Is It Not Torture When the Prisoner is a Jew?

NewsRealBlog ^ | 12/21/2010 | Phyllis Chesler

[Sioux-san]

Why is this man still in jail? Why was this man forced to spend seven years in solitary? Why is he still confined, languishing, festering in jail for a total of twenty five years?

Solitary confinement is the most barbaric of punishments. Few people can withstand this form of torture without becoming very ill, both physically and mentally.

Am I talking about the Soviet Gulag? Or about some hell-hole in Afghanistan or Iran?

Last year, The New Yorker ran a piece about solitary confinement. The article concludes that this punishment amounts to torture, that it can even induce “acute psychosis with hallucinations.” The article describes the cases of two political prisoners or prisoners-of-war: AP’s Middle East correspondent, Terry Anderson, who was put into solitary by Hezbollah in Lebanon for six years. Anderson “felt himself disintegrating”; his mind went blank; he had hallucinations; he started to become “neurotically possessive about his little space”; he felt his brain was “grinding down.” He also describes Senator John McCain who said that “solitary confinement crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more than any other form of mistreatment. And he said that even though he had his arms broken and was subjected to other forms of torture.”

Clearly, the New Yorker’s man, Atul Gawande, opposes this practice.

He does mention the cases of two unnamed inmates: one was convicted of felony-murder and spent five years in isolation. After a few months he began talking to himself, pacing back and forth, having panic attacks, and hallucinating. After a year he was hearing voices on the television who were talking to him. In another case, Gawande describes another American man in solitary whose initial crime was armed robbery and aggravated battery but who then “misbehaved” at a medium security prison for which he was was put in solitary or in isolation for almost fourteen years. This man stopped showering and began throwing his feces around his cell. He became psychotic.

Even he was released after he served his sentence of fifteen years.

Gawande does not mention the man I have in mind, a man whose living head is on a pike in the public square for all to see—a message, a warning to us all—a man who killed no one.

I am talking about Jonathan Pollard.

What crime did he commit? Did he spy against America for the Soviets or for the Chinese communists? Did he do so for money, sex, or for ideological reasons? American Navy Seaman, Michael Walker, operated a Soviet spy ring; he was arrested in 1980, pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 25 years and released after 15.

CIA Agent David Barnett sold the Soviets the names of thirty American undercover agents. He was arrested in the mid-1980s, sentenced to only 18 years, and paroled after only ten years. In 2001, John Walker Lindh, who joined the Taliban and received training as a terrorist in Pakistan, was captured and sentenced to 21 years. Kedar Helmy, an Egyptian-born American, transmitted classified materials to Egypt used in a joint weapons program with Iraq to vastly increase the range of ballistic missiles, including Scud missiles, which were later fired on U.S. troops during the Persian Gulf War.” In 2010, Chinese-American engineer Dongfan “Greg” Chung operated as a spy for China against America for thirty years. He received a 15 year sentence.

What is “different” about Pollard? Unlike Walker, Barnett, Lindh, Helmy, and Chung, Pollard is the only Jew. The others are Christians or Muslims or atheists.

What else is different? Pollard is the only one who shared secrets with an American ally with whom America was not and is not now at war. Pollard shared information with Israel.

What else is “different” about Pollard? There is one more thing. Like the Rosenbergs, Pollard was the proving grounds, the scapegoat, for another man, also a Jew, but a Jew who did not like being mistreated as a Jew, as a Jew who wanted to prove how tough the was or how hard he was ready to be on another Jew and on the Jewish state.

The Rosenbergs (who were guilty) had their Jewish judge who chose to have them electrocuted. Pollard, poor Pollard, had Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger whose paternal grandparents were Jews and whose father was a Jewish lawyer. When Caspar was a boy, he was taunted for supposedly being Jewish. His mother was a Christian and he was raised as a Christian. When he visited Yad Vashem, the Memorial to the Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, he said loudly: “I am not a Jew.” He said this in response to the guard who told him that “he, too, would have been murdered in the Holocaust.”

Weinberger submitted a 40 page affidavit in which he insisted that Pollard should be harshly sentenced. In later years, he said that “the Pollard matter was comparatively minor.” Weinberger is now dead and no doubt roasting in Hell. One wonders: What did he have over CIA head George Tenet (who threatened to resign when President Clinton suggested pardoning Pollard)? What did Weinberger have over President Bush’s Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom went along with Weinberger’s revenge?

