[East Jerusalem: Occupied Territory] Beginning this September, Mordechai Vanunu will be back in court fighting a six month sentence behind bars because he opened his mouth in Israel.
On July 2, 2007 , Mordecahi Vanunu learned that the Israeli law under which his speech and movement have been restricted is a relic from the British Mandate period in Palestine , before the state of Israel was founded and replaced that British rule in 1948. Nothing like it exists in any democracy in the world. When Vanunu was convicted, he joked, "Perhaps I should turn to the Queen or Tony Blair for justice."
In March 2006, just three months after Vanunu's historic freedom of speech trial in a Mid East democracy began, what played out in court was discussed between us in "30 Minutes with Vanunu" a video commentary by Vanunu on the irony of Israeli democracy implementing the British Mandate Regulations against him and millions of Palestinians, that led him to conclude, "Israel is only a democracy if you are a Jew."
Jeff Halper, American Israeli, Founder and Coordinator of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions coined the term 'Ethnocracy' to describe Israeli rule; full and equal rights to all Jews, but nobody else. Halper has unequivocally affirmed, "Israeli is not a democracy, it is an Ethnocracy."
The maxim is never meet your hero's, but I am glad I met one of mine. My only regret is that it took me two years to realize the irony and my shortsightedness in not realizing the impossibility of Vanunu trusting another woman from Florida .
From 1986 to 2004, Israel kept Vanunu in a tomb sized cell with no window, most all of it in solitary confinement. Vanunu was drugged and interrogated without legal council and convicted of treason during a closed door trial. For the first two years of incarceration, a camera and light were on constantly. If Vanunu ever did nod off to sleep, "A guard would come and shine a brighter light into my face and say, 'Just checking if you had committed suicide yet.'"
In 2002, President Bush declared U.S. citizen, Jose Padilla an enemy combatant and he was stripped of all rights and detained at a Navy brig in South Carolina where he was held in solitary isolation for 43 months and denied access to an attorney for two years.
Forensic Psychiatrist Angela Hegarty examined Padilla last year and concluded the extreme isolation and torture had left Padilla essentially brain damaged, "What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being's mind." http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/17/1323250
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
