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Whose bidding is Abe Foxman doing at Anti-Defamation League (ADL)? What a bunch of crap by this idiot. Israel master spy and handler [Rafi Eitan] of Pollard was quoted as saying he should have put a bullet through his head. Many private persons and organizations in America, in the cause of Liberty and Freedom, call for Edward Snowden to be assassination while self-exiled in Russia. Seems to me Pollard got a fair deal and will be up for parole in 2015. Why this hatred for America Mr. Foxman?
One instance where Israeli lobby leads to no result … I wonder to whose credit or blame. In a country of political corruption, this condition of treating a citizen accused of treason could not evolve this way.
Responses To Our Call to Free Jonathan Pollard
(The Tablet) – Last week, we published an editorial arguing that Jonathan Pollard’s continued imprisonment sends a chilling message to American Jews that they are all potential traitors to their country, evincing a distinct odor of political anti-Semitism. We called on Jewish leaders and organizations to recognize and combat this implicit prejudice. Most of the leaders we reached out to for comment refused to go on the record with any–an indication of the issue’s continued untouchability. But a few did.
Below are replies from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League and the Rabbinical Council of America.
Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League:
When the Jonathan Pollard affair surfaced 28 years ago, there were claims by some that the sentencing of Pollard, life imprisonment, was tinged with anti-Semitism. We at the Anti-Defamation League took that charge seriously, made our own investigation, and concluded there was no basis for such an accusation.
I bring that up now because as the years pass and the world has changed many times over, and with more and more prominent Americans, including individuals from the intelligence community, saying “enough already,” Pollard remains in prison.
Pleas for his parole are raised on a regular basis, but go unheeded. The whole thing at this late date makes no sense. There surely is no information that Pollard possesses after all these years that can be harmful to American interests. The fact that Pollard shared information with an ally–Israel–was no reason for him not to be punished. But after this long imprisonment, the fact that it was such a close ally who received his information should have influenced a positive response when the subject of parole arose.
I am not one to equate what Pollard did, to betray his country, to the recent revelations that the United States has been spying on top Israeli leaders. Here too, however, these revelations add further context to the absurdity of the ongoing vendetta against this one man.
Yes, I use that word because that’s what it seems like at this point. If it were only a vendetta against one individual it would be bad enough. But it has now become one against the American Jewish community.
In effect, the continuing imprisonment of this person long after he should have been paroled on humanitarian grounds can only be read as an effort to intimidate American Jews. And, it is an intimidation that can only be based on an anti-Semitic stereotype about the Jewish community, one that we have seen confirmed in our public opinion polls over the years, the belief that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their own country, the United States.
In other words, the underlying concept which fuels the ongoing Pollard incarceration is the notion that he is only the tip of the iceberg in the community. So Pollard stays in prison as a message to American Jews: don’t even think about doing what he did.
I come to this conclusion with much sorrow and, as noted, as someone who resisted efforts early on to connect the Pollard affair to anti-Semitism. It is harder and harder to do so any longer.
Rabbinical Council of America Calls on President Clinton to Free Jonathan Pollard (1994)
FBI’s Robert Mueller in a repeat performance at the Anti-Defamation League conference
“In 1987, the ADL came under FBI scrutiny in the wake of the Pollard spy scandal. While assigned to the Navy’s Anti-Terrorist Alert Center, where he had access to the most closely-guarded U.S. secrets, Jonathan Pollard stole thousands of pages of classified documents for Israel, which, according to Federal prosecutors, ‘could fill a room the size of a large closet … ten feet by six feet by six feet.’ Pollard’s handler was Avi Sella, an Israeli air force colonel whose wife worked for the New York ADL as a lawyer. Pollard later wrote to friends that a prominent ADL leader was deeply involved in the Israeli spy operation.” Behind the Mask of Respectability: The truth about the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.
In November 1985, civilian U.S. Naval Intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested and charged with spying for Israel. Pollard was convicted and is still in Federal prison, but investigators never succeeded in capturing his top-level U.S. accomplices, known as the “X Committee.”
“One document Pollard is believed to have slipped to the Israelis–thought to have landed in Soviet hands, albeit unintentionally–was a huge compendium of frequencies used by foreign military and intelligence services [which] cost the U.S. billions of dollars but Pollard rendered . . . useless [and, by compromising it] may have cost informants their lives.” –Time magazine, Dec. 13, 1993.
Pollard’s Israeli handlers were granted immunity from prosecution in the United States in exchange for cooperation after Pollard’s arrest. Sella’s role, however, was unknown at the time and the Israelis were not forthcoming about his involvement. For this reason, Aviem Sella was not given immunity by the US when his role was uncovered. Israel then refused to extradite Sella for questioning. In March 1987, Sella was indicted in absentia by a Federal grand jury on three counts of espionage, facing a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and a $500,000 fine.
After Sella was promoted to Brigadier General and given command of Tel Nof Airbase, and the U.S. Congress reacted by threatening to cut aid to Israel. U.S. officials in Israel were instructed to have no contact with Sella, or with the airbase so long as he commanded it. Israel refused to relieve him of his duties, creating tensions. Sella then resigned to defuse US-Israel tensions, and was subsequently appointed an instructor at Israel’s National Security College.
This is the same ADL which received $250,000 from Marc Rich and pushed his pardon.
