Lessons of the long Pollard affair
FINALLY, JONATHAN J Pollard, a former US navy intelligence analyst, is to be released after languishing in prison for 30 years.
Pollard, an American Jew, was imprisoned on charges of passing on highly sensitive military secrets to Israel. He is the only person in US history to be handed a life sentence for spying for an ally.
Pollard’s prison sentence was excessive and vindictive: other Americans have been caught passing on secrets to other US allies and have faced relatively lenient punishments.
According to Pollard’s lawyers, after he is freed at his parole hearing on November 21, he will be required to remain in the US for five years.
Shimon Peres, Israel’s prime minister when the Pollard affair came to light, has warmly welcomed his forthcoming release.
Understandably, many see the decision to release Pollard as an attempt to pacify the Netanyahu government over the deal with Iran. Dick Morris, a US strategist, has claimed that President Barack Obama is seeking to win over Jewish voters by releasing Pollard. However, as some observers have pointed out, the Obama administration would be unlikely to want to create a linkage between the Iran deal and the release of Pollard when four American prison- ers are still stuck in Iranian jails.
Undoubtedly, there will be Israeli politicians who will hail Pollard as a hero. However, such sentiments take no account of the vulnerabilities of the many American Jews who were pained by the aftershock of Pollard’s arrest and imprisonment. The Pollard affair was very troubling for American Jews, who were deeply discomfited by any notion that they held “dual loyalties”.
This same Israeli short-sightedness and insensitivity was in evidence recently when Israeli leaders were quick to call on French and Danish Jews to move to Israel following the terrorist attacks on Jewish community centres in their respective countries.
George Shultz, a former US Secretary of State, and a genuine friend of Israel, wrote in his 1993 memoirs that Pollard’s actions were “shocking and chilling, even to Israel’s staunchest American supporters”.
One of the important lessons of the Pollard affair is that Israel must tread carefully when working to mobilise the support of diaspora Jewry, and ensure that its efforts to win friends do not come at the expense of local Jewish communities. Dr Azriel Bermant is a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv