Recalling Pollard

Some are hoping for a release of Jonathan Pollard within this latest framework of US-brokered negotiations as a quid pro quo.

I doubt Jay would agree but while we're on the topic, my previous thinking:


1.

Jonathan Pollard Is My Purim Hero
The Jerusalem Post - Purim, 1989 - (March 1989)

Earlier this month, a small get-together was held for the members of the Israeli intelligence operation in Egypt who were incarcerated there for 13 years. They obtained their release to Israel only following the Six Day War. The operation, actually quite unintelligible in hindsight, was dubbed the "Dirty Business" [and later, "the Lavon Affair"] when no one came forward to take responsibility at the time. Subsequently, the government fell. In the 1960s, when David Ben-Gurion reopened the investigation into the affair, it tore Mapai apart and led to recriminations that reverberate to this day.

At this month's gathering, Meir Amit, former Mossad head, stated that the release of the Egyptian Jewish victims of a botched operation could have been effected sooner if not for "neglect and idleness." His words are a woeful condemnation of the mindset and the insular thinking which marks the peculiar character of the average Israeli politician as well as our own special brand of civil servant.

Coincidentally, this month also marked a date linked with another Israeli security operation with unsympathetic parallels (not to mention a possible rerun of the political fall-out). On March 5,1986, Jonathan and Anne Pollard were sentenced to terms of life and five years imprisonment respectively, for their roles in providing Israel with highly sensitive American intelligence data relating to Arab military buildup. Many of the details have undergone purposeful misinterpretation, such as the impression that Ann Pollard was a spy - which she wasn't.

Be this as it may, Jonathan is in his fourth year of solitary confinement. Ann is the sole female resident of the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota. She weights 89 pounds, down from 165, and an esteemed gastroentrologist of 30 years practice termed her condition behind bars as "lethal" and "malignant." Her prison doctor has taken away all medication to prevent addiction. Magistrate Janice Symchych refused her a medical furlough to obtain private care.

Having been involved with the Pollards for some time, I think that Purim is a particularly poignant time to reconsider some aspects of their tribulations. In fact, I consider Jonathan Pollard my Purim hero.

In the Meggilah, Mordechai does not mince words in making it clear to Esther that her position as queen is not for her own personal convenience. Her silence in the face of a threat to the Jewish people will not only be unhelpful in the extreme but it will not aid her either: "Do not imagine that you will escape...for if you are quiet...you and your father's house will perish." (4:13-14)

Jonathan Pollard was not silent. Reviewing the material that passed through Naval Anti-Terrorist Intelligence, and knowing the less-than-enthusiastic appreciation some of his fellow workers had for Israel and Jews, he decided to do something. Rereading his letters and memoranda contained in the book, "Pollard: The Spy's Story," as well as the letters he sent me, it is obvious that for all his amateurish espionage habits, Jonathan Pollard is acutely aware of the historical dimensions of what it means to be a Jew.

Indeed, Jonathan is a "Prisoner of Zion" in the keenest ideological sense of the expression. Zion had made him its prisoner. The Zion of Jewish survival, the Zion of the centrality of Israel to Jewish existence, had placed upon his shoulders the awesome responsibility of circumventing laws to assure that chemical weaponry data, among other items of security intelligence withheld from Israel despite a signed American-Israeli agreement, would get to Israel.

Without the information supplied by Pollard, Israel would have been offset in the battle against the PLO - the same group Secretary of State James Baker is nudging us to negotiate with. It was Jonathan's initiative, and he had no illusions as to the gravity of his actions.

However, now that he is a prisoner, Israel's official policies seem so inadequate, so unconcentrated, that the Zion of Jonathan's vision has become an active partner in keeping him a prisoner, rather than gaining his early release, and, at the very least, halt the terrible physical waste US prison and Justice Department officials are bringing down on his wife, Ann, which MK Rabbi Eliezer Waldman witnessed in his visit to her on March 9 in Rochester.

Indeed, Israel's silence, despite its private humanitarian appeals on their behalf, is unworthy of Jonathan's very public suffering. The rejection of his request for Israeli citizenship bordered on the callous.

An exegetic interpretation of another verse of the Meggilah may provide the direction for a reordering of priorities. Chapter Five opens with the words: "Esther donned royalty." A jaded eye might have expected to read that Esther would prefer a ecdysiast duplication of Vashti to attract the king's favor. My reading, though, is that the message is that it is useless to shed any outer layers or to bend the knee. To stand tall with all the Jewish finery one possesses - to don royalty - is the proper response.

Jonathan Pollard's prison clothes as well as the bars on his cell and walls surrounding him are all external. Jonathan is garbed with an internal suit of belief, commitment and faith. His actions were a donning of royalty.

Will we in Israel, the cause of his privations and object of his sacrifice, learn to dress in the correct fashion?

Purim is not only a happy holiday but a heroic one as well. Simply put, Jonathan Pollard is our hero.

Yisrael Medad is a parliamentary aide for the Tehiya party.

2.

