Peace and Justice Post

Information Clearing House, July 13, 2007

A Reform to Restore the People’s Power

By Paul Craig Roberts

The American political system has failed. The fabled checks and balances of American politics were no match for a neoconservative administration with a secret agenda. The American people were deceived and tricked into supporting two invasions that are war crimes under the Nuremberg standard.

US aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq and the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians have radicalized Muslims throughout the world and swelled the ranks of insurgents. Despite the “surge” and an additional 30,000 US troops in Baghdad, the US is unable to protect its own embassy. On July 10, the fortified Green Zone, which contains the US and British embassies and the puppet Iraqi government, came under intense mortar and rocket attack. Within the protected Green Zone, 18 people were wounded and 3 were killed.

The US military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus said that the US is a decade away from victory in Iraq. Gen. Petraeus could have added another truth and acknowledged that the US military lacks sufficient fresh troops to remain in the conflict. Last year Colin Powell said the US Army is “about broken.” The US military is exhausted by the insurgencies and will be driven out if not withdrawn.

Gen. Petraeus assumed command in January. Six months later, Petraeus says “the question is how can we gradually reduce our forces so we reduce the strain on the army.”

In the US Senate, Republican support for Bush’s wars is fading as senators face a hostile public that has had enough of Bush’s pointless and lost wars based on lies and deception. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq never had any valid reason. The US occupations of these countries have failed, and no purpose has been achieved except the enrichment of the military-security complex and the swelling of al-Qaeda’s ranks and credibility.

One trillion dollars has been totally squandered. Moreover, Bush’s wars have had to be financed by borrowing abroad. The result has been a reduction in the dollar’s value and an erosion of the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. The dollar has fallen to a new low against the Euro and has reached a 26-year low against the British pound.

The latest comprehensive worldwide Pew poll reveals the complete collapse of America’s standing in the world.

This is a huge price to pay for Bush’s childish ego, for the enrichment of Cheney’s cronies at Halliburton and merchants of death, and for Congress’ appeasement of AIPAC.

Bush’s and Cheney’s lies and assaults on the US Constitution and American civil liberty, their plans to attack Iran, and the war crimes for which they are responsible provide an open and shut case for their impeachments. The latest polls show that 54% of Americans support impeachment of Vice President Cheney, with only 40% opposed. Bush hangs on by a hair with 45% favoring his impeachment and 46% opposed. But Democrats, like Republicans, have failed the electorate and refuse to do their duty. Congress is a creature of special interests and no longer represents the American people.

Obviously, some new method is needed for removing incompetent or dictatorial presidents and vice presidents.

Constitutional reform might be next to impossible, but before dismissing the possibility consider that according to British news reports, Britain’s new prime minister, Gordon Brown, intends a wide-ranging program of constitutional reform, including giving up the prime minister’s power to declare war.

The London Telegraph says: “The measures are intended to restore trust in politics after the by-passing of Parliament and the Cabinet, as well as the culture of spin and media manipulation, that characterized the Blair decade.”

If America is to remain a democracy, the people need refurbished powers to hold “government of the people, by the people, for the people” accountable. One way of doing this would be a vote of confidence by the people. The question can be put to a national referendum: “Shall the President remain in office?” “Shall the Vice President remain in office?”

The state of Florida does this for judges, including Florida’s Supreme Court, so there is precedent for allowing the people to decide whether officials may remain in office.

As the American people can no longer rely on elected officials to respond to public opinion, the people must do what they can to gather power back into their hands before they become the subjects of tyrants.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Counterpunch, July 13, 2007

Musharraf’s Massacre

When Dictators Serve US Interests

By IMRAN KHAN

Over recent days, news from Pakistan has been dominated by the siege at the Red Mosque, which ended late yesterday. Scarcely a mile from the seat of power in Islamabad, the madrasa students and their two leading clerics inside the mosque first claimed attention with kidnappings, threats of suicide bombings and demands for the imposition of sharia law. The Musharraf regime mounted a military operation against the militants which led to the loss of numerous lives, among them one of the clerics, Abdul Rashid Ghaz. A number of questions arise. Why was action not taken immediately? How were militants and arms able to get in under the gaze of the police and intelligence services? And why were other measures, including shutting off electricity at the mosque, not exhausted earlier?

