by Eileen Fleming
On Monday evening, President Obama went on TV to focus on the need for intervention in Libya.
On Tuesday morning, it was reported that the Israeli Interior Ministry announced a decision would be reached next month regarding final approval to build another 1,500 Jewish only apartments in east Jerusalem and regarding the annexing of major West Bank settlement blocs. Israel does not consider the Jewish only colonies that house 200,000 to be settlements, but the international community comprehends that every settlement is illegal under international law.
In the last two weeks, Israel also passed two laws that reek of fascism: the banning of Nakba commemorations and another punishing activists who speak in support of BDS until Israel ends the occupation of Palestine.
The Palestinians call for international recognition as a state is also gaining speed, and they also intend to create their future capital in east Jerusalem.
Excerpted from President Obama’s 28 March 2011, speech:
“Because wherever people long to be free, they will find a friend in the United States. Ultimately, it is that faith – those ideals – that are the true measure of American leadership…To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and – more profoundly – our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are…Yes, this change will make the world more complicated for a time. Progress will be uneven, and change will come differently in different countries…The United States will not be able to dictate the pace and scope of this change…But we can make a difference. I believe that this movement of change cannot be turned back, and that we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us through many storms…our support for a set of universal rights, including the freedom for people to express themselves…”
On May 23, 2010, just a few hours prior to spending 78 days in a maximum SECURITY prison in solitary confinement, Mordechai Vanunu taped his Manifesto for Freedom of Speech, a blistering attack on complacent media and hypocrisy in high places:
President Obama, is the third sitting American president to win the Nobel Peace Prize. His peers include Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who won the Nobel for helping end the Cold War, which raged from 1945 to 1991, and Nelson Mandela, who fought for the end of Apartheid in South Africa. The apartheid regime in South Africa existed from 1948 until 1994; but it was not until the late 1980’s that the American government got on-board with the over twenty years of a global call for boycott, divestment and sanctions that finally brought that apartheid system to its knees.
In his congratulatory message to President Obama upon being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Israeli President Shimon Peres said:
“Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire world in such a short while with such profound impact. You provided all of humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that there is a Lord in heaven and believers on earth. Under your leadership, peace became a real and original agenda. And from Jerusalem, I am sure all the bells of engagement and understanding will ring again. You gave us a license to dream and act in a noble direction.” [1]
Within days of the announcement for 2009’s Nobel Peace Prize, Mordechai Vanunu declined the honor in a letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Oslo:
“I am asking the committee to remove my name from the nominations…I cannot be part of a list of laureates that includes Simon Peres…Peres established and developed the atomic weapon program in Dimona in Israel…Peres was the man who ordered [my] kidnapping…he continues to oppose my freedom and release…WHAT I WANT IS FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM….FREEDOM AND ONLY FREEDOM I NEED NOW.”
Alfred Nobel’s intention was to reward people with a moral backbone and he hoped to create icons and examples to humankind. In 1994, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Peres were all awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for playing a part in achieving the Oslo Declaration of Principles. According to the preamble of the DOP, peace was to be based on mutual respect and reconciliation.
In 1963, when Vanunu was nine years old the Zionists came to his home town of Marrakech, Morocco and convinced his Orthodox father to abandon his general store and pack up the first seven of his eleven children for the land of milk and honey. Instead, the Vanunu’s were banished to the desert of Beesheva, one of over 500 ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages and towns that Israel destroyed to create their facts on the ground.
In 1963, Shimon Peres, then Israel’s Deputy Minister of Defense met with President John Kennedy, at the White House.
Kennedy told Peres, “You know that we follow very closely the discovery of any nuclear development in the region. This could create a very dangerous situation. For this reason we monitor your nuclear effort. What could you tell me about this?”
Peres replied, “I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first.”
On October 2, 2009, The Washington Times reported that “Obama agrees to keep Israel’s nukes secret [and] reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections.”
On April 5, 2009, President Obama stood on the world stage in Prague and admitted, “As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act…When we fail to pursue peace, then it stays forever beyond our grasp. We know the path when we choose fear over hope. To denounce or shrug off a call for cooperation is an easy but also cowardly thing to do. That’s how wars begin. That’s where human progress ends…the voices of peace and progress must be raised together…Human destiny will be what we make of it…Words must mean something.”
In his March 2011 speech, Obama also noted, “Born, as we are, out of a revolution by those who longed to be free, we welcome the fact that history is on the move in the Middle East and North Africa, and that young people are leading the way.”
60% of the population of the Middle East is under 30. Rap and Alternative-Rock are the music of The Revolution.
Mordechai, (More-dee-kai) are a Sydney based alternative-rock band that began to raise awareness about Vanunu in 2005. To listen to their recent release ‘No More Heroes’
Click here to listen or download
Leadership is not delivered in speeches, but demonstrated via leaders who stand up for universal rights and most especially for the freedom of people to express themselves.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.-Article 19, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
1. During YouTube interview PM debunks “Bibi-Tours”
Eileen Fleming founded WeAreWideAwake.org. She produced videos “30 Minutes with Vanunu” and “13 Minutes with Vanunu”. She has authored many books including; A USS Liberty Remembrance of 50 years USA Government Cover-Up of Israel’s 8 June 1967 Attack on USA Spy-Ship, Wabi Sabi Body ETERNAL SPIRIT, and Heroes, Muses and the Saga of Mordechai Vanunu. Click here to see her latest books. Visit Eileen’s YouTube Channel
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