The Jonathan Pollard industry. There are plenty of howls and whines to let Jonathan Pollard go, as if he is some victim in Kafka story of deep injustice of the system. Stuck in the in-between space of Kafka’s Before The Law. The truth is that Pollard is a traitor and a spy who passed sensitive information to people who should know much better. In Kafka’s parable,The gatekeeper waits and allows the man to continue waiting, but never letting him pass through the gate. As the man is dying, he questions why he was the only person seeking the Law to which the The gatekeeper replies that the gate he guards was only meant for him and since he is dying now, the, the gatekeeper does not need to give him a glimpse anymore and is going to close it. Something like not letting the Jews of Exodus enter the Promised Land. As a final word, Kafka has K assert that the Law is not real, it is a falsehood, and was not worth seeking invoking the spectre of the martyr and a glorification of the existential condition. …
—Former Florida Congressman Robert Wexler, a confidante to President Barack Obama, on Middle East matters has written to the President asking that convicted Israel spy Jonathan Pollard be released. Wexler, whom I respect, joins some other progressives like former Reagan administration defense official and Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb in calling for a pardon of Pollard.
As I’ve written before, I think Pollard is a first class traitor to the United States — someone whose betrayal is worse because he worked for an ally. That’s a worse breach of trust than if Pollard had been working for Cuba or China or Iran.
Wexler, who serves as President of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, should know that the only way to get Pollard released is to treat him as pawn in the chess match over Israel’s future relations with Palestine and the Arab region.
In my book, Pollard should die in prison for his deeds that betrayed his fellow citizens and only be released if he became a bargaining chip in a scheme moving forward America’s strategic interests. …
Israel sets the temperature in the region — and continues to engage in settlement expansion undermining any trust in its long term intentions to negotiate a two state deal…. In this circumstance, the release of Pollard for ‘nothing in return’ from the Israelis in improving the climate in their neighborhood would be a further betrayal of US national interests.
Leave Pollard in prison until the Israel government comes to understand that its passive aggressive behavior on settlements and peace negotiations is undermining its long term national security interests …—Steve Clemons. click image for source…
( from the New Yorker, 1999)…According to the Times, George J. Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, warned the President that he would be forced to resign from the agency if Pollard were to be released. Clinton then told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Pollard’s release would not be imminent, and ordered a formal review of the case… Pollard, these officials told me, had done far more damage to American national security than was ever made known to the public; for example, he betrayed elements of four major American intelligence systems. In their eyes, there is no distinction between betraying secrets to an enemy, such as the Soviet Union, and betraying secrets to an ally… Many officials said they were convinced that information Pollard sold to the Israelis had ultimately wound up in the hands of the Soviet Union… Describes how he got a job in Suitland Maryland, as an analyst at a Naval intelligence facility… According to senior members of the American intelligence community, Pollard’s argument that he acted solely from idealistic motives and provided Israel only with those documents which were needed for its defense was a sham designed to mask the fact that he was driven to spy by his chronic need for money. … Describes how he was sentenced to life in prison… A number of officials strongly suspect that the Israelis repackaged much of Pollard’s material and provided it to the Soviet Union in exchange for continued Soviet permission for Jews to emigrate to Israel. Other officials go further, and say there was reason to believe that secret information was exchanged for Jews working in highly sensitive positions in the Soviet Union. A significant percentage of Pollard’s documents, including some that described the techniques the American Navy used to track Soviet submarines around the world, was of practical importance only to the Soviet Union… Tells about Pollard’s sale of a highly-classified ten-volume signal intelligence “bible”… A senior intelligence official whose agency was involved in preparing the report for the White House told me, somewhat facetiously, that he would drop all objections to Pollard’s immediate release if the Israeli government would answer two questions: “First, give us a list of what you’ve got, and, second, tell us what you did with it.”…
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1999/01/18/1999_01_18_026_TNY_LIBRY_000017310#ixzz2IzybLJNB
COMMENTS