The episode appears to have been drawn out deliberately by President Musharraf. Since he sacked the chief justice in March, a movement led by lawyers, journalists and opposition parties has been clamouring for democracy on Pakistan’s streets. As Musharraf faces his biggest crisis, he is desperate to prove his indispensability to the west in the war on terror.

But this use of force is likely to produce unintended and dangerous consequences, as it has in Baluchistan, Waziristan and Bajaur. It may be salutary to recall how Indira Gandhi’s order for troops to attack the Golden Temple, where Sikh militants were holed up, not only failed to subdue the militants but triggered a wave of violence, including her assassination. While few Sikhs may have sympathised with the militants, many came to deeply resent the government’s high-handedness.

Suicide bombing and other noxious forms of terrorism were once alien to Pakistan. After eight years of military dictatorship, radicalism and fundamentalism are in the ascendant everywhere. Musharraf is perceived among radical elements as the west’s instrument in a “war on Islam”–there could be no greater failure in the battle for hearts and minds.

Terrorism requires a political solution. Extremists can be marginalised through debate and political dialogue in a democracy. Military dictatorship, as we are now seeing, only exacerbates the problem. It has become obvious to every Pakistani that, far from presiding over a transition to genuine democracy in the country, Musharraf is intent on dismantling every democratic institution in his way. Over recent months he has assaulted the judiciary, restricted freedom of the press, and put hundreds of members of the opposition behind bars.

The roots of the most shocking incident so far, however, can be found in north London, where the chairman of the Musharraf-allied Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Altaf Hussain, resides. When Pakistan’s chief justice decided to address the bar in Karachi, a vast welcome was expected in the city. This worried Musharraf and his MQM allies, who control the Sindh government–and especially Karachi, the provincial capital. They decided to organise a rival rally the same day, despite protests by the opposition. What followed on the blood-soaked May 12 could be described in two words: state terrorism.

While the police stood aside, the terrorist arm of the MQM sprayed bullets into a peaceful procession of the opposition parties. Some 48 people lost their lives and 200 sustained bullet wounds. Among them were 10 members of my party. Most callously, Musharraf later that evening triumphantly claimed that the people had shown their “force”. None of the opposition parties believe MQM’s denials that they were involved in turning this peaceful protest violent. It was then I decided to launch legal proceedings against Altaf Hussain, who has been living in exile in London since 1992 and became a British citizen in 1999.

The MQM came into existence in the mid-1980s as a genuine people’s movement in Karachi, representing the immigrant community that had arrived from India shortly after the creation of Pakistan. This community had serious grievances, the most significant being that educated young muhajirs could not get jobs because of imposed quotas. But within a few years it had degenerated into a thuggish mafia outfit, controlled by one man, Altaf Hussain.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and even the US state department and the European Union have issued reports about the MQM’s terrorist activities. The only independent provincial assembly in Pakistan recently denounced the party as a “terrorist organisation”, and last weekend the conference of opposition parties jointly resolved to support the legal proceedings against Hussain.

While Musharraf maintains that he is at the frontline of the war on terror–in which thousands of Pakistani soldiers and citizens have lost their lives–he has allied himself with the country’s number one terrorist. And Tony Blair’s government, which was at the fore of this war, gave Pakistan’s number one terrorist citizenship.

It is impossible to embark on any quest for the hearts and minds of Pakistanis when these blatant double standards exist. Are dictators somehow fine when they exist to serve US interests, even if they destroy hopes of democracy in the process? And are terrorists only a problem when it is western blood that is shed?

Imran Khan is the leader of the Pakistan Movement for Justice and a member of parliament

Source: War Times

Life under occupation has been an unending tragedy for the people of Iraq. Over 34,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in 2006, and the violence has forced over one million Iraqis to flee their country. One in five Iraqis are living in poverty and more than half are unemployed, all while the costs of basic goods have skyrocketed. Many Iraqis still don’t have enough drinking water or electricity.

No wonder more than 80% of Iraqis want the U.S. military to leave.

THE U.S. OCCUPATION: THE SOLUTION OR THE PROBLEM?

All people of conscience are concerned with the intensifying civil war in Iraq. But the U.S. military cannot prevent civil war. This was clear when Sunni guerrillas blew up a sacred Shiite shrine in February 2006, sparking attacks and counter-attacks among Iraqis. “The [U.S.] military largely watched the violence from the sidelines,” according to the L.A.Times.

The only way to end the civil war in Iraq is for the different groups of Iraqis to negotiate a solution. This is impossible as long as the U.S. military remains in Iraq, because many of these groups are opposed to the occupation and the U.S. is openly trying to destroy them. Furthermore, extremist groups who actually do want civil war have very little support among the Iraqi people and are only tolerated because they are attacking occupation forces. If the US troops leave, these groups will be isolated and powerless.

The vast majority of Iraqis think the US military is creating more conflict than it is preventing. They are right. A series of atrocities created widespread anger against U.S. soldiers and fueled the armed insurgency: torture in the Abu Ghraib prison, arbitrary and indefinite imprisonment, massacres such as the shooting of 24 civilians at close-range in Haditha, and the rape and murder of a 14 year-old girl, to name a few.

The occupation makes a civil war more likely, not less. The US military’s main goal is destroying the mostly Sunni resistance, not preventing a civil war. But when the US military attacks a Sunni area with Shia soldiers, they generate retaliatory attacks by Sunni against Shia. The best chance to stop the cycle of violence is to end the occupation.

WHAT ABOUT OUR MORAL OBLIGATION TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE?

The occupation fulfills no moral obligation; it has fostered corruption instead of genuine reconstruction. But, because of the catastrophic effects of U.S.-led sanctions and military occupation we do have a responsibility to support the process of rebuilding Iraq, if the process is led by the people of Iraq. Individuals can support Iraqi groups struggling for womens’ rights and workers’ rights, and efforts to cancel Iraq’s foreign debt accumulated by Saddam. The U.S. government should support projects to clear Iraq of the depleted uranium, cluster bombs, and landmines in Iraq that poison, kill, and injure hundreds of Iraqis each year. It should also play a leading role in establishing a fund to rebuild Iraq, which will be controlled by the Iraqis themselves. The U.S. should be this fund’s largest donor. This will provide Iraq with the resources to move forward.

WHAT IS THE PATH TOWARDS REAL SECURITY FOR ALL?

Bush’s endless anti-Islamic “war on terror” is alienating other governments and peoples. This is the wrong course. In order to create true security, we must work cooperatively with the global community to resolve situations where the roots of violent conflict–inequality and social instability–are clear. In the Middle East, the U.S. must support a just resolution to the Israel-Palestine crisis that will allow Palestinians to live with rights and dignity.

The U.S. cannot play a positive role in promoting peace and security without withdrawing from Iraq. Our military presence there is destabilizing the region, putting Iraqis, US soldiers, as well as people in the U.S. at risk. Worldwide, it has pushed resentment of U.S. foreign policy to the highest levels in recent memory, according to BBC polls. Getting out now will make another world possible.

WHAT’S BEST FOR IRAQIS AND FOR U.S. SOLDIERS?

