Posted on 12/30/2013 8:55:31 PM PST by Star Traveler
Israeli PM will demand release of Jonathan Pollard, convicted of spying for Israel against US in 1987, reports say.
The Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu will link the release of former US naval intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard, convicted of spying against the US for Israel, to progress in the US-sponsored peace talks with the Palestinians, Israeli media reported on Tuesday.
The reports said Netanyahu would either demand Pollard's release when Israel signed a framework agreement, or as part of a prisoner exchange involving Arab citizens of Israel held for terrorist offences, who have always been excluded from previous agreements.
Netanyahu's office declined to confirm or deny the story, which was reported by most of Israel's most well-informed diplomatic correspondents – a favoured method of leaking sensitive information.
Netanyahu appeared to be responding to mounting pressure following revelations that Britain's GCHQ and America's National Security Agency had targeted then Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, his defence minister, Ehud Barak, and Barak's chief of staff.
Pollard was imprisoned in 1987 and has served longer than any other spy captured in the US. Repeated Israeli requests for his release have been ignored, although they have lately been joined by top US officials responsible for his prosecution, including Lawrence Kolb, deputy to then US defence secretary Caspar Weinberger.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Here’s an extensive thread on the Pollard issue ...
Report: Kerry Offers Pollard’s Release to Israel
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3105836/posts
I think we are headed for a deal to create a Palestinian state with Israel making territorial concessions.
Netanyahu will need to sell it to Israel and gaining Pollard’s release would be something he could use to justify the caving in.
I like the way Netanyahu is “sticking it to Obama” ... :-) ...
Netanyahu already knows what a LIAR Obama is and he’s NOT going to let Obama pull the same thing on him that Clinton did at the Wye River Memorandum.
Netanyahu is going to face down Obama and win!
Calls To Free Spy Jonathan Pollard Grow Louder
http://www.npr.org/2013/03/20/174867727/calls-to-free-spy-jonathan-pollard-grow-louder
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Free Jonathan Pollard - that’s something President Obama is expected to hear in Israel. In the 1980s, Pollard was a young, Jewish-American intelligence analyst who spied for Israel. He pleaded guilty; and after an alarming victim-impact statement from then-Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, claiming how much damage Pollard’s spying had done, he was sentenced to life in prison.
Calls for Pollard’s release are not new. What is new is how many Israelis and Americans have joined in the call, including people who used to oppose any leniency or early release for Jonathan Pollard. One such person joins us now. R. James Woolsey was director of Central Intelligence in the Clinton administration. He’s in New York, and joins us now. Welcome to the program.
R. JAMES WOOLSEY: Good to be with you.
SIEGEL: You opposed - or used to oppose Pollard’s release. What’s different now?
WOOLSEY: Passage of time. In - 20 years ago, when I’d just taken over as director of Central Intelligence in the Clinton administration, the White House asked several of us what we thought about clemency for Pollard. And I said I thought he had not been in prison long enough for the seriousness of what he had done. It had been about eight years, at that point.
But now, 20 years later, he’s been in prison solidly over a quarter of a century. And the only spies who are sentenced to - that way are basically, people like Ames and Hanssen, who got Americans killed and spied for an enemy. We’ve had several spies for friendly countries - we’ve had a Greek-American spy; we’ve had a Filipino-American spy; we had a South Korean-American spy - and they get sentenced to four to five years, six - seven, in one case - but not 28.
SIEGEL: Since prosecutors in the Pollard case claimed that he spied not just out of love of Israel, but for money; and that he was willing to sell things, they said, to Pakistan and to South Africa; does that put him in a different category from spies for friendly nations, and into the category of mercenaries who might have sold anything?
WOOLSEY: Well, most spies, there’s a mixture. Sometimes, the notion of allegiance is overriding and sometimes, money is; and sometimes, it’s a mixture. But whatever his motivation and however it mixed, Pollard didn’t end up getting - as far as I know - American agents killed the way Ames and Hanssen did, and the way people who’ve been sentenced to life in prison.
SIEGEL: We should say he was - Pollard was delivering classified documents by the valise load, every couple of weeks.
WOOLSEY: Yes, it was a lot of material. It was a serious spy case; there’s no doubt about that. I don’t mean to diminish that at all by saying that 28 years is enough.
SIEGEL: One thing that’s different about the Pollard case from either the Hanssen case or the Aldrich Ames case - or the other friendly nation spying cases - is, it relates to the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel. And for some American Jews, Jonathan Pollard was a poster child for everything that they do not want to be thought of the American Jewish community - that it tolerates dual loyalties, and doing things for Israel that are contrary to U.S. interests. You’ve encountered this argument, making the case...
WOOLSEY: Well, yes. Israel’s on the front lines and - whereas we’ve had a formal alliance with Greece since NATO was formed; we’ve had one with the Philippines for 60-some years, and with South Korea for 50, 60 years; formal alliances, and we don’t really have one of those with Israel. We just have a great deal of ties and close feeling, and strong sense of support. I really take the view now that if someone says he 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.
SIEGEL: Mr. Woolsey, thank you very much for talking with us today.
WOOLSEY: Thank you.
SIEGEL: That’s R. James Woolsey, who is the former director of Central Intelligence in the Clinton administration. He was talking about the case of Jonathan Pollard.
NSA spying revelations boost calls for Pollard’s release
http://www.jta.org/2013/12/23/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/snowden-revelations-boost-calls-for-pollards-release
TEL AVIV (JTA) — The disclosure last week that American intelligence spied on former Israeli prime ministers has given new momentum to the effort to secure a pardon for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several leading members of Knesset members have called in recent days for Pollard’s release following reports that documents leaked by former defense contractor Edward Snowden showed U.S. intelligence had targeted the email addresses of Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert.
Pollard’s case “isn’t disconnected from the U.S. spying on Israel,” Nachman Shai, the co-chair of the Knesset caucus to free Pollard, told JTA. “It turns out, it’s part of life. And what he did is a part of life.”
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein accused the United States of “hypocrisy” for holding Pollard, who as a civilian U.S. Navy analyst spied on the United States for Israel, even as it spied on Israeli leaders. Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said he wants the Israeli government to demand Pollard’s release and insist the United States cease its espionage operations in Israel. And opposition leader Isaac Herzog said Pollard’s punishment “has long passed the limits of sensibility.”
“We hope that the conditions will be created that will enable us to bring Jonathan home,” Netanyahu said Sunday at the Israeli Cabinet’s weekly meeting. “This is neither conditional on, nor related to, recent events, even though we have given our opinion on these developments.”
When Pollard’s crimes first came to light in the mid-1980s, his activities seemed like a major act of betrayal given the close alliance between Israel and the United States. But the Snowden revelations show that spying by the United States and Israel was a two-way affair, prompting a new round of calls for the release of Pollard.
Support for freeing Pollard represents a rare point of consensus in Israeli politics, with 100 Knesset members among the 120 signing a letter asking Obama to release Pollard, according to Shai. Eighty members signed a similar letter last year.
The truth will eventually emerge on the Palestinian state issue and Iran’s nuclear weapons program....
Bibi Netanyahu has the Lapid party to his left and the Jewish Home party to his right in the governing coalition.
Netanyahu’s Likud is the Israeli equivalent of the Republican Party, making conservative noises and speeches for sure but stopping short of conservative actions.
In the months ahead we will know if Netanyahu is standing up to Obama or is cutting deals with him, although I suspect the Likud propaganda machine will blow a lot of smoke to obfuscate what’s really happening.
If we end up with Iran having a nuclear weapon and Israel giving up land for a Palestinian state and “peace agreement” I will say Netanyahu was going along with Obama’s lead.
I don’t care what the spin coming the Netanyahu camp will be to justify the negative turn of events, I will say he was really in bed with Obama all the time if these events come to pass in the months ahead.
In regards to the DISPROPORTIONATE “time served” for Pollard ...
I would say it’s more like some kind of anti-Jew and anti-Israel thing going on here. You can especially see that when looking at comparative sentences for those who are not Jews.
Comparative Sentences
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/sentences.htm
Obama will cave. Just wait and see.
Like this sentence: “Friends don’t spy on friends” regarding CIA on the same day he demands Pollards release.
I’d make a comment, but you spammed your own thread so deeply nobody will even see what I wrote. Besides, it appears you are calling everybody antisemitic if they don’t agree with you 100%.
I would like nothing better!
Pollard should have been released a long time ago - instead President Clinton LIED to Netanyahu, at the Wye River Memorandum — saying that he would release Pollard, in order to get concessions from Israel — and then Clinton jerked the rug out from under Netanyahu and refused to release Pollard.
That was 15 years ago - October 1998!
Netanyahu is not going to be taken as a chump again — and certainly not by the likes of Obama!
When people do things DISPROPORTIONATELY against Jews and the State of Israel - thereby applying a double standard between Jews/Israel — yes, that’s either ANTI-SEMITISM or the corresponding ANTI-ISRAEL sentiment (which is a “cover” for Anti-Semitism).
The Jews have been subjected to this double standard and oppression for their entire history. And since the formation of the State of Israel, as the “homeland for the Jews” — many have substituted ANTI-ISRAEL sentiments and actions, in place of the long-standing ANTI-SEMITISM (and finding that it provides “cover” for their ANTI-SEMITISM).
The demand for Pollard’s release isn’t for the cause of “not spying” — but rather the release is called for, on account of the DISPROPORTIONATE time served by Pollard, compared to others who have served time for similar circumstances.
POLLARD’s case (in terms of the DISPROPORTIONATE time served) is nothing more than INSTITUTIONALIZED ANTI-SEMITISM and ANTI-ISRAEL sentiments and actions.
You’re convincing me. Maybe you’re right, and Pollard’s treatment has been DISPROPORTIONATE. The cold war was still going on at the time...maybe he should have been shot instead.
That would REALLY show how DISPROPORTIONATE the treatment of Pollard has been - “times two” ... :-) ...
This was posted in WorldNetDaily right after the attack on the USA on 9/11/2001 ...
Terror in the U.S. and the Jonathan Pollard case
http://www.wnd.com/2001/09/11023/
Essentially, Jonathan Pollard warned Israel that Saddam Hussein was planning to scorch the Jewish State with weapons of mass destruction. What is perhaps most shocking of all, though, is the fact that this vital information was being purposely withheld from Israel by the U.S., Israel’s closest ally.
Nevertheless, thanks to Jonathan Pollard, Israel was ready with gas masks and sealed rooms when Iraq attacked her during the Gulf War.
In warning Israel, Jonathan broke the law. He deserved to be punished. But the punishment has to fit the crime. The usual sentence for spying for an ally is 2-4 years. Jonathan is about to complete his 16th year of a life sentence, with virtually no possibility of parole.
Jonathan Pollard did not spy against the United States. He was never indicted for intent to harm the United States, nor for treason, though he has been falsely accused of both. He received his life sentence without benefit of trial, as the result of a plea bargain which Jonathan honored and the U.S. violated.
Jonathan received a sentence far harsher than most of those who spied for an enemy nation. Twentieth-century spies Michael Walker, Clayton Lonetree and Richard Miller, who spied for the Soviet Union and did inestimable damage to American national security, are all free men today. Only Jonathan Pollard, a Jew who spied for the Jewish State, remains in prison with no end in sight.
Additionally, the case of Michael Schwartz highlights the disparity in sentencing between Jew and non-Jew and between Israel and other U.S. allies. Schwartz, a non-Jew who spied for Saudi Arabia, was arrested, confessed and indicted. But before he ever stood trial, a quick deal was worked out in order to appease America’s Saudi ally. His punishment? Loss of his Navy job, rank and pension. Whereas Jonathan Pollard got life for his activities on behalf of a U.S. ally, Schwartz did not get a single day in prison.
An article (“Crime and Punishment,” LA Jewish Journal – 04/03/98) by J.J. Goldberg, Editor of The Forward (N.Y.), cites high-level Washington sources indicating that the Joint Chiefs of Staff acted through Caspar Weinberger to secure a life sentence for Jonathan Pollard that has nothing to do with Jonathan’s guilt or innocence and everything to do with sending an intimidating message to Israel and to the American Jewish community: “High-ranking sources say that it was the Joint Chiefs of Staff who urged the judge, through then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, to ignore the plea agreement and throw the book at Pollard. … They wanted to send a message. … Pollard is still in jail, these sources say, not because his crime merits his lengthy sentence – it doesn’t – but because too many American Jews still haven’t gotten the message.”
Perhaps this explains why both the American justice system and the clemency process have been repeatedly subverted in the Pollard case and why, in spite of the patently false accusations against him, Jonathan Pollard remains in prison nearly 16 years later.
Well, I’m glad we didn’t. But it doesn’t do a lot of good for Pollard being a pawn either. I do like what Bibi is doing here, in a way: He’s tying Obastard and the PLO firmly together, and that looks good from where I sit. But it’s toying with Pollard again.
lol. He was sentenced after a fair trial. There is no such thing as uniform sentencing in this country, a child rapist in Montana got 30 days not long ago for crying out loud, 3 strikes laws might throw a petty thief in prison for life.
So we should be all crying about the sentence of a spy who put our national security at risk?
He isn't even close to a pressing problem as far as I am concerned.
and I might be the most pro-Israel person on this board.
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