Where are all the anti-torture activists on Pollard? How can it be that our most prominent American political prisoner has never made it onto their honor roll of causes with which to browbeat America?

Yesterday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formally asked President Obama to pardon Jonathan Pollard, at long last. I stand with him in this matter.

Update: Based on a recent article by Leo Rennert which critique’s yesterdays’ coverage of the Pollard case, “ it is now clear that Pollard, in failing health, has been the victim of a CIA cover-up of a massive intelligence failure, with the agency blaming Pollard for the damage caused by a real “mole” inside the CIA who passed to Moscow the names of more than a dozen U.S. informants in the Soviet Union — namely Aldrich Ames, the head of CIA’s Soviet-Eastern Europe division, who fingered Pollard to keep the CIA from discovering his own treachery.. The CIA did not discover Ames’ role until well after Pollard was behind bars and it still isn’t willing to acknowledge its mistake in blaming Pollard for Ames’s crimes.”

[Jack Black]

Weinberger is correct. You are Jewish if your Mother is Jewish. Jewish-ness does not flow from your Father. Sorry Phyllis.

Well that's the Jewish religious rule for who is Jewish. Needless to say those were NOT the rules that the Nazi's used.

The Nazi's had their own rules for determining who was a Jew, it was based on genetics, and codified as a part of the Nurenberg Laws.

Chart used by Nazi's to determine who was a Jew

According to Nazi standards Weinberger would be considered a 1/2 Jew, or a "Mischling". In Germany proper this category suffered discrimination, but not exile to the death camps. In most of occupied Eastern Europe they were lumped in with full-blooded Jews and treated accordingly.

The guard's comment wasn't far off from the likely treatment that Weinberger would have received as a mishling in the Czech region where his family hailed from.

Weinberger was a great American, and the author is way out of bounds saying he's "in hell". What a crass and stupid thing to say. Why? For that nit-sized annoyance of Iran Contra? Weinberger did more for America than most of us could ever imagine. Among many other proud accomplishments he was a Captain on Gen. MacArther's staff in WW2.

Based on the authors comments I discount whatever else she has to say.

[ops33]

Actually, he pled guilty. He also passed classified info to South Africa, Pakistan, and Australia. Doesn’t sound like someone who merits clemency.

[Lurker]

Doesn’t sound like someone who merits clemency.

He merits execution.

[SamuraiScot]

“I am not a Jew.” He said this in response to the guard who told him that “he, too, would have been murdered in the Holocaust.”

Weinberger is correct. You are Jewish if your Mother is Jewish. Jewish-ness does not flow from your Father.

I don't know the details of the conversation, but the statement attributed to the guard is correct. The Nazis did not obey Jewish law, oddly enough. They went after people who had Jewish blood, even if it was from their fathers. I knew some in just that situation.

[Jean2]

“Weinberger is correct. You are Jewish if your Mother is Jewish. Jewish-ness does not flow from your Father. Sorry Phyllis.”

I agree that Pollard committed a crime and should be appropriately punished regardless of who he is spied for.

BTW for the record; Weinberger is not entirely correct. According to the Nazis anyone with a drop of Jewish blood was considered a Jew and therefore fair game.

[Riodacat]

Not every Jew is a victim..

[MeganC]

Israel is a country with who we frequently have common interests. We may even have treaties with them, but their actions render them more as our enemies than as our allies. Case in point: an actual ally would not employ people like Mr. Polllard.

In general, I’m pro-Israel. But I’m more pro-USA than I am pro-Israel. They don’t get a pass from me for their actions against my country.

[The Comedian]

He committed Espionage and was convicted in a US Court of Law. Personally I'd let him out of prison just long enough to hang the son of a bitch.

This ^

Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

[papertyger]

Your thread was pulled because it started a flamewar according to the Admin Moderator.

Normally, reposting such as you have done is punishable by revoking your posting privileges.

I assume you have not been so punished because you were not informed as to the reason. Nevertheless, I am not engaging in the argument on this thread because it would seem the Moderator will pull the thread if *both* sides engage in the flaming.

As such I post only on this thread as a form of protest.

[PAR35]

Why is this man still in jail?

He's a traitor. He got off easy. Now if you want a poster child for police state treatment, look up Mordechai Vanunu.

[PAR35]

According to the Nazis anyone with a drop of Jewish blood was considered a Jew and therefore fair game.

Historically inaccurate.

