Internationalnews

Globalresearch August 6, 2010

“On Monday, August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM, the nuclear bomb ‘Little Boy” was dropped on Hiroshimaby an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, directly killing an estimated 80,000 people. By the end of the year, injury and radiation brought total casualties to 90,000-140,000.”[1]

 

“On August 9, 1945, Nagasaki was the target of the world's second atomic bomb attack at 11:02 a.m., when the north of the city was destroyed and an estimated 40,000 people were killed by the bomb nicknamed ‘Fat Man.’ The death toll from the atomic bombing totalled 73,884, as well as another 74,909 injured, and another several hundred thousand diseased and dying due to fallout and other illness caused by radiation.”[2]

In the European Theatre, World War II ended in early May 1945 with the capitulation of Nazi Germany. The “Big Three” on the side of the victors – Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union – now faced the complex problem of the postwar reorganization of Europe. The United Stateshad entered the war rather late, in December 1941, and had only started to make a truly significant military contribution to the Allied victory over Germany with the landings in Normandy in June 1944, less than one year before the end of the hostilities. When the war against Germany ended, however, Washington sat firmly and confidently at the table of the victors, determined to achieve what might be called its “war aims.”

As the country that had made the biggest contribution and suffered by far the greatest losses in the conflict against the common Nazi enemy, the Soviet Union wanted major reparation payments from Germany and security against potential future aggression, in the form of the installation in Germany, Poland and other Eastern European countries of governments that would not be hostile to the Soviets, as had been the case before the war. Moscow also expected compensation for territorial losses suffered by the Soviet Unionat the time of the Revolution and the Civil War, and finally, the Soviets expected that, with the terrible ordeal of the war behind them, they would be able to resume work on the project of constructing a socialist society. The American and British leaders knew these Soviet aims and had explicitly or implicitly recognized their legitimacy, for example at the conferences of the Big Three in Tehran and Yalta.

That did not mean that Washington and London were enthusiastic about the fact that the Soviet Union was to reap these rewards for its war efforts; and there undoubtedly lurked a potential conflict with Washington’s own major objective, namely, the creation of an “open door” for US exports and investments in Western Europe, in defeated Germany, and also in Central and Eastern Europe, liberated by the Soviet Union. In any event, American political and industrial leaders - including Harry Truman, who succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt as President in the spring of 1945 - had little understanding, and even less sympathy, for even the most basic expectations of the Soviets. These leaders abhorred the thought that the Soviet Union might receive considerable reparations from Germany, because such a bloodletting would eliminate Germanyas a potentially extremely profitable market for US exports and investments. Instead, reparations would enable the Soviets to resume work, possibly successfully, on the project of a communist society, a “counter system” to the international capitalist system of which the USA had become the great champion. A

merica’s political and economic elite was undoubtedly also keenly aware that German reparations to the Soviets implied that the German branch plants of US corporations such as Ford and GM, which had produced all sorts of weapons for the Nazis during the war (and made a lot of money in the process[3]) would have to produce for the benefit of the Soviets instead of continuing to enrich US owners and shareholders.  

Negotiations among the Big Three would obviously never result in the withdrawal of the Red Army from Germany and Eastern Europe before the Soviet objectives of reparations and security would be at least partly achieved. However, on April 25, 1945, Truman learned that the USwould soon dispose of a powerful new weapon, the atom bomb. Possession of this weapon opened up all sorts of previously unthinkable but extremely favorable perspectives, and it is hardly surprising that the new president and his advisors fell under the spell of what the renowned American historian William Appleman Williams has called a “vision of omnipotence.”[4]

It certainly no longer appeared necessary to engage in difficult negotiations with the Soviets: thanks to the atom bomb, it would be possible to force Stalin, in spite of earlier agreements, to withdraw the Red Army from Germany and to deny him a say in the postwar affairs of that country, to install “pro-western” and even anti-Soviet regimes in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and perhaps even to open up the Soviet Union itself to American investment capital as well as American political and economic influence, thus returning this communist heretic to the bosom of the universal capitalist church.

At the time of the German surrender in May 1945, the bomb was almost, but not quite, ready. Truman therefore stalled as long as possible before finally agreeing to attend a conference of the Big Three in Potsdam in the summer of 1945, where the fate of postwar Europewould be decided. The president had been informed that the bomb would likely be ready by then - ready, that is, to be used as “a hammer,” as he himself stated on one occasion, that he would wave “over the heads of those boys in the Kremlin.”[5]  At the Potsdam Conference, which lasted from July 17 to August 2, 1945, Truman did indeed receive the long-awaited message that the atom bomb had been tested successfully on July 16 in New Mexico. As of then, he no longer bothered to present proposals to Stalin, but instead made all sorts of demands; at the same time he rejected out of hand all proposals made by the Soviets, for example concerning German reparation payments, including reasonable proposals based on earlier inter-Allied agreements.

Stalin failed to display the hoped-for willingness to capitulate, however, not even when Truman attempted to intimidate him by whispering ominously into his ear that Americahad acquired an incredible new weapon. The Soviet sphinx, who had certainly already been informed about the American atom bomb, listened in stony silence. Somewhat puzzled, Truman concluded that only an actual demonstration of the atomic bomb would persuade the Soviets to give way. Consequently, no general agreement could be achieved at Potsdam. In fact, little or nothing of substance was decided there. “The main result of the conference,” writes historian Gar Alperovitz, “was a series of decisions to disagree until the next meeting.”[6]

In the meantime the Japanese battled on in the Far East, even though their situation was totally hopeless. They were in fact prepared to surrender, but they insisted on a condition, namely, that Emperor Hirohito would be guaranteed immunity. This contravened the American demand for an unconditional capitulation. In spite of this it should have been possible to end the war on the basis of the Japanese proposal.

In fact, the German surrender at Reimsthree months earlier had not been entirely unconditional. (The Americans had agreed to a German condition, namely, that the armistice would only go into effect after a delay of 45 hours, a delay that would allow as many German army units as possible to slip away from the eastern front in order to surrender to the Americans or the British; many of these units would actually be kept ready - in uniform, armed, and under the command of their own officers – for possible use against the Red Army, as Churchill was to admit after the war.)[7] In any event, Tokyo’s sole condition was far from essential. Indeed, later - after an unconditional surrender had been wrested from the Japanese - the Americans would never bother Hirohito, and it was thanks to Washington that he was to be able to remain emperor for many more decades.[8]

The Japanese believed that they could still afford the luxury of attaching a condition to their offer to surrender because the main force of their land army remained intact, in China, where it had spent most of the war. Tokyo thought that it could use this army to defend Japan itself and thus make the Americans pay a high price for their admittedly inevitable final victory, but this scheme would only work if the Soviet Union stayed out of the war in the Far East; a Soviet entry into the war, on the other hand, would inevitably pin down the Japanese forces on the Chinese mainland. Soviet neutrality, in other words, permitted Tokyoa small measure of hope; not hope for a victory, of course, but hope for American acceptance of their condition concerning the emperor. To a certain extent the war with Japan dragged on, then, because the Soviet Union was not yet involved in it.

Already at the Conference of the Big Three in Tehran in 1943, Stalin had promised to declare war on Japan within three months after the capitulation of Germany, and he had reiterated this commitment as recently as July 17, 1945, in Potsdam. Consequently, Washington counted on a Soviet attack on Japanby the middle of August and thus knew only too well that the situation of the Japanese was hopeless. (“Fini Japs when that comes about,” Truman confided to his diary, referring to the expected Soviet entry into the war in the Far East.)[9] In addition, the American navy assured Washington that it was able to prevent the Japanese from transferring their army from China in order to defend the homeland against an American invasion. Since the US navy was undoubtedly able to force Japanto its knees by means of a blockade, an invasion was not even necessary. Deprived of imported necessities such as food and fuel, Japan could be expected to beg to capitulate unconditionally sooner or later.    

In order to finish the war against Japan, Truman thus had a number of very attractive options. He could accept the trivial Japanese condition with regard to immunity for their emperor; he could also wait until the Red Army attacked the Japanese in China, thus forcing Tokyo into accepting an unconditional surrender after all; or he could starve Japan to death by means of a naval blockade that would have forced Tokyo to sue for peace sooner or later. Truman and his advisors, however, chose none of these options; instead, they decided to knock Japanout with the atomic bomb. This fateful decision, which was to cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women and children, offered the Americans considerable advantages.

