Israel declared over the weekend that it is cutting
off ties with the BBC to protest a repeat broadcast of a
documentary about non-conventional weapons said to be in Israel. The
program was broadcast for the first time in March in Britain, and was
rerun Saturday on a BBC channel that is aired all over the world. The
boycott decision was made by Israel's public relations forum, made up
of representatives from the Prime Minister's Office, the Foreign
Ministry and the Government Press Office. It was decided that
government offices won't assist BBC producers and reporters, that
Israeli officials will not give interviews to the British network,
and that the Government Press Office will make it difficult for BBC
employees to get press cards and work visas in Israel. Before the
broadcast Saturday, Israeli officials tried to pressure the BBC to
cancel the broadcast, saying that the program was biased and
presented Israel as an evil dictatorship. Here is a complete
transcript of the program.
This script was made from audio tape - any inaccuracies are due to
voices being unclear or inaudible
00.00.01 Correspondent Theme Music
00.00.11 Music
00.00.11 Graphic: Which country in the Middle East has undeclared
Nuclear weapons?
00.00.16 Graphic: Which country in the Middle East has undeclared
biological and chemical capabilities?
00.00.21 Graphic: Which country in the Middle East has no outside
inspections?
00.00.26 Graphic: Which country jailed its nuclear whistleblower for
18 years?
00.00.31 Title page: ISRAEL'S SECRET WEAPON
00.00.36 Music
00.00.42 St Paul, Minnesota
00.00.45 Olenka Frenkiel: Meet the Eoloffs. Five years ago they
adopted a man they'd never met who writes to them from a prison cell
in Israel.
00.00.55 Actor's voice
00.00.55 Voiceover: My dearest Nick and Mary, I am very glad to hear
from you so soon. About the next parole hearing I don't know what
will happen. We've passed a long time in a very bad cruel
condition.
00.01.07 Voiceover: We will see what the U.S. is going to do with
Iraq, if they'll go to war.
00.01.13 Olenka Frenkiel: The man they adopted is Mordechai Vanunu,
jailed as a traitor. He spent eleven years in solitary
confinement.
00.01.21 Mary Eoloff: He was buried alive. He was shut up in a six by
nine-foot cell with no windows so he couldn't see outside. Even when
he exercised there was a canvas around him when he was out
walking.
00.01.32 Nick Eoloff: He has spent more time in isolation in a prison
in the western world than any other human being. It was that bad. His
condition was that bad. And that was what really moved us to adopt
him. How can a country treat a human being that way?
00.01.52 Olenka Frenkiel: Vanunu moved to Israel as a child with his
family from Morocco. He served in the Israeli army, studied
philosophy, and found work at Dimona.
00.02.07 Olenka Frenkiel: This mysterious complex in the Negev desert
employed thousands of people all sworn to secrecy. For years Israel
called it a textile factory, never admitting its true purpose; making
plutonium for bombs.
00.02.26 Olenka Frenkiel: Vanunu's dissent over government policies
was noted. He was given a warning and decided to leave.
00.02.35 Olenka Frenkiel: But not without the evidence which would
change history. Today his are still the only photographs ever seen of
the inside of Israel's nuclear bomb factory.
00.02.55 Olenka Frenkiel: It's 16 years since Sunday Times journalist
Peter Hounam heard rumours that an Israeli whistleblower was offering
proof of what the world had long suspected.
00.03.05 PETER HOUNAM, Freelance Journalist: Here was someone who
said he'd worked right inside the plutonium separation plant helping
to fabricate atomic weapons; who had taken photographs of the
machinery and who had lots of information about how much material was
being processed, and so on.
00.03.21 Peter Hounam: Therefore he was potentially going to be able
to provide incontrovertible evidence that Israel had a very advanced
programme.
00.03.31 Olenka Frenkiel: Hounam flew to meet Vanunu, who was now a
Christian living in Australia.
00.03.36 Olenka Frenkiel: He was brought to England. He was hidden in
a country hotel and smuggled into the paper's offices in the boot of
the car while they checked his story.
00.03.45 Olenka Frenkiel: But Israeli intelligence agents caught here
on Wapping's security cameras were onto him. They were waiting to
strike.
00.03.58 Olenka Frenkiel: It took weeks for The Sunday Times to go to
press with their scoop. When they finally did on Oct 5th 1986 Vanunu
had vanished.
00.04.10 Reconstruction
00.04.14 Olenka Frenkiel: He'd met an American woman in Leicester
Square who seemed to like him. He was vulnerable and afraid.
00.04.23 Olenka Frenkiel: When she suggested he'd be safer with her
in Rome, he fell for it. It was a classic honey trap.
00.04.39 Olenka Frenkiel: Once in Rome the full weight of Israel's
wrath kicked in. Vanunu was overpowered, assaulted and drugged.
