-by Rayna Moss, for The Israeli Committee for Mordechai Vanunu and for a Middle East Free of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons
Vanunu's adoptive parents, Nick and Mary Eoloff, arrived in Israel on December 9 and are appealing to the Israeli authorities to be allowed to visit their adopted son in prison. A previously approved visit was suddenly cancelled by unnamed "security authorities" 48 hours before their arrival in Israel. The Eoloffs have visited Vanunu twice previously, but have not seen him since September 1998. An official at Hashikma Prison in Ashkelon said that the cancellation of their visit had been ordered by the office of the Prisons Service, not by the prison administration. However, the head of the Prisons Service told reporters that his office had not made the decision to cancel the visit.
In an appeal that the Eoloffs sent to the Minister of Public Security, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the Commissioner of the Prisons Service, they stated:
"Please reconsider your decision to deny us visitation rights, granted by the sentencing court, to visit our son Mordechai Vanunu next week. Such a decision is at odds with our governments' agreement to honor civil decrees of Israeli and US courts. Such a decision may prove to be of international embarrassment to the new Labor Government. We may be constrained to ask our State Department to intervene on our behalf to enforce the current US-Israeli protocol."
Minister Rabbi Michael Melchior
The Knesset
Fax: +972-2-6753689
It is important to keep protests up, and send copies to Israeli embassies.