The Nobel Peace Prize for 2005 was awarded to IAEA and Mohamed ElBaradei for their “efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way”.
Why did the Nobel Prize Committee prefer ElBaradei to Vanunu who was 18 years in Israeli prison for informing the world press about Israel’s nukes? Awarding the Peace Prize to Vanunu would have been a bold step against nuclear armament.
It seems the Nobel Peace Committee is afraid of antagonizing the Israeli government or of being branded as anti-Semitic.
Yet what are the facts?
1. Israel was the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the M-E and thus started the nuclear arms race in the Middle-East.
2. For 40 years Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
3. Israel refuses to allow an IAEA inspection of its Dimona nuclear pile.
Anyone who REALLY wants to stop the nuclear arms race in the M-E must take active steps, like economic boycott, political pressure, severing diplomatic relations, etc. against Israel to make it sign the NPT and allow an IAEA inspection of Dimona. This will signal to all other governments in the region that the campaign is not one sided.
If Israel persists in its refusal to sign the NPT, refuses to allow inspection of Dimona, and refuses to return to Norway the 30 tons of heavy water lent to it only for research on condition that it is not used for the production of nuclear weapons, them the same steps that the USA and IAEA applied to Iraq must be applied to Israel.
What did ElBaradei do about Israeli nukes? Nothing.
What did he say about Israel’s refusal to sigh the NPT? Nothing
What did he say about Vanunu being jailed for 18 years for informing the world press about Israel’s nukes ? Nothing
He visited Jerusalem and refused to meet Vanunu lest this antagonize the Israeli government. No wonder Israel congratulated ElBaradei and the IAEA on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
The IAEA applied to Israel a very different policy from the one it applied to Iraq.
It tries to solicit co-operation on nuclear disarmament from a government that refuses for 40 years to do so. This policy has failed for 40 years.
Why continue with it?
Why reject any pressure on such a government to make it change its nuclear policy?
The USA, IAEA, and the Nobel Committee know very well that Israel has nuclear weapons and keeps building them in Dimona, and refuses to sign the NPT and refuses an IAEA inspection of Dimona.
Yet the USA, IAEA, and the Nobel Peace Prize Comittee adamantly refuse take any step against Israeli nuclear policy.
This makes them accomplices to Israeli nuclear policy.
Israel persists in its refusal to sign the NPT, ElBaradei and the IAEA do not even criticize this – and get the Nobel Peace Prize.
Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and Niels Bohr, would have denounced such a duplicity.
Very impartial.
Or, as Niels Bohr used to say: “VERY interesting”
Akiva Orr