00.04.56 Olenka Frenkiel: He'd been kidnapped and smuggled back to
Israel by boat, unconscious. For weeks no one knew where he was.
00.05.09 Olenka Frenkiel: Eventually the Israelis brought Vanunu to
court for a secret trial. They now admitted they had him but still no
one knew how he'd got there.
00.05.19 Olenka Frenkiel: His kidnap - an illegal act on foreign soil
- was kept secret. Somehow Vanunu found a pen and solved the mystery
for the waiting press.
00.05.31 Olenka Frenkiel: Hijacked in Rome thirtieth of September
1986.
00.05.38 Olenka Frenkiel: It was Shimon Peres, then Prime Minister,
who had ordered Vanunu's capture. To this day the kidnap remains an
official state secret. Peres was the father of Israel's secret
nuclear programme and for him Vanunu was a spy.
00.05.52 Shimon Peres: He was a traitor to this country.
00.05.56 Olenka Frenkiel: So what was your reaction?
00.05.57 Shimon Peres: Very negative.
00.05.58 Olenka Frenkiel: What did you do?
00.06.00 Shimon Peres: What I thought should be done.
00.06.01 Olenka Frenkiel: Which was what?
00.06.03 Shimon Peres: To put him to trial.
00.06.06 Olenka Frenkiel: Kidnap him?
00.06.08 SHIMON PERES, Former Prime Minister: My lady, I can't go
into all the processes. I am unwilling. I don't see any reason to do
so. The fact is that he was brought to trial.
00.06.22 Olenka Frenkiel: Vanunu's trial was held in secret. He was
found guilty of treason and espionage and sentenced to eighteen years
in jail.
00.06.41 AVIGDOR FELDMAN, Mordechai Vanunu's lawyer: Vanunu was
treated this way out of revenge out of a way to deter others and
because actually he was the person who broke the taboo of the secrecy
in Israeli society, a very strong and influencing taboo in a very
closed society more like a tribe.
00.07.05 Olenka Frenkiel: Mordechai Vanunu started his sentence on
the twenty seventh of March 1988. Few tears were shed. For most
Israelis he was more than a traitor. He had rejected Judaism.
00.07.18 Olenka Frenkiel: His parents declared him dead. And the
world forgot about Israel's nuclear whistleblower. But the truth was
out.
00.07.27 Peter Hounam: Vanunu told the world that Israel had
developed between one hundred and two hundred atomic bombs and had
gone on to develop neutron bombs and thermonuclear weapons. Enough to
destroy the entire Middle East and nobody has done anything about it
since.
00.07.45 Olenka Frenkiel: Today, proliferation experts report Israel
has the world's sixth largest nuclear arsenal with small tactical
nuclear weapons, nuclear landmines as well as medium range nuclear
missiles launchable from air, land or sea.
00.08.00 Olenka Frenkiel: It's thought plutonium is made in Dimona;
nuclear weapons are assembled at Yodefat and stored at Zachariah and
Eilabun. Three nuclear submarines are based in Haifa and Israel's
biological and chemical warfare laboratories are at Nes Ziona.
00.08.16 Olenka Frenkiel: Israel never comments on such reports.
00.08.20 Olenka Frenkiel: But evidence continues to emerge. In 1992
an Israeli cargo plane crashed in Amsterdam killing forty-three
people.
00.08.28 Olenka Frenkiel: The Israelis claimed it was carrying
flowers and perfume. It took six years and a Dutch parliamentary
enquiry before they admitted it was carrying DMMP, a key component
for sarin nerve gas.
00.08.42 Olenka Frenkiel: The DMMP was bound for The Israeli
Institute of Biological Research at Nes Ziona, one of Israel's most
secret defence sites. It is subject to no international inspection
and reporting of its activities in Israel is prevented by strict
military censorship.
00.09.08 Olenka Frenkiel: As war has loomed closer small signs of
dissent have appeared on the suburban streets of Middle America. Nick
and Mary Eoloff have been peace campaigners since the Vietnam War and
the draft.
00.09.20 Mary Eoloff: The definition of a conscientious objector is
someone who sincerely objects to participation in all forms of war.
There are two words that are extremely important in that definition:
"sincere" and "all".
00.09.37 Olenka Frenkiel: Fear that the draft may return has lead a
new generation to the local church hall to hear how, if they're
called up to fight, they can claim their right to say no.
00.09.50 Olenka Frenkiel: For the Eoloffs, Mordechai Vanunu is the
ultimate conscientious objector. When they first visited him in 1997
it was his eleventh year in solitary confinement.
00.10.03 MARY & NICK EOLOFF, Mordechai Vanunu's adoptive parents:
And we waited and they brought him in and he looked like an old man.
I didn't anticipate that. And he came up to us and he put his fingers
through the bars through the cage, because it was a steel cage. We
were crying. We felt so awful to see him like this.
