Vanunu by Witold Jedlicki (from News FromWithin, October 1986)
An inquiry into the character, personality, and moral qualities of Mordecai Vanunu has been going on for quite some time now, and is not likely to expire soon. His case is indeed extraordinary, abounding in sensations and conflating issues as disparate as nuclear arms, terrorism, national security, government secrecy, censorship, freedom of speech, human rights, due process of law, loyalty and treason, Jewishness and Israel's international relations. It's no wonder that the man has become a symbol and that speaking about him has become a popular pastime, with many awaiting their turn to communicate their moral or psychological insights about Vanunu to the public.
The money motive is clearly at the top of the list. Vanunu betrayed his country for money. The profferers of this insight consider it so self-evident and indisputable that they are not overly concerned with his biography except for one reported fact: that years earlier Vanunu had revealed his inordinate passion for money by speculating on the stock market and that he had despaired over the losses he incurred during the stock market crash of 1983. The apparent presumption here is that only shady characters like Vanunu have "inordinate" passions for money; we, the righteous, do not succumb to such lowly temptations. The second apparent presumption is that it would somehow have been "fairer" on the part of The Sunday Times not to offer him money, and for him to remain a penniless emigre for the rest of his days, or at least for long years to come. Even if legally it would make no difference, morally it might.
Simple insights call for simple conclusions. Since to betray one's country for money is wicked, the "transfer" (a lexical innovation of the Jerusalem Post of Nov.14) of Vanunu from a Covent Garden hotel to an Israeli jail served him right, and now he should be punished by the Israeli court with the utmost severity. Consequently, there is no reason whatsoever to be concerned with his fate. The only ones who perhaps deserve some pity are his close ones; his parents, who are reported to have refrained from visiting him in jail; his father, who is reported to be too ashamed to appear anymore at his stall in the Beersheba marketplace to peddle phylacteries and other "religious articles", and the assorted Vanunus who are reported to be seeking a change of name. Family being what it is, there is no way of avoiding such a radiation effect.
Vanunu's conversion to Christianity, although not easily explicable in terms of a money motive, is often adduced as additional evidence of his treacherous character and nature. To a lesser extent, his application for membership in the Israeli Communist Party is viewed in the same way. To a lesser extent still, the same is the case with his decision to emigrate from Israel. Taken together, these three facts add up to the image of evil incarnate - beyond human imagination.
The trouble with the money motive insight and the attendant moral classification of the Vanunu case is that it does not jive well with the mindset of the educated classes of Israeli society who abhor categorical judgments and like analytical nuances. So if the masses have morality, the educated classes have psychiatry. Psychiatry enables the educated classes to understand that it was not money that propelled Vanunu into betraying his country but madness. Unlike the money motive insight, the madness insight commands considerable interest in Vanunu's biography, because the educated classes understand that their claims have to be backed by hard evidence. This explains the steady stream of breathtaking news about Vanunu's sexual impotence, failure to find a girlfriend, failure to complete courses at the Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, and the like. This is all highly interesting and utterly relevant to the case. The tacit assumption is, of course, that only disturbed characters like Vanunu are impotent or fail to pass the courses; we, the mentally healthy, never do so.
The madness insight has certain significant variations, gradable according to the level of sophistication. At the lowest level there clearly appears the Soviet-styled equation of political dissent with mental illness: if you are critical of the State of Israel, then you are a self-hating Jew, and if you are a self-hating Jew, then there is something wrong with your head. On a somewhat higher level of sophistication, madness is predicated not on political dissent, but on the incomprehensibility of the sequence of events in Vanunu's life history. If Vanunu's life does not make sense for the educated classes, it is sure proof that Vanunu must be mad. This approach offers certain spiritual comforts. On a still higher level of sophistication, terms like "madness" are avoided as too crude: instead, phrases such as "character disturbances", "unfulfilled identity", "frustration pattern", and the like abound. Analysis in such terms is perfectly dispassionate and value-free, except that Vanunu invariably winds up an utterly small and insignificant figure.
