Israel Matzav

Why is Vanunu a hero while Pollard is demonized

Unlike Vanunu, a traitor who endangered the security of Israel at a time when Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Iran’s ayatollahs, Libya’s Gaddafi and Syria’s Assad were making every effort to develop weapons of mass destruction, Pollard is recognized as the source of Israel’s preparedness for the Iraqi missile attacks during the Gulf War.

Pollard, then employed by US Naval Intelligence, realized that satellite maps of poison gas and other unconventional weapon sites being built by Israel’s Arab enemies were clearly aimed at the destruction of the Jewish state. This was six years before the Gulf War, when Syria, Libya, Iran and Iraq have all built huge “aspirin factories,” as Muammar Gaddafi called them.

The dictators stockpiled huge quantities of chemical weapons, including the Nazi-invented sarin. If Pollard became convinced that the Jews of Israel were facing a possible second Holocaust, Vanunu worked to make it possible. But if Pollard today is demonized as an Israeli right-wing “fanatic” (Robert Friedman of The Washington Post) or “an aberration” (Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg), Vanunu is celebrated as a romantic Israeli icon.

The different treatment tells us much not only about treason celebrated, but also about Western newspapers’ anti-Semitism and Israel’s fate in a time of new chemical, nuclear and biological threats. Some 29 years after Saddam’s 39 missiles landed in Israel, forcing Israelis to put on their gas masks, Iran’s Ahmadinejad promises to wipe out the "dead rats," as he called the Israelis.

Twenty years after Saddam threatened to "burn half of Israel," Pollard began his 27th year in solitary confinement, Vanunu is a symbol of good and the Jewish state remains the only "bunkered" democracy in the world, now even more relentlessly ghettoized.

Labels: Giulio Meotti, Jonathan Pollard, Mordechai Vanunu

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:02 PM