Attacks on US troops in Iraq average several hundred each week. Frightened young GI’s are shooting first, asking questions later. The result: one-third of Iraq veterans suffer from depression, schizophrenia or post-traumatic stress disorder. On top of that, US troops are being sent to the frontlines even if they are mentally ill, just to keep the occupation going. Iraq Veterans Against the War says:

“We, the veterans of the war, now know. . . the reasons for invading the sovereign country of Iraq were false, and we have paid a heavy price for these lies. . . . We call upon our President, the Congress, and all elected officials to immediately and unconditionally withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq and the Middle East.”

BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW

Take action to end the war: go to www.unitedforpeace.org for more information and action ideas.

The Nation, July 12, 2007

Bush’s Royal Edict: Don’t Cooperate With Congress

by John Nichols

President Bush has treated Congress with contempt for more than six years.But the most regal executive to reign over the United States since King George III was deposed has never displayed that contempt so aggressively as he did Wednesday.

On the eve of former White House counsel Harriet Miers’ scheduled testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, she was ordered by the president to defy the subpoena she had been issued by the committee.

The president’s lawyers claimed that Miers has “absolute immunity from compelled congressional testimony” in regard to the investigation of the administration’s politicization of federal investigations and prosecutions.

According to current White House counsel Fred Fielding, Miers does not need to cooperate with congressional inquiries into “matters occurring while she was a senior adviser to the president.”

That was enough for the former counsel’s lawyer, George T. Manning, to notify Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, D-Mich., that Miers would refuse to appear at Thursday’s session to answer questions about the role played by the White House in forcing the firings of eight U.S. Attorneys.

Unlike former White House political director Sara Taylor, who answered a subpoena to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday but refused to answer most questions, Miers will not offer even a bare minimum of respect for the system of checks and balances that gives Congress the authority to investigate wrongdoing in the White House.

“As a former public official and officer of the court, Ms. Miers should be especially aware of the need to respect legal process,” complained Conyers.

The committee chair said he was, “extremely disappointed in the White House’s direction to Ms. Miers that she not even show up to assert the privilege before the committee.”

That disappointment is understandable.

But disappointment is not enough.

The administration’s casual disregard for subpoenas issued by Congress demands a response.

Conyers has spoken of seeking Contempt of Congress citations against current and former administration aides who refuse cooperate with his committee.

It’s time, not merely to defend the authority of the Congress but to reassert respect for the role of the Constitution in defining proper relations between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

John Nichols’ new book is The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism. Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson hails it as a “nervy, acerbic, passionately argued history-cum-polemic [that] combines a rich examination of the parliamentary roots and past use of the ‘heroic medicine’ that is impeachment with a call for Democratic leaders to ‘reclaim and reuse the most vital tool handed to us by the founders for the defense of our most basic liberties.’”

the Dallas Morning News (Texas)

Published on Thursday, July 12, 2007

Nobel Laureate Calls for Removal of Bush

by James Hohmann

Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams came from Ireland to Texas to declare that President Bush should be impeached.

In a keynote speech at the International Women’s Peace Conference on Wednesday night, Ms. Williams told a crowd of about 1,000 that the Bush administration has been treacherous and wrong and acted unconstitutionally.

“Right now, I could kill George Bush,” she said at the Adam’s Mark Hotel and Conference Center in Dallas. “No, I don’t mean that. How could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that.”

About half the crowd gave her a standing ovation after she called for Mr. Bush’s removal from power.

“The Muslim world right now is suffering beyond belief,” she said.

“Unless the president of the United States is held responsible for what he’s doing and what he has done, there’s no one in the Muslim world who will forgive him.”

When an audience member told Ms. Williams that Vice President Dick Cheney would become president if George Bush were impeached, she said, “Can’t you impeach them both?”

“It’s twisted. It’s all wrong,” she said. “There are so many lies being told. It’s hard to be an American and go out into the world right now.”

Ms. Williams started her speech by asking every member of the audience to hug everyone around them. Then she cut to what amounted to both a call for peace and a stinging rebuke of the American government.

Conference organizers have said that the conference is nonpartisan and that no one was invited to speak about the war in Iraq. After Ms. Williams finished her speech, conference chairwoman Carol Donovan took the podium to say that Ms. Williams did not speak for the conference — only herself.

