A model life?
Paul Oestreicher writes about Mordechai Vanunu
As thousands suffer and die every day and new life is born, often with scant hope of survival, it is each life and each death that is of inestimable value. An Easter letter has not been a feature of my life even though Good Friday and its truly remarkable sequel have long been at the heart of my spiritual life. That centres not on the shame and glory of humanity in general but on a single human being on whom some of us try to model our life.
That is why I am writing today about one man who has accepted great suffering and continues to do so in the hope that all people might live in peace. No more than Jesus, whom he has chosen to follow, does he lay claim to greatness. He, too, was born into a Jewish family. He, too, put his conscience before his safety. He remains an outcast among his own people. His name – I expect you may know it already – is Mordechai Vanunu.
Many years have passed since I joined a group of ordinary citizens, albeit some of us well known, who went to Israel to appeal for Vanunu’s release from prison. Our concern was for one human being. We had no political agenda other than a plea for compassion. We were received politely by the president of Israel. Our plea was heard and resolutely rejected. Many others have done the same. An American family has legally adopted him as their son. Few people remain sane after eleven years in solitary confinement, a breach of international law, and seven further
years behind bars. He has remained steadfast in his convictions. He is now imprisoned in Israel, a state whose citizenship he has renounced, yet which will not allow him to leave.
What purpose is served in my writing this? Perhaps it is no more than an expression of my solidarity with one human being that I want to share. If you pray, that is one way, not the only way, of expressing your solidarity. Perhaps you will send this information on to others. What will it achieve? God knows. Perhaps that’s the wrong question. What is not in question is that what Vanunu wanted to achieve, to warn the world of the danger of nuclear weapons, is as relevant now as it has been since 1945. Only very recently did Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations, remind the world that the continuing presence of nuclear weapons leaves the world on a dangerous, yet largely unacknowledged, precipice.
In Britain the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), of which I remain a vice-president, working from its offices in Mordechai Vanunu House, goes on tirelessly appealing for the United Kingdom to take seriously its lip service to non-proliferation and, therefore, to abandon its Trident missile system. To join that campaign is one way of honouring a courageous whistle-blower.
So, raise your voice for Mordechai Vanunu at every opportunity. Who knows, maybe even pope Francis will when he visits Israel and Palestine in May.
Barbara Einhorn, a long time peace campaigner who went to prison in the cause, as I have not, joins me in this Easter greeting, written in New Zealand, the only country that has explicitly rejected nuclear weapons on its soil or in its territorial waters.
Paul Oestreicher is a vice-president of CND.
You can read more on Mordechai Vanunu at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/20/israel-mordechai-vanunu-hero-edward-snowden
