‎ In the darkness of a cinema, a woman's voice: "Hey! Take your hands off! ‎‎Not you! YOU!"‎ ‎ This old joke illustrates the American policy regarding nuclear armaments ‎‎in the Middle East. "Hey, you there, Iraq and Iran and Libya, stop it! Not YOU, ‎‎Israel!"

The danger of nuclear arms was the main pretext for the invasion of Iraq. ‎‎Iran is threatened in order to compel it to stop its nuclear efforts. Libya has ‎‎surrendered and is dismantling its nuclear installations.‎ ‎ So what about Israel?

This week it became clear that the Americans are full partners in the ‎‎creation of Israel's "nuclear option".

How was this exposed? With the help of Mordecai Vanunu, of course.‎ ‎ Throughout the week, a festival was being celebrated around the prisoner, ‎‎who was released on Wednesday. ‎ ‎ The Security Establishment has not stopped harassing him even after he ‎‎has sat in prison for 18 years, 11 of them in complete solitary confinement - a ‎‎treatment he himself described on leaving the prison as "cruel and barbaric". ‎‎After he was "set free", far-reaching restrictions were imposed on him (e.g. he ‎‎is forbidden to leave the country, is restricted to one town, cannot go near any ‎‎embassy or consulate, may not talk with foreign citizens). All this under the ‎‎colonial British emergency regulations that were condemned at the time by ‎‎the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine, as "worse then the Nazi ‎‎laws".

Not, God forbid, because of any desire for revenge!

The security people declared from every podium that this is not revenge for ‎‎all the shame Vanunu caused the security services, and is by no means just ‎‎more persecution, but an essential security requirement. He must not be ‎‎allowed to leave the country or to speak with foreigners and journalists, ‎‎because he is in possession of secrets vital to the security of the state.

Everybody understands that he has no more secrets. What can a ‎‎technician know after 18 years in jail, during which technology has advanced ‎‎with giant steps?‎

But gradually it becomes clear what the security establishment is really ‎‎afraid of. Vanunu is in a position to expose the close partnership with the ‎‎United States in the development of Israel's nuclear armaments.

This worries Washington so much, that the man responsible in the State ‎‎Department for "arms control", Under Secretary John Bolton, has come to ‎‎Israel in person for the occasion. Vanunu, it appears, can cause severe ‎‎damage to the mighty super-power. The Americans are afraid of sounding like ‎‎the lady in the dark cinema.

(By the way, this John Bolton is an avid supporter of the group of Zionists ‎‎neo-cons who play a central role in the Bush theater. He opposes arms ‎‎control for the United States and its satellites, and was installed in the State ‎‎Department against the wishes of the Secretary of State himself.)

In the short address Vanunu was able to make to the media immediately ‎‎on his release, he made a strange remark: that the young woman who served ‎‎as bait for his kidnapping, some 18 years ago, was not a Mossad agent, as ‎‎generally assumed, but an agent of the FBI or CIA. Why was it so urgent for ‎‎him to convey this?

From the first moment, there was something odd about the Vanunu affair.‎

At the beginning, my first thought was that he was a Mossad agent. ‎‎Everything pointed in that direction.‎ ‎ How else can one explain a simple technician's success in smuggling a ‎‎camera into the most secret and best guarded installation in Israel? And in ‎‎taking photos apparently without hindrance? How else to explain the career of ‎‎that person who, as a student at Beer-Sheva University, was well-known as ‎‎belonging to the extreme left and spending his time in the company of Arab ‎‎fellow-students? How was he allowed to leave the country with hundreds of ‎‎photos? How was he able to approach a British paper and to turn over to ‎‎British scientists material that convinced them that Israel had 200 nuclear ‎‎bombs?

Absurd, isn't it? But it all fits , if one assumes that Vanunu acted from the ‎‎beginning on a mission for the Mossad. His disclosures in the British ‎‎newspaper not only caused no damage to the Israeli government, but on the ‎‎contrary, strengthened the Israeli deterrent without committing the ‎‎government, which was free to deny everything.‎

What happened next only reinforced this assumption. While in London, in ‎‎the middle of his campaign of exposures, knowing that half a dozen ‎‎intelligence services are tracking his every movement, he starts an affair with ‎‎a strange women, is seduced into following her to Rome, where he is ‎‎kidnapped and shipped back to Israel. How naive can you get? Is it credible ‎‎for a reasonable person to fall into such a primitive trap? It is not. Meaning ‎‎that the whole affair was nothing but a classic cover story.

But when the affair went on, and details of the year-long daily mistreatment ‎‎of the man became public, I had to give up this initial theory. I had to face the ‎‎fact that our security services are even more stupid than I had assumed ‎‎(which I wouldn't have believed possible) and that all these things actually had ‎‎happened, and that Mordecai Vanunu was an honest and idealistic, if ‎‎extremely naive, person.

I have no doubt that his personality was shaped by his background. He is ‎‎the son of a family with many children, who were quite well-to-do in Morocco ‎‎but lived in a primitive "transition camp" in Israel, before moving to ‎‎Be'er-Sheva, where they lived in poverty. In spite of this, he succeeded in ‎‎getting into university and got a master's degree, quite an achievement, but ‎‎suffered, so it seems, from the overbearing attitude and prejudices of his ‎‎Ashkenazi peers. Undoubtedly, that pushed him towards the company of the ‎‎extreme left, where such prejudices were not prevalent.

The bunch of "security correspondents" and other commentators who are ‎‎attached to the udders of the security establishment have already spread ‎‎stories about Vanunu "imagining things", his long stay in solitary confinement ‎‎causing him to "convince himself of all kinds of fantasies" and to "invent all ‎‎kinds of fabrications". Meaning: the American connection.

Against this background one can suddenly understand all these severe ‎‎restrictions, which, at first sight, look absolutely idiotic. The Americans, it ‎‎seems, are very worried. The Israeli security services have to dance to their ‎‎tune. The world must be prevented by all available means from hearing, from ‎‎the lips of a credible witness, that the Americans are full partners in Israel's ‎‎nuclear arms program, while pretending to be the world's sheriff for the ‎‎prevention of nuclear proliferation.‎

And the lady cried: "Not you! YOU!"‎