00.10.33 Olenka Frenkiel: Vanunu writes regularly. It is the only
communication he is allowed with the outside world. But his letters
take months to arrive and are always censored.
00.10.46 Mary Eoloff: He says, don't feel so bad, we can bear another
year.
00.10.50 Nick Eoloff: My, what courage!
00.10.54 Mary Eoloff: The early letters that we got were totally cut
out. This isn't even an example because they were cut out more than
that, this. They use a highlighter and then they bring it to
Mordechai, and he has to cut out the things they've highlighted.
00.11.11 Mary Eoloff: One time, he said they weren't paying
attention. And so he just put the pieces in the envelope and we got
them, because we said, you know, we got the pieces, and they're
really not even significant. I think it's control, total control.
00.11.30 Music
00.11.34 Olenka Frenkiel: Today Jerusalem is a ghost town, drained of
life. Israel's nuclear weapons have proved useless in its latest war.
The suicide bombers have frightened the tourists away. The economy
has collapsed.
00.11.51 Olenka Frenkiel: Israelis have learnt to live with war.
Every citizen gets a gas mask, is taught how to use it and is
expected to have it ready in case of attack.
00.12.13 Olenka Frenkiel: Nuclear weapons are seen as a justifiable
deterrent by most Israelis, who feel besieged by enemies.
00.12.21 Olenka Frenkiel: Forty years ago Uzi Even, then a young
scientist at Dimona was in at the start of Israel's bomb.
00.12.28 Professor UZI EVEN, Dimona scientist, 1962-68: We were a
very small country, and we were surrounded by much much larger, more
populous states on borders that are almost impossible to defend. The
holocaust was very much in our memory at that time, and we all
realised that we have to do something to prevent the same scenario
from happening again.
00.12.51 Uzi Even: So we were a young crew, most of us very young,
very enthusiastic, working on something we believed is essential for
our existence, like building the final insurance policy that we will
not be attacked or terminated.
00.13.15 Olenka Frenkiel: It was the young Shimon Peres, back in the
fifties who negotiated a secret deal with the French to buy a nuclear
weapons reactor like theirs.
00.13.24 Olenka Frenkiel: But while Dimona was going up, intelligence
reports reached Washington that Israel was building an atom bomb.
00.13.30 Olenka Frenkiel: Despite claims that Dimona was for peaceful
purposes only, Israel's leader Ben Gurion was summoned to Washington.
President Kennedy feared an arms race in the Middle East and demanded
inspections.
00.13.45 Olenka Frenkiel: But when inspectors finally entered the
plant in May 1961 they were tricked. They were shown a fake control
room on the ground floor. They were unaware of the six floors below
where the plutonium was made.
00.14.00 PETER HOUNAM, Freelance journalist: Well this was something
of great pride and almost a legendary story in Dimona, according to
Vanunu. When the Americans came they were completely hoodwinked.
00.14.11 Peter Hounam: All the entrances including the lift shafts
were bricked up and plastered over so it was impossible for anyone to
find their way down to the lower floors.
00.14.24 Olenka Frenkiel: After Kennedy's assassination the pressure
on Israel was off. His successor Lyndon Johnson turned a blind
eye.
00.14.33 Olenka Frenkiel: Then In 1969 Israel's Golda Meir and
President Richard Nixon struck a deal, renewed by every President to
this day. Israel's nuclear programme could continue as long as it was
never made public. It's called nuclear ambiguity.
00.14.48 Olenka Frenkiel: The term nuclear ambiguity, in some ways it
sounds very grand. But isn't just a euphemism for deception?
00.14.58 SHIMON PERES, Former Prime Minister: If somebody wants to
kill you, and you use a deception to save your life it is not
immoral. If we wouldn't have enemies we wouldn't need deceptions. We
wouldn't need deterrent.
00.15.12 Olenka Frenkiel: Was this the justification for concealing
the floors of the plutonium reprocessing areas from the Americans,
the inspectors, when they came?
00.15.23 Shimon Peres: You are having a dialogue with yourself, not
with me.
00.15.27 Olenka Frenkiel: But that's been documented in a number of
books.
00.15.30 Shimon Peres: Ask the question to yourself, not to me.
00.15.32 Olenka Frenkiel: I mean, Is it not true?
00.15.35 Shimon Peres: I don't have to answer your questions even. I
don't see any reason why.
00.15.43 Olenka Frenkiel: Ambiguity is a luxury unique to Israel.
Today the country's an inspection-free zone, protected from scrutiny
by America and her allies.
00.15.56 Ronen Bergman: This is the place where Vanunu identified as
the separation plant, built mostly underground. And this is the
silver dome of the Dimona nuclear reactor.
00.16.11 Olenka Frenkiel: Ronen Bergman is an Israeli journalist
specialising in security and defence.
00.16.17 Ronen Bergman: This picture was taken by one of the best
commercial satellites available called Ikonos, and Ikonos is capable
of taking pictures up to a resolution of one metre.
00.16.30 RONEN BERGMAN, Journalist, "Yediot Ahronot": However due to
the demand of Israel the American Congress ruled a new amendment to
the law that forbids American satellites to sell anything of Israeli
sites that is better than two metres, meaning the Ikonos is taking
imagery of Israel. Then they change the imagery to the resolution of
two metres.
00.16.52 Olenka Frenkiel: Worse, less clear?
00.16.53 Ronen Bergman: Much much less clear.
00.16.55 Olenka Frenkiel: And that was a ruling in the United States
that's specifically for Israel, not for other countries.
00.17.00 Ronen Bergman: Only to Israel.
00.17.03 Olenka Frenkiel: Last November there were signs of a
softening towards Vanunu. The authorities allowed pictures to be
taken at his parole hearing. Parole itself has always been refused.
Vanunu still has secrets, the prosecutor claims, that could harm
Israel. It's an argument his lawyer will have to fight at the next
hearing.
00.17.22 Olenka Frenkiel: Will the court hear the secret that they
claim Vanunu holds?
00.17.27 AVIGDOR FELDMAN, Mordechai Vanunu's lawyer: They will hear
some of the secrets, not the real secrets. They will hear secrets
about the secrets.
00.17.34 Olenka Frenkiel: And you too, as his lawyer, will hear
those?
00.17.37 Avigdor Feldman: Part of it. Less that the court. The court
will hear the secrets about the secrets. I may hear the secrets about
the secrets about the secrets.
00.17.47 Olenka Frenkiel: Is that really the case, or is that a sort
of ironic...?
00.17.50 Avigdor Feldman: No, it's really the case. I will be given
some type of general description of the secrets. The court will get
something more concrete and the secrets themselves will be never
released to anybody, they exist at all.
00.18.14 Olenka Frenkiel: Nick and Mary Eoloff have arrived in
Israel. They hope to visit Vanunu in prison but they haven't yet got
permission.
00.18.28 Mary Eoloff: Oh gosh, any news?
00.18.31 Rayna Moss: Not yet. Not good news. Not yet.
00.18.33 Olenka Frenkiel: Rayna Moss is one of a small group of
Israelis campaigning for Vanunu's release. She's been hassling the
prison authorities for weeks to get Nick and Mary the necessary
permissions.
00.18.46 Rayna Moss: What she says now is that they have approval
from one authority but she's waiting for approval from a second
authority.
00.18.54 Nick Eoloff: Do they clearly understand our time limitation
that we're due to be leaving on Friday?
00.18.53 Rayna Moss: Oh absolutely. I made that absolutely clear to
them. I said that you're leaving on Friday, that you've already been
here for a couple of days.
00.19.06 Mary Eoloff: Well I appreciate you making all these calls,
Rayna.
00.19.08 Mary Eoloff: Oh it's nothing. I don't mind. I just wish I
had good news for you.
00.19.16 Olenka Frenkiel: Forty-year-old reactors are usually shut
down, but Dimona grinds on. Dimona is under the control of the Prime
Minister, beyond the reach of Parliament or public scrutiny.
00.19.32 Olenka Frenkiel: And that worries the scientist who once
worked there so optimistically.
00.19.37 UZI EVEN, Dimona scientist, 1962-68: As the reactor gets
older the tendency to have accidents becomes more probable. You
should have an outside watchdog and the secrecy more or less created
an ex- territorial area in Israel where standard procedures of safety
monitoring is not implemented.
00.19.58 Uzi Even: So, worker safety, environmental questions,
industrial safety procedures, all are not covered and there are
thousands of people working there.
00.20.25 Olenka Frenkiel: But the secrets of this old reactor are
beginning to leak.
00.20.34 Olenka Frenkiel: Evidence has seeped out of accidents, lies
and deceit.
00.20.43 Olenka Frenkiel: In 1996 the press heard rumours of a
radioactive hotspot in the desert. The Environment Minister took them
to watch him test the site with a Geiger counter. They weren't
allowed to bring their own, one journalist told me.
00.21.00 Olenka Frenkiel: The Minister proclaimed the site clean. The
readings for radioactivity, his instrument showed, were below
normal.
00.21.06 Olenka Frenkiel: But journalists weren't happy.
00.21.09 Journalist, Subtitles: What worries us is the disposal of
the waste. Can you please tell us where it is buried?
00.21.21 YOSSI SARID, Environment Minister, 1992-96, Subtitles: In a
good place. I am being honest with you... I would lose my job if I
told you where the nuclear waste is buried. The Prime Minister
considers this information to be classified.
00.21.46 Olenka Frenkiel: But on Israeli television last year, a
groundbreaking documentary alleged it was a cover-up.