Of course, there has been a minority intimidated to the core: not at all by what Vanunu did, but by what has been and is still being done to Vanunu. A bi-national minority: not just Israeli but also British. This minority has responded to Vanunu's predicament in two ways. One partook of genuine objectivity, not the faked one of the experts in remote-control psychiatry. A surprisingly substantial amount of coverage of Vanunu's case in the Hebrew press bore that character. This was commendable, except that such coverage was still bound to miss what in Vanunu's case is the most essential: its excruciatingly tragic character. More befitting in this respect was the second type of informed response to Vanunu's case: silence, involving no condemnation of Vanunu, but also no defense. It was more befitting, because silence is a way of testimonializing a tragedy.
But this particular silence-- so typical of certain segments of the Israeli Left - stemmed not from deference to the tragic, but rather from embarrassment. Much as Vanunu the man impelled compassion and even a modicum of sympathy, the Sunday Times payment seemed to preclude the categorization of his case as that of a "prisoner of conscience". What was perceived as the instabilities of his past behavior did not augur well for his capacity to persevere under duress, and the opprobrium attached to "treason" made it impolitic to speak up in his defense. In effect, neither objectivity nor silence has made any dent on the national consensus which commanded recognition of Vanunu's case as an ultimate in wickedness, treachery and insanity.
On the face of it, the Vanunu case looks very damning indeed. But is there really nothing that can be said in his defense? Nothing at all?
Preoccupation with the amount of money received from the Sunday Times, with his sexual or scholastic performance, with avoidance of adverse publicity and with aspects of the case deemed embarrassing for leftist politicking have been too intensive to leave much room for concern with his beliefs. Indeed, the very possibility that Vanunu may perhaps have had some beliefs and acted upon them does not seem to have been considered--traitors-for-pay and Jewish self-haters are not supposed to have any beliefs, only treacherous instincts. And for the few who would theoretically grant that such a possibility exists, the question of Vanunu's beliefs appear to be largely irrelevant at present. Yet there is something curious here: neither popular morality nor psychiatry explain Vanunu; both merely label him. An analysis of Vanunu's beliefs, by contrast, can infuse his actions with some overriding meaning and consistency, thereby making comprehensible what appears so incomprehensible.
Let us begin with what appears the most incomprehensible: his conversion to Christianity only a few months after he left Israel as a socializee of the Communist Party. On the face of it, it doesn't seem to make any sense. Had he been out for money, he should have gone to Crimea or the Caucasus rather than Australia and peddled his Dimona photographs to KGB debriefers. He would have received much more money than from the Sunday Times and better protection than he received from Scotland Yard. Had he wanted to make a symbolic act of the renunciation of his Jewishness, he should have converted to Islam rather than Christianity. His conversion to Islam would have had clear political meaning as an act of ultimate, even if purely symbolic, identification with the wretched of the Israeli earth. His conversion to Christianity had no political meaning. Let us immediately add, without any hypocrisy, that socialization in the Israeli Communist Party or in the sectarian fringes of student politics, implies utter contempt for religion - any religion. It is not easy to see how, under Rev. McKnight's genial patronage this contempt turned in several months time into reverence for Jesus Christ.
Let us now make a plausible assumption that Vanunu perceived both Communism and Christianity in terms of contrast with what he had known before. Let us start with the former. Sure, Rakah's peace-loving and anti-nuclearism stand suspect in the light of the party's total identification with a superpower which has done a lot of war-making and nuclear arming. But from Vanunu's perspective, Rakah was the only political party and the only social milieu in Israel, in which he could talk nuclear issues and vent his nuclear concerns without making a fool of himself. Let us incidentally note that something must have gradually gone sour in his cordial relationship with Rakah. For one thing, we, on the non-Communist left, know well that Rakah is not exactly the right place for people with passionate concerns and without bureaucratized minds. For another thing, the fact that Vanunu emigrated to Australia rather than taking a vacation in Crimea is much more significant than meets the eye. And finally, insofar as it can be known, Vanunu was not "transferred" to the Australian Communist Party, as is the normal procedure with emigrating Party members.
