STATEMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL CITIZEN'S WEAPONS INSPECTION TEAM
Dimona, Israel, 22 September 1998.

We have come to Dimona today as a citizen's inspection team in response to the dictates of conscience and international law.

We have come to verify the presence of nuclear weapons and their components, first reported 12 years ago by the nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu and confirmed by scientists, journalists and others familiar with Israel's unacknowledged nuclear weapons programme.

If the production of the materials for such weapons at Dimona can be verified, this would clearly fall within the purview of the United Nations Security Council Resolution which calls for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction not only in Iraq but throughout the Middle East.

In assisting in the upholding of international law we are also heeding our obligations under the Nuremberg Principles which place on every citizen the duty to prevent crimes against humanity.

Here, as in similar factories elsewhere in the world, the making of a nuclear weapon is a crime against humanity. It is the building of a global gas oven. Auschwitz showed what humans are capable of. Hiroshima showed how that capability threatened the survival of humanity. Nuclear weapons join Auschwitz with Hiroshima.

Today, we heed the prophet Isaiah, who called on us to beat swords into ploughshares. We honour the wisdom of Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell, who warned us of the suicidal consequences of a nuclear-armed world. We follow the example of the women of Greenham Common, who took nonviolent collective action in the cause of peace.

We are Jews, Christians and people of no religion. We are citizens of Israel, the United States and Britain acting together as citizens of the world. All of us have acted against nuclear weapons or for peace in our own countries and elsewhere.

We have chosen Dimona because we are in Israel to honour the sacrifice of Mordechai Vanunu and to continue his work of nuclear disarmament.

We are acting now because this is the time chosen by citizens in many countries to conduct inspections of nuclear weapons facilities.

We act in a spirit of mutual respect for all the people of this region, knowing that they would be the first to suffer the disastrous consequences of an explosion or other accident at this aging, uninspected reactor, as occurred at Chernobyl.

And so, at the beginning of a new year, wishing peace, justice and security to all people, we call upon you, our brothers and sisters guarding the Dimona reactor, to assist us in this inspection. And in doing so, we ask you to set an example to Israel and all other countries to help to create a nuclear-free world.

Thank you,
Sam Day, Hal Carlstad, Art Laffin, Ruth Haviv, Scott Schaeffer-Duffy, Eurydice Hirsey, Felice Cohen-Joppa, John Landgraf, Barry Roth, David Polden.