00.21.57 Olenka Frenkiel: Ariel Spieler, a holocaust survivor and a
loyal Dimona worker for 27 years, described how he had been told to
prepare the site for the Minister's visit by removing contaminated
waste from a deep crater.
00.22.11 Olenka Frenkiel: He said he'd replaced it with fresh soil
and planted trees to cover the hole as though it had never happened.
Then he said they brought the minister and the press to prove that
everything was okay.
00.22.24 Olenka Frenkiel: Five Dimona workers appeared on the
programme. They'd given their lives for Dimona, they said, and now
they felt betrayed.
00.22.32 Olenka Frenkiel: They broke no secrets. Only the code of
silence.
00.22.36 Olenka Frenkiel: They said they'd worked with uranium. There
were fires, spills, and explosions of toxic gas.
00.22.44 Olenka Frenkiel: Now they were sick, they said, the plant
didn't want to know. The management was denying they'd worked with
radioactive materials, and because they were bound to secrecy they
couldn't fight for their rights.
00.23.01 Olenka Frenkiel: The programme listed more than a hundred
Dimona workers who'd developed cancer and whose claims were being
ignored.
00.23.08 Olenka Frenkiel: A doctor and two lawyers backed their
story.
00.23.18 Olenka Frenkiel: It was the first time Dimona workers had
spoken out.
00.23.26 Olenka Frenkiel: I want to talk to Ariel Spieler. He's
suffering from cancer and in the last few years he's seen a number of
his friends and colleagues who worked there with him die of the
disease.
00.23.35 Olenka Frenkiel: He's been fighting for compensation for
their families, for their widows, and I know he'd really like to talk
to us about this.
00.23.41 Olenka Frenkiel: He's told me he wishes he could, but he's
also told me he's been warned off. He's been told not to talk. I'm
going to go and see him and see if he'll change his mind.
00.23.59 Secret filming
00.23.59 Olenka Frenkiel: I just wanted to ask you, you know, why you
can't?
00.24.04 Ariel Spieler, Subtitles: The Secret Service silenced me.
They've silenced me completely. They told me not to say one word.
What can I do? What can I do?
00.24.18 Ariel Spieler, Subtitles: They told me; "You'll end up like
Vanunu". How long has he been in prison? 15 years? Do you want me to
go to jail? I really wanted to talk. I asked the others but they
refused. Nobody wants to talk.
00.24.50 Olenka Frenkiel: It was time to try the others: The doctors,
the relatives, the lawyers.
00.24.58 Voice One: Hello?
00.24.59 Olenka Frenkiel: Hello. I just wanted to ask if there would
be any possibility of doing an interview with you about the cancer
victims and about their case?
00.25.07 Voice One: I'm really reluctant to be interviewed publicly
on the media over the story overseas. It's just not appropriate.
00.25.13 Olenka Frenkiel: But why is it so sensitive?
00.25.21 Voice One: Come on now. Any discussion of nuclear issues is
sensitive.
00.25.30 Voice Two: I talked to my family. I don't want to
participate in this. I don't think it's the right thing to do.
00.25.37 Olenka Frenkiel: Nobody is prepared to talk about it.
00.25.45 Voice Three: There are things that it's not good to talk
about, even if you're a lawyer.
00.25.54 Olenka Frenkiel: Are you worried about a sort of Vanunu
scenario?
00.25.58 Voice Three: Of course! You think about it.
00.26.03 Olenka Frenkiel: I just don't get it. If this was the Soviet
Union or Iraq or North Korea I'd understand why people are so scared
to talk.
00.26.11 Olenka Frenkiel: But this is Israel. This is supposed to be
a democracy.
00.26.22 Olenka Frenkiel: In Israel today, an invisible power
enforces the code of silence - through fear. It comes from one man,
whose own identity was itself a secret until two years ago, Yehiyel
Horev.
00.26.39 RONEN BERGMAN, Journalist, "Yediot Ahronot": Horev is the
smartest, most brilliant official figure in the sense of getting
power. He took some kind of very small office and made it the fourth
intelligence agency in Israel, with no law, no real scrutiny and
monitoring by the Israeli Parliament.
00.27.05 Ronen Bergman: In this sense he is a grave danger to Israeli
democracy.
00.27.11 Olenka Frenkiel: For sixteen years Horev has been the
faceless guardian of Israel's secrets. His picture has never been
published unmasked till now.
00.27.24 Olenka Frenkiel: It's Horev from his office at the Ministry
of Defence who is blocking Vanunu's early release.
00.27.35 Olenka Frenkiel: But next year Vanunu's sentence is up. So
Horev found a new Vanunu, Brigadier-General Yitzhak Yaakov, known to
his friends as Yatsa. In his retirement he wrote a fictionalised
memoir and talked on camera about his life.
