Posted on 06/18/2011 10:29:06 PM PDT by Eleutheria5
Morris Pollard, the father of Jonathan Pollard, has died at age 95. HIs family has sent an urgent plea to President Obama, asking him to show mercy and allow Jonathan Pollard compassionate leave to attend his father's funeral. Jonathan Pollard was convicted for passing classified information to a foreign country and has been incarcerated for 26 years Pollard's father had been hospitalized for the last several months. During this period, activists on Pollard's behalf and various well-known Israelis, attempted to no avail to obtain permission for Jonathan to visit his father on a 24 hour leave.
The refusal prompted MK Aryeh Eldad to send a message of condolence to Jonathan, saying: "The people of Israel will not forget President Obama's cruelty in ignoring all the requests to free you. A president who lacks the basic human feeling that would allow a son's visit to his dying father should not wonder that the Jewish people will make every effort to prevent his re-election."
A petition signed by a 75 israeli MK's, asking Obama to allow Pollard to visit his dying father was to have been handed to Vice President Joe Biden shortly. It came too late.
MK Nachman Shai (Kadima), initiator of the petition, said that its signers represented a broad spectrum of parties and opinions, who united for this humanitarian purpose. "I hope that we will succeed in opening President Obama's heart," he had said.
Recent efforts on the part of various persons to convince President Shimon Peres, considered by Deptury Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon the natural choice to turn to Obama on this issue, had been unsuccessful.
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
For some reason I was thinking that the funeral was going to be in Israel, rather than in South Bend, Indiana. Yes, you are correct that the prison people could ensure he returned from a funeral in Indiana.
These are the “comps”—the comparables Harmonium posted.
Jonathan Pollard - Israel - ife imprisonment
Michael Schwartz - Saudi Arabi - Discharged from Navy-No time served.
Peter Lee - China† - 1 year in halfway house-No jail time.
Ronald Montaperto-China- 3 months
Xiaodong Sheldon Meng- China - 2 years
Samuel Morison- Great Britain 2 years 3 months
Phillip Selde -El Salvador 2 years
Sharon Scranage - Ghana- 8 months
Steven Baba - South Africa -5 months
Jean Baynes - Phillipines-1 year and 3 months
Geneva Jones - Liberia-3 years and 1 month
Frederick Hamilton -Ecuador- 3 years and 1 month
J. Reece Roth China and Iran 4 years
Abdul Kader Helmy Egypt 4 years 2 years
Joseph Brown Phillipines 6 years
Michael Ray Aquino Phillipines 6 years and 4 months
Michael Allen Phillipines 8 years
Robert Kim South Korea 9 years 7 years
Leandro Aragoncillo Phillipines 10 years
Thomas Dolce South Africa 10 years 5.2 years
Steven Lalas Greece 14 years
What is your answer to them?
God obviously did NOT save us. Obama’s the proof of that.
Between 1775 and 1783, some 200,000 Americans took up arms against the British Crown. Just over 6,800 of those men died in battle. About 25,000 became prisoners of war, most of them confined in New York City under conditions so atrocious that they perished by the thousands. Evidence suggests that at least 17,500 Americans may have died in these prisons—more than twice the number to die on the battlefield. It was in New York, not Boston or Philadelphia, where most Americans gave their lives for the cause of independence.Those aboard ships had it the worst, for them there was no hope. The Admiralty refused prisoner trades.New York City became the jailhouse of the American Revolution because it was the principal base of the Crown’s military operations. Beginning with the bumper crop of American captives taken during the 1776 invasion of New York, captured Americans were stuffed into a hastily assembled collection of public buildings, sugar houses, and prison ships. The prisoners were shockingly overcrowded and chronically underfed—those who escaped alive told of comrades so hungry they ate their own clothes and shoes.
See http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Patriots-American-Prisoners-Revolutionary/dp/0465008356
I’m okay with him going to funeral as long as he wears an ankle ring with a tracer.
