As for the Knesset reaction...in 1986, when the Israeli KGB agent got caught, the Knesset was extremely PO'd. They never stopped supporting Pollard, but they were livid at the Mossad and Shin Bet for letting an embarrassing situation get even worse.
As for blowing smoke and passing gas, I leave that chore to the rabid Pollard fanatics. Espionage, no matter who its being done for, is espionage, and Pollard passed enormous amounts of data to Israel. He did the crime, he can do the time. Technically, he could've gotten the death penalty (some of the material he passed qualified--space and nuclear-warfighting related material).
Professional Liars Have a Field Day
William Stevenson - The Toronto Sun - December 14, 1991
"... Hersh, the author, and his publishers refused to believe the sources were discredited. One investigator who taped damning interviews to support the case against Hersh was Steven Emerson whom I first knew at U.S. News & World Report. His refusal to gloss over unwelcome facts led him to write books himself, of which the latest, Terrorists, makes plain his knowledge of international conspiracy.
Reporters like Emerson agree Hersh's claim that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir passed the Pollard secrets to Moscow is a figment of the imagination of a former low-level Israeli defense department translator, Ari Ben-Menashe, who portrayed himself as a top intelligence agent....
The Pentagon's Friend
Editorial - The Forward, (NY) January 15, 1999
Much of the debate over the fate of Jonathan Pollard rests on what secrets he did or did not pass along to the Israelis and whether or not they used this information to bargain with the Soviets during the heady years just before the end of the Cold War. Since the records are sealed, we need somebody to break the record open and, if it is possible to do so without damaging national security, tell us in a way that illuminates for the Jewish community and for the rest of the country, the reason that Pollard needs to be kept in prison.
A resolute Israel-basher like Seymour Hersh, writing in the current New Yorker, is not the one to do such a thing. His own biases are well known in the wake of his 1991 book attacking Israel's nuclear capabilities, "The Samson Option." Mr. Hersh is moreover cynical and insulting about Pollard's orthodox religious beliefs and about the sincerity of his supporters in the Jewish community. These days Mr. Hersh is putting forward the idea that Pollard was a cocaine addict and alcoholic, deep in debt and that is why he succumbed to the Israeli offer of money for passing along reams of secret documents about code-breaking and communication intercept procedures....
Public Enemy No. 1
January 21, 1999 - The Jerusalem Post - Uri Dan
The unceasing crusade against granting any kind of clemency to Jonathan Pollard is based on exaggerations - not to mention lies - aimed at painting him as some kind of monster that threatened America's national security.
... Joining the demonization of Pollard this month is the noted American journalist Seymour Hersh, who, in an article that appeared in the New Yorker, accused Pollard of everything he could think of.
He described Pollard as a drug abuser, who betrayed his country because he needed money to support his habit. Hersh also claimed that the US intelligence secrets that he passed on to Israel made their way also to the Soviet Union, during the period that the KGB still ruled Russia and was conducting its own espionage activities throughout the world.
Now, anyone in Israel who is familiar with the Pollard affair knows that no secret or document that he gave to Israel was passed on to the Soviet Union....
... American security officials were in the dark as to how this had occurred, and tried to pin the blame on Pollard. Several years later, they learned the bitter truth: that it was a CIA man, Aldrich Ames, who had sold out his colleagues for money and caused the biggest setback the US intelligence community had ever suffered.
But when these shocking facts were revealed, there was no senior US administration official with the guts to get up and admit that the allegations against Pollard with regard to the events in the Soviet Union in the late Eighties had been proven baseless.
There is the same lack of truth to Hersh's turning of Pollard into a drug addict, with the help of a dubious "witness."
It's no surprise that Seymour Hersh includes half-truths and fairy tales in his sensational stories, particularly since Pollard is linked to Israel, which Hersh had already turned into a nuclear monster in a previous book. In the same fashion, he paints Pollard as a monstrous spy, who severely harmed American national security.
Media Monitor: Seymour Hersh - Unreliable Source
January 22, 1999 - Jason Maoz
One can agree or disagree with the proposition that Jonathan Pollard ought to serve out his life sentence for spying on behalf of Israel, but alarm bells should go off -- on both sides of the argument -- when someone like Seymour Hersh slithers out from under his rock to take up the cudgels for the anti-Pollard position.
In a lengthy article in the Jan. 18 issue of The New Yorker, Hersh recycled several allegations he first aired in his 1991 book The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, the most serious of which is that an unknown quantity of the most highly-classified data stolen by Pollard ended up in Soviet hands.
The Samson Option was widely panned for its unsubstantiated charges and unseemly reliance on questionable sources. Hersh’s prime informant for the book’s most sensational claims was one Arie Ben-Menashe, an individual who has been labeled "a notorious, chronic liar" by The Jerusalem Post and "an abject liar" by the investigative journalist Steven Emerson, and who in fact failed a lie-detector test administered by ABC News.
Another source for The Samson Option, a character named Joe Flynn, admitted that he’d deceived Hersh in exchange for money. According to the Near East Report, "After Flynn was exposed, Hersh said he regretted not checking his facts more carefully....
Seymour Hersh Has Record of False Claims, Bad Journalism
Yated Ne'eman - January 22, 1999 - D.D. Levitin
....