00.27.54 Olenka Frenkiel: A distinguished soldier and scientist,
Yaakov had for years led Israel's top-secret weapons development
programme.
00.28.02 Olenka Frenkiel: So eminent was he, he was a candidate for
the prestigious Israel Prize.
00.28.07 Olenka Frenkiel: But when he told his life story to a
journalist, he broke the rules.
00.28.13 Olenka Frenkiel: The journalist was Ronen Bergman. He showed
his article, as all Israelis must, to the censor.
00.28.19 Olenka Frenkiel: It went straight to Horev - who sent in the
heavies.
00.28.23 Ronen Bergman: They were deadly deadly serious. My phones
were bugged. I was followed by Israeli Secret Service, Yaakov was
followed by Israeli Secret Service, and the whole system was
surrounding us and following us and stalking us.
00.28.43 Olenka Frenkiel: Yaakov went from hero to zero. He was
arrested secretly and charged with treason. He spent two years
fighting Horev. Two years of jail, heart disease, bankruptcy and
house arrest ended in public disgrace.
00.29.01 Olenka Frenkiel: He was spared prison, but the court found
him guilty of betraying Israel's secrets.
00.29.08 Ronen Bergman: Horev was afraid that veterans of the Israeli
army, the Israeli intelligence, the Israeli nuclear effort, would try
to maintain their footprint in the history of Israel and tell their
story.
00.29.26 Ronen Bergman: And he wanted to frighten them. In this sense
he was successful.
00.29.33 Olenka Frenkiel: Do you think that there is too much
secrecy? The power of somebody like Horev to destroy the life of an
individual like this Brigadier-General Yaakov, for example. The man's
life had been destroyed and he'd been a very loyal Israeli all his
life.
00.29.51 SHIMON PERES, Former Prime Minister: It happens
unfortunately in life, of false accusations, and some innocent people
are paying the high cost.
00.29.59 Shimon Peres: I cannot see how can it be avoidable.
00.30.04 Olenka Frenkiel: Israel's parliament had never debated
Dimona or nuclear weapons, until one MP three years ago forced them
onto the agenda for the first time.
00.30.14 Olenka Frenkiel: Issam Makhoul an Israeli Arab broken the
taboo - to the outrage of his colleagues.
00.30.21 Issam Makhoul, Subtitles: Vanunu is not the problem. The
problem is the Israeli government's policy. A policy that's turned a
small territory into a poisonous nuclear waste bin... which could
make us all disappear into a nuclear cloud.
00.30.40 Olenka Frenkiel: These words uttered in the heart of
Israel's democracy were seen by his fellow MPs as a sacrilege.
00.30.48 Issam Makhoul, Subtitles: The entire world knows that Israel
is a vast nuclear, biological... and chemical warehouse that is used
as an anchor... for the nuclear arms race in the middle east.
00.31.04 Olenka Frenkiel: He wasn't allowed to finish his speech, but
he had made his point.
00.31.16 Olenka Frenkiel: But in his constituency during the recent
election campaign it was a different story. Here his audience are -
like him - Israeli Arabs.
00.31.23 Issam Makhoul, Subtitles: Why are the Americans looking for
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? I can tell them where there are
weapons of mass destruction... including nuclear weapons.
00.31.40 Issam Makhoul, Subtitles: They are in Dimona, in Haifa Bay
in the Eilabun mountain... and in the area of Sakneen, Yolfhata. Let
them send their inspectors to me... and I will lead them by the hand
and show them.
00.32.00 Olenka Frenkiel: There is a cry going up which is talking
about a double standard. The world has to check Iraq's nuclear
installations but not Israel's.
00.32.08 Shimon Peres: How can you compare it? Iraq is a
dictatorship. Saddam Hussein is a killer. He killed a hundred
thousand Kurds with gas bombs. How can you compare that at all?
00.32.23 Shimon Peres: Just because he calls himself a state? He's
not a state - he's a Mafia. He's not a leader - he's a killer. You
cannot say that about us.
00.32.34 Olenka Frenkiel: But even in Israel some do. The current
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon directed the invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Thousands of innocent civilians were killed.
00.32.49 Olenka Frenkiel: The worst excesses were in the refugee
camps of Sabra and Shatila, for which an Israeli enquiry held Sharon
personally responsible. In Belgium there are plans to prosecute him
for alleged war crimes.
00.33.09 Olenka Frenkiel: While Sharon has been Prime Minister seven
hundred Israelis have been killed. But more than two thousand
Palestinians have died in attacks by Israeli soldiers.
00.33.21 Olenka Frenkiel: The Israeli army has used new unidentified
weapons. In February 2001, a new gas was used in Gaza. A hundred and
eighty patients were admitted to hospitals with severe
convulsions.
