A Petition for Mordecai Vanunu

About 150 signatures have been collected under the Hebrew version of the following petition, on behalf of Vanunu, the jailed Israeli nuclear technician. Some observers see the police raid on the Alternative Information Center as in part a reprisal for its role in the circulation of this petition.

We, the undersigned, wish to disassociate ourselves from the lynch campaign which has accompanied the arrest of Mordecai Vanunu and from the general consent in the country to the whitewash of the anti-democratic methods employed by the government in its handling of the case.

The abduction of a person, his secret confinement and his trial in camera, the deliberate use of prevarication and censorship in order to publicly condemn a person and incite the public against him before he has stood trial, are characteristic of lawless dictatorships. Whoever cherishes human freedom cannot condone these practices in any manner whatsoever.

In our view, there is no “Vanunu Affair,” but rather the affair of a desperate attempt to incite the Israeli public [and thereby prevent it] from coming to grips with the basic question of the existence of tens of nuclear warheads-without any local or international supervision-in the hands of a government whose sense of responsibility for the lives of the people living in this region, including Jews, has never been one of its strong points.

Without condoning the acts attributed to Vanunu, we wish to state that lifting the veil of secrecy from the issue of Israeli nuclear armament would be very beneficial to the safety and security of the residents of this country and the region at large.

We call on the peace forces in Israel to disassociate themselves from the incitement against Vanunu, to condemn the totalitarian practices of the Israeli government, and above all else, to mobilize against nuclear weapons in the country and the region as a whole-a situation which will bring a holocaust upon us all.

March-April 1987, ATC 8