“It’s important for us to separate the opinion of the person and the position of the conference,” Ms. Donovan said.

Two other Nobel Peace Prize winners, American activist Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchú Tum of Guatemala, will speak this week as part of the conference. Jody Williams, who was in the audience Wednesday, has also indicated she would speak about Mr. Bush.

“We believe very strongly it was important to have the opportunity to hear these three peace prize winners,” Ms. Donovan said.

Betty Williams won the Nobel Prize in 1976 for creating a group that helped start peace talks in Northern Ireland.

In 1992, Texas Gov. Ann Richards appointed Betty Williams to the Texas Commission for Children and Youth.

Many in the crowd found out that Lady Bird Johnson had died when Jan Sanders, the wife of U.S. District Judge Barefoot Sanders and a close friend of the former first lady, gave an impromptu eulogy.

“She was a friend, a doer, an influencer of world events,” Ms. Sanders said. “She lived a full life. If she were here, she would say to you, ‘Keep on being women doers.’ ”

Source:CounterPunch, July 10, 2007

“Whatever AIPAC Wants, AIPAC Gets”

Democratic Defectors and the Israel Lobby

BY JERRY KROTH

In November, the American electorate repudiated Bush’s Iraq debacle and established Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate promising to bring this “flawed policy wrapped in illusion” to a decisive end. Bush vetoed their withdrawal timetable, but voters urged their leaders to hold the line and not be bullied. In the end, though, 37 Democratic senators capitulated and gratuitously gave the President his $100 billion no-strings- attached blank check . . . enough money to pay tuition and fees for 1.3 million college students for four solid years!

Deep disappointment set in. Cindy Sheehan, the liberal icon, was so demoralized she resigned and returned to private life. In June, a CNN poll reported that “respect for Congress” plummeted to the lowest level “ever recorded.”

Bloggers called them “traitor Democrats”, and the descriptor is apropos. At the time of the vote, sixty-two percent of the American people favored a time-table for a withdrawal, but, more significantly, “seventy percent” of Democrats were so inclined. Voting against this burgeoning tide of anger betrayed the will of the people and party that put these Democrats in office.

Curiously, all of the traitor democrats were huge career recipients of funds from the Israeli lobby. If we took ten Democratic apostates and compared them to ten Democrats who stood by the voters, pro-Israeli PAC contributions were “ten times” greater for the turncoats than those who stayed with their constituencies ($322,000 versus $34,000 on average).

To be specific: Carl Levin, outspoken critic of the war and, we thought, a loyal supporter of the new regime to end it, defected and blithely turned his back on his Michigan support base. Despite his strident anti-war rhetoric, the Grand Rapids Independent reports Levin has supported Bush all the way “consistently funding the war and not introducing any meaningful legislation to bring it closer to an end.” Practically unknown to his constituents, Levin is one of the largest beneficiaries of Pro-Israeli PAC funds collecting $600,000 in career contributions according to the Washington Report on Mideast Affairs.

Full article

The Independent,

Interviews with US veterans show for the first time the pattern of brutality in Iraq

By Leonard Doyle in Washington

Published: 12 July 2007

It is an axiom of American political life that the actions of the US military are beyond criticism. Democrats and Republicans praise the men and women in uniform at every turn. Apart from the odd bad apple at Abu Ghraib, the US military in Iraq is deemed to be doing a heroic job under trying circumstances.

That perception will take a severe knock today with the publication in The Nation magazine of a series of in-depth interviews with 50 combat veterans of the Iraq war from across the US. In the interviews, veterans have described acts of violence in which US forces have abused or killed Iraqi men, women and children with impunity.

The report steers clear of widely reported atrocities, such as the massacre in Haditha in 2005, but instead unearths a pattern of human rights abuses. “It’s not individual atrocity,” Specialist Garett Reppenhagen, a sniper from the 263rd Armour Battalion, said. “It’s the fact that the entire war is an atrocity.”