First, the bomb might force Tokyo to surrender before the Soviets got involved in the war in Asia, thus making it unnecessary to allow Moscow a say in the coming decisions about postwar Japan, about the territories which had been occupied by Japan (such as Korea and Manchuria), and about the Far East and the Pacific region in general. The USAwould then enjoy a total hegemony over that part of the world, something which may be said to have been the true (though unspoken) war aim of Washington in the conflict with Japan. It was in light of this consideration that the strategy of simply blockading Japan into surrender was rejected, since the surrender might not have been forthcoming until after – and possibly well after - the Soviet Union’s entry into the war. (After the war, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey stated that “certainly prior to 31 December 1945, Japan would have surrendered, even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped.”)[10]

As far as the American leaders were concerned, a Soviet intervention in the war in the Far East threatened to achieve for the Soviets the same advantage which the Yankees’ relatively late intervention in the war in Europe had produced for the United States, namely, a place at the round table of the victors who would force their will on the defeated enemy, carve occupation zones out of his territory, change borders, determine postwar social-economic and political structures, and thereby derive for themselves enormous benefits and prestige. Washington absolutely did not want the Soviet Union to enjoy this kind of input.

The Americans were on the brink of victory over Japan, their great rival in that part of the world. They did not relish the idea of being saddled with a new potential rival, one whose detested communist ideology might become dangerously influential in many Asian countries. By dropping the atomic bomb, the Americans hoped to finish Japan off instantly and go to work in the Far Eastas cavalier seul, that is, without their victory party being spoiled by unwanted Soviet gate-crashers. Use of the atom bomb offered Washington a second important advantage. Truman’s experience in Potsdamhad persuaded him that only an actual demonstration of this new weapon would make Stalin sufficiently pliable. Nuking a “Jap” city, preferably a “virgin” city, where the damage would be especially impressive, thus loomed useful as a means to intimidate the Soviets and induce them to make concessions with respect to Germany, Poland, and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe.

The atomic bomb was ready just before the Soviets became involved in the Far East. Even so, the nuclear pulverization of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, came too late to prevent the Soviets from entering the war against Japan. Tokyo did not throw in the towel immediately, as the Americans had hoped, and on August 8, 1945 - exactly three months after the German capitulation in Berlin - the Soviets declared war on Japan. The next day, on August 9, the Red Army attacked the Japanese troops stationed in northern China. Washingtonitself had long asked for Soviet intervention, but when that intervention finally came, Truman and his advisors were far from ecstatic about the fact that Stalin had kept his word.

If Japan’s rulers did not respond immediately to the bombing of Hiroshimawith an unconditional capitulation, it may have been because they could not ascertain immediately that only one plane and one bomb had done so much damage. (Many conventional bombing raids had produced equally catastrophic results; an attack by thousands of bombers on the Japanese capital on March 9-10, 1945, for example, had actually caused more casualties than the bombing of Hiroshima.)

In any event, it took some time before an unconditional capitulation was forthcoming, and on account of this delay the USSR did get involved in the war against Japan after all. This made Washington extremely impatient: the day after the Soviet declaration of war, on August 9, 1945, a second bomb was dropped, this time on the city of Nagasaki. A former American army chaplain later stated: “I am of the opinion that this was one of the reasons why a second bomb was dropped: because there was a rush. They wanted to get the Japanese to capitulate before the Russians showed up.”[11] (The chaplain may or may not have been aware that among the 75,000 human beings who were “instantaneously incinerated, carbonized and evaporated” in Nagasakiwere many Japanese Catholics as well an unknown number of inmates of a camp for allied POWs, whose presence had been reported to the air command, to no avail.)[12] It took another five days, that is, until August 14, before the Japanese could bring themselves to capitulate. In the meantime the Red Army was able to make considerable progress, to the great chagrin of Truman and his advisors.

And so the Americans were stuck with a Soviet partner in the Far Eastafter all. Or were they? Truman made sure that they were not, ignoring the precedents set earlier with respect to cooperation among the Big Three in Europe. Already on August 15, 1945, Washingtonrejected Stalin’s request for a Soviet occupation zone in the defeated land of the rising sun. And when on September 2, 1945, General MacArthur officially accepted the Japanese surrender on the American battleship Missouri in the Bay of Tokyo, representatives of the Soviet Union - and of other allies in the Far East, such as Great Britain, France, Australia, and the Netherlands - were allowed to be present only as insignificant extras, as spectators. Unlike Germany, Japan was not carved up into occupation zones. America’s defeated rival was to be occupied by the Americans only, and as American “viceroy” in Tokyo, General MacArthur would ensure that, regardless of contributions made to the common victory, no other power had a say in the affairs of postwar Japan.

