Mordechai Vanunu

{{Audio|He-Mordechai_Vanunu.ogg|Mordechai Vanunu}} (מרדכי ואנונו) (born October 13, 1954), also known by his baptismal name John Crossman, is an Israeli former nuclear technician who revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently lured to Rome by an American Mossad agent, abducted and smuggled to Israel, where he was tried behind closed doors and convicted of treason.

Background

Vanunu was born in Marrakech, Morocco to a Jewish family; his father was a rabbi. He had 11 brothers and sisters, and emigrated under the Law of Return with his family to Israel in 1963. Vanunu completed his three years of military service in the sapper unit of the Israeli Defense Forces, with the rank of sergeant. After being honorably discharged, Vanunu became a philosophy student at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where he became critical of many policies of the Israeli government, forming a group called "Campus" with four other Jewish students and five Arab students. Vanunu also admired his professor, Evron Pollakov, a left-wing professor at Ben-Gurion University who had refused to serve with the IDF in Lebanon and had been jailed because of it. Vanunu also was affiliated with a group called "Movement for the Advancement of Peace".

Related Topics:
Marrakech - Morocco - Jew - Rabbi - Law of Return - Sapper - Israeli Defense Forces - Sergeant - Philosophy - Ben-Gurion University of the Negev - Arab - Left-wing - Lebanon

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Between 1976 and 1985, Vanunu was employed as a nuclear technician at the Negev Nuclear Research Center, an Israeli facility which, according to the majority of defense experts, is used for manufacturing nuclear weapons; it is located in the Negev desert south of Dimona. Most worldwide intelligence agencies estimate that the state of Israel developed nuclear weapons as early as the 1960s, but the country has purposely maintained a stance of "nuclear ambiguity", neither acknowledging nor denying that it possesses the weapons. It was during his employment there that one of the left-wing groups in which Vanunu held membership, protested against Israel's 1981 destruction of Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor, which was believed to be part of the Iraqi nuclear weapons development program. The Jerusalem Post stated that he took part in these protests http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull%26cid=1082438195598, arguing that this showed that Vanunu was motivated by antipathy to Israel in his later actions. Vanunu has not responded to these claims.

Related Topics:
Negev desert - Dimona - Osiraq - Jerusalem Post

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At Dimona, it is believed that Vanunu became increasingly troubled about the widely believed Israeli nuclear weapons program on which he worked. In 1985, he was laid off from Dimona and left Israel. He arrived at Nepal, and considered a conversion to Buddhism, later traveling to Burma and Thailand. In 1986, he traveled to Sydney, Australia. While there, Vanunu lived in a hostel in Kings Cross and worked in odd jobs, first as a hotel dishwasher and later as a taxi driver.

Related Topics:
Israeli nuclear weapons program - Nepal - Conversion - Buddhism - Burma - Thailand - Sydney - Australia - Hostel - Kings Cross - Taxi

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Vanunu began to attend the local church, St. John's. There he met the Reverend John McKnight, who worked with the homeless and drug addicts. Vanunu converted to Christianity and was baptized into the Anglican Church. This isolated him from his family. While in Sydney, he met Peter Hounam, a journalist from The Sunday Times.

Related Topics:
St. John's - Christianity - Anglican Church - Peter Hounam - The Sunday Times

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