00.33.41 Voiceover: The Israelis say this is tear gas. But this is
not tear gas. We have never seen this gas before. We need some
medicine for treatment. But it must be the right medicine.
00.33.56 Dr MOHAMMED SALAMA, Director, Palestinian Health Ministry:
We asked, what kind of gas? But nobody verified for us the type of
gas to give the antidote at that moment. Also we don't know how to
check, how to examine, how to send this. We are in occupied area. We
are surrounded. It is impossible to send these samples to
international lab to test.
00.34.27 Olenka Frenkiel: Israel is outside chemical and biological
weapons treaties and still refuses to say what the new gas was.
00.34.44 Olenka Frenkiel: The Eoloffs have still not heard from the
prison. Their flight home is tomorrow night and they worry they may
have to leave without seeing their adopted son.
00.34.56 Olenka Frenkiel: Today they are having lunch with a small
group of activists who for sixteen years have fought in vain for
Vanunu's release.
00.35.03 First Israeli activist: They pressurise Iraq about nuclear
weapons. What about Israel and nuclear weapons?
00.35.07 Second Israeli activist: Imagine for one moment that
Mordechai Vanunu was not an Israeli, that the whole story had
happened with a Korean or an Iranian or a Pakistani technician, he
would have had the Nobel Peace Prize. He would have been the second
Sakharov.
00.35.23 Second Israeli activist: Instead he is a non-person in the
West. This tells you what we are dealing with. We're dealing with the
number one privileged state on earth.
00.35.34 Third Israeli activist: Counter to the Israeli argument that
the whole world is against us, it is the exact opposite. We started
the nuclear race in the Middle East. There is no doubt about it.
00.35.53 Third Israeli activist: And there is not even one important
state in the Western Hemisphere who is dealing with it seriously.
00.36.00 Rayna Moss: You can talk all we want. We can sit until
tomorrow morning and discuss Israel's nuclear policy. We can discuss
whatever we want. It's the people who work in those areas, with
weapons of mass destruction, the environment, Dimona itself, all
these research places.
00.36.16 Rayna Moss: Vanunu is a living warning to them. This is what
will happen to you if you speak out. You'll be Vanunu-nised. That's
the warning. You will spend ten years in solitary confinement.
00.36.28 Rayna Moss: You will be cut off from all your family. You
will be cut off from everyone who knows you. You will be this
prisoner without a number and without a name. That's what will happen
to you if you speak out.
00.36.41 Olenka Frenkiel: It's the prison on the phone.
00.36.47 Mary Eoloff: Hello? Oh how marvellous! What time? Well, if
we come at eleven, can we have an hour and a half? Okay. Thank you so
much. Okay. Bye.
00.37.06 Olenka Frenkiel: On their last day the Eoloffs get their
visit. After an hour and a half they emerge with a message.
00.37.16 Mary Eoloff: It's just wonderful. We're so excited we don't
know what to think. All right, you talk.
00.37.21 Nick Eoloff: It was a marvellous experience. It was the
first time we've seen him so high and just anxious to talk about
what's going on in his life and what he's looking forward to.
Especially the anticipation of getting out.
00.37.33 Nick Eoloff: He's just strong. That was his final word: "Let
them know that I'm strong and anxious to get out of here, out of
Israel and just start life all over again". And he was just
beaming.
00.37.45 Mary Eoloff: And he said the message to world is the message
to the world is that I have forgotten the last sixteen years. I'm
looking towards the future. I believe in a future of non-
violence.
00.37.56 Olenka Frenkiel: So did he say that he'd do it all
again?
00.37.58 Mary Eoloff: You know, he did. He said, of course I would.
Isn't that incredible?
00.38.12 Olenka Frenkiel: The Eoloffs have gone, and Vanunu is again
up for parole. But as usual everything, even the location of the
parole hearing, is secret.
00.38.22 Secret filming
00.38.22 Olenka Frenkiel: Apart from me and Peter Hounam, who has
come from London, there are no other journalists here.
00.38.27 Peter Hounam: Mordechai Vanunu? Mordechai Vanunu? Is he in
there?
00.38.34 Olenka Frenkiel: Mordechai Vanunu is in there? Is that where
the case is being held?
00.38.40 PETER HOUNAM, Freelance journalist: He is the most sensitive
prisoner that this country has got, and whenever he comes here they
block off the windows of his van if they can, or they, in the early
days they used to put a crash helmet over him so people couldn't see
him.
00.38.54 Peter Hounam: At one point they even had an electronic
device that emitted a screeching signal so people couldn't hear him
speak.
00.39.02 Olenka Frenkiel: And yet you and I are the only journalists
here. The most sensitive prisoner Israel has got, and there's not a
single member of the press here apart from you. Why do you keep
coming?
00.39.10 Peter Hounam: I keep coming because he's in there because he
spoke to me and we published his story on the Sunday Times in 1986,
and I feel a sense of responsibility that we should be helping him
get out.
