Posted on 12/13/2013 9:56:36 AM PST by Kaslin
The expressions of shock and indignation that accompanied Edward Snowden’s revelations that the United States uses signal intelligence assets to spy on its allies were more than a little disingenuous. Everybody knows that everybody spies on everybody. If Germany’s spy agencies can, they are most certainly listening to the cellphones of friendly leaders from Washington to Paris. Allies routinely use signals intelligence, and human intelligence and everything in between to uncover information that their allies seek to keep from them.
In the case of the US and Israel, US government agencies have been involved not merely in spying against Israel, but in bids to undermine American public support for Israel almost since the establishment of the Jewish state.
According to a new history of the CIA’s involvement in the Middle East, America’s Great Game, reviewed this week in The Wall Street Journal, in 1951 Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA’s operations chief in the Middle East set up a fake anti-Israel lobby in Washington called American Friends of the Middle East. Its job was to weaken popular support for the Jewish state. The CIA’s anti-Israel front group operated for 16 years, until the fact that it was a CIA front group was exposed in 1967 by the far-left Ramparts magazine.
And this brings us to Jonathan Pollard, the American Jewish naval intelligence analyst who is now serving the 28th year of his life sentence for transferring classified materials to Israel.
Snowden’s revelations and the story of the CIA’s anti-Israel front group in Washington make clear that US indignation over Israel’s fielding of an agent in Washington was equal parts self-righteousness and hypocrisy. There was nothing extraordinary in Israel’s efforts to gain information that its American ally didn’t wish to share with it. Allies spy on each other. And they use sympathetic locals to achieve their ends. South Korean Americans have been caught spying for South Korea. Taiwanese Americans have been caught spying for Taiwan, and so on.
US prosecutors prosecuted, and US judges convicted these agents of friendly countries for their criminal activities. The average prison term meted out to such agents of friendly governments runs from four to seven years. Their average time served in prison is two to four years.
Pollard was different not because of what he did, nor even, necessarily because he transferred classified information to Israel rather than to Britain. Pollard was unique because he was an American Jew transferring classified information to Israel. And the discriminatory treatment he has received from the US government owes entirely to the same institutional anti-Jewish bias that caused the CIA to form the first anti-Israel lobby in Washington, just three years after Israel gained independence.
As former CIA director R. James Woolsey explained to National Public Radio in March, “I really take the view now that if someone says [Pollard] should not be released after 28 years, just pretend that he’s a Filipino American or a Greek American and pardon him. I see no reason why people should treat a Jewish American who spied for Israel on those grounds more harshly than they treat a Filipino American who spied for the Philippines or a South Korean American who spied for South Korea.”
Pollard’s prolonged imprisonment, and the fact that the criminal justice system has been used against him in such a profoundly discriminatory manner have brought about a situation where his only chance of early release is through a Presidential grant of clemency.
Cicero said it best:
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”
Pollard shouldn’t be treated any differently than other spies. They should all get life sentences (or a rope).
Obviously you miss the point. It was about bias and discrimination, as well as the destination for the material secrets.
Jews and Israel = triple time and still running.
Anybody/Anywhere else = 6 years.
This is a mental and conceptual pathology, not becoming to America, toward the Jews, for harder punishment.
No, you missed my point. Spies are spies, period. A spy from a foreign nation is bad enough. An American spying for a foreign country is both a spy and a traitor. All should be subject to the fullest punishment.
No reason Pollard should get a break because he was working for Israel. Ask anyone who was on the Liberty in 1967 how they feel about it.
Ask anyone who liberated Auschwitz how they feel about Bobby Ray Inman unilaterally withholding information from Israel that was theirs by treaty in retaliation for the destruction of the Osirak facility.
Addendum to my post #2.
Far too many State Department trough feeders are treasonous Arabists and should have been tried and executed.
his only chance of early release is through a Presidential grant of clemency.
Sounds like a carrot, looks like a carrot, maybe
J F’n K offered it to Israel?
This Pollard BS comes up here every once in a blue moon.
He was not simply spying for Israel. He sold info to South Africa and also attempted to see his info to Pakistan.
The information he was selling was some of the most acute information, including the top secret warfighting codes used by the United States.
Manipulating this as a Jewish discrimination issue is infantile and no better than Obama counting on the ignorance of the electorate.
Find that quote, buster. It isn’t there from any keyboard of mine.
The article addresses discrimination in punishment against Jews compared to all others. So did I. I didn’t like it. It stinks. Comprende?
Bump.
Compare, instead of empty posturing. How many Soviet spies got the treatment that Pollard received? How many Soviet/Cuban agents of influence have been jailed? Our institutions have been taken over by overt Communists and useful idiots. it’s been happening since the 1930s.
Pollard deserved a prison sentence, but 28 years, and still no end in sight, is completely unjust.
Let him go, Barack, even though you hate Israel and Jews, do the right thing.
According to their article, Pollard is eligible for parole in 23 months.
I agree! So, if the average prison term meted out to other spies runs from four to seven years, and the average time served in prison is two to four years, why is Pollard still in prison? The point is NOT what is a fair sentencing for someone found out to be spying, but being consistent when sentencing different individuals.
Source?
Allies spy on each other all the time and when caught usually get a slap on the wrist. Pollard's extremely disproportionate sentence is for no other reason than to make him an example for all Jews and their dreaded "dual loyalty."
Jews and Israel = triple time and still running.
Anybody/Anywhere else = 6 years.
This is a mental and conceptual pathology, not becoming to America, toward the Jews, for harder punishment.
You get it. Thank you.
Ask anyone who was on the Liberty in 1967 how they feel about it.
Ask anyone who liberated Auschwitz how they feel about Bobby Ray Inman unilaterally withholding information from Israel that was theirs by treaty in retaliation for the destruction of the Osirak facility.
YES!!!
Unfortunately Auschwitz was liberated by the Russians. I think it was Buchenwald that was liberated by us.
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