Punishment Worse Than the Crime

On Wednesday, Mordechai Vanunu, Israel’s most famous prisoner, is due to be released from prison. But he will not be a free man. For some Israeli security officials, his 18 years behind bars isn’t sufficient punishment. As a result, Vanunu, who was convicted of treason and espionage, will not be allowed to leave the country to unite with an American couple, Nick and Mary Eoloff of Minnesota, who adopted him as their son six years ago. He will be kept under surveillance for six months.

What Vanunu, a junior nuclear technician, did was unheard of in Israel. In 1986, the loyal Israeli citizen talked to the Sunday Times of London about the one and only subject no one dared to publicize then as now -- Israel’s nuclear weapons. Before Vanunu’s disclosure, the world’s governments and intelligence agencies had confidently assumed that Israel did have the bomb. But his stunning insider account provided the fine details of how, when and where Israel had produced its nuclear weapons, including information about materials, processes and quantities. Based on Vanunu’s revelations, the British newspaper and outside experts concluded that Israel had enough plutonium to manufacture as many as 200 warheads, including neutron and thermonuclear bombs.

No less important, Vanunu exposed the weakness of Israeli security agencies, the guardians of the country’s nuclear secrets. He managed to smuggle his camera inside the secret nuclear facility outside the town of Dimona, where he worked. During long and boring night shifts in the center’s control room, he shot two rolls of film, 65 exposures in all. After he was fired in the summer of 1985, Vanunu, 31, left Israel with the film in his pocket.

When Vanunu’s story appeared in the British newspaper, Shimon Peres, then Israel’s prime minister, ordered the Mossad, Israel’s espionage agency, to track Vanunu down and bring him back to Israel. There were people in the Mossad who urged that the “nuclear traitor,” as they dubbed him, be assassinated. But Peres and his Cabinet instructed the spymasters to bring Vanunu back to Israel so he could face trial. A young, female Mossad operative from Orlando, Fla., code-named “Cindy” (her real name is Cheryl Hanin-Bentov), found Vanunu in London and lured him to an apartment in Rome with the promise of sexual favors. When Vanunu arrived, her male colleagues abducted him.

After his trial and sentencing, Vanunu was held for nearly 10 years in solitary confinement and denied rights that every Israeli prisoner is entitled to: newspapers, television and radio. Only a few family members were allowed to visit him. Most ostracized him. His father, an orthodox Jew, no longer recognizes him as his son, because Mordechai converted to Christianity.

In prison, Vanunu’s mental health deteriorated. When authorities lifted some restrictions, he refused a TV set, claiming that Israel’s security services would use it to transmit information designed to brainwash him.

To many people, Vanunu is a classic whistle-blower -- the lone ranger who exposes what authorities wish to conceal and suffers for it. To groups advocating a nuclear-free world, he is a symbol, icon and hero. Vanunu has been nominated again this year for the Nobel Peace Prize.

More than icon, however, Vanunu is a confused soul. When he was fired, largely because he was regarded as a “troublemaker” and a potential “security risk,” he had no clear idea of what he would do with his rolls of film and inside information. He traveled to the Far East contemplating a conversion to Buddhism. Later in Australia, he changed his faith to Christianity and met a Colombian middleman who introduced him to the Sunday Times. He never received money for the story he gave the paper, only a vague promise to be paid royalties from a future book deal based on the scoop. The book never materialized.

During his prison term, Vanunu refused to cooperate with security authorities. His anti-nuclear ideology hardened. Yehiel Horev, chief of security at the Defense Ministry (which oversees the Dimona facility), claims that the former nuclear technician retains in his memory many sensitive state secrets and is thus a security risk and threat to the state of Israel. To guard against further disclosures, Horev had suggested that Vanunu be “administratively detained,” which would keep him in jail for another six months, or denied a passport, which would keep him in Israel and make it easier to track his movements. The Israeli government rejected what would have amounted to arrest without trial but denied him the passport and forbade him to go near foreign embassies and border crossings.

But it’s difficult to believe that Vanunu is as much of a threat to Israel’s security as Horev professes. He doesn’t know more than what he already has told the British newspaper. True, he intends to raise the issue of Israel’s nuclear policy at various international forums. He opposes Israel’s official policy of nuclear “ambiguity” -- we have nuclear capability but we won’t admit it. Undoubtedly, he will further embarrass Israel’s nuclear authorities and security establishment, and spotlight the U.S. inconsistency of demanding that Iran and North Korea dismantle their nuclear programs while maintaining silence about Israel’s. But these political activities are surely not crimes in a democracy.

The nearly inhuman treatment Vanunu received in prison and the new restrictions imposed on his “freedom” go largely unnoticed in Israel. Except for a few media reports and one brief parliamentary hearing, there has been no serious discussion of whether the post-prison curbs on Vanunu’s movements constitute an injustice that no democratic society should tolerate. It’s ironic that at a time when Israelis have lost some measure of trust in their security chiefs, they trust them on the nuclear issue.

Additional punishment for Vanunu after he has already paid his debt to society would be an unprecedented and dangerous move. He should be allowed to leave Israel if he so wishes.