As a Jew, I am thrilled and ardently saddened that Jonathan Pollard is scheduled to be released in four months.
Thirty years in prison for spying on behalf of Israel is 29½ years too long. Mr. Pollard is one of the two or three most unjustifiably imprisoned Americans of the last hundred years. His ginned-up crime is the equivalent of running a stop sign on an abandoned street.
He passed along to Jerusalem information that Washington was withholding. In fairer times, that would have meant a fine and possible loss of his job. The Israelis were secondarily complicit in his punishment.
In the years since 1985 when Mr. Pollard was so immorally treated, first by the Reagan administration, every president since, criminals who have relayed American secrets to America’s enemies have waltzed into and out of punishment in comparative fingersnaps. Mr. Pollard’s crime: He is a Jew. Paddy O’Brien would not have been treated nearly this harshly.
How ironic that the most openly anti-Semitic, racist administration in modern times indicates, merely indicates – ain’t no guarantee – that the long suffering Mr. Pollard may be released in November by a politicized parole board.
What keenly insults me is the corrupt Obama administration – bumblingly, as usual – is floating a balloon about potentially releasing him in four months to appease Mr. Netanyahu for having betrayed Jerusalem in the tragically comical Iran deal. It would be fairer for Mr. Pollard to be released and for the president and Cash-and-Kerry to take his old cell until the end – soon? — of their days.
