The American Jewish community’s response to Pollard’s self-evidently discriminatory parole terms has been muted.
Even before the dust settled on last Friday’s happy headlines proclaiming that after 30 years in federal prison, Jonathan Pollard was being released, we discovered that his release wasn’t the end of his sad saga.
Pollard’s parole conditions are draconian. For the next five years he will be under curfew, barred from stepping outside his apartment after 7 pm. He is prohibited from surfing the Internet. Anyone hiring him will be required to allow law enforcement authorities full access to their computers. Pollard already lost one job due to this condition.
Pollard is prohibited from leaving the US, or even from leaving New York. Even the smallest infraction on his parole conditions is liable to send him back to the slammer In other words, Pollard moved from a federal prison to house arrest.
The injustice screaming out from Pollard’s parole conditions force us to recall the long injustice he has suffered at the hands of very specific parts of the American establishment. The story that everyone wishes to put behind us, remains excruciatingly familiar.
From 1983 until his arrest in 1985, as a US naval analyst, Pollard served as an Israeli agent and unlawfully transferred classified information to Israel, a US ally. The normal prison sentence for Pollard’s offense is 2-5 years. Pollard was sentenced to life in prison.
Generally speaking, convicted agents of allied nations serve their prison sentences in minimum- security prisons under relatively easy conditions. Pollard spent ten years in solitary confinement at a maximum security prison.
Generally, prisoners receive early parole for good behavior and if they express sincere regret for their crimes.
Pollard was denied early parole despite the fact that he was a consistently exemplary prisoner and repeatedly – indeed continuously – expressed his sincere remorse for his offense.
Despite the fact that Israel is the US’s closest ally in the Middle East, none of the five presidents who served while Pollard sat in jail agreed to grant him clemency.
And today, President Barack Obama has made clear that he will not intervene with federal prison authorities to ease Pollard’s parole conditions or allow him to move to Israel.
The American Jewish community’s response to Pollard’s self-evidently discriminatory parole terms has been muted. Only Pollard’s lawyers and a handful of other voices have spoken out publicly against them. This is not in the least surprising.
For the past 30 years and still today, the Pollard affair has served as a warning to American Jewry. The Pollard case taught them that their acceptance as full Americans is conditional. In many ways, as Pollard, American Jewry has been on parole. The same forces that railroaded Pollard into a life sentence, and the same forces that are keeping him under house arrest today – can turn on a dime. Speak out too forcefully on Israel’s behalf, and you will be crushed like a bug.
If the message wasn’t clear enough, in 2004 we had the phony AIPAC spy scandal to drive it home.
The so-called spy scandal wrecked the careers and reputations of three innocent men – DIA analyst Lawrence Franklin, AIPAC policy director Steve Rosen, and AIPAC’s senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman. It besmirched the institutional standing and reputation of the largest American Jewish pro-Israel organization. It harmed the Israeli embassy. And it intimidated all Jewish Americans who supported Israel and served in the national security community.
The bottom line of the scandal, which unfolded over the course of five years, was that the FBI attempted to criminalize normal activities carried out by law-abiding, patriotic Americans who supported Israel.
Franklin transferred information to Rosen and Weissman just as federal officials trade information with lobbyists in Washington every day. He met with Israeli diplomat Naor Gillon, because dealing with Israeli embassy officials was part of his job. There was no criminal intent on the part of any of the people involved. The charges against Rosen and Weissman were thrown out.
And Franklin, who agreed to a plea bargain after his family was threatened, and was initially sentenced to 12 years in prison, had his term reduced to ten months of house arrest.
Pollard’s name lurked in the air throughout the sordid affair. The underlying message of the probe and the subsequent criminal trials was that as far as the powers that be in Washington are concerned, Jews who supported Israel while working on national security issues were inherently untrustworthy.
Outside Franklin, Rosen and Weissman, the primary victims of the fake spy case were the Jews in the Bush administration’s national security apparatus, who found themselves under around-the-clock surveillance, and AIPAC, which was tarred as the agent of a foreign government with nefarious motivations.
