Monday, May 1, 2006

Why Mordechai Va’anunu should get the Nobel Peace Prize



Because he helped stir SOME discussion on this matter, which hardly exists and I think there should be.
Let's assume for a moment that Israel HAS a right to have a nuclear bomb, more than, say, Iran. In this case, who is to decide on this matter? Who's in charge that all benefits and risks are considered? Who's responsible to make sure that all possible safety measures are taken? In the best case, there is somebody, but nobody knows if he or she is doing the job properly, because there is no discussion and nobody wants to know anything. I think that leaving all this to the good will of the government, which has already been proven irresponsible on many issues, is naive and in fact crazy. Nothing should be left uncontrolled, even (or rather, especially) security matters. Even if I believed that Israel has a right to possess this weapon, I would want a number of matters to be kept open to public debate and scrutiny, such as: who decides, what are the circumstance under which it's OK to use it, how are safety issues handled, etc. Not where the bombs are and how many - those should be secrets. These are the main points of Prof. Avner Cohen, who is a world expert on this subject.
You could say that all this is in contradiction to the Opacity policy, which was Israel's only option to carry out this program. I don't think that the opacity is any more justified, morally, than Iran's lies to the Security Council. Because in my view, opacity means that (a) we are not telling the truth, (b) we get away from being liars because we are "opaque". I see this as another form of hypocrisy, no better than Iran being a liar. I don't believe that because of the opacity, any other country gave up its nuclear programs, because they didn't know for sure if we had it. Everybody knows today, and everybody could reasonably assume that we had the bomb back then; and my guess, that this was what drove Pakistan, Iraq and Iran to pursue their programs, is no worse, to say the least, than anybody else's guess that thanks to opacity, countries like Egypt gave it up. Nobody can know for sure.

Now, on top of all that, my personal opinion is that no country has the right to have the bomb, no matter how much democratic it is. A democratic regime is by no means a guarantee for anything. In fact, the only one country which used this weapon, under very questionable and controversial circumstances, is "the greatest democracy in the world." This is a WMD of the worst kind which no country should possess (and if you say that its existence is a fact of life, then this undermines the validity of any argument against other countries which are working on their own programs). Va'anunu has paid a tremendous price in order to start some discussion about this, and by doing that, I would think that he didn't even cause any damage, even if I believed in Israel's right for having the bomb! Because the opacity policy is based on the assumption that the world WILL know, or at least will fear, that we have the bomb. So, actually Va'anunu did a great service to Israel, by telling everybody that we had the bomb, without Israel having to admit it!
The fact that Va'anunu is probably mentally troubled or even sick, is another issue completely. I judge him first by his contribution to peace, and not to his poor family and friends.
The fact that he converted to Christianity is Prof. Leibowitc's problem (otherwise he would support him), but not mine.

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