An Iranian technician called Jalal-a-Din Taheri, who had been working at the nuclear reactor at Bushehr, managed to defect to Europe, where he disclosed the Ayatollahs' plans for producing nuclear bombs.
Taheri was acclaimed a hero throughout the world. A number of organizations nominated him for the Nobel Peace Price. President Bush praised his courage. Ariel Sharon invited him to come and live in Israel, even calling him one of the Righteous of the Nations. The Ayatollahs denounced him as a traitor, infidel, Crusader and Zionist.
This is, of course, an entirely fictitious story. But it corresponds exactly to the story of Mordechai Vanunu, who is considered by almost all Israelis as a despicable traitor - proving once again that treason, like pornography, is a matter of geography.
This week I used my privilege as a former Member of the Knesset to attend a session of the Knesset Committee for "the Constitution, Law and Justice", in which the Vanunu affair was discussed. In the course of the session, Knesset members cursed each other in the language of fishmongers (by which I mean no offence to fishmongers). Two Likud members, Ronie Bar-On (who once served for several hours as Attorney General before being ignominiously removed) and Yehiel Hazan shouted that Vanunu had no human rights, since he was not a human being. It should be mentioned in all fairness that the chairman of the committee, Michael Eytan, also a Likud member, strongly condemned these utterances.
Vanunu, who in 1986 disclosed to a British newspaper some of Israel's nuclear secrets, was kidnapped soon after by the Mossad, smuggled back to Israel and put on trial. He served his sentence: 18 years in prison. For most of the time he was held in total isolation. (He told me that, in order to keep his sanity, he would read the New Testament in English out loud, over and over again, and in this way improved his command of this language, which he now insists on using instead of Hebrew.)
On his release, he was placed under severe restrictions: he is forbidden to go abroad, forbidden to move inside the country without prior notification of the authorities, forbidden to speak with foreigners, forbidden to give interviews. The Supreme Court has upheld these constraints. Vanunu has violated most of them, and some weeks ago he was indicted for these violations.
The restrictions were initially imposed for one year, which came to an end this week. The Knesset committee was about to discuss the possibility of their being extended, but a few hours before the session, the Minister of the Interior, Ophir Pines (Labor Party) signed an order extending for another year the prohibition of leaving the country, and the Army Commander of the Home Front signed an order to extend the other constraints (under Emergency Regulations).
At the committee meeting, the representative of the Attorney General set out the government arguments for this extension: (a) Vanunu still "holds in his head" dangerous secrets, (b) He has a "phenomenal" memory, (c) If given the opportunity, he will disclose these secrets abroad.
What is the evidence to support this?
1. In one of the letters he wrote in prison, Vanunu told his correspondent abroad that he was in possession of many more secrets, which he had not yet disclosed. He announced his intention of revealing these secrets at the first opportunity.