HERSH HAS REPEATEDLY USED UNRELIABLE SOURCES
HERSH HAS COMPARED ISRAEL TO THE NAZIS AND MADE OTHER STATEMENTS SHOWING ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS
HERSH ADMITTED LYING ABOUT ASPECTS OF IRAN-CONTRA
HERSH'S QUESTIONABLE INTERVIEWING TECHNIQUE
Why Do They Hate Pollard So Intensely?
Hershel Shanks, Editor - Moment Magazine April 1999
... "Senior members of the American intelligence community" leak to a Jewish investigative reporter with a distinctly Jewish name horrendous charges about the damage Pollard caused, damage that "could extend up to today." You don't have to be a great investigative reporter to write the anti-Pollard article Seymour Hersh wrote in the New Yorker. All you need to be able to do is transcribe unsubstantiated charges by willing leakers. A good secretary could have done this.
I wonder how Hersh happened to get this story. Did he initiate it, or did someone come to him and say something like: "Psst. Hey, Sy. Want a story? We've got the inside dope. It's yours for nothing. And you'll get another New Yorker byline."
And was that preceded by someone's wondering who to leak it to? Like: "Sy Hersh has a great reputation as an investigative reporter. And besides, he's Jewish. Let's use him."
All of this bespeaks not random opposition but a carefully planned and coordinated high-level effort to make sure Pollard stays in prison.
Why the intensity of it? Why so broadly based? Who is this guy Pollard that he deserves this attention 14 years after his crime, after more than a dozen years in jail?
There's another issue: Dual loyalty. Again, we dare not talk about it But the fact is that the charge is made, and in some quarters it is widespread. Jews are still suspected of dual loyalty. Worse, maybe some are guilty. Doesn't everyone have some hierarchy of moral values?
I have my own secret sources-and I can vouch for their reliability. They tell me that after the Pollard case became known, their security clearances were placed under special review because they were Jews. A number of them hate Pollard as much as anyone else in the intelligence community does. They want him to "rot in jail," as one of them expressed it to me. It is he who raised the ugly head of "dual loyalty."... [Blame-the-victim mentality]. ...
As for the Knesset reaction...in 1986, when the Israeli KGB agent got caught, the Knesset was extremely PO'd. They never stopped supporting Pollard, but they were livid at the Mossad and Shin Bet for letting an embarrassing situation get even worse.
Still no URL on the 'Knesset reaction'. I'll have to assume that it's more smoke and gas unless you can come up with a real source.
Also, I don't know what 'Israeli KGB agent was caught in 1986'. Unless you can come up with a valid source we'll have to assume that's more smoke and gas too. Maybe you were refering to the Russian double agent, Vitali Yurchenko. Poohbah, you seem to be propagating Aldrich Ames lies:
In Washington, anxiety lingers over Aldrich Ames, the director of U.S. counterintelligence revealed as the highest-ranking Russian agent to operate in American intelligence.
Many details are still unknown, but some suspect Ames mounted a conspiracy against Jonathan Pollard to allay Panic in U.S. intelligence circles over the infiltration of a mole and to deflect all suspicion from himself.
It appears Ames spread the word about a Russian mole in Israeli intelligence and claimed Pollard was responsible for the arrest and execution of dozens of agents that Ames himself had exposed.
... CIA Director of Counterintelligence Aldrich Ames was recruited in 1984 by the Russians and handsomely paid. For 10 years Ames supplied staggering amounts of information. The precise extent of the damage he caused may never be known. For the moment, what we do know is that in the early years he gave the Russians a great deal of information about the activities of U.S. intelligence agents in Russia. A good number of them, probably many dozens, were discovered, arrested and killed.
... In July 1986, KGB agent Vitali Yurchenko “defected” to the West. For four months, Yurchenko had numerous conversations with Aldrich Ames’s boss, CIA Director Bill Casey. Yurchenko sold the Americans a large quantity of information that included some truthful data mixed with a generous dose of disinformation. The primary goal was to keep the most highly prized Russian agent - Ames - out of the line of fire.
In post #19 you said: Pollard's material did NOT covr Iraq--it covered the USSR. And a largish amount of the material turned out to be going to the USSR (an Israeli with access to it turned out to be a KGB agent).
Your assertions seem to be fully discredited.
As for blowing smoke and passing gas, I leave that chore to the rabid Pollard fanatics.
The only ones passing gas around here is the anti-Pollard mob. The pro-Pollards are responding with clean, well-reasoned discourse and backing them up with dozens of valid references. The anti-Pollards are responding with angry rants and pointers to disinformation. So far, only one source from the anti-Pollards: http://www.crimelibrary.com/spies/pollard/5.htm, (credit gaijin in post #53) seems to have any valid facts we can check out. Unfortunately, gaijin also gets a demerit for fabricating a lie in post #55 - people making stuff up shouldn't quote the Washington Post because they have an archive where you can go back and check to see if the reference is true.
Espionage, no matter who its being done for, is espionage, and Pollard passed enormous amounts of data to Israel. He did the crime, he can do the time.
He's done far more time than others who have done far worse.
Technically, he could've gotten the death penalty (some of the material he passed qualified -- space and nuclear-warfighting related material).
He passed information that the Russians were sending warfighting material to the Arab states surrounding Israel. The Soviets were arming Hezbullah, Hamas, Islamic Jehad, Egypt, Syria, the Saudis ... and dozens of other unfriendlys. For some strange reason, the U.S. wanted this information kept from Israel (and the American public) -- and that's why Pollard must remain in jail forever.