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Mordechai Vanunu
It all began with a magazine. One day, in 1995, I was reading an article written by a Sam Day in "The Progressive" magazine. Sam was identified as coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu, and the story was about a prisoner being held in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison. That seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary. I had visited Hispanic prisoners in the federal prison in Stillwater, and occasionally a prisoner would spend time in the "hole". But as I read the Vanunu story I became horrified because this man, this human being, had been in solitary in a 6 X 9' cell for nine years, and his sentence ensured that he would be in that cell for another nine years. Even when he was allowed to exercise outdoors, he was limited to a walking area which was surrounded by a plastic barrier so that he could not see beyond it. I wondered if I was reading correctly — was this happening now in 1995 or did this happen in the dark ages? And what heinous crime had the man committed? He had blown the whistle on Israel's secret nuclear weapons program in Dimona. He was not a spy. He acted, not for personal gain, nor out of malice, nor on behalf of any government, but out of the urgings of his conscience. He thought that in a democratic country such as Israel, people have the right to know what their government was doing, especially regarding a matter as important as nuclear weapons. He believed that all nuclear weapons had to be dismantled and that Israel was no exception. I agreed with his sentiments wholeheartedly. I had been arrested several times at a munitions plant and at the Strategic Air Command base in Omaha in hopes of raising public awareness about the futility of weapons. Mordechai immediately became my hero. The Progressive article went on to say that Mordechai Vanunu was from a Moroccan Orthodox Jewish family that had emigrated to Israel when he was young, and that he had taken a job as a technician at the Dimona nuclear research center while attending Ben-Gurion University. After a time, he came to realize that Israel was secretly building nuclear weapons at Dimona. Before he left his job, he took clandestine photos of the facility. Travels took him to Australia, where he eventually developed the film and shared his story with a social concerns group at an Anglican Church, where he later was baptized. The London Sunday Times learned of his story and asked him to travel to London, where his information was confirmed by nuclear experts. Just days before the story was published on October 5, 1986, Mordechai was lured to Rome by an American, female Mossad agent; there he was drugged and smuggled aboard a cargo vessel back to Israel. It was weeks before Israel admitted to having him in custody. He was charged with espionage and treason, tried in secret, convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison. How could such a hero be condemned as a traitor, and suffer such vicious torture? Nothing could be worse than isolation from all that is human. I recalled that when my babies were born, they immediately became part of the web of humanity. They knew almost immediately the love and support of grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and neighbors. Relationships bring us into being and it is relationships that give purpose at every moment of our existence. Relationships provide security and make us able to trust. Now this man, this hero, this human being was being shut away, his humanity denied. I grieved for him and for those who had chosen to deny his connection with them. How would this man ever trust again? But there was a note of hope at the end of the article. It suggested that people could write to Mordechai in care of Ashkelon Prison in Ashkelon, Israel — no numbers, no zip codes — and that anyone wishing to join the campaign to free him, could contact Sam Day in Madison, Wisconsin. So we did both — contacted Sam and wrote our first letter to Mordechai in 1995. Imagine the thrill it was for us to receive an answer from Mordechai in about three months time. Imagine also what it was like to receive a letter that was full of holes cut out in seemingly harmless sentences. We alternated between anger and sadness. But a correspondence had begun. We treasured that letter and reread it many times. After we had joined the campaign, Sam urged us to help with efforts to collect signatures on a petition to President Clinton to ask him to use his good offices to urge the Israeli government to free Mordechai on humanitarian grounds. We brought petitions to churches, peace gatherings and to assemblies of Pax Christi, Minnesota — a chapter of an international Catholic peace organization. We sent over 1,000 names to the President but our efforts proved fruitless. We received not as much as an acknowledgement of our petitions. Sam visited St. Paul, where we live, in the winter of 1996, and stayed with us. As we drove him to various places, where he spoke so movingly about Mordechai's cruel imprisonment and the current and impending disaster of nuclear weapons, we became more involved in the Campaign. Sam had been the editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and spoke with authority. That fall, on September 30, the anniversary of Mordechai's kidnapping, six of us held a vigil outside the Government Center in Minneapolis. Our good friend, John Landgraf, who had been corresponding with Mordechai, built a 6' high cage and stood inside it while the rest of us passed out flyers. No one had heard of Mordechai, with the exception of an attorney who angrily said, "Why are you doing this? I know more about Vanunu than all of you!" So we learned that some individuals knew about Mordechai, but they did not believe as we did that he should be released
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