And this week, released a year ago from prison and talking from his Jerusalem home even though under an Israeli gag order, he said “this is the thanks I got” for trying to bring peace and avert a nuclear disaster.

Forgotten and left for dead in a cold and dark Israeli jail cell, Vanunu ended up there almost 20 years ago by revealing what was termed “classified state secrets” when in the mid 1980s, he blew the whistle on secret Israeli intelligence information about a hidden arsenal of 200 nuclear weapon, an arsenal he claims that has grown larger today.

Sadly admitting he was disappointed the “world didn’t do more” to come to his rescue, he said “all is forgiven now,” as he plans to pick up the pieces of his life and vigorously continue speaking, writing and talking about world peace by trying to stop the spread of nuclear weapons before it’s too late.

Although Vanunu is out from behind bars now, released April 21, 2004, he still remains a prisoner in a sense, the state demanding he be restricted from leaving Israel and from speaking to the press and public until at least April 2006. Recently, in March, the Israeli government tacked another year on his state prisoner status, as prosecutors continue to search for ways to put Vanunu behind bars.

However, on May 29, the long time peace advocate received his first partial legal victory of sorts when an Israeli magistrate ruled in his favor for the first time in more than 20 years, saying he wasn’t in violation of the state imposed traveling restriction when he recently traveled to Bethlehem in the West Bank.

The judge also decided charges of talking to foreign journalists could not stand, which could have landed Vanunu in jail for two years.

Recently, Ernest Rodker, head of a UK campaign to free Vanunu, claimed the ruling was a breakthrough.

“It’s the first time in his long history of persecution by the Israeli security services that their ridiculous charges against him have been seriously challenged,” said Rodker.

But even though Rodker’s hopeful, Vanunu isn’t completely out of the woods since the government has been left a window open by the judge to reformulate the 22 count indictment, seeing if Vanunu’s actions violated “Emergency Israeli legislation,” carrying a nine month prison sentence.

At present, Vanunu is still waiting for new charges to be filed.

But like a true peace advocate on a mission more important than life itself, he brushed aside his legal problems and flaunted the Israeli gag order again this week, like he has done numerous times in the past year, speaking openly on the telephone about Israeli’s growing nuclear threat and America’s lopsided foreign policy, slanted toward Israel.

“I would like to tell George W. Bush that if he is looking for nuclear weapons in Iran and Iraq, he should start looking right here in Israel,” said Vanunu in a telephone conversation this week from his Jerusalem home, adding Israel’s nuclear stockpile will only lead to others in the region obtaining the same weaponry, eventually leading to outright war.

Regarding the American invasion of the Middle East, he said:

“Of course, I am against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am against war period. But I want the American people to know that President Bush is lying to the people of the world about the motives behind this war and who really has the nuclear capability in the Middle East.

“Like I said, if he wants to find nuclear weapons in the Middle East, Bush should start looking right here in Israel because there is a huge stockpile.”

Emphasizing his intention was never to harm Israel when he blew first blew the whistle in the 1980s on the Israeli nuclear program, he said instead he felt an obligation “to protect the people of the world” from an impending nuclear holocaust, since he was privy to the Israeli nuclear buildup while working as a scientist on the program.

And now he says nothing has really changed, as Israel still is a “very real” nuclear threat and he still feels the obligation to warn the people of the world of the consequential danger.

“I want to today tell the people of the world that absolutely, without question, Israel’s nuclear capacity has grown since the 1980s when I knew then of 200 such weapons,” said Vanunu, adding the gag order is nevergoing to keep him quiet.

“I really don’t care about that (jail) as they have already taken much of my life away from already. I felt like I was dead so many times in jail, it doesn’t matter anymore. And besides, I have talked to numerous journalists and activists during the last year about spreading peace and not war and will continue doing so.

“I simply am not going to stop talking about ending the proliferation of nuclear weapons and what I consider to be a major threat to peace in the world. This is who I am and what I believe.”

Although Vanunu talks openly and wants to come to America, the Israeli government still monitors his words and movements closely, recently in March putting another one year restriction on his state prisoner status.

“I have suffered a lot for world peace. Sure I feel very bad that the world didn’t do more to help me all the years I was in jail, but I also realize that I am just one human being that stood up against a number of very powerful people,” said Vanunu.

Although it’s difficult to imagine the pain and suffering of a man imprisoned for so long, Vanunu penned numerous poems while being locked away in solitary confinement. Recently on an American web site dedicated to his complete vindication, he released one entitled “Buried Alive,” depicting what life in ‘the hole” is really like:

Solitary confinement is living in a grave

to live alone is living with yourself, talking to yourself in your mind remembering

yourself in the past, living the past in the present, living the past many times,

In the present time you are Dead. A dead man walking in his grave. To be alive

is to be free.

Here I am a blind man

my eyes, walls, can see

eight years far away from trees, flowers, sea, women, birds -freedom.

Now iron gates, doors, grills, cement in this concrete world solidifying me.

Only my mind, my spirit is free-free to remember why I am in prison but not

prison for my spirit, they cannot chain my mind.

And I am free to keep my belief

in my action against all psychological brainwash until I can fly from this state

prison - until my dead body will rise again from this tomb like an agent who

came back from the cold to serve the world in the war against nuclear Holocaust,

nuclear proliferation, against nuclear secrets...

to be free to live to be alive…

Besides the movements in both the UK and America to release Vanunu, Daniel Ellsberg and numerous living Nobel Peace Prize winners have also publicly called for Vanunu’s complete vindication and release.

Recently, famous American whistle blower Daniel Ellsberg released this statement about Vanunu’s case:

“Nineteen years ago, Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the secret nuclear weapons production facility at Dimona in Israel, did something that he was right to do, something that others with his knowledge of Israel's nuclear activities and their implications for Israeli security and democracy and for world order should have done earlier, or later. He revealed to his fellow citizens and to the world truths about these activities that had long been wrongly concealed and denied by his government.

“What he revealed was not merely that Israel was a nuclear weapons state; that had been known for more than a decade on the basis of widely-publicized leaks in the U.S. about official American intelligence estimates to this effect.

“Vanunu's photographs and interviews with the London Sunday Times revealed that Americans and all others had substantially underestimated the pace and scale of the Israel's secret and un-inspected production of nuclear materials and warheads, especially since the early '70's.

“New estimates on the basis of his revelations put the Israeli arsenal in 1986 at some 200 warheads (rather than 20), making it the third or possibly fourth largest nuclear power, ahead of Britain and probably ahead of France. After nineteen more years of production, that ranking remains valid, with Israeli probably possessing closer to 400 weapons.

“Did not Israelis, citizens of a democracy, and other nations of the world deserve to know this? Was not his example of truth-telling, at great personal risk, to be thanked and emulated?

Vanunu, who lives at the pilgrim’s hostel of the Anglican Cathedral in Jerusalem, is now in the process of writing a book, waiting for the day he can finally leave Israel legally, his desired destination being America.