You might have an argument as to disparity of sentencing. However, your characterization of this abysmal low life as heroic and a savior of the West from Iranian nuclear attacks sounds more like something that would come from the mouth of his defense attorney than an objective observer.I also think his wife should have served more time and not been released as early as she was.
YOu are a fool there bvw,
Pollard admitted to and was convicted of giving and selling American secrets to a foreign country,
This marxist punk we have as a president has YET to be charged or convicted.
Get a grip
AND, Israel would likely have executed him ...
So there were not communist spies during and prior to the McCarthy era? Because you did not like McCarthy’s tactics does not mean the people that were accused were not spies and communist sympathizers. Because a murderer does not receive his Miranda warning does not mean factually he was not a murderer.
There were spies. They spied for allies.
The Soviet Union was an official ally during the war.
The USSR was an ally in the vein of being allied with a natural enemy as the lesser of 2 evils to defeat the Nazis. No one can seriously equate them with our British allies. The spies that were supplying info to the USSR were doing it not for altruistic reasons to advance democracy but for purposes of aiding a communist philosophy they believed in and wanted exported to the US.They continued to do so after the war, Can you argue that supplying the USSR with the Atom bomb technology after the war was over was for purposes of “aiding an ally”?
Not an “apologist,” myself. But your analogy is way off. He told the Russians how the US was following its nuclear subs. What would Al Qaeda or Hamas even do with something like that? He told Israel about Syria’s poison gas program. He told Israel about Iraq’s nuclear program. Both were intelligence that the US had already agreed to share with Israel, but which his superiors ordered him not to pass along. Because he passed them along, both the United States and Israel were saved a lot of grief, which is the basis of any inclination I have towards leniency in his case.
He did not, to my knowledge, out any US agents working under cover overseas. He did not to my knowledge cause any physical harm to anyone, or compromise any intelligence operations, other than with the submarines. Forgive my ignorance if I’m wrong. I don’t really know all the facts, and would happily say a mea culpa if you can bring an instance to my attention in which he did any of that.
But what specifically do you mean by “the SAME information (to Al Qaeda, Egypt, Hamas, , Jordan, Syria, etc.)” What sort of information would you regard as “the same”? If you mean the bomb that Israel allegedly made at Dimona, that was outed in the media by an intelligence agent, who is now walking around free, having served his sentence.
Now here’s why I’m not an apologist for him. From what I have learned over the years, it seems he was a coke head, and he was selling secrets to support his habit. He was no hero. I’d be content to let him rot, but for the fact that we are now looking at a democratic, free Iraq thanks to the fact that Saddam didn’t get the bomb, thanks to Pollard. If he did that with the worst motives in the world, the world still benefits from this act. On the other hand, he also tried to sell secrets to Pakistan and Red China. I might be willing to overlook the Soviet Union, which no longer exists, since his leaks to Israel did cause Saddam to remain nukeless. But Red China is a sworn enemy of the US, and Pakistan is only sometimes a little better. So right now I’m leaning towards keeping him in, but letting him pay his last respects in some way to his dad.
“AND, Israel would likely have executed him ..”
Oh, and Israel doesn’t have the death penalty except for Nazi war criminals and their collaborators.
The USSR was not an official enemy. They still had the status of a ally.
From June 1941 to September 1945 the US supplied the USSR billions in military aid and armaments. The US offered to include the USSR in the post-war support of the Marshall Program in 1947. The Soviets rejected any of that aid.
The Rosenbergs did spy, they did pass nuclear secrets to the Soviets. Their spying occurred during WWII, starting in 1943.
The term “Cold War” was first known to have been used in July 1947. Stalin ordered the blockade of West Berlin on 24 June 1948. The Rosenberg’s last microfilm was passed to an agent on 30 June 1948.
The Soviets say that the information the Rosenbergs passed them was not helpful in their development of a nuclear bomb.