[Sioux-san]

I did look up Vanunu and this is what I found - now there is a true traitor to his country:

Mordechai Vanunu seeks the destruction of Israel. In that he is not alone, since he is a convert to the Anglican branch of Christianity, a church whose clergy preach anti-Jewish hate with a vehemence that would do justice to the Dark Ages. For the British Jewish community this means that Jewish cemeteries are regularly vandalized, Jews are beaten on the streets and synagogues are burnt down. Anglicans teach that God hates all Jews because all Jews are “Christ killers”.

Vanunu sold Israel’s atomic secrets to a British hate sheet also known as The Sunday Times in 1986. That so-called newspaper is a notorious anti-Jewish tabloid which spreads the same old canards against us, the Jewish people, that have been around these 2,000 years and have led to so much persecution, hate and bloodshed (Jews bake matzohs with the blood of Christian children, Jews poison the drinking supply, Jews rule the world etc.).

Vanunu had gone to Australia in 1986, where he unveiled to a local journalist that he had in his possession numerous photographs of the Dimona nuclear reactor, where he had been a technician for nine years. The Sunday Times richly rewarded Vanunu for his story. With the money he flew to Rome, Italy, to meet a woman he had first seen in London. Arrived in Rome, this “American tourist” lured him to the outskirts of the city, where she said her sister had an apartment. On entering the flat, Israeli agents, of whom “Cindy” was one, overpowered Vanunu, and brought him by ship to Israel, where he was imprisoned for treason eighteen years, ending in May of 2004.

It may be recalled that the American traitors such as Aldrich Ames were given life terms for their treason.

On his conditional release from prison, Vanunu complained to the media sharks that he could not leave Israel. This condition for his release is of course necessary because Vanunu may have more secrets to tell his bigot supporters. More important is that Vanunu has announced that he would like to travel in the Arab countries, in Europe and in the U.S. and campaign for the destruction of Israel. It is noteworthy that Vanunu became an anti-Israel propagandist when he studied philosophy with Professor Evron Pollakov at Ben Gurion University. Believe it or not, the “liberal” academic establishment in Israel is as anti-Jewish as they are here.

Vanunu is now the “darling” of the anti-Jewish haters in Europe and in the U.S. All of these haters scream that Israel should divest itself of its nuclear deterrent, knowing full well that without the nuclear bomb Israel would be overwhelmed by its 280 million Arab neighbors and utterly destroyed. Even that great appeaser Shimon Peres told a CNN interviewer “For us the issue (atomic deterrent) is really to be or not to be.”

http://www.jbuff.com/c061004.htm

[Elendur]

As you say: “Ms. Chesler asks a very appropriate question...” Phyllis Chesler is a very courageous journalist, on a wide range of topics.
Especially topics the main stream media will not touch... and then she calls them (Amnesty International, N.O.W., etc.), on their hypocrisy.

Like this, about the Harry Potter actress hiding in fear:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2646446/posts

http://netwmd.com/blog/2010/12/22/6600

[Sioux-san]

It is very alarming how the indefensible is defended and those who need some mercy continue to be crucified.

[Excellence]

If Pollard was set up, then it is an injustice for him to be in prison. If there's anything in the wikileak docs that would vindicate him, then justice is served. If anybody has docs on 0dingobama, great!

[PAR35]

Feeling as you do, why don’t you exercise your right of return? It’s pretty clear where your loyalties lie.

[Sioux-san]

My loyalties lie 100% with that most famous of all Jews - Jesus Christ!

I can only assume what your politics are, and it doesn’t seem to lie with Israel’s right to exist and defend itself.

[PAR35]

I have no problem with Israel defending itself as long as it does not endanger American security to do so. When they induce American citizens to turn traitor, or kill American sailors, however, I’ll put our interests over theirs. You, by your posts, appear to be an Israel firster.

[Sioux-san]

I have provided ample evidence that your entire premise is in error. No lives were lost due to anything Pollard did. Weinberger later said that what Pollard did was “minor.” The disinformation put out by our Govt. and the KGB and others who didn’t want their assets compromised used Pollard as the goat. That has been proven but you refuse to update yourself. This has nothing to do with “Israel first.” You’ve been to Russia - are you sympathetic to them? If so, that explains a lot.

[PAR35]

I’ve been to a lot of places - hope to get to more. I don’t object to the Russians doing what is in their interest any more than I mind the Israelis doing what is in their interest. But when an American sells out to either one, they need to be locked away for life, preferably a short one.