Ambassador To US Visits Pollard

The Jerusalem Post ^ | May 17, 2005

[Cecily]

Israel's Ambassador to the United States Danny Ayalon met Jonathon Pollard in his cell in a North Carolina prison for the first time Tuesday.

It was the first official visit by an Israeli government representative since Pollard's incarceration some 19 years ago.

Sources in the embassy said that Ayalon was bringing a message of support and encouragement from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Army Radio reported.

[Cecily]

Whatever happened to Pollard's first wife? She knew what he was doing and enjoyed the money they received too.

[konaice]

Why is this visit allowed?

[Cecily]

The article says that his recent petition for prisoner of Zion status was meant to generate some attention, and it did.

[Jaysun]

When I read the title I thought you'd misspelled "Poland".

Last I heard, his wife Esther was over in Jerusalem on a hunger strike. She said she wouldn't eat until her husband was released. That was about 10 years ago. If she's a woman of her word we have to assume that she starved to death.

[konaice]

From the story
As a result of previous legal action in Israel, Pollard was given Israeli citizenship in 1996 and later officially recognized as an Israeli agent.

So they admit his guilt...

Pollard's petition also included claims that he was subject to "cruel" mistreatment and torture during his years in prison.

Oh sure, likely story. He has all the hot-button words down pat doesn't he...

In spite of all the aid and support we give Isreal they still spy on us. Now they want to start visiting their partner in crime in prision? Whats up with that? Why is he given the opportunity to associate with his co-conspirators? Declare prisions off limits to foreign meddeling and be done with it.

Pollard can rot.

[happyathome]

You know, like most Americans I am a supporter of the State of Israel. It would just be so much easier defending them against all the pro-Palestinian idiots if they (Israel) would stop spying on us. Seems like every 2-3 years there is some new scandal which is quickly swept under the rug.

[laconic]

More than $100 billion in aid and loan guarantees and not a single friend outside the United States. They need to stick to their own business.

[Cecily]

I am not defending their actions, but one reason they (Israel, not Pollard, who did it for money) do it is because history has taught them many painful lessons about leaving their fate in the hands of any Gentiles.

[Calvin Locke]

A postulation in another very recent post said that it's to reassure all the other spies for Israel that they will
not be abandoned, if captured.

But I have no idea why access was given to a foreign nation to what was an American citizen at the times of his crimes
and conviction.

[Alberta's Child]

I am not defending their actions, but one reason they (Israel, not Pollard, who did it for money) do it is because history has taught them many painful lessons about leaving their fate in the hands of any Gentiles.

Funny how Israel always seems to have just enough faith in these "Gentiles" to cash the checks we send them.

[Cecily]

Since Israel turns around and buys military equipment from us with the bulk of it, we can't complain. They are supporting our economy.

[Rockingham]

And history also shows that such an attitude alienates many Gentiles and damages Israel's friendships and alliances. If Israel truly thinks that they are alone, they ought to give up the billions of aid we send them every year and all claims on American support.

[Words]

... Pollard, who did it for money ...

I'd appreciate some credible proof of it.

[Words]

If Israel truly thinks that they are alone, they ought to give up the billions of aid we send them every year and all claims on American support.

The question is can the US defence industry afford losing the US govt. socialist handouts and Israeli brainpower?

[Rockingham]

Israel's economy would swiftly tank without US aid. Their scientific and technical talent would soon become available for hire in the US on favorable terms.

Egypt similarly depends on US aid, the difference with Israel being that there is relatively little human talent in Egypt.

[Cecily]

I can't remember the name of the book, but I read the story in a book about espionage, and the book was credible to me (it wasn't one of the books by Victor Ostrovsky, and I don't think it was in "Gideon's Spies" by Gordon Thomas).

[Words]

Israel's economy would swiftly tank without US aid.

I don't think so. It will crash the socialism-thumping Labor in Israel, though, not that I care much about them. Israel may dust off old projects suppressed by US administrations. The market is big.
But what would the US defence industry do without the socialist handouts of the govt.? I guess, they will be secured by boosting supplies to the "friends", who vote against the US 95% of the time in the UN and lamenting (sanctioning) "unfaithful" Israel, while srewing it.

[Rockingham]

I had better explain myself in detail here because US-Israeli relations are so prone to emotion and controversy and the Pollard case is a particular flash point.

The US arms budget is large, but concessionary US arms sales to Israel and other military aid is but a small part of it. Money that would be saved if the US ended such aid to Israel would easily be consumed by other defense needs with little discomfort to the industry.