A number of the troops have returned home bearing mental and physical scars from fighting a war in an environment in which the insurgents are supported by the population. Many of those interviewed have come to oppose the US military presence in Iraq, joining the groundswell of public opinion across the US that views the war as futile.

Full article

Source: Dissident Voice

July 9th, 2007

By James Petras /

You cannot win the peace unless you know the enemy at home and abroad.
– US Marine Colonel from Tennessee.

Everywhere I visit from Copenhagen to Istanbul, Patagonia to Mexico City, journalists and academics, trade unionists and businesspeople, as well as ordinary citizens, inevitably ask me why the US public tolerates the killing of over a million Iraqis over the last two decades, and thousands of Afghans since 2001? Why, they ask, is a public, which opinion polls reveal as over sixty percent in favor of withdrawing US troops from Iraq, so politically impotent? A journalist from a leading business journal in India asked me what is preventing the US government from ending its aggression against Iran, if almost all of the world’s major oil companies, including US multinationals are eager to strike oil deals with Tehran? Anti-war advocates in Europe, Asia and Latin America ask me at large public forums what has happened to the US peace movement in the face of the consensus between the Republican White House and the Democratic Party-dominated Congress to continue funding the slaughter of Iraqis, supporting Israeli starvation, killing and occupation of Palestine and destruction of Lebanon?

Absence of a Peace Movement?

Just prior to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 over one million US citizens demonstrated against the war. Since then there have been few and smaller protests even as the slaughter of Iraqis escalates, US casualties mount and a new war with Iran looms on the horizon. The demise of the peace movement is largely the result of the major peace organizations’ decision to shift from independent social mobilizations to electoral politics, namely channeling activists into working for the election of Democratic candidates — most of whom have supported the war. The rationale offered by these ‘peace leaders’ was that, once elected, the Democrats would respond to the anti-war voters who put them in office. Of course practical experience and history should have taught the peace movement otherwise: The Democrats in Congress voted every military budget since the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. The total capitulation of the newly elected Democratic majority has had a major demoralizing effect on the disoriented peace activists and has discredited many of its leaders.

Full article

McClatchy Newspapers

By Jonathan S. Landay

• Posted on Tue, July 10, 2007

WASHINGTON — Struggling to stem growing opposition to his Iraq policy even among Republicans, President Bush contended anew Tuesday that the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States are the same as al Qaida in Iraq, a violent Iraqi insurgent group that didn’t exist until after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

It was the second time in two weeks that Bush has made the link in an apparent attempt to transform lingering fear of another U.S. terrorist attack into backing for the current buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq.

“Al Qaida is doing most of the spectacular bombings, trying to incite sectarian violence,” Bush told a business group in Cleveland, Ohio. “The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims.”

Al Qaida in Iraq didn’t emerge until 2004. While it is inspired by Osama bin Laden’s violent ideology, there’s no evidence that the Iraq organization is under the control of the terrorist leader or his top aides, who are believed to be hiding in tribal regions of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan.

Moreover, the two groups have been divided over tactics and strategy.

While U.S. intelligence and military officials view al Qaida in Iraq as a serious threat, they say the main source of violence and instability is an ongoing contest for power between majority Shiites and Sunnis, who dominated Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Bush’s speech came as Democrats in the Senate mounted a drive for legislation that would mandate a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal or set the stage for a pullout.

Four key Republican senators have broken with Bush over Iraq, and more could desert after the administration sends a report to Congress at week’s end that is expected to chart slight improvements in security, but virtually none on political measures aimed at reconciling rival religious and ethnic groups.

In his speech, Bush cited the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as the motivation behind the continuing war in Iraq. “They will kill a Muslim, a child or a woman at a moment’s notice to achieve a political objective,” Bush said. “They are dangerous people that need to be confronted, and that’s why since Sept. 11 our policy has been to find them and defeat them overseas so we don’t have to face them here at home again.”

