Heroes, Muses and the Saga of Mordechai Vanunu by Senior Correspondent Eileen Fleming credits Jon Stewart, The Daily Show Correspondents, Brenda Starr, Dorothy Day and John Lennon among her heroes and muses; and concludes her ten years of reporting on Israel's Nuclear Whistle Blower's struggle for his right to leave Israel, since she met him in east Jerusalem in 2005.
The events of 11 September 2001 compelled New York born writer and Florida transplant Eileen Fleming to research and then journey eight times to both sides of The Wall in Israel and Palestine beginning in 2005. While in east Jerusalem during her first trip, serendipity crossed the author's path with Israel's Nuclear Whistle Blower and conscience called for Fleming to realize her childhood dream of being a reporter when Vanunu informed her, "The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona. The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out.
"President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, 'The nuclear reactor is only for peace.'
"When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to '69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.
"Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year."
From 1976 to 1985, Mordechai Vanunu worked the night shift within Israel's nuclear facility at Dimona. When the mid-level technician realized Israel had begun working on thermonuclear technology his conscience called to "prevent a nuclear holocaust" and over a few harrowing hours in top-secret locations within the 7-story underground nuclear facility Vanunu shot two rolls of film.
Vanunu quit the Dimona in Oct. 1985 and traveled through Europe with the undeveloped film until he reached Australia and met Peter Hounam, an investigative reporter for London's "The Sunday Times."
Nuclear physicist Frank Barnaby interviewed Vanunu for three days before Israel's Mossad lured Vanunu from London to Rome where he was kidnapped just before "The Sunday Times" ran a front-page story under the headline: "Revealed: the secrets of Israel's nuclear arsenal" on 5 October 1986.
Fleming dedicated "Heroes, Muses and the Saga of Mordechai Vanunu" to the Iran Deal with hope for a World Nuclear Deal: WMD Free!
Fleming became a reporter in 2005, when she founded WeAreWideAwake.org In 2012, Fleming ran for US HOUSE of Representatives in Florida. In 2014 she became Senior Non-Arab Correspondent for USA's The Arab Daily News.
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