Free Republic

The United States has proposed freeing Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in a trade-off deal in which Israel would agree to proceed with the next round of prisoner releases, including Israeli Arab prisoners, and the Palestinian Authority would agreed to extend the current peace talks, Israel’s Army Radio reported Wednesday. It said the offer had been conveyed to Israel and the PA, but there was no official confirmation. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki was quoted telling journalists accompanying Secretary of State John Kerry to a meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas Wednesday morning that there were currently no plans to release...

If any of you had any doubt that Jonathan Pollard is anything other than a hostage being held by the United States, this should dispel them: The US is reportedly considering releasing Pollard as an incentive for Israel to go through with the release of 'Israeli Arab' terrorists at the end of this week in order to keep the 'peace talks' going. The talks, which began last summer, were supposed to have concluded at the beginning of April with a framework for negotiations, to be written by Secretary of State John Kerry. But PA chief Mahmoud Abbas has made it...

Obama administration hasn't ruled out releasing Pollard in exchange for Israel’s agreement to free Israeli Arabs convicted of terrorist acts. With Israeli-Palestinian peace talks teetering on the brink of collapse, US officials are mulling a desperate bid to resuscitate the negotiations by making a significant move that would win the approval of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition, one that may perhaps include the release of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, Israel Radio reported on Sunday. Citing Western diplomatic sources, Israel Radio reported that Obama administration officials have not ruled out Netanyahu’s proposal that Pollard be released in exchange for Israel’s agreement...

Knesset Land of Israel Caucus heads Yariv Levin (Likud Beytenu) and Orit Struck (Bayit Yehudi) expressed regret on Wednesday that a recording of the parliamentary group’s meeting with US Ambassador Dan Shapiro was leaked to the press. The meeting, which took place on Tuesday, was closed to the press and was described by attendees as “charged,” after MKs used harsh language in discussions of imprisoned Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard’s treatment and accused the US of bias against Israel in talks with Palestinians. Shapiro spoke to Levin and Struck, saying that he was upset that the meeting was recorded. The two...

CIA Director: Jonathan Pollard Is In Prison Because He's JewishBy Karen Levy Israel News AgencyJerusalem — February 9, 2014 ... There have been many senior US officials who have called for Israeli Jonathan Pollard to be released, but none ever came from this highest of security institutions. Former CIA Director James Woolsey has reiterated his call for the immediate release of Jonathan Pollard, now in his 29th year behind American bars over charges of spying for Israel. Speaking to the Israel News Agency, Woolsey stated: "It's enough. After a quarter century the time has come to free Pollard. That doesn't...

The journalist from the British Guardian who published some of the documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said on Monday that there are additional leaked documents, unpublished as of yet, relating to Israel. Speaking to Israel’s Channel 10 News, Glenn Greenwald also said that Israel had done the right thing by linking the revelations about American spying on Israeli targets to the continued imprisonment of Jonathan Pollard. Greenwald’s interview comes weeks after leaked documents showed that American spies monitored the email traffic of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Greenwald said he had found...

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...

British companies sold chemicals to Syria that could have been used to produce the deadly nerve agent that killed 1,400 people, The Mail on Sunday can reveal today. Between July 2004 and May 2010 the Government issued five export licences to two companies, allowing them to sell Syria sodium fluoride, which is used to make sarin. The Government last night admitted for the first time that the chemical was delivered to Syria – a clear breach of international protocol on the trade of dangerous substances that has been condemned as ‘grossly irresponsible’. The sales were made at a time when...

<p>The CIA station chief opened the locked box containing the sensitive equipment he used from his home in Tel Aviv, Israel, to communicate with CIA headquarters in Virginia, only to find that someone had tampered with it. He sent word to his superiors about the break-in.</p>

Professor Morris Pollard was laid to rest Monday, denied the privilege of having his son Jonathan present to recite the Kaddish – the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead – over his grave. Jonathan Pollard sat grieving for his father in his jail cell instead, his mother already having died -- also without his presence to comfort her in her final hours. Despite thousands of phone calls that flooded the White House switchboard, an appeal to the U.S. State Department by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren and pleas by dozens of Israeli lawmakers, the Obama administration refused to allow Pollard to...

