The slowly swelling crowd of irate Israelis began arriving not long after Mordechai Vanunu’s supporters had strung themselves in an almost festive line across the road from Ashkelon prison at eight o’clock that morning. Separated only by a thin blue line of police, several armed with assault weapons, the two groups eyed each other with the edgy apprehension nurtured over nearly two decades of waiting for this day.

While working as a technician inside Israel’s highly secret nuclear weapons facility in Dimona, Vanunu had gradually come to feel the world should know what his country had long denied, that it had clandestinely developed the capacity to build and deliver a nuclear arsenal capable of massive destruction throughout the entire Middle East. After considerable soul-searching, he brought his story, coupled with photographs secretly taken at Dimona, to England, where the “London Times” brought his almost surreal tale to light in 1986. The story caused an instantaneous international furor, sparking both denials in Tel Aviv and demands from nuclear weapons experts to visit Dimona, where the veracity of Vanunu’s story could be verified. Israel refused every request. Shortly before the story broke, an Israeli agent playing on his isolation and fear lured Vanunu to Rome. Kidnapped in the Eternal City and secretly spirited to Israel, he was tried and sentenced to 18 years of solitary confinement. In 1998, under mounting international pressure, Vanunu was removed from segregation. Throughout his years in prison, he never wavered in his conviction that his actions were justified, and he developed a far-flung network of sympathetic supporters with whom he frequently corresponded. International interest in his case grew, cresting on April 21, the day of his release, when more than eighty supporters from around the globe, including his adoptive parents, Mary and Nick Eoloff of Minnesota, gathered across from the heavy blue and white prison gate, holding banners, singing, and anxiously awaiting his appearance.

By Kathy Kelly

April 28, 2004

Phil Berrigan, the renowned peace activist who died in December 2002, always urged people to talk back to the TV screen while the news was being spun by politicians and commentators. Phil would have approved of women who watch CNN early morning news here at the Pekin Federal Prison Camp. A few mornings ago, Soledad O’Brien interviewed John McCain about his recommendations regarding US troops presence in Iraq. McCain lamented the shortage of funding to pay for the plans he envisioned and then recommended that congress make courageous choices to cut back spending. Immediately, women prisoners pointed to themselves and shouted to McCain, “We’ll help you save money. Send us home!”

Each of the women are “first time offenders” with mandatory minimum sentences of five or more years for non-violent drug related crimes. With no possibility of parole and very few means of earning good time, the only way for them to achieve some kind of sentence reduction is to be “a snitch.”

It’s hard to think of a more difficult setting in which to try and organize legislative activism. Disappointment and feelings of isolation have been reinforced by the letdowns that come with “chain gang rumors” which turn out to be completely false. Yet an extremely capable and efficient team of women prisoners here has repeatedly managed to generate many hundreds of letters to relatives and friends, written by prisoners, in support of various prison reform bills that have actually been introduced into the US Congress.

Two weeks ago, Connie and Ruth, two “long termers” who’ve been who’ve been part of a core group of organizers here, came into the Nebraska unit with a manila packet carrying the text of House Resolution 4036. This resolution, introduced by Danny Davis, D- IL, on March 25, 2004, proposes to revive the system of parole for federal inmates. Before the weekend was over, the “team” had put in place a plan to copy and distribute 600 sample letters which prisoners could send to their family members and friends, urging support for the bill.

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by Kathy Kelly
May 1, 2004

It’s Saturday morning, May 1, 2004, and women here at Pekin Federal Prison Camp who watched CNN news feel indignant about the way Iraqi prisoners have been treated by US military guards. “Did you see those pictures?” Ruth asked. What in the world is going on over there?”

The news coverage they watched had photo-ops from last year’s May Day, when President George Bush triumphantly boarded a USS Carrier ship to declare “Mission Accomplished,” juxtaposed with the recently released ghastly photos of US military members apparently enjoying degradation and torture of Iraqi prisoners.

“Where did May Day traditions come from?” I later asked aloud, in the prison library. The librarian, Lori, quickly found an Encyclopedia item detailing various May Day traditions. Several of us laughed about one which holds that the dew on the grass, on May 1, holds special qualities for restoring youth. Authorities would be mighty surprised if we all started rolling on the grass. “It would be better to celebrate morning dew than to boast about dropping all those bombs over Iraq,” said Carol. “Looks like people there are going to hate us so much, they’d rather kill us than look at us.”

by Laurie Hasbrook
May 9, 2004

Chicago — Mother’s Day 2004. My 6- and 8-year-old sons, under their father’s supervision, will “surprise” me with breakfast in bed, handmade cards, lots of hugs and kisses and promises of perfect behavior and brotherly cooperation in the year to come. I’ll bask in that simple joy of spending the day together as family.

I am acutely aware, though, that for mothers with sons or daughters in Iraq, this day will be one of tremendous longing and anxiety. For mothers whose children have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom or in the occupation, Mother’s Day will be a day of grief and mourning, a day of loss that those of us who have not suffered the death of a child can never fully comprehend. Many Iraqi mothers also know this loss.

The cruelties of war led Julia Ward Howe to write in the original Mother’s Day Proclamation of 1870: ” . . . `Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.’… ‘Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.’”

As a mother raising sons in a country whose government is using the deaths of its young people in war to extol the virtues of sacrifice, honor and devotion to family and country–as do all governments in time of war–I have never been so acutely aware that war, far from being a necessity in a terror-plagued world, is a foreign policy failure that actively contributes to terrorism.

It is a challenge, while our politicians and military leaders masterfully weave a national narrative that gives military service God’s imprimatur, to say loudly and clearly that I will not raise my children to be killers. Teaching my sons the distinction between being willing to die for their beliefs as opposed to being willing to kill for them is difficult in a culture that melds the two.

As I grieve for the families who receive word that a beloved son or daughter has been killed overseas, I reaffirm my commitment this Mother’s Day to help build a world in which all violence, whether it is individual or state-sponsored, is rejected.

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE (LETTER) Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune