As usual, I disagree with everyone. Both the situation and the man are more complex than either side will admit. It is plain that Vanunu had mixed motives for his actions – neither wholly pure nor wholly base. Anyone who regards him as either a hero or a traitor is over-simplifying.
Now, to be honest, I find it hard to sympathise with a renegade Jew, and for that reason I don’t particularly care what happens to him. But I do think his treatment by the Israeli authorities is both unjustifiable and politically misguided. The opportunity was there to show some generosity and to demonstrate freedom and democracy in action. Instead, the thing comes across as yet another example of arrogant Israeli indifference to the opinion of the rest of the world.
In the Jewish press Vanunu is generally portrayed as a villain, and the pretence is kept up that he might have information that is
militarily and not merely
politically dangerous. This is necessary in order to justify the continued restrictions on his freedom. But it is surely obvious that this claim is just plain boiling absurd (actually, no-one here has said any different, so I won’t waste my time arguing that point until they do).
z-n: do you really believe that Vanunu is a security risk
in a sense that should deny him protection under Clause 3 of Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights?
From a_u_p:
Vanunu was not trying to help any Israeli enemies by selling or giving away weapons technology secrets. He was trying to stop nuclear proliferation, one of the major problems the world faces today.
That is being more charitable than he really deserves. I do think that he was partly (though not primarily) motivated by a hatred of his country, and that his rejection of Judaism implied a rejection of Israel (which he has now made explicit).
z-n, Mycroft: I wonder what you would think about, for example, an Iranian scientist who believed that his country’s secret nuclear weapons program posed a terrible danger to Middle East stability and decided to tell the world about it (at great personal risk).
Honest answer?