As the calls for clemency for Jonathan Pollard continue to intensify, Henry A. Kissinger, an elder statesman, well-respected diplomat, and experienced member of the United States intelligence community, has become the latest American governmental leader to issue a public call for Pollard’s release. Pollard has spent more than 25 years languishing in a federal prison for passing classified information to Israel, an ally of the United States. Kissinger, who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, sent a letter to President Obama requesting that he commute Pollard’s sentence to...

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...

Uniting Behind a Cause by Ari Bussel and Norma Zager There is no better example of “taking the key and throwing it away” than the way we deserted Jonathan Pollard. Most all of us at least. Pollard, who admitted to spying for Israel, has been in top security American prison since 1986. If only he were charged and found guilty more recently, under a President who loathes Israel, than when Ronald Reagan was the 40th US President (1981—1989). Three months ago, following a long sting operation by the FBI, ten Russians were charged spying for Russia in the United States....

A scientist who worked for the US Defense Department, a White House space counsel and other agencies was arrested Monday on espionage charges. Department said Stewart David Nozette, 52, of suburban Chevy Chase, Maryland, was charged in a criminal complaint with attempting to communicate, deliver and transmit classified information to an individual he believed to be an Israeli intelligence officer. The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf violated US law. Nozette was arrested Monday by FBI agents. He is expected to make his initial appearance in federal court in Washington on...

Anyone who spends as much time in bookstores as I do can smell an emerging literary fad. About 10 years ago, it was books about angels. Not to be undone, the rationalists and atheists have launched their own cottage industry of "God doesn't exist" and "He's mean" books — Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, among them. We are witnessing the birth of another literary craze — the "Do we really need Israel, anyway?" book. (ENLARGE) Jeffrey K. Salkin of Atlanta is an ordained rabbi and director of Kol Echad, an adult Jewish learning center. He is the author of...

Former CIA director George Tenet places most of the blame for the breakdown of the security plan bearing his name and other efforts to stop the violence after the outbreak of the second intifada on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in his new book published Monday. "Almost always, that last impenetrable barrier to peace had the same name: Arafat," he writes in his 576-page memoir, of which an entire chapter is devoted to the late PA chairman. In At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA,Tenet also confirms reports from the Wye River negotiations in 1998 that he...

The Case Against Johnathon Pollard In the last decade, Jonathan Pollard, the American Navy employee who spied for Israel in the mid-nineteen-eighties and is now serving a life sentence, has become a cause celebre in Israel and among Jewish groups in the United States. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a consortium of fifty-five groups, has publicly called for Pollard's release, arguing, in essence, that his crimes did not amount to high treason against the United States, because Israel was then and remains a close ally. Many of the leading religious organizations have also called for an ...

Israel And Freedom For Jonathan Pollard By Caroline Glick The Jerusalem Post - With INA Publisher's Note Below Jerusalem ---- April 28......Jonathan Pollard is one of the most polarizing figures of our times. Pollard, a former intelligence analyst in US naval intelligence, has now served 20 years of a life imprisonment sentence following his conviction for transferring classified US intelligence materials relating to Arab ballistic missile and nonconventional weapons programs to Israel from May 1984 until his arrest in November 1985. For his contribution to Israel's security and for his long suffering in prison, Israel considers Pollard a national hero....

The Knesset passed a resolution on Tuesday demanding that the government make the US release of Pollard a condition for Israel's freeing of Palestinian prisoners. It also called on the government to demand that the US immediately release Pollard on humanitarian grounds because of his long prison service and his deteriorating health. The resolution, drafted by the National Union, Shas and National Religious Party, noted that Israel has recognized Pollard as an Israeli agent who acted loyally for the security of its citizens. Yitzhak Levy (NRP) said Israel was being asked by the US to make gestures to the Palestinians....

On May 13, 2004, Senator Edward Kennedy berated Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz at the Senate Armed Services Committee, condemning "disaster after disaster" in U.S. Iraq policy. Well before the Abu Ghraib revelations, Kennedy has sought to transform Iraqi freedom from a philosophical and strategic issue into a partisan debate, without regard either to reality or result. On April 6, Kennedy called Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam." On March 5, 2004, Senator Edward Kennedy, speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations, took the president to task for allegedly exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq: "The evidence so far leads to...