawned. The only people
   from whom the Israeli arsenal was a secret were the world's public.
   After Vanunu, normal Israelis had a chance to debate the nuclear
   option. Most of them, of course, ignored and excoriated the prophet.
   It's still open to debate whether Israel needed its weapons to stay
   alive. After all, it managed to win over its enemies in every
   conventional war. We know its weapons make everybody around it less
   safe.

   Today, Asia is awash in nuclear weapons. The end of the double
   hegemony of the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the Cold War era meant
   that a lot of countries couldn't depend on a nuclear umbrella from a
   super-power and decided they had to get a bit of their own. The Bush
   administration has largely abandoned any reasonable program to get
   North Korea to give them up (it would require a guarantee of their
   safety), and both the Americans and the Europeans realize that weaning
   Iran away from its program will take much longer than they had hoped.

   Outside Asia, even leftist Brazil is teasing us with a possible
   nuclear weapons program. As one speaker from the [82]American Friends
   Service Committee said at an event I organized around Vanunu (an event
   I held at my synagogue, angering the Rabbi and many synagogue
   members), "Any technology that's fifty years old is hard to keep
   secret."

   Vanunu was recently quoted in the press as saying that the Zionist
   state should disappear and that Jews should live in a Palestine
   controlled by the surrounding Arab majority. This is again the
   hallmark of a prophet. The question is not whether the idea is
   shocking to Zionists. Vanunu has never claimed to have easy answers.
   The question is whether his statement is a stark recognition of
   reality.

   Andy Oram is an editor at O'Reilly & Associates, specializing in
   books on Linux and programming. Most recently, he edited
   Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies.

References

  82. http://www.afsc.org/ 

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