The Patriot Post® · Israel's Sad Mistake

I need to say real quickly that I am a huge believer in Israel. I think the Israelis may be the greatest ally the United States has in today’s world and, because my Jesus was a Jew, my loyalty and friendship for Israel is pretty strong.

But I believe that sometimes Israel makes mistakes, just as we in the United States are sometimes wont to do, and what just happened between our two nations bothers me a lot. In my way of thinking, it should never have even been allowed to happen and, very sadly, Israel is to blame.

There is a despicable man named Jonathan Pollard who is a traitor and now sits for life in a Federal prison in North Carolina. He once worked as a civilian analyst for the U.S. Navy at The Pentagon but in 1985 he was finally caught after copying enough classified documents to fill a walk-in closet. He was a spy for Israel.

That’s right, back during the Cold War even “our best friend” spied on us and Pollard was the turn-coat caught for spying against his own country. The evidence was overwhelming, the damage devastating, and he was sentenced to life in prison for espionage. To this day he is despised by Americans but, in a sad sort of way, he is equally lionized by the Israelis and many of the Jewish faith.

Two weeks ago his father, a professor emeritus of biological services at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., died at age 95. Dr. Morris Pollard’s lone lament was that he never got freedom for his son. Needless to say, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons refused to give Pollard permission to attend the funeral.

But the Israelis were quick to intervene. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implored Vice President Joe Biden to make it happen and – get this – a lawmaker named Nachman Shai, obtained 73 signatures of Israel’s 120-member Parliament in an effort to allow the convicted spy the temporary freedom to go to his father’s burial in Indiana.

Protests were staged last weekend at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and a liberal editor of a leading Israeli newspaper wrote, “The Americans have still not figured out how principled an issue this is for the Israeli people. It is simply an issue of humanity. To let him say a final goodbye to his father after spending 25 years in jail, you don’t have to be ‘Israel’s best friend.’ You simply have to be a human being.”

Let’s go back to 1985 for a minute. A panicked Jonathan Pollard sought political refuge at the Israeli Embassy in Washington just hours before the FBI nabbed him. Two years later, when he was found to be guilty, Israel was quick to apology for recruiting him, and for spying on the U.S., and said they would never do it again.

Pollard, in jail, was granted Israeli citizenship in absentia in the late 1990s when Netanyahu was first in office and, since then, the prime minister has actually visited Pollard at the Federal prison. Oh, there has been a great swirl of bleeding hearts who have also lobbied for the traitor’s release, including Henry Kissinger, George Schultz and even Dan Quayle, but American might doesn’t take to spies too kindly.

As a matter of fact, the late Navy Admiral Sumner Shapiro summed it nicely when he once said, “We work so hard to establish ourselves and to get where we are, and to have somebody screw it up… and then to have Jewish organizations line up behind this guy and try to make him out a hero of the Jewish people, it bothers the hell out of me.”

Well, it really bothers me too. Jonathan Pollard was a citizen of the United States when he made the decision to commit treason. The classified materials that he secreted to a foreign country could have gotten American servicemen and women killed, not to mention his fellow citizens.

He was the one who decided to be our enemy, not just Israel’s friend. The Bureau of Justice says he will become eligible for parole in 2015 but despite my adoration for Benjamin Netanyahu and my respect for the 73 members of parliament that signed a petition in his behalf, I hope Jonathan Pollard will remain in jail for the rest of his life for the decