I have never wanted to blog about Jonathan Pollard. In fact, I never wanted to learn about Jonathan Pollard. I remember feeling slightly guilty when I heard (or read?) David HaIvri say that if American Jews really want to do something to help Israel, they should address the Jonathan Pollard situation. I felt slightly guilty and I imagined he was right, but I didn't so much as Google Pollard. Why? Because I knew that if I found out about it, if I knew about it, I would be obligated to do something.
Then a friend who is the daughter of Holocaust survivors sent me this last night: The Man in the Mirror by David Holzel.
I'm bad, I'm weak, I procrastinate and avoid, but there's a limit. Could I tell a child of survivors that I don't want to know about this? That I would rather leave Jonathan Pollard in the dust bin of time so I might avoid being affected? So I might not have to know about corruption, or whatever it is that is so yucky about this? Of course not.
I wouldn't be able to face my friend if I continued to sit here with my hands over my eyes, thinking - like some three-year-old - that Gd can't see me. And it's not just her, or even Him. Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev and Udi Goldwasser look at me every day. I have to think... they have been captive for six -going on seven- months. Pollard has been imprisoned for almost twenty years. Not on the other side of the world, but in America. Three hundred miles from where I sit right now.
It's time I learned about him. And maybe it's time for you as well. We turn to David Holzel to begin the conversation I have avoided for so long.
In March 1987, I was attending a gathering of Jewish journalists in New York City, when I happened to scan the front page of the New York Times. A headline noted that Jonathan Pollard was to be sentenced that day, and as I read the article, my sense of reality shifted. An American Jew, guilty of one count of passing classified material to Israel, was almost certainly about to receive a life sentence, and not a word of it had been mentioned at this gathering of Jewish newspaper editors and writers.If there was a story for a Jewish journalist, this was it. It threw a glaring light onto the hyphenated identity of the American-Jew. It raised the question of how far an American Jew would be willing to go to help Israel, if it were in his power to render the Jewish state singular assistance. And it raised a mirror to those who dared to look at a reflection that asked: “We say we revere the martyrs who went to their death saying the Shema, rather than desecrate the name of God. Is that empty sentimentality, or do we truly believe in sticking our necks out for a just cause?”
For all that, not a word from my colleagues. And suddenly my conscience became a clock ticking down the minutes until Pollard was put away for life. All Jews are responsible for each other, we are fond of saying, but I could do nothing to stop that clock ticking down on an American Jew, just four years older than I, a Zionist who wanted to see Israel safe, and who, from his position as an analyst for the U.S. Navy, had passed military information to Israel that the U.S. had withheld.
It soon will be 20 years since that date – March 4, 1987. Jonathan Pollard and I have grown from impetuous young men to something like middle age. We have never met or spoken. But since that day, he has been my shadow. Whenever I have looked for him he is there, in prison....
He remains chained by a secret – by a 46-page classified memorandum that then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger submitted to federal Judge Aubrey Robinson. The public has never been allowed to see this memo, which reportedly outlines the damage Pollard did to American security and which, David Zwiebel writes, “is widely cited as a major reason that the judge ultimately sentenced Pollard to life in prison for espionage.”
The day before Pollard was sentenced, Weinberger submitted an additional memo to the court, in which he accused Pollard of treason. The accusation was dramatic, but inaccurate. Pollard was not charged or convicted of treason. Worse, to this day the public has not been allowed to see and judge the secret information Weinberger supposedly presented. That we are expected to accept Pollard’s life sentence without hearing a credible reason enlists us in what amounts to a witch hunt.The witch hunt has had the intended chilling effect. Every judicial appeal, every attempt at clemency for Pollard has failed. And yet I cling to the belief that, whoever else Jonathan Pollard may be, he is a Jew who attempted to help Israel, an American who has been denied justice, and ... his punishment far outweighs his crime. He has served his time.
....As the 20th anniversary of Pollard’s sentencing approaches, his shadow grows longer around me. He sits in prison with no release in sight.
Holzel ends by asking this legitimate, if somewhat bone-chilling, question:
[I]f in that time and in that place you had been in Pollard’s position, what would you have done?
Your assignment is to read it all and then meet me over at Justice For Pollard, a site known as "the nexus of all things Pollard."
Hey, I've learned something over there already (I have two monitors, a spiffy technological equivalent of being in two places at once) ... Pollard is going on not 20, but 22 years of his life sentence.
On November 21, 2006 Jonathan Pollard entered his 22nd year of a life sentence for his activities on behalf of Israel.The median sentence for the offense Pollard committed - one count of passing classified information to an ally - is 2 to 4 years.
Jonathan Pollard received his life sentence without benefit of trial, as a result of a plea bargain which he honored and the U.S. government violated.
For more information, see The Facts of the Pollard Case page.
If I can do it, so can you.