This is an issue I've kept quiet about for a long time. I really have little constructive to say about it, to tell the truth. But I've now been provoked into putting my $.02 in. I guess I'm easily provoked.
Background: Jonathan Pollard was a U.S. naval officer who, back in the early 1980s, took advantage of his position to pass highly classified information to Israel about Iraqi offensive plans and capabilities (against Israel) that our government preferred to keep to itself. Then he got caught.
The Pollard case is a messy one. I don't have the time or the inclination to embellish or annotate it right now. A quick search, though, will reveal more commentary than you can sift through in a year. The long and short of the matter is that Pollard's information was apparently instrumental in facilitating Israel's defensive meaures against Saddam Hussein prior to the near global awakening to the threat posed by his regime. When his espionage was revealed, though, Israel denied that Pollard was working for them and continued to deny it publicly for years.
But secretly, Israel turned over extensive documentation of his work to the US government under a solemn pledge that the documents wouldn't be used to convict him. At the same time, Pollard agreed to plead guilty to the only charge against him (one count of delivering classified information to an ally) in return for the government's promise not to seek the maximum sentence.
As a result of a secret memorandum sent by then Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger to the judge, Pollard received a life sentence. This, notwithstanding the plea agreement, the conditions under which Israel turned over the evidence in its possession (which was used in violation of those conditions) or the fact that no other spy for a friendly power had ever received more than a token sentence. Something unpalatable was clearly at work here.
Jonathan Pollard has now served more than 17 years in prison for his crime. His health is bad. There are anecdotes awash on the internet and elsewhere that he has been subjected to anti-Semitic abuse in prison. His release was half-heartedly bought and paid for by Benyamin Netanyahu at Wye and thoroughly squirreled out of by Bill Clinton on the grounds that he was afraid of George Tenet's response. The whole thing stinks. And yet. And yet.
What is it about Jonathan Pollard that makes every US administration from Regan to Bush to Clinton to Bush determined to keep him in prison while pardons abound for other criminals? What has made every Israeli government from Peres to Shamir to Rabin to Netanyahu to Barak to Sharon reluctant to lauch a full press for his release? Why do leaders of the American Jewish community consistently shy away from this subject? Is it anti-Semitism? Is it simply that Pollard doesn't have the charisma of a Mumia Abu Jamal?
I don't know the answer, but I suspect there is more to it than is readily apparent and I, for one, have had my fill of the incessant string of Pollard press releases and published letters castigating this or that public official, the Israeli government, the leadership of the American Jewish community and any writer who dares to question or criticize Pollard's complaints. Whether this stuff comes from him, his "network" or his wife (not the wife who was charged as his collaborator, but the one he married in prison after his divorce), it all reeks highly of W-H-I-N-E. Thus, yesterday, the following landed in my mailbox:
Jonathan Pollard's rabbi, the former Chief Rabbi of Israel, His Eminence HaRav Mordecai Eliyahu, has given his blessing to a proposal by Rabbi Shlomo Aviner calling on all of Israel to set a place at the table for Jonathan Pollard on Seder Night. His empty chair symbolizes the longing and hope of the Nation to see Jonathan (Yehonatan Ben Malka) free and speedily returned home to Israel.
No. No, thank you. I have no intention or inclination to set a place or even cast a thought in Mr. Pollard's direction at my Seder this year. I understand that his heart may have been in the right place. I understand that he may have contributed greatly to Israel's security (though the extent to which this is true remains unclear). I understand that, based on all the information I've been able to obtain, his punishment is way out of proportion to the severity of his actions as well as to that doled out to similarly situated criminals in this country. But I also understand that he committed an act of espionage against the United States of America. That's a serious crime.
The truth is that there doesn't appear to be more than a handful of members of "the Nation" who give a high hoot whether or not Pollard is set free and "returned" to Israel (where he's never lived and to which he only applied for citizenship after his arrest). Having been barraged by the ludicrous and, frankly, caricaturisticly religious appeals with which his organization has flooded my mailbox over the past few years, I know that I've lost most of my former interest in and sympathy with his plight. I guess this is the heart of my dilemma. It isn't the arguments of Pollard's detractors that have turned me from his cause. It's Pollard himself.
I do highly recommend a vist to the "official" website devoted to and authorized by Jonathan Pollard and, in particular, his latest letter to Israel's new Interior Minister, Tommy Lapid. Let me know what you think.
