Israel
In 1986, a former technician, Mordechai Vanunu, at the Israeli nuclear facility near Dimona revealed information about the Israeli nuclear weapon program to the British press, confirming widely held notions that Israel had an advanced and secretive nuclear weapons program and stockpile. Israel has never acknowledged or denied having a weapons program, and Vanunu was abducted and smuggled to Israel, where he was tried in camera and convicted of treason and espionage.
Whether Vanunu was truly involved in espionage, per se, is debated: Vanunu and his supporters claim that he should be regarded as a whistle-blower (someone who was exposing a secretive and illegal practice), while his opponents see him as a traitor and his divulgence of information as aiding enemies of the Israeli state. Vanunu did not immediately release his information and photos on leaving Israel, travelling for about a year before doing so. The politics of the case are hotly disputed.
Read more about this topic: Nuclear Espionage
Famous quotes containing the word israel:
“appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Samuel 8:5.
Leaders of ancient Israel asking the last of the judges, Samuel, to appoint a king.
“Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy,
And with him is plenteous redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalm CXXX (l. CXXX, 7–8)
“Do you not see that so long as society says woman has not brains enough to be a doctor, lawyer or minister, but has plenty to be a teacher, every man of you who condescends to teach, tacitly admits before all Israel and the sun that he has no more brains than a woman?”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)