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Haaretz.com

British Jewry goes 'off-message' over Israel

British Jewry’s relationship with Israel is undergoing seismic change. The monolithic “Israel right or wrong” support of the mainstream suddenly cracked when one of the community’s most senior leaders went dramatically off-message.

As the Jewish Chronicle reported Mick Davis, chairman of the pre-eminent Anglo-Israel charity, the UJIA, and the executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, “shattered a longstanding taboo by publicly criticising the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the peace process, voicing moral reservations about some of Israel’s policies and calling for criticism of Israel to be voiced freely throughout the community.”

What followed was an “I am Spartacus” moment. As the Israeli embassy and their cohort of diehard loyalists within Anglo-Jewry looked on aghast, one heavyweight community player after another voiced support for Mr Davis.

They included figures who have worked tirelessly throughout their professional lives to defend Jewish rights, promote Israel’s right to peace and security and neutralise the ugly sisters of anti-Zionist/anti-Semitism. Nobody could ever accuse the likes of Jon Mendelson, Gordon Brown’s chief fundraiser and former Labour Friends of Israel chairman, or Bicom chairman Poju Zabludowicz, of possessing an iota of “self-hatred”.

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May Peace Prevail On Earth

Mordechai Vanunu (Hebrew: מרדכי ואנונו‎) is an Israeli former nuclear technical assistant who revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently lured to Italy by an American woman named Cheryl Bentov and kidnapped by Israeli intelligence operatives. He was transported to Israel and ultimately convicted of treason and espionage.

Vanunu was born in Marrakech, Morocco, on 14 October 1954 to a Jewish family; his father was a rabbi. In 1963, at the age of nine, he emigrated under the Law of Return with his parents and the first 4 of his 11 brothers and sisters to Israel. He studied in an ultra orthodox elementary school, and attended, but did not finish, a Bnei Akiva yeshiva high school.

Vanunu completed his three years of military service as a sapper in the IDF Combat Engineering Corps, with the rank of First Sergeant. After completing his service, Vanunu began working as a technician at the Negev Nuclear Research Center. Concurrently, he became a part-time geography and philosophy student at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

At that time he became critical of many policies of the Israeli government, forming a group called "Campus" with four other Jewish students and five Arab students. Vanunu was also affiliated with a group called "Movement for the Advancement of Peace." In early 1980s Vanunu converted to Christianity from Judaism. Vanunu graduated from Ben-Gurion University in 1985 with a BA in Philosophy and Geography.

Mordechai Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 years in solitary confinement. Vanunu was released from prison in 2004, subject to a broad array of restrictions on his speech and movement. Since then he has been briefly arrested several times for violations of those restrictions, including giving various interviews to foreign journalists and attempting to leave Israel. He says he has been persecuted by the authorities in Israel because of his conversion to Christianity, saying "I want to tell those who say I am a traitor, I suffered here 18 years because I am a Christian."

In 2007, Vanunu was sentenced to six months in prison for violating terms of his parole. The sentence was considered unusual even by the prosecution who expected a suspended sentence. In response, Amnesty International issued a press release on 2 July 2007, stating that "The organisation considers Mordechai Vanunu to be a prisoner of conscience and calls for his immediate and unconditional release." Vanunu has been characterized by some as a whistleblower and by others as a traitor. Daniel Ellsberg has referred to him as "the preeminent hero of the nuclear era".

On 28 December 2009, Mr. Vanunu was once again arrested "by Jerusalem Police in a hotel in the capital following an alleged meeting with a Norwegian national. He remained in jail on Tuesday, though was set to be transferred to house arrest..."

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Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land

...a very sad piece of truth, once we know



...are we supposed to do nothing about it?

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