On Jonathan Pollard

Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard has been in the news lately. There are some odd stories (here, for example) about Pollard being a pawn in the current round of Kerry-brokered Israel-PLO talks. Some accounts mention his being released to the Israelis in exchange for a deal with the PLO. I find this supposed proposal so idiotic, absurd, and irrelevant that, given we have the Obama misadministration, it must be true. It is the kind of nonsense that Kerry would see as creative "outside the box" thinking.

I have stated before that the Palestinian issue is a complete fraud. Why anybody would think that creating ONE MORE corrupt, authoritarian Arab state in the Middle East would solve anything is beyond me. The Middle East "mess" has little to nothing to do with a "Palestinian homeland." There already are AT LEAST two such homelands: one is Jordan and the other is Israel (over 1.6 million Arabs have Israeli citizenship). It makes no sense for our Secretary of State to spend the amount of time he does on this, and for his issuing false deadlines for a "deal" (must have borrowed that from the Obamacare geniuses). The problems in the Middle East arise from failed Muslim states, Muslim extremism, and the real possibility that Iran will get a nuclear weapon very soon.

From the US perspective, the Middle East is quite manageable: 1) make sure Israel has a military capability second to none in the region; 2) let Tehran know in no uncertain terms that any use of a nuclear weapon would put into doubt the continued existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran; and 3) Frack! Drill! Frack! Drill!

That said, let's turn to the sorry topic of Jonathan Pollard.

Pollard has sat in the Federal hoosegow nearly three decades for passing classified information to the Israelis. He, apparently, is eligible for parole next year. Various groups seek Pollard's release, and Pollard and his wife have a web site making that case, too. You can read the arguments, most of which revolve around that Pollard passed info to an ally, not an enemy; that this info did not present a danger to US security; that others who have done worse have gotten lesser sentences; and that nearly thirty years in jail and prison are enough punishment. Here, I part company with Netanyahu, a man I admire greatly; I think he's been dead wrong on the Pollard case, and has used it for political points at home to the detriment of the US-Israel alliance.

I vividly remember the Pollard case. I was working in New York at the US Mission to the UN when Pollard was arrested for passing Israel's air force US-gathered intel on Syrian air defenses. For a Reagan-voting, conservative Jewish American diplomat such as myself, the case was horrifying. Pollard had not only betrayed his country, but, in the words of my late grandmother in Morocco, had done something "bad for the Jews." It brought up all the arguments that Jews could not be trusted with America's secrets, and that Jews, as Pollard loudly proclaimed himself, were dual citizens with split loyalties, at best.

Pollard was a lowly analyst in Naval intel. His boss, the late Admiral Sumner Shapiro, also Jewish, considered Pollard a kook, demoted him, and recommended that he lose his security clearances. The bureaucracy, however, did not follow up, and Pollard continued to gain access to classified information. He apparently became enraged that the Reagan administration decided against sharing certain intelligence with Israel. This particular intel involved a topic of great concern to Israel: Syria's air defenses. We, apparently, did not want to share our assessment of those defenses as that could reveal the capabilities we had to collect on those (and other) air defenses. It was a question of protecting means and methods. Valid? Not valid? I don't know, but certainly it wasn't Pollard's call to make.

I have seen no evidence that the Israeli intel services, and apparently there was more than one involved in this case, went looking for Pollard or actively recruited him. He walked in, and gave them a "bunch of stuff." Given the alliance with the USA, the right thing for the Israelis to have done was to report Pollard to the FBI, the DIA, or the CIA, but they didn't. They took the "stuff," and gave Pollard several thousand dollars. Pollard, apparently, also had approached other foreign officials in Washington, including an Australian naval officer, offering classified info--the Aussie reported the approach up his chain of command, and the Aussies told Pollard to get stuffed.

Pollard got snagged and sentenced to life in prison. Several Jewish organizations in the US and Israel launched campaigns--to the chagrin of Admiral Shapiro--arguing that the sentence was unfair, and motivated by anti-semitism. For those of us who were and are strong supporters of the US-Israel alliance, this was a nightmare. I had many arguments with American and Israeli Jews that this was not an issue for people to fall on their swords. Pollard was an unstable creep with a Walter Mitty complex who never should have had access to classified information.

Are twenty-eight years in the slammer enough? Don't know. I hope, however, the decision on whether to give him parole gets taken independently of any nonsense re an Israel-PLO deal, a deal that will never hold, anyhow. I certainly won't shed any tears if the decision is to keep Pollard in the pen.

Pollard committed treason. He should pay for it.