00.39.23 Olenka Frenkiel: Three hours later the hearing ended. As
usual Vanunu left behind darkened windows. In court Horev's
prosecutor had cited the war with Iraq as a new reason for blocking
parole.
00.39.38 AVIGDOR FELDMAN, Mordechai Vanunu's lawyer: The prosecutor
of course went back to the old argument that Vanunu is a threat to
security and she even said that if Vanunu will be released, probably
the Americans would leave Iraq and go after Israel and Israel's
nuclear weapons, which I found extremely ridiculous.
00.40.11 Olenka Frenkiel: Minnesota, the Peace Bridge and a weekly
ritual. Every Wednesday hundreds protest against the war.
00.40.22 Olenka Frenkiel: Mary is there. So of course is Nick. Every
week the numbers grow. There is a new generation of peaceniks who
were children when Israel's nuclear weapons were exposed.
00.40.38 Olenka Frenkiel: Have any of you guys heard of Mordechai
Vanunu?
00.40.42 Protesters: No.
00.40.43 Olenka Frenkiel: You don't know who he is.
00.40.47 Olenka Frenkiel: And if I tell you that he's somebody who
exposed Israel's weapons of mass destruction, which nobody knew about
until then, what would you say?
00.40.56 Protester: One Why is our media that's supposed to be free
and open not telling us and why is our government not letting us know
this information if we're living in the home of the free?
00.41.06 Protester Two: I think if our administration was consistent
or had any integrity, then he would be held as a hero.
00.41.14 President George W. Bush: We're going to work with the
members of the Security Council in the days ahead to make it clear to
Saddam that the demands of the world and the United Nations will be
enforced.
00.41.26 Olenka Frenkiel: In Washington, which gives Israel more than
three billion dollars a year, the talk is only of Iraq. For weeks
we've tried to get an interview about Israel's weapons of mass
destruction, but no one in this Bush administration wants to talk
about Israel.
00.41.41 Olenka Frenkiel: So we've asked for an interview about the
military balance of power in the Middle East. And now they've
agreed.
00.41.43 Olenka Frenkiel: This morning we've finally been told that
we're going to have an interviewee. He's an expert in all matters
Israeli. He's an Under Secretary of Defense, and his name is Douglas
Feith.
00.42.04 Olenka Frenkiel: The Pentagon has demanded a list of
questions in advance. So, it's "The balance of power", "Israel's
nuclear ambiguity", "Allegations of a double standard" and "Mordechai
Vanunu".
00.42.16 President George W. Bush: The gravest danger facing America
and the world is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear,
chemical and biological weapons.
00.42.35 Olenka Frenkiel: Yet again the shutters have come down on
this story. Our interview with Under Secretary for Defense Douglas
Feith was scheduled for four o'clock somewhere in this vast complex
of the Pentagon behind me. Yet at the last minute we've heard the
interview is cancelled.
00.42.50 Olenka Frenkiel: Questions about Israel, it appears, are
strictly off-limits.
00.42.56 Olenka Frenkiel: We'd received this e-mail from the
Pentagon.
00.43.00 Voiceover: Subtitles. Ladies: We showed Mr Feith the list of
topics for the BBC interview. He is not willing to answer any of the
questions you listed... Respectfully request you resubmit your
questions as soon as possible this morning. Questions directed
towards the current Iraqi situation.
00.43.17 Olenka Frenkiel: On February nineteenth Vanunu was again
refused parole. He remains in Ashkelon prison.
00.43.30 Olenka Frenkiel: Horev has let it be known he intends never
to let Mordechai Vanunu leave Israel.
00.43.36 End music
00.43.46 Olenka Frenkiel: You can comment on tonight's programme by
visiting our web site at: www.bbc.co.uk/correspondent
00.43.46 Credits:
Reporter OLENKA FRENKIEL
Camera IAN PERRY
VT Editor BOYD NAGLE
Dubbing Mixer CLIFF JONES
Graphic Design STEVE ENGLAND
Production Team ALEXANDRA CAMERON SARAH EVA MARTHA O'SULLIVAN AGNES
TEEK
Production Manager JANE WILLEY
Unit Manager SUSAN CRIGHTON
Film Research NICK DODD
Historical Research AVNER COHEN
Yitzhak Yaakov photos YEDIOT AHRONOT
Research CANDICE TALBERG TOM WATSON
Web Producer ANDREW JEFFREY
Picture Editor JONATHAN COOKE
Produced & Directed by GISELLE PORTENIER
Deputy Editor DAVID BELTON
Editor KAREN O'CONNOR
(c) BBC MMIII 00.44.20
The BBC Film That Exposed Israel's Secret Illegal Nuclear Weapons (FULL
Documentary)
"Israel's Secret Weapon" - Alternative
version (if the other one is censored)