Purim Plea for Pollard
The Jerusalem Post - March 4, 1993

Exactly six years ago, on March 4, 1987, Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life imprisonment in the US District Court in Washington, D.C., by Judge Aubrey Robinson. Despite a plea agreement with the prosecution, the judge meted out the most severe sentence ever in a case where an American citizen admitted to acting on behalf of an American ally.

Pollard was found guilty on one count of delivering classified information to a foreign government. Nevertheless, US government officials colored his activities to such an extent that the impression was conveyed to the media, the public and the sentencing judge (via Caspar Weinberger's notorious memorandum on the day prior to sentencing) that a venal traitor was in the dock. In addition, Weinberger, who was recently pardoned by former president George Bush for his Iran-Contra involvement, recommended to Judge Robinson that Pollard never be paroled.

Arrested on November 21, 1985, Pollard had been an active intelligence agent for Israel for a period of 18 months. He is now in his eighth year behind bars; he has spent the last five and a half of them in solitary, 23-hour confinement. For almost a year, he was imprisoned in a ward for the criminally insane. The first month there he was kept stripped naked.

I visited with Jonathan for three hours last year in the Marion Penitentiary, a maximum security facility. He is on a non-meat diet, because the prison authorities cannot properly provide kosher meals fit to eat. His telephone privileges are curtailed and limited. His cell, three floors down and windowless, has overflowed with sewage on more than one occasion, posing the additional dangers of HIV contamination, to say nothing of the accompanying physical discomfort.

In comparison, Abdelkader Helmy, an Egyptian-born US naturalized citizen convicted of illegally exporting material used in the Stealth airplane for Iraqi aircraft missiles and rockets, received 46 months and was deported before the end of his jail term. Clayton Lonetree, convicted on 13 counts of espionage for the KGB, was sentenced to 30 years, but his sentence was set aside on appeal after five years. Sharon Scrange revealed the names of CIA operatives to a Ghanaian agent, and was jailed for two years.

Pollard only went to the courts to reverse his sentencing and to vacate his plea-bargain after his wife was released. Indeed, Anne was the only spouse of a convicted agent ever to be jailed on the minor charge of an after-the-fact accessory to the possession of security-related documents.

The Federal Appellate Court, in a majority decision, rejected Pollard's arguments that the government had acted unfairly and broken faith with him even while terming his sentence "harsh." The dissenting judge, the sole non-Jew, gave vent to his emotions and claimed there had been a "fundamental miscarriage of justice." Referring to the government's behavior, Judge Williams quoted Shakespeare's lines in Macbeth: "Be these juggling fiends no more believed ... that keep the word of promise to our ear, and break it to our hope."

UNDOUBTEDLY, a major factor in keeping Pollard behind bars and, indeed, originally facilitating the US government's vicious prosecution, was and is the response of the organized American Jewish community.

The refusal of high-profile groups such as the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC), the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress to act on Pollard's behalf, claiming the issue is not a Jewish one, is difficult to grasp. Morally speaking, it is probably the most callous decision of non-intervention made in the last 50 years.

In contradistinction, last December, almost 700 Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist American and Canadian rabbis published a plea for the commutation of Pollard's sentence. Other major groups such as the B'nai B'rith, Hadassah and the WJC have joined the campaign for Pollard's release to time served.

The US Supreme Court's rejection of Pollard's appeal has stirred the hearts of formerly indifferent men and women. It is notable that outstanding Christians - clergy, nuns and laymen - have been in the forefront in the Pollard campaign for years.

One more front must be addressed. Just days prior to his leaving office, Yitzhak Shamir signed a letter to president Bush asking that Pollard be pardoned. This was a major turnabout in the Israel government's behavior.

Pollard filed for Israeli citizenship years ago, but official instructions were that the request be denied. Israeli consular officials were not to get involved. Support was limited to other behind-the-scenes efforts involving, to their anonymous credit, some of the highest officials in government.

The time has come, however, for Prime Minister Rabin, who is not unfamiliar with the case, to appeal directly and unequivocally to President Clinton, requesting that he commute Pollard's sentence. Such a humanitarian act by the new president - who during the election campaign promised to review the case - would be very fitting.

Even the villain of the piece, defense secretary Weinberger, has made it known that he feels Pollard, if released, would no longer present a security risk. A commutation could be achieved if the Israeli government openly made known its desire that Pollard be freed.

Jonathan Pollard sacrificed himself. He acted in the perceived spirit of the 1983 Executive Agreement signed by president Ronald Reagan, which was to assure Israel's survival. He revealed to Israel data on Syrian and Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear buildup. He was privy to Weinberger's reports to the Saudis on US defense systems sold to Israel and other covert operations inimical to Israel. He disturbed an FBI operation called SCOPE, revealed in the Wall Street Journal on January 17, 1992, to maintain surveillance on Jews in government service.

Purim tells the story of Jewish pride and the intervention of leadership (Esther and Mordecai). How fitting it would be were the campaign to free Pollard to move into a different phase - one of responsible public protest, firm diplomatic demands and wide-ranging pressure. Jonathan Pollard deserves that support in so many ways.