Not surprisingly, Pollard is the object of intense hatred by many Jews in Washington who blame him for their suffering. But of course, his punishment was far greater than his crime. The forces that tried to criminalize AIPAC and the Jews of Washington in 2004 were the same ones that sent Pollard to prison for life for an offense that should have landed him 2-5 years in the big house.
Pollard committed a serious offense. But he didn’t commit the original sin.
At any rate, the Pollard affair and the so-called AIPAC spy scandal both taught us that there are powerful forces in the American national security bureaucracy who do not like Israel and who believe that American Jews who support Israel are inherently disloyal. For these forces, who seem to comprise a permanent anti-Israel lobby in the State Department, FBI, CIA and Pentagon, unlike Italian Americans or Irish Americans who support their mother countries, Jewish Americans who support Israel are suspect.
This then brings us to Israel.
The Pollard affair’s lessons for Israel relate both to our relations with the American Jewish community and to the US government.
Israelis have always had a childlike tendency to view the American Jewish community as all-powerful. While it is true that the American Jewish community is more powerful than any other Diaspora community, it is far from all-powerful. The pressures exerted on the community in everything related to US Jewish support for the Jewish state require Israel to be careful about involving American Jews in serious disputes between Jerusalem and Washington.
This past summer we saw how hard it is for the US Jewish establishment to stand up for Israel, when doing so is the least bit controversial.
Although most major Jewish American organizations eventually announced their opposition to Obama’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran, it took a long time for them to do so.
And even after they announced that they opposed it, they bent over backwards to make clear that they harbored no hard feelings towards ostensibly pro-Israel lawmakers who decided to support a deal that guarantees that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons. AIPAC’s decision to host an event last month for Senator Chris Coons, a key supporter of the deal, showed just how eager American Jews are to move on and not hold anyone to account.
So too, the Jewish community’s failure to reject out-of-hand the mendacious claims that Israel is persecuting the Palestinians stem from a discomfort with an issue on which Israel and the administration are openly at odds.
As for the US government, generations of Israeli leaders have taken American declarations of ironclad devotion to Israel’s security at face value. When American leaders, like former president Bill Clinton or former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice raised the possibility of signing a mutual defense treaty with Israel if we gave up the Jordan Valley or Jerusalem, or the Golan Heights, many Israeli leaders – particularly on the Left – thought that it would be a good trade-off. After all, we can trust America.
And in many ways, we can trust America. For instance, the US is Israel’s largest military supplier. Many of our military platforms are made in the US. US military aid to Israel has been more or less steady for decades. The US is Israel’s only defender at the UN.
Because of the US, Israel has avoided becoming subject to economic sanctions and even military actions that would in all likelihood pass through the Security Council in the absence of a US veto.
Having the US as a strategic ally has enhanced Israel’s deterrent power in the region. As the US withdrawal from the region under Obama has shown, the vacuum formed by the US retreat from Iraq and from the Persian Gulf more generally has enabled the rise of forces from the Muslim Brotherhood to Iran to Islamic State that are all dedicated to the annihilation of Israel.
While Israel’s alliance with the US is real and significant, Pollard’s story exposes its limitations.
It warns us that while secretaries of state proclaim their eternal concern and friendship for Israel, there are officials whispering in their ears that Israel is the source of instability in the Middle East and that due to the support Israel enjoys from American Jewry, America’s ability to secure its interests in the Middle East is impaired. The weaker both US Jewry and Israel are, the better off America will be, they are told.
Unfortunately, more often than not, when Israelis aren’t pretending that these forces don’t exist, they tend to view them as all-powerful.
So it is that the same Israeli officials – again, predominately on the Left – who insist that Israel can trust US security guarantees because the US will never waver in its commitment to Israel, also insist that Israel must never act in opposition to the US. So long as the US opposes destroying Iran’s nuclear installations, Israel, they insist, must not raise a finger against them.
So long as the US supports a Palestinian state, they insist that Israel must carry on as if the so-called two-state solution is possible, let along good for Israel.
Obviously, both positions are simplistic and wrong. For the past 30 years, as Pollard suffered in prison, and Israel’s position in the US remained under constant assault by its opponents in the bureaucracy, Israel’s relations with the US expanded and deepened. The level of US popular support for Israel has grown from year to year.
