Peace

102nd year anniversary
May Day greetings

Port Alberni & District Labour Council

What we desire for ourselves we wish for all.

May Day Greetings
to the labour movement

from
the executive and members of
The Vancouver and
New Westminster
Newspaper Guild

May Day Greetings

United Fishermen &
Allied Workers Union
, Local 7

MAY DAY GREETINGS
Jrade Union Research Buroau

The only dedicated labour research group in Canada to operate
continuously for over 48 years — providing unique research,
advisory, advocacy, benefit plan and computer services.

Maritime Labor Centre, #170-111 Victoria Drive
Vancouver, B.C. V5L 4C4. Telephone: 255-7346

CUPE Local 389

marks May Day, 1988
in celebration
of all workers,
men and women,
standing together for
economic, social and
trade union rights.

6 ¢ Pacific Tribune, April 27, 1988

Burnaby MP Svend Robinson (c), flanked b

Libby Davies, Hank Rosenthal.

y (left to right) Mordecai Breimberg, Ald.

MP nominates Vanunu
for Nobel Peace Prize

Burnaby MP Svend Robinson has joined
other world ‘parliamentarians in nominat-
ing for the Nobel Peace Prize an Israeli
nuclear technician jailed for 18 years for
revealing his country has a secret stockpile
of nuclear weapons.

The New Democratic Member of Parli-
ament said April 22 he chose to make his
announcement on the eve of the Walk for
Peace in Vancouver because Mordechai
Vanunu’s actions helped the cause of world
peace.

“Mordechai Vanunu, at great personal
risk, took a very courageous step in reveal-
ing the extent of Israeli involvement in the
production of nuclear weapons,” Robinson
said at his constituency office. Vanunu’s
evidence showed Israel ranked sixth among
the world’s nuclear powers.

Robinson said he anticipated the support
of other Canadian MPs, including those
from the other two political parties in the
House, in making the nomination which
has come from parliamentarians in Britain,
Australia and the European Parliament.

The Israeli court which tried Vanunu in
closed-door sessions received a petition cal-
ling for clemency signed by 20 Nobel Prize
winners. They included University of
Toronto professor and Nobel Prize for
Chemistry winner John Polyani — also a
prominent peace spokesman — Nobel
Peace Prize and Chemistry Prize winner,
and peace activist, Linus Pauling, and
astronomer Carl Sagan.

Vanunu, a former worker at Israel’s top-
secret Dimona nuclear facility, told his story
to The Sunday Times of London in
October, 1986. He was later kidnapped in
Rome by agents of the Israeli intelligence
agency, Mossad, and taken to Israel.

Vanunu was convicted for treason and
sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. News
accounts said the Jerusalem District Court
justices rejected calls for a life sentence —
which carries a maximum 20 years — on
the grounds that “the accused showed signs
of regret in recent remarks” and that
Vanunu had already spent 18 months in
harsh solitary confinement.

But the trial, conducted out of the public
eye, has also drawn worldwide condemna-
tion and demands that Israel come clean on
what is essentially an open secret: that it has,
through a variety of illegal means, acquired
bomb-grade plutonium and has manufac-
tured nuclear weapons.

Robinson said that, combined with

_ recent actions such as the assassination, by

Israeli commandos, of Palestine Liberation
Organization official Khalil el Wazir pres-
ent “a shocking illustration of the extent to

which the situation (in the Middle East) has
deteriorated.”

Calling it an example of “state terror-
ism,” Robinson said he hoped the Cana-
dian government would demand an end to
the violence.

Vancouver alderman Libby Davies, who
with others joined Robinson in making his
announcement, said it is important that
Canadians learn of the little-publicized
Vanunu case. :

“Sometimes it’s important to remember
what an individual has done. We’re all part
of a very large movement, but here is one
person who has made an outstanding con-
tribution,” Davies said.

The Committee of Progressive Electors
alderman said it is “important for people in
Vancouver to take some action, and write
to their MP and urge their support and
write Canadian government and urge that
he be released, and support his nomination
for a Nobel Peace Prize.”

Hank Rosenthal, editor of Canadian
Jewish Outlook, said Vanunu’s action “is
an act for all of humanity, and transcends
national boundaries and the narrow goals
of any particular nationalism, including the
Israeli one.”

“What Vanunu has done is particularly
important for the prevention of nuclear war
because a tradition has been established
recently of individuals taking some con-
structive action where governments don’t,”
peace activist Dr. Tom Perry said.

He compared the action to that taken by
leaders of the International Physicians for
the Prevention of Nuclear War, who on
their initiative petitioned ina meeting Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev to unilaterally
cancel nuclear weapons testing, which the
Soviet Union did.

“Here’s an example of an individual who
did something that his government was not
yet prepared to do... .I think it is in the very
best tradition of human beings taking
responsibility for humanity as a whole. I
think he richly deserves the Nobel Peace
Prize,” Perry said.

Mordecai Briemberg, a local activist for a
Palestinian homeland, said that Vanunu
acted in the “best traditions of the Nurem-
berg laws.” The Nuremberg trials of Nazi
leaders after World War II established that
individuals have a personal responsibility
not to carry out crimes against humanity.

“What (Vanunu) did-was say ‘I choose to
act against nuclear war, I choose to make
known the world the dangers they face in
the case of Israel, because Israel had illegally
and secretly manufactured these wea-

pons,” Breimberg asserted.

TRIBLINE PHOTO . NAM voeTRAK