Something similar can be said about Vanunu's embracement of Christianity. From the publicity surrounding Rev. McKnight's visit, we have a certain notion what kind of Christianity was involved. Thus we know that in McKnight's Anglican church, there was some room, even if marginal and secondary, for social and political concerns, including concern with nuclear armaments. From Vanunu's perspective, this was quite a contrast with the only other religion he had known: a religion keenly concerned with menstrual blood and real estate, but not at all with nuclear armaments. Again, Vanunu could at least talk nuclear issues with Rev. McKnight and his parishioners without appearing foolish.
Vanunu's "obsession" with nuclear issues has been reported widely and repeatedly. The second such reported "obsession" of his were the "Arabs". He is reported to have become extremely"pro-Arab". In a moment, we will formulate a guess - just a guess - that the two "obsessions" were in fact one. But prior to that, we have to pause to ponder the question what these "obsessions" actually were. Fortunately, the question is not at all difficult to answer. When do we say that somebody is "obsessed" by something? Only when that person keeps raising his/her subject, undeterred by the fact that the listeners do not want to listen. All the reports about Vanunu's two "obsessions" only indicate that Vanunu desperately sought an audience for some communications of his about nuclear matters and about the Arabs, and that he could not find any.
What did these communications contain? Unfortunately, since the audience did not want to listen, there is little trace of that in the recorded testimony. By necessity, an explorer of this matter must therefore rely on guesswork. But certain things can be conjectured fairly safely. To begin with, his nuclear "obsession" was not about the mysteries of atom splitting, radiation, etc. The second "obsession" suggests that the first was no less political--or just human-- in nature. Furthermore, it had to be something more than the destructive potential of nuclear weaponry, more than the idea that the Arabs are also human beings, more than what everybody - even the racist - knows anyway. It had to be something which clashes with popular knowledge and with common sense.
Given the nature of evidence disclosed to date, the most likely guess seems to be this. At some time during his Dimona years Vanunu realized that contrary to what ordinary folks normally suppose, nuclear research and development cannot be safely relegated to experts and professionals, because the entire system of professional expertise rests on hermetic disconnection of the technical from the human. This was his discovery: shattering, profoundly insightful, perfectly true, albeit unoriginal, because Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, George Kennan and Edward Thompson - to name just a few among many, made the same discovery long before Vanunu. But for Vanunu himself, this discovery had profound implications.
The first and the most important implication was that the disconnection of the technical from the human expressed itself in the concept of the "enemy" - -civilian population included - -as nothing more than a target. Hence his "pro-Arabism", internationalism in plain English, which explains his subsequent fascination with Communism and student radicalism. But this was just an implication of the same discovery, not two different discoveries: one "obsession", not two. From that moment on, he ceased to be "Jewish" only and became human. Security ceased to be "national" for him and became universal. At the same time, he must have known that Israeli nuclear research and development was no different in essence than any other. (His choice of Australia over Crimea is again relevant here.) Which means that contrary to all the published allegations, there is no basis for accusing him of being anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish. He was merely anti-nuclear.
The second implication was that from a certain critical moment on, Vanunu realized that he could not rely on what he had been told. He was determined to puncture the walls of indoctrinative mendacity, to "deculture" himself, so to speak, in search of human universality. No wonder he flunked his university courses: for when he sought emancipatory knowledge, all he received was technical knowledge.
By all means, he was too small for so big a role. By all means, he was naive, confused, unaware of the way things are done in the big world, unaware that the mind-shattering truth he wanted to communicate to the world had already been known, additionally handicapped by an insufficient command of English, if we are to believe one of the press reports. Idiotically, he meandered through Communism, Christianity and a friendship with the mercurial Mr. Guerrero, until he reached the Sunday Times , more by chance than by design, as it seems.
What remains is a practical matter. There are judicial rumblings in Israel, precedentially binding, which are fairly liberal in regard to the supplies of printed matter to convicts. I appeal you to send him a copy of your own writings and magazines. I appeal to you to tell others to do the same. Within the parameters of the possible, Mordechai Vanunu's search for an audience, contacts and emancipatory knowledge should be allowed to continue.