Pollard’s story tells us that we need to grow up. The US is a great ally, but our alliance with America is no substitute for national power.
As an ally, we should take US concerns into account where we can, and act independently where we must. Pollard’s case was a great victory for our enemies in Washington. And they will score additional ones in the future. But so will our friends. And so will we.
@ babushka:
Not sure what this has to do with the Pollard saga. Elle King is a classless act. Adele is much better!
https://youtu.be/rYEDA3JcQqw
That’s one of her older songs…..She’s baaaaaack… with a new hit!
https://youtu.be/YQHsXMglC9A
1) Pollard is a hero and his lengthy incarceration was a function of Jew hatred, especially on the part of self-loathing Caspar Weinberger.
2) I like Paddy’s pathetic gross generalizations.
3) mammoth is right about Russia. To quote the great philosopher Tony Bennett, “When you lie down with pigs, you get up smelling like garbage”.
4) Laura is correct with her comment over on the Turkey thread – – there is no way America should have a mutual defense obligation with a jihadist nation.
5) Talent apparently skips a generation in the Rob Schneider gene pool because while he is painfully unfunny his daughter is absolutely terrific:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uLI6BnVh6w
@ Paddy:
Paddy, Really? None of the pathetic gross generalizations you made here are true, not one. You would by definition have to include a majority of Israelis onto YOUR “hates Israel” list, for starters. If you remove all of the contributions to Israel since 1948, from these “Israel Haters” of yours; there would be no Israel today. In addition, your prescription for an Israel Russia Alliance in place of the current arrangement would result in the same, NO ISRAEL. Russia is aligned with Iran, in case you did not notice, and Israel is in an unprecedented precarious position with The Russians in Syria. Do not believe reports that just because Israel and Russia have a communications line set up that Israel will not be hit at some point by some combination of adversaries from The North, especially with Turkey’s latest blunder and NATO’s alleged approval of the operation considered plausible or even likely by Putin himself. Putin may wish to help Assad re-acquire Golan, in order to save face. Putin’s assurances have a “very limited shelf life”.
What’s clear is that the atheistic West hates the State of Israel. This includes overlapping groups of most Jewish Americans, all communists worldwide, and both the EU and Democratic Party leadership. As America sinks under the waves of the dialectic, a Russian Alliance may make more sense for Israel. Both of you will be fighting Jihad for the rest of this century.
I can understand that, but in the context of the extremely close relationship between the Israeli and US militaries, it would seem that there is huge potential for confusion; a kind of blurring of the roles of the participants in said relationship. This would lead to an inability or inconsistency in the definition of who are “spies” and who are not – for either country. It seems that the US Military and the State Department are working against each other, to the detriment of keeping the enemy constantly at bay… or ultimately destroying it.
@ woolymammoth:I believe Glick makes a major contribution to this discussion. Her remarks about the Jewish community and their deficiencies are well understood to apply to a specific segment.
One item which she should include in future write-ups is the following: The arrest of a retired Army engineer irefocused attention on claims in Washington that Jonathan Pollard was not the only Israeli spy planted in the American military. Ben-Ami Kadish, 84, was charged with spying for Israel from 1979 to 1985.
The indictment included four counts of conspiracy relating to the passing of classified information to an Israeli official in New York between 1979 and 1985 and make direct reference to the case of Pollard, a former naval intelligence analyst who was convicted of espionage in 1986. According to the indictment, Pollard and Kadish shared the same operator: an Israeli official referred to in the indictment as “co-conspirator-1 (CC-1)” and since named in the press as Yosef Yagur.
Kadish’s arrest, more than two decades after his alleged espionage acts took place, appears to show that ever after Pollard’s arrest in 1985, suspicion remained in Washington about Israeli espionage against the United States. American officials involved in military and intelligence ties between the two countries told the media that rumors of an active Israeli spy network, or of a senior Israeli agent known as “Mega,” still hold currency within the American intelligence and counter-espionage communities.
