Justice May Yet Be Served to the Spy Pollard

Ari L. NoonanEditor's Essays

[img]2534|right|Jonathan Pollard||no_popup[/img]Short of Swish Obama’s kidnapping by illegal aliens, the best news to emerge from the East this morning was the Jew-loathing President’s hints that the convicted spy Jonathan Pollard may be released. 

Not that honorable intentions are not at the bottom of the latest Obama sewer. It is political ulterior motive time for the most dishonest President in our history.

The devious Pollard-release gimmick would be an administration ploy to browbeat further concessions out of Israel – such as a cap on home-building in East Jerusalem – in the name of salvaging piece talks with the Palestinian terrorists. This way, pompous Secretary of State Kerry can qualify for his yearned-for Nobel Prize and President Obama will have a backup legacy in case ObamaCare remains in the toilet.

29 Years in Another World

I count myself among a small band of Jews who have been tracking the ugly Pollard case all 29 years we have been aware of him – half of his life on earth.

Son of a Notre Dame University professor, Mr. Pollard, a Jew, was a U.S. Naval systems analyst in the early 1980s when he admittedly passed American intelligence secrets to our ally Israel. Don’t look so surprised. We spy on our friends, hourly. They spy on us.

The Pollard matter, starting with his 1985 arrest, differed from standard spy cases in several important ways. Typically, spy cases are adjudicated, time served and completed with impressive brevity — before you and I finish breakfast.

But the government, from the start, determined to make a living – or dying, if necessary – example of the Jew Pollard.

The Jew

That he is a Jew is the single most important element in the case. Had he been Urban O’Reilly of the EUB Church, he probably would have been released in time to celebrate the first Clinton inauguration.

Mr. Pollard’s Jewishness, compounded by the dreadful thought to many that Israel was the beneficiary, colored every legal (read: political) step in the case. He is the only American ever convicted of spying for an ally who was sentenced to life in prison.

The State Dept.’s rampant anti-Semitism dates back to the FDR days. In these times, it has flowered under the nurturing fingers of Ms. Clinton and Mr. Kerry, eager to offset their nude records.

In the 1980s and ‘90s, I interviewed his suffering parents, Morris and Molly, and I covered demonstrations by small groups of Los Angeles Jews, staged to urge his release from prison. The most prominent leader among the protestors, a brave woman from Congregation Beth Jacob, an Orthodox synagogue on Olympic Boulevard, died years ago, frustrated but confident that one day Mr. Pollard would breathe free air.

Other American spies arrested and convicted around the time of Mr. Pollard’s crime had the decency to sneak American secrets to enemy governments. Therefore these Gentile chaps did their time and returned to the normal world.

It may surprise you to know that from 1985 to the end of the century, the American Jewish community was sharply divided on the Pollard case. Traditional Jews backed him – liberal Jews, governed by their left-wing political muse because their Jewish beliefs were so frail, concluded Mr. Pollard got what he deserved.