Whistleblower: I feared brainwashing

[JoFerret]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=514973

Whistle-blower: 'I feared brain-washing... They were out to destroy my personality'
As newly released technician speaks out, Sharon comes close to admitting his country has nuclear weapons
By Donald Mcintyre in Jerusalem
25 April 2004


Nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu was convinced during his long years of imprisonment that his jailers were out to brainwash him.

In an extended interview in The Sunday Times, which ran his story in 1986, the man who revealed Israel's weapons programme at the Dimona nuclear plant said: "They were trying to destroy my personality. They monitored all my moves and I suspected they were tampering with my meals. I felt I had to resist accepting any changes or they would succeed in breaking me."

He said that what helped him survive his imprisonment ­ including 11 years in solitary confinement ­ was listening to opera tapes and CDs sent by well-wishers, Wagner being a particular favourite.

His remarks came as Mr Vanunu's family and supporters reported him to be in high spirits, despite their continued worries about his security from bitterly hostile elements among the Israeli public. He was brought face to face with that hostility by the taunts and shouts of "death to traitors" when he was driven from the high-security jail in Ashkelon after an otherwise tumultuous welcome from his supporters on Wednesday.

Mr Vanunu's brother Meir said that foreign governments, including Britain's, should act to ensure that Mr Vanunu was protected after the Justice Minister, Tommy Lapid, said that Israel would not be providing security for Mr Vanunu. He was also disturbed by the heavy emphasis laid by sections of the Israeli media on his brother's conversion from the Judaism of his Moroccan immigrant parents. Referring to the main headline in the mass-circulation daily Yedhiot Ahronot after his release ­ "Mordechai the Christian" ­ he said: "They are treating him as a traitor to his religion and not as a man who is also idealistically and ideologically motivated."

Although a few of the restrictions on his release have been slightly relaxed, he will not be able to make a new life in the US for at least a year. Despite his repeated denials, ministers continue to insist he has more security-sensitive details to divulge.

<more.

[DianeG5385]

1. He is a truthteller. Protect him or

He is so dead. The IsraeliuGovt. is nothing I have ever seen before...They appear to be marauding pigs. They want territory that belongs to others.

[JoFerret]

2. They are good at wat they do

.

[nolabels]

4. Shame on you, marauding pigs have way more manners

I am often amazed why this potentially worthless small hunk of desert is so highly prized. So prized to the point groups of zealots would be wanting or needing to destroy all of civilization to keep it pure in their thinking. When principle out weighs the need for practicality, disaster is sure to arrive sooner or later.

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.' - Plato (427-347 B.C.)"

http://www.miniluv.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=471

[Matilda]

3. They put him in solitary for nine years.

Could've sent him crazy, but he came out intact, a testament to the
strength of his mind and will.

But I worry about the fact that they won't let him leave Israel -
some nut will get him, I'm afraid. He's served his term, the law
says he's a free man, and so he should be.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

5. By revealing his address, they are making him a target, done to MLK.

The Israeli gov't revealed the address he was going to live at while he waits to go to the US. This is a tactic to make him a target and get him executed.

This was done to Martin Luther King when he was in Memphis. His motel room number at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis was announce on TV and he was shot on the balcony. The Lorraine Motel is now the US's National Civil Rights Museum.

I hope there isn't a Vanunu museum being readied.