The Woman from Mossad: The Story of Mordechai Vanunu and the Israeli Nuclear Program [Paperback]

Peter Hounam (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 9, 2000

After three years' military service, Mordechai Vanunu answered an ad for a control room job at the nuclear research center near Dimona. In 1976 he was assigned to Mochon 2, where he discovered the nuclear weapons program that he later divulged to Peter Hounam. Before his story could be published however, Vanunu met Cindy, a beautiful American woman who lured him to Rome. Caught in a trap, he was attacked by agents from Mossad (the Israeli secret service), drugged, and smuggled to Israel to stand trial for treason. Since then, Vanunu has spent more than 12 years in solitary confinement. In The Woman from Mossad, Hounam details the kidnapping and what happened to Cindy when she was exposed by the author. He also names governments that secretly helped Israel.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

One of Britain's best-known investigative journalists, Peter Hounam has studied murder and corruption in many countries. With The Sunday Times Insight Team he broke the story of Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistle-blower. In 1997, he exposed the dangerous world of international cigarette smuggling for BBC Television. In the same year, he won the What-The-Papers-Say Scoop of the Year Award. At age 55, he counts among his accomplishments the book Who Killed Diana? and an exposé of South Africa's nuclear weapons program.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Frog Books (February 9, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583940057
• ISBN-13: 978-1583940051
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.5 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,917,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ths story is told as an UNdisguised sympathy campaign, April 4, 2006

By 

Victor Levy (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Woman from Mossad: The Story of Mordechai Vanunu and the Israeli Nuclear Program (Paperback)

I preface my comments below by saying I truly enjoyed reading this book.

However, the editing in this book is terrible. I wouldn't attribute this to the author, as he seems like a phenomenal writer, but the typos are just annoying and sometimes led me to think I should discount the credibility of the book.

As for the substance, I think the author clearly writes this book from a viewpoint sympathetic to Vanunu; he writes as an advocate and not as an impartial objective journalist. To his credit though, he does make this agenda subtly but painstakingly clear on page one.

One thing I don't think is well-established is the author's assertion that Vanunu was acting purely for humanitarian reasons. This is taken as fact and without scrutiny by the author. He does not critically or sufficiently analyze Vanunu's alternative options in arriving at the conclusion that Vanunu had altruistic motives. Why DIDN'T he go to the IAEA first?? To me this would have been an obvious option, which even if it wasn't, the reason for discarding this option is not spelled out well enough other than for a lone short paragraph in the book. Given that this is the international body/watchdog set up specifically for the purpose of nuclear monitoring, I thought more analysis of the purported futility of this option was required.

Which brings me to my next point. One of the author's main criticisms of the treason charge was that Vanunu did not disclose the sensitive information to a foreign country, which is an element of that crime. Au contrare. While that claim is technically accurate, by publishing in a major international newspaper, the author glosses over the fact that in doing this Vanunu enabled disclosure of that information to EVERY (not just one) enemy of his country and that was a despicable, nation-abandoning act that deserves an even harsher punishment than he actually received (because he in fact committed **countless** acts of treason - one for every Arab and other enemy of Israel that benefited from this information). To me, that is the very definition of treason - a criminal charge whose purpose is intended to prevent individuals from harming the national security of the country to which the offender is a citizen. Vanunu did just that, and by the worst means possible, not only harming Israel's national security, but also damaging it diplomatically with its major allies.

To those who claim Israel was skirting international agreements by pursuing these weapons, that is in fact true. But you need look no further than a map of the Middle East and history books of that period describing bellicose declarations of the hostile Arab countries surrounding this small Jewish state to understand Israel's need for these weapons as a deterrent force, and know that their intended purpose was and still is defensive. This was the only way Israel could get them, and I think it speaks volumes, as an implied acknowledgement of this assertion as well as an attestation to the trust placed in Israel, that the civilized world's then-superpowers willingly turned a blind eye while having overt knowledge that these weapons were being developed by Israel. These countries welcomed Israel in The Nuclear Club because they knew it could be trusted as a responsible partner in harmonizing the Middle East's balance of power and serve as a long-term deterrent for other nations to think about seeking, producing and possibly detonating a nuclear bomb in the Middle East. Just look at what's happening today with Iran and you can clearly see the different attitudes expressed to their pursuit of the same, in light of that country's long and conceded history of terrorism-sponsoring (Hezbollah) and declarations of their pursued destruction of the Jewish State. To think that "equal opportunity" is the proper framework in which to analyze the propriety of a given country's pursuit of nuclear weapons is, I think, not only naive but incredibly outrageous.

I agree, if the author's assertions are in fact true, that Vanunu did not seem to be looking for money. But he damned well wanted notoriety, another human vice that unfortunately escapes an in-depth analysis by the author. (I think Vanunu knew full well that his offer to remain anonymous would have been a non-starter, for the reasons the author articulates very well.) He had revenge on his mind, too.

Those criticisms aside, I think this book has a fantastic discussion of the shocking game that is nuclear politics.

Last, I agree with the author that the later shameless decision by The Sunday Times to abandon Vanunu by not covering his legal defense costs is unequivocally an outright stab in the back and a black eye on this paper's otherwise internationally credible reputation. When someone gives you a scoop like this, as a paper I think you must undertake to unqualifiedly attempt to exonerate that individual no matter what the legal cost, and no matter how long that legal process may drag on and no matter what technicalities may not legally require you to do so. The fact that a contract was never signed to this effect also seems a little suspect to me, perhaps the result of deliberate oversight (a possibility not even remotely entertained by the author) rather than innocent scheduling conflicts as the author suggests, for the very reasons cited above.

21 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent piece of research, November 23, 2001

By 

Mark H. Gaffney (Chiloquin, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Woman from Mossad: The Story of Mordechai Vanunu and the Israeli Nuclear Program (Paperback)

(...) Hounam's book is a fine introduction. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about nuclear politics, and about nuclear weapons proliferation in the Mid East. Hounam's research has added some pieces of the puzzle, for example, how rogue parts of the US government supplied Israel with nuclear technology (for the control room of the Dimona reactor, in triplicate) in violation of official US policy. In other words the left hand of the US government hasn't known what the right hand has been up to. This insanity has helped produce the current crisis in the Middle East. For surely if anything has inspired Saddam Hussein and the leaders of Iran to acquire nukes and other weapons of mass destruction it is the Israeli example; which is one of deception and contempt for the international community.

Recently I received a letter from the nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu (who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year since 1987). In it Morde asked me to send him a copy of Hounam's book. This tells you everything you need to know. Get it. You won't be disappointed. (...)

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The truth about Israel's true agenda, September 10, 2010

By 

Ali K. Sabir "ali8500" (hamburg, new york United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Woman from Mossad: The Story of Mordechai Vanunu and the Israeli Nuclear Program (Paperback)

This book shows how dangerous the Israeli foreign policy is towards the United States and how they want to use the USA to destroy all the Islamic and Catholic countries because Israel fears they do not support the zionist movement. I'm not against the Jewish people most jewish people are also a victim of the zionist movements goals because they give the Jewish people a bad name with their global domination agendas. Sad what has been done in history for the zionist cause and all the damage it has done towards the Jewish people.