Jonathan Pollard and the LA Times

As the LATimes editorial has it:

Pollard's lawyers have petitioned Obama for a commutation of his sentence to the time he already has served. What criteria should
influence the president's decision? The fact that Pollard spied for a friendly nation isn't an extenuating factor; even if Israel and the United States have identical interests, which isn't always the case, the decision to share intelligence with another country belongs to the political leadership of this nation, not to individual government employees.

[And the Justice for Pollard Committee points out: Jonathan Pollard is the only person in the history of the United States to receive a life sentence for spying for an ally. Proportional justice, or "equal justice for all" which is supposed to be guaranteed by the American Constitution means similar sentences for similar offenses. There is no reasonable or acceptable way to explain or justify why the median sentence for this offense is 2 to 4years for everyone else, but for Pollard it is life.]

But there's another consideration:

After World War II, certain Germans, Nazis or not, were allowed to enter the US and serve America in one way or another.

Like Werner Van Braun:

In his 20s and early 30s, von Braun was the central figure in Germany's pre-war rocket development programme, responsible for the design and realization of the deadly V-2 combat rocket during World War II...In November 1937 (other sources: December 1, 1932), von Braun joined the National Socialist German Workers Party. An Office of Military Government, United States document dated April 23, 1947, states that von Braun joined the Waffen-SS (Schutzstaffel) horseback riding school in 1933, then the National Socialist Party on May 1, 1937, and became an officer in the Waffen-SS from May 1940 until the end of the war...After the war, he and some of his rocket team were taken to the U.S. as part of the then-secret Operation Paperclip. In 1955, ten years after entering the country, von Braun became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

There were many more like him via Operation Paperclip.

I would never compare Jay Pollard to a Nazi war enemy of America but I would compare the woeful injust atttitude and practice of US authorities to Jay as compared to Van Braun.

It's time Jay was released - without any need to plead that the act will assist American relations with Israel.

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