Pollack has been found guilty of espionage for a foreign power, in this case Israel. When Pollard joined the government he pledged "to bear true faith and allegiance" to the Constitution. Clearly, he did not. We have a federal law that requires all foreign agents to register. He did not.
Lord Palmerston had it exactly right: A nation has no permanent allies, only permanent interests. Israel and the U.S. have usually acted in concert, but Israel is not a formal treaty ally, and at times our national interests have diverged. In 1967 the Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan personally ordered a combined air-sea attack on the U.S. spy ship Liberty that killed 34 Americans and wounded 171 -- the largest combat loss the Navy has sustained in any WAR since World War II. Israeli apologists claim the attack was accidental, but the premedited nature of the attack has been documented beyond dispute. The NSA monitored Israeli surveillance and recorded Dayan's order. The ship was listed in Jane's which is on board virtually every warship in the world. The ship was flying an enormous American flag. Israeli boats approached within 50' of the Liberty and A-4s buzzed the mast just prior to the attack. In 1969 Israeli SAM missile radar locked on a U.S. Air Force reconnaisance aircraft that was overflying Israeli positions in the Golan. During the first Bush Adminstration, the Israeli Prime Minister Shamir betrayed some of America's most sensitive state secret -- our global nuclear targeting plan -- to the Soviets. Again, this is very well documented.
So while I like and respect the Israelis, my loyalty is to the U.S.
General Washington had loyalist spies in his camp before the crossing of the Delaware and the 'surprise' attack on Trenton. This during war. He didn't go nuts about it -- he knew that secrecy is best composed of of two elements -- the most primary speed (aka alacrity, dispatch) -- that is a no secret ages well. The second is trust. But not the trust born of a bureaucrat's or ordinary member's oath, no matter how threatened with death and tearing out of one's guts. A trust that comes from both a serious oath and a close, direct association in hazardous or other deep-trust forming activities. In other words not that veneer-level trust that is all one can ever hope for at best and which one is rotten to play for in mass enterprises such as our modern Federal Intelligence bureaus.
In the Cold War, early middle and late, we ouselves relied on a simple rotten meaness to keep secrets, a method that just doesn't cut the mustard, secret keeping wise. It works short term and on many, many men -- few have that internal spark, flake or hard ore that allows them to break the bonds of threat and general cussedness. But a few do. And always will -- no death penalty, no drawing and quartering will stop them. That's the facts. History. Experience.
Doesn't really matter why they do it. What does matter is you can not stop it from happening.
The number of men a person can deeply trust to keep dread secrets, is a handful, at most a few more than a score. At most. General Washington knew that. He would never have relied on secret keeping of vital state secrets like we do now -- or have done for the past sixty years. It is both dishonorable and ineffective.
Look -- China has our best nuke designs and Pollard did NOT give them. China is still Red China -- unlike the Soviet Union, which fell apart -- even they supposedly had all that dread info via Spy Pollard and PM Shimar. Did Pollard do us a favor?
Yes, later in the Revolutionary War Washington hung a spy rather than trade him. Trades -- at least for Officers -- were common. But Washington knew the difference between war an peace. Even though fragile, and full of little conflicts a peace is still a peace. You trade. Officers, enlisted and spies.
Washington, himself, on a spy mission -- had been captured. Back just before the full outbreak of the French-and-Indian Wars. Some of his captors -- like many freepers would have evidently -- wanted to kill him. Cooler heads prevailed. Washington was given his parole -- he was set free.
We are at peace. Israel is our ally. Pollard should be deported to Israel.