Before the war, the president and his aides cited Iraq’s alleged illegal chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs to justify the ouster of Saddam, who administration officials asserted also had ties to al Qaida.

No such programs were found, however, and U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Saddam also had no operational links to al Qaida.

CounterPunch

Weekend Edition
July 7 / 8, 2007

Back Behind Bars

The Unbreakable Mordechai Vanunu

By RANNIE AMIRI

“I said to the Shabak, the Mossad, ‘you didn’t succeed to break me, you didn’t succeed to make me crazy.'”

Mordechai Vanunu, former Israeli nuclear technician, upon being released from Ashkelon’s Shikma prison on April 21st, 2004, where he served 18 years.

They were words of courage and defiance, uttered by a man who embodied both. Mordechai Vanunu spent 18 years in jail, a full 11 of them in solitary confinement, for revealing Israel’s yet undeclared nuclear capability to the world. He had emerged from Shikma with arms outstretched, repeatedly flashing the victory sign ­ or was it peace? ­ and refused to answer questions posed to him in Hebrew from the awaiting media. “I am proud and happy to do what I did,” he unabashedly stated.

And what he has done since will now land him back behind bars.

An Israeli court has just sentenced Vanunu to six months in jail for violating the terms of his parole, which prohibit him from having any contact with foreigners or visiting the West Bank. As in all matters, he was fearless in doing both.

It thus behooves us to retell this man’s remarkable story, lest we forget what a person of conscience can achieve.

Mordechai Vanunu was the first to expose Israel’s dirty little secret: it was a major atomic power. He worked as a technician at the Dimona nuclear plant in the Negev desert from 1976 – 1985. Then, in a 1986 interview with London’s Sunday Times, he disclosed pictures that not only proved Israel had the capacity to produce nuclear weapons, but was actually in possession of them.

Just prior to the publication of his interview on October 5, events unfolded as if they came straight off the pages of a Robert Ludlum thriller. On September 30, Vanunu was lured by a female Mossad agent from London to Rome, where he was captured and scurried off to Israel. Behind closed doors he stood trial for treason, was quickly convicted and sentenced to an 18-year term. If the Israeli government had hoped he would quietly and contritely fade away, they were sadly mistaken.

Vanunu vociferously renewed his call for Israel to come clean regarding its nuclear arsenal (reportedly the world’s fifth largest) and open the Dimona reactor to international inspection. Israel still remains the only country in the Middle East to be a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has likewise barred entry to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) personnel.

Israeli politicians, from left, right and center, roundly heaped scorn on Vanunu after his release, whom they dubbed a “traitor.” Conditions of his parole included prohibition of traveling abroad for one year or possessing a passport, limitation of his movement within the country, speaking with non-Israeli citizens, and discussing anything related to his former work at Dimona. These restrictions were condemned by Amnesty International who demanded their rescindment, citing Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which permit a citizen to move freely about or leave the country of their citizenship.

Although the term “whistleblower” is often used to describe Vanunu, it is a rather weak and understated characterization. He was a siren, alerting the world that nuclear weapons had found their way into the Middle East, shattering Israel’s official policy of nuclear ambiguity.

Born in Morocco, Vanunu converted to Christianity before being imprisoned. He felt both his religious and political views (a staunch advocate of Palestinian rights) led to the harsh treatment he received while incarcerated, which he described as “cruel and barbaric.”

Despite interrogation by the world’s most ruthless intelligence agencies and imprisonment in what could have only been unforgiving conditions, Vanunu endured, saying:

“I am a symbol of the will of freedom, that you cannot break the human spirit.”

A Nobel Peace Prize recipient in waiting and a true hero of our time no less.

Rannie Amiri is an independent commentator on issues dealing with the Arab and Islamic worlds. He may be reached at: rbamiri@yahoo.com.