The Rosenbergs were arrested in 1950, tried in 1951, and executed 58 years ago yesterday, 19 June 1953. Pope Pius XII was among many who appealed for them not to be executed.
A crime that wasn't done isn't a crime.
Red China is a sworn enemy of the US
Red China enjoys Most Favored Nation trade status and buys a whole lot of our bonds. Not exactly a "sworn enemy". Not at least, since Nixon and ping-pong.
Clearly Red China is a problem and dangerous. So too are Saudi Arabia and Egypt. It wasn't Chinese that attacked our embassies, ships and interests around the world, not was it Chinese attackers on 9/11. Bin Laden was found in the heart of Pakistan though!
THE DEFINITION OF TREASON ACCORDING TO ISRAELI LAW:
In article B. of the penal code, entitled: “Treason”, clause 97 is entitled:
“Harming the sovereignty of the country or its wholeness”.
From clause 97:
(a) Any person who committed an act with the intention of harming the sovereignty of the country, an act which may cause harm to the sovereignty of the country, shall be sentenced to death or life in prison.
(b) Any person who intentionally allowed any part of land to be removed from the sovereignty of the country or added to the sovereignty of another country, an act which will bring to that, shall be sentenced to death or life in prison.
One of my earlier posts stated the same thing - an appropriate memorial service within the confines of the prison.
BTW: he is going to be released in 4 years [probably] as a policy that was in effect at the time he was sentenced allows for it ...
But there is no sentencing law that allows the sentence of death to be implemented, except in the case of Nazi collaborators. “Death or Life Imprisonment” is to allow a sentence of death if the sentencing statute allows, and it doesn’t. Paranthetically, every PM from Begin to the present has violated this law. What do you call giving away the Sinai, Aza, pieces of Judah and Samaria, if not “intentionally allowed any part of land to be removed from the sovereignty of the country or added to the sovereignty of another country, an act which will bring to that...” Weizman and Ben Gurion might have violated it by allowing the partition in 1921 and agreeing to the further partitioning in 1948. It’s a lousily drafted piece of legislation, because paragraph a is too vague. Anyway, it was not enforced with reference to the Dimona leaker, the closest thing we have here to the Pollard case. He served a sentence and then went free.
I have heard those arguments before. After years of denying any culpability, the Rosenberg apologists had to concede they were spies after the release of the Verona papers wherein Soviet documentation did confirm their status as spies. They moved to a new tack that they were innocents aiding an American ally and as a backup the information was not really that important.
1. The Rosenbergs and their cabal went into business before 1941 when the Soviets had a pact with the Nazis. They were communist Soviet partisans and the fact that the Soviets later became a US “ally” during the war was only coincidental to their mission as Stalinist supporters who wanted to advance the Stalinist cause even to the detriment of their country
2.The US offered Marshall aid assistance to Stalin. We aid Palestineans and we also supplied aid to Iraq during the Iraq Iran war. Does that mean anyone supplying nuclear secrets to Hamas or Saddam during the Iran Iraq war should not be treated harshly?
3.The Soviets whenever they mention that the Rosenbergs did not supply them info that led to their development of the bomb are disingenuous. The Rosenbergs supplied them with the corroborative drawings to corroborate info they already had from and Hall and Fuchs who were part of the cabal of spies. That is if we are to believe the Soviets at all.
4.Pope Pius advocated vs their being put to death. Irrelevant. The Church has opposed the death penalty for decades. Popes are always sending entreaties to death penalty state governors to commute death penalty sentences.We should pay them no heed.
Spies for allies do time and/or expatriation. They never get executed. The Rosenbergs were executed.
A pact with the Nazis in 1941 did NOT make the US an enemy of the USSR, we didn’t go to war with the Nazis ourselves until after the USSR did.
When did Popes start objecting to the death penalty? That really started only recently, with the papacy of Pope John Paul II in 1978. Before then, historically, the Catholic Church supported the death penalty in appropriate cases.
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