Sixty-five years ago, Truman did not have to use the atomic bomb in order to force Japan to its knees, but he had reasons to want to use the bomb. The atom bomb enabled the Americans to force Tokyo to surrender unconditionally, to keep the Soviets out of the Far East and - last but not least - to force Washington’s will on the Kremlin in Europe also. Hiroshima and Nagasakiwere obliterated for these reasons, and many American historians realize this only too well; Sean Dennis Cashman, for example, writes:

With the passing of time, many historians have concluded that the bomb was used as much for political reasons...Vannevar Bush [the head of the American center for scientific research] stated that the bomb “was also delivered on time, so that there was no necessity for any concessions to Russiaat the end of the war”. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes [Truman’s Secretary of State] never denied a statement attributed to him that the bomb had been used to demonstrate American power to the Soviet Union in order to make it more manageable in Europe.[13]

Truman himself, however, hypocritically declared at the time that the purpose of the two nuclear bombardments had been “to bring the boys home,” that is, to quickly finish the war without any further major loss of life on the American side. This explanation was uncritically broadcast in the American media and it developed into a myth eagerly propagated by the majority of historians and media in the USAand throughout the “Western” world. That myth, which, incidentally, also serves to justify potential future nuclear strikes on targets such as Iran and North Korea, is still very much alive - just check your mainstream newspaper on August 6 and 9!

Jacques R. Pauwels, author of The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, James Lorimer, Toronto, 2002

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagasaki.

[3] Jacques R. Pauwels, The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, Toronto, 2002, pp. 201-05.

[4] William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, revised edition, New York, 1962, p. 250.

[5] Quoted in Michael Parenti, The Anti-Communist Impulse, New York, 1969, p. 126.

[6] Gar Alperovitz Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power, new edition, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1985 (original edition 1965), p. 223.

[7] Pauwels, op. cit., p. 143.

[8] Alperovitz, op. cit., pp. 28, 156.

[9] Quoted in Alperovitz, op. cit., p. 24.

[10] Cited in David Horowitz, From Yalta to Vietnam: American Foreign Policy in the Cold War, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1967, p. 53.

[11] Studs Terkel, "The Good War": An Oral History of World War Two, New York, 1984, p. 535.

[12] Gary G. Kohls, “Whitewashing Hiroshima: The Uncritical Glorification of American Militarism,” http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/kohls1.html.
[13] Sean Dennis Cashman, , Roosevelt, and World War II, New York and London, 1989, p. 369.

Related:

"Le mythe de la bonne guerre", livre de J.Pauwels (+ vidéo)

The Lies Of Hiroshima Are The Lies Of Today By John Pilger

D'Hiroshima à Bagdad par Joëlle PENOCHET

Anniversaire du bombardement d’Hiroshima le 6 août 1945 (+ dossier)

Pluie Noire de Shohei Imamura 1989 (Extrait VOSTF)

Hibakushas: Hiroshima dans les gènes

White Light, Black Rain- The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The Man Who Bombed Hiroshima

(previous videos has been suppressed...)

Source de cet article: http://www.globalresearch.ca

Url de cet article: http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-why-world-war-ii-ended-with-mushroom-clouds-65-years-ago-august-6-and-9-1945-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-55002125.html

Internationalnews

Bastamag  (27 juillet 2010)

Par Eros Sana 

Selon un récent reportage, l’ancien Secrétaire général de l’OTAN George Robertson a confirmé que la Turquie possède de 40 à 90 armes nucléaires « made in USA » sur la base militaire d’Incirlik. (en.trend.az/)
  
Est-ce que cela signifie que la Turquie est une puissance nucléaire? 

« Loin de sécuriser l’Europe davantage, et loin de réduire la dépendance de l’Europe à l’énergie nucléaire, [la politique] pourrait très bien finir par accroître la quantité d’armes nucléaires sur le continent européen et entraver certaines tentatives visant à obtenir le désarmement nucléaire. » (Ancien Secrétaire général de l’OTAN George Robertson, cité dans Global Security, 10 février 2010)

« L’Italie est-elle en mesure de procéder à une frappe thermonucléaire? […]

Les Belges et les Néerlandais pourraient-ils larguer des bombes à hydrogène sur des cibles ennemies? […]

Israël: « un État nucléaire non déclaré »

Israël est identifié comme « un État nucléaire non déclaré ». Il produit et déploie des ogives nucléaires contre des cibles militaires et civiles au Moyen-Orient, incluant Téhéran.