[I was involved in this case as a member of the Justice Department/Defense Department security evaluation process. I certified to the following: 1. The allegations listed every document that Kadish had ever handled during that time period, and did not specify which had been allegedly transferred; 2. All of the documents dealt with logistics and were of “official use only” and/or “confidential “level. (None of the accusations about nuclear transfer even came close to making sense.) The disposition of this case showed that this was another attempt to smear Israel and the Jewish community and not a serious attempt at an actual espionage investigation/prosecution.}
Obama’s foreign policy blunders due to his hubris simply show his suicidal tendencies by warming relations between israel and Russia, whose determination to destroy ISIS in the face of wishy-washy US Administration policy exposes Obama’s false sense of invincibility. Let’s be clear: current US policy is that of an evanescent administration soon to leave office and does not make opposition unAmerican. A lamer duck cannot be imagined given the makeup of the Congress. His sense of arrogant executive order power will be wiped out by the stroke of a pen by the next President. All Bibi has to do is continue his successful holding action for another 13-odd months.
Pollard should have been released a decade ago and should be deported to Israel after the surrender of his United States citizenship.
It’s not unfair though for many Americans to believe Jewish Americans align themselves, religiously, to the Left, including their allegiance to Karl Marx, Leon Kerensky and Barack Obama. Their disproportionate support for the Hitler-Stalin Pact to destroy Poland still rankles.
We’ll see a majority once again voting for the most extreme Leftist presidential candidate, and even sacrificing Zion to their communist leanings. Israel and Jewish Americans have to come to terms with this political mess. AIPAC is the least of your problems.
It’s odd, but usually Glick gets the front page treatment at the JPost website. I didn’t see it today, didn’t know it existed until I saw it here.
Did she strike a nerve somewhere among editors at JPost? The comment above suggests there might have been some detractors
The American Jewish establishment has failed to acknowledge that our enemies are conducting non-stop psychological warfare while we fail to respond.
1. Jewish leaders have failed to mount a vigorous campaign to educate Americans to the immense help Israel is to America thus leaving the impression that Israel survives only because of U.S. support.
2. Jewish leaders are unwilling to ever confront U.S. officials over their ongoing treachery against Israel. The book “The Secret War Against the Jews” by Loftus and Aarons documented these ongoing betrayals. Instead of using this, and other such books, to confront our enemies, U.S. Jewish leaders chose to ignore it and to hide out.
@ Salomon Benzimra:
Actually Bibi only very reluctantly under Obama’s threats agreed to a two state solution with conditions he could live with but knew the Palestinians never would.
If a true pro Israel President would arise who would say it is up to the Israelis to decide what is best for them then Bibi would be free of this lip service to a two state solution.
All that said if Herzog/Livni were in the Prime Ministers seat they would favor a two state solution, even though they also do not really believe you can actually currently achieve one.
At first reading one may let this Glick piece pass as a mere repetition of 20 or thirty articles she penned over the last ten years. One would be mistaken to give her that pass. One such discrepancy, which I will highlight here and return to later for another is as follows, quoting Glick above: ” …Aipac’s decision to host an event for Senator Chris Coons, a key supporter of the deal(Iran Nuclear Deal) showed just how eager American Jews are to move on and not hold anyone to account…”
Excuse me, Caroline, are you certifiably insane, did you really think that AIPAC speaks for American Jews or were you trying to slander all of The American Jews who have absolutely no affiliation with AIPAC or any input into their executive decision making process(99%+), out of pure spite. I think you knew exactly what you were writing and it is repugnant. I do not have to prove my point, it is a fact. In case you did not know it, Morton Klein is an American Jew and has participated in AiPAC events as ZOA President. Morton Klein is not one iota removed from your own view on The Iran Nuclear Deal and has done more for Israel than you will ever do.That was an anti-Semitic comment, as per Ben Tekoa who stated, “…anti-semetism is lies about Jews…” .
As I have stated in this forum, within the last 72 hours, “Glick is a jerk”.
TO BE CONTINUED….
Caroline Glick says:
“So long as the US supports a Palestinian state, they insist that Israel must carry on as if the so-called two-state solution is possible, let along good for Israel.”
It implies that were it not for American support of a Palestinian state, the Israeli government wouldn’t support it either. I am not that sure about that.