Calling the US defense industry socialistic is silly. The industry depends on and is bound to serve the interests of its prime customer, the US military. That makes for a lot of lobbying, influence peddling, and heavy restrictions by the government, all common attributes of socialism. Nevertheless, the US defense industry is capitalist in the key criteria that ownership and the flow of profits are in private hands.

US foreign aid has various purposes, but the overriding one is that US interests are served in some fashion, even in assistance to organizations and countries that do not like us. The rationales are case specific.

Egypt, a country that does not like the US, gets US support for one prime reason: to buy relative peace for Israel. In that sense, US aid to Egypt is an extension of US support for Israel and its tenuous peace with Egypt. A serious effort to terminate US aid to Egypt would be strongly opposed by Israel.

A free market Israel in a peaceful Middle East could go it alone economically without US aid. But Israel has a tightly controlled socialistic economy, and since Zionism was expressly formulated as socialistic and modern Judaism has a strong attachment to socialism, Israel is unlikely to embrace free market capitalism. Even in a peaceful Middle East, a socialist Israel would be regularly asking for US aid.

Of course, the Middle East is not peaceful and is unlikely to become so in the foreseeable future. Without billions of dollars per year in military and economic aid from the US, socialist Israel would not last long because the strain of paying for its defense would run the country into bankruptcy within a few years.

Israel is a substantial net burden to the US. If Israel did not exist, US relations with the Muslim world would be easier and the US could more easily play its cards as a superpower to pick and chose allies and enemies in the Muslim world according to our interests.

George Marshall, the revered top WWII general and US Secretary of State at the time of Israel's creation, was fiercely opposed to US recognition of Israel because he foresaw that it would be a strategic complication and burden to the US. The USSR is believed to have recognized Israel in part because Arab-Israeli conflict would be useful to Soviet efforts to court friends in the Muslim world -- and so it was.

These calculations incline more than a few Americans to resent Israel and to wish that the US would cut off support and get the best terms available for ourselves from the Muslim world. But I am adamantly pro-Israel. Not only does Israel exist and should exist, but the US has a moral and strategic obligation to support Israel as a fellow democracy. Israel's existence spurs conflict with the Muslim world, but the prime cause of such conflict is not Israel but the vile pathologies of Islam and of Arab societies.

What I find galling from Israel are those instances in which it does direct harm to the US: the Pollard case (Israel spying on the US and negating billions of dollars worth of intelligence capacity essential to US security); the attack on the Liberty (Israel deliberately attacking a US naval vessel and causing dozens of American casualties); and arms sales and intelligence cooperation with China (which means that China is using Israeli military equipment, technology, and intelligence against America). There are even some unresolved reports that suggest Israel knew that 9/11 was coming and preferred to let the attack proceed so as to benefit from US action against Muslim terrorists.

For all the dedication and shrewdness of Israel's military and intelligence agencies, they are reckless at times in seeking advantages where fundamental good sense urges that American patience should not be risked beyond its natural limits. If the left wing of the US Democratic party comes back into power -- which is always a possibility -- Israel would soon find itself pressed hard to make fatal accommodations with her Muslim neighbors.

Clinton did that, more for his ego than anything else, but post 9/11, the American Left back in power would seek a de facto abandonment of Israel for the sake of an American peace with Islam. A fully energized right wing of the Republican Party would be essential to preventing that, but the accumulated antagonisms generated by the Pollard case and other episodes of Israeli overreaching would weaken and perhaps disable such opposition.

Although those episodes are relatively obscure for now, a liberal Democratic administration could easily stir them to prominence by releasing new information about them. That was done by the Clinton administration as to the Pollard case in the aftermath of the collapse of the Wye River Plantation deal. Israel got a lot of bad press in consequence. It took weeks before Arafat's turn down of the deal was made clear.

The Bush administration is strongly pro-Israel -- but Israel's arms deals with China have recently led to a downgrading of US defense cooperation on a range of projects. Is loyalty to Pollard or arms deals with China worth gravely damaging Israel's relationship with the US? As a supporter of Israel, I think not -- and I wish that Israel's leaders were of the same opinion.

[churchillbuff]

Is there any truth to the claims that information passed along by Pollard ended up in Soviet hands, and American operatives in Russia were identified and executed as a result? If that's true, why is Pollard allowed to live?

[Cecily]

I have never read that his espionage went that far, and it is never mentioned in stories about him.