Iran

Il y a eu bien du battage, soutenu par de rares preuves, voulant que l’Iran puisse devenir un État nucléaire à une date ultérieure. Par conséquent, une attaque nucléaire préemptive contre l’Iran visant à annihiler son programme inexistant d’armement nucléaire devrait être sérieusement envisagée « afin de rendre le monde plus sécuritaire ». Les médias dominants regorgent d’opinions improvisées au sujet de la menace nucléaire iranienne.

Mais qu’en est-il des cinq « États nucléaires [européens] non déclarés », soit la Belgique, l’Allemagne, la Turquie, les Pays-Bas et l’Italie? Représentent-ils une menace?

Selon la définition officielle, ces cinq pays sont des « puissances nucléaires non déclarées ».

Les B61 tactiques stockées et déployées dans ces cinq « États non nucléaires » sont destinées à des cibles au Moyen-Orient. De plus, conformément aux « plans d’attaque de l’OTAN », ces bombes thermonucléaires antiblockhaus B61 (entreposées par les États non dotés de l’arme nucléaire) pourraient être lancées « contre des cibles en Russie ou des pays au Moyen-Orient, tels que la Syrie et l’Iran ( cité dans  National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe , février 2005) 

Est-ce que cela signifie que l’Iran ou la Russie, qui sont des cibles potentielle d’une attaque nucléaire provenant de l’un ou l’autre de ces cinq soi-disant puissances non nucléaires, doivent envisager des attaques nucléaires préemptives contre la Belgique, l’Allemagne, la Turquie, les Pays-Bas et l’Italie? La réponse est non, même en faisant un énorme effort d’imagination.  

Alors que ces « États nucléaires non déclarés » accusent nonchalamment Téhéran, sans preuve documentaire, de développer des armes nucléaires, ils possèdent eux-mêmes la capacité de lancer des ogives nucléaires ciblant l’Iran. Il est euphémique de dire qu’il s’agit d’un cas évident de « deux poids deux mesures » de la part de l’AIEA et de la « communauté internationale ».

Parmi les cinq « puissances nucléaires non déclarées », « l’Allemagne demeure le pays le plus fortement nucléarisé avec trois bases nucléaires (deux d’entre elles étant opérationnelles) et pouvant entreposer jusqu’à 150 bombes [antiblockhaus B61] ». (Ibid) Conformément aux « plans d’attaque de l’OTAN » (mentionnés ci-dessus), ces armes nucléaires tactiques ciblent également le Moyen-Orient.
 

Bien que l’Allemagne ne soit pas officiellement dans la catégorie des puissances nucléaires, le pays produit des ogives nucléaires pour la Marine française. Il entrepose des ogives nucléaires (faites aux États-Unis) et est en mesure de lancer des armes nucléaires. Par ailleurs, l’European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company - EADS, une coentreprise française, allemande et espagnole, contrôlée par Deutsche Aerospace et le puissant groupe Daimler, constitue le deuxième plus grand fabricant militaire européen et fournit les missiles nucléaires M51 à la France.

L’Allemagne importe et déploie des armes nucléaires des États-Unis et fabrique des ogives nucléaires exportées en France. Pourtant, ce pays est classé parmi les États non dotés d’armes nucléaires.

 
 Michel Chossudovsky est directeur du Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation et professeur d'économie à l'Université d'Ottawa. Il est l'auteur de Guerre et mondialisation, La vérité derrière le 11 septembre et de la Mondialisation de la pauvreté et nouvel ordre mondial (best-seller international publié en 12 langues).    

Guerre et mondialisation

http://www.mondialisation.ca

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-qinq-puissances-nucleaires-europeennes-non-declarees-par-michel-chossudovsky-45279165.html

Mordechai Vanunu was released from Ashkelon prison to open air captivity in east Jerusalem on April 21, 2004 after 18 years.  

In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu was clubbed, drugged, bound and kidnapped from Rome by the Mossad because he told the truth and provided the photographic proof of their clandestine 7 story underground WMD facility in the Negev.

In the case of Mordechai Vanunu, Americans need to know that the restrictions that have held him captive in Jerusalem come from the Emergency Defense Regulations which were implemented by Britain against Palestinians and Jews after World War II.

After WW II, Attorney Yaccov Shapiro, who later became Israel's Minister Of Justice, described the Emergency Defense Regulations as "unparalleled in any civilized country: there were no such laws in Nazi Germany."

During one of my seven trips to Jerusalem since 2005, I asked Vanunu, "If the British Mandate has expired why not the British Mandate's Emergency Defense Regulations?"

Vaunu replied, "The reason given is security but it is because Israel is not a democracy unless you are a Jew. This administration tells me I am not allowed to speak to foreigners, the Media, and the world. But I do because that is how I prove my true humanity to the world. My freedom of speech trial began January 25, 2006 for speaking to the media, the same day as the Palestinian elections…When I decided to expose Israel’s nuclear weapons I acted out of conscience and to warn the world to prevent a nuclear holocaust."

In 1963, Peres was Israel’s Deputy Minister of Defense when he met with President Kennedy at 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.”

In 2005, Vanunu told me, "President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.’"

"Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection. The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona. The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out. Everything inside was written in French, when I was there, almost twenty years ago.

"Back then, the Dimona descended seven floors underground. In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on.

"When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.

"Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year."

On January 25, 2006, after nearly two years of speaking to hundreds of foreigners since his release from prison, Vanunu was convicted by the Jerusalem Magistrates Court of 15 violations of a military order that had prohibited him from talking to non-Israelis and because he attempted to "leave the state" by taking a cab from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to attend Christmas Eve mass at the Church of the Nativity in 2004. The original indictment included 22 different violations; Vanunu was charged with 19 and acquitted of four. He was acquitted of speaking to foreign nationals on the internet and via video and voice chats.

Just prior to the taping of "30 Minutes with Vanunu" on March 26, 2006, Vanunu told me, "Many journalists come here to the American Colony, from CNN and NY Times. They all want to cover my story, but their EDITORS say no...CNN wants to interview me; but they say they can't do it because they don't want problems with the Israeli censor. BBC is doing the same thing. Sixty Minutes from the United States from the beginning they wanted to do a program, but because of the censor situation they decide not to do it."

On July 2, 2007, Israel sentenced Vanunu to six more months in jail for speaking to foreign media in 2004. On September 23, 2008, the Jerusalem District Court reduced Vanunu’s sentence to three months, "In light of (Vanunu’s) ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country’s security in jeopardy."

On June 14, 2009, Vanunu told me, “The Central Commander of the General Army testified in court that it is OK if I speak in public as long as I do not talk about nuclear weapons.”

Vanunu's restrictions will be reviewed again by the Israeli High Court after Dec. 21, 2009. On July 6, 2009, the Supreme Court stated, "pending a review of his conduct, Vanunu will be able to ask for the restrictions to be lifted and be allowed to travel abroad…The state's representative noted that six months may be too short a time period to determine a change in Vanunu's behavior and that the state will reconsider the restrictions based not only on Vanunu's behavior but a host of other considerations, including the time that had lapsed since he divulged state secrets to the British paper." [1]

It will soon be twenty-four years since Vanunu "divulged state secrets" and as Vanunu told me, "All the secrets I had were published in 1989 in an important book, by [Nuclear Physicist] Frank Barnaby, The Invisible Bomb: Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East." [2]

Regarding Israeli behavior towards Vanunu, Americans need to know that in 1986, Israel kidnapped him from Rome but Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states: "No one shall he subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention", including abduction of a person by agents of one state to another state.

Vanunu was charged with and convicted of treason and espionage. According to Section 99 of the Israeli Penal Code, treason is defined as "an act calculated to assist (an enemy) in time of war...delivering information with the intention that it fall into the hands of the enemy."

Section 113 defines aggravated espionage as "deliver(ing) any secret information without being authorized to do so and with intent to impair the security of the state" and a sub-clause provides for a penalty of seven years for the unauthorized collection, preparation, recording or holding of secret information; if this is done with intent to impair the security of the state and then, the penalty is increased to 15 years.

Vanunu got 18 years and was also rendered defenseless when the court ruled that his motivations were not ideological and they refused to allow Vanunu's own statements regarding his intentions to be considered in his defense. 

A few days before Vanunu was lured from London to Rome, where he was clubbed, drugged and kidnapped by the Mossad, he spent three days being interviewed by Nuclear Physicist, Frank Barnaby.

Barnaby had been employed by the London Sunday Times to review the 57 photos Vanunu had obtained at various restricted locations in the Dimona and he also went to Jerusalem to provide expert testimony at Vanunu's closed door trial.

Barnaby testified, "I found the fact that Vanunu was able to smuggle a camera and films into and out of Dimona and photograph highly sensitive areas in the establishment astonishing. I very vigorously cross-examined Vanunu, relentlessly asking the same questions in a number of different ways and at different times...I found Vanunu very straightforward about his motives for violating Israel's secrecy laws he explained to me that he believed that both the Israeli and the world public had the right to know about the information he passed on. He seemed to me to be acting ideologically.

"Israel's political leaders have, he said, consistently lied about Israel's nuclear-weapons programme and he found this unacceptable in a democracy. The knowledge that Vanunu had about Isreal's nuclear weapons, about the operations at Dimona, and about security at Dimona could not be of any use to anyone today. He left Dimona in October 1985 and the design of today's Israeli nuclear weapons will have been considerably changed since then…Modern nuclear weapons bear little relationship to those of the mid-1980."[3]

A total of 1,200 pages of transcript of that closed door trial have been released and Vanunu told the court: "I wanted to confirm what everyone knew, I didn't want Israel to go on denying that it had nuclear weapons, and Shimon Peres to go on lying to (then US president) Ronald Reagan, saying that we didn't have a nuclear arsenal. I also wanted controls to be placed on these weapons." [4]

Defense witness and the Sunday Times journalist who broke Vanunu's story, Peter Hounam, stated, "It is clear that, as far as Vanunu's accusers are concerned, the trial is not only about whether this decision to reveal the secrets of Israel's atom bomb amounted to treason and espionage, it is also about whether his decision to become a Christian was at the root of his alleged treachery".

Hounam also testified that "We did not pay him money, but only covered his expenses... Money did not motivate him." [5]

Sunday Times journalist Wendy Robbins wrote, "Mordechai never asked for nor received a single penny for his information... he blurted out the whole tale without first setting out any financial preconditions. Mordechai got nothing out of the whole episode.   He never `sold' Israel's secrets -- he told them." 

In the 80's, Vanunu was transported to and from his closed door trial in a crash helmet, handcuffs and leg-irons, inside a van with blacked out windows that blasted noise to assure Vanunu would not communicate with journalists or supporters. During the court hearings, two Israeli security agents flanked him at all times in order to be able to cover his mouth if he began to reveal anything they deemed secret. The public, the press and all observers-even Amnesty International- were excluded from the hearings and the court's judgment was censored before publication.

On January 25, 2006, the first day of a freedom of speech trial in Israel only two reporters from minor media showed up for Vanunu's historic court case. Not one was in the court room on February 22, 2006, when it was revealed that Israel had gotten Microsoft to hand over all the details of Vanunu's Hotmail account before a court order had been obtained by eluding that he was being charged for espionage.

 
Vanunu wrote, "Microsoft obeyed the orders and gave them all the details…three months before I was arrested and my computers were confiscated…it is strange to ask Microsoft to give this information before obtaining the court order to listen to my private conversations. It means they wanted to go through my emails in secret, or maybe, with the help of the secret services, the Shaback, Mossad…Sfard [Vanunu's attorney] proved that the police had misled the judges who gave the orders to arrest me: to search my room, to go through my email, to confiscate my computers and that they misled Microsoft to believe they are helping in a case of espionage. The State came to the court with two special secret Government orders; Hisaion [documents or information that are deemed confidential by the government and kept from the court, the defendant, and lawyers.] This allows the prosecution to keep documents related to my court hearing secret. One was from the Minister for Interior Security and one from the Minister of Defense."

Americans need to know that Vanunu's secretly taped police interrogations, his 2004 Christmas Eve arrest for "attempting to leave the country" when he attempted to celebrate his first Christmas out of prison at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the confiscation of his private property by thirty Israeli Forces that stormed into his room at St. George's Cathedral in 2004, according to Vanunu had all "been done…under the false and misleading statements to the courts of 'suspicion of espionage', and yet they are not charging me with spy crimes… and the fact is that I have not committed any crimes."

When Vanunu next faces the Israeli Supreme Court, the world will know more about Israeli democracy and Justice. Until then, learn more @ http://vanunu.com/ and see and hear Vanunu in 2005, 2006, 2008 video interviews freely streaming @ VANUNU ARCHIVES: http://wearewideawake.org/

2.      http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1370&Itemid=223

3.      http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/barnaby.pdf

4.      http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/onvan.htm

5.      http://www.toysatellite.org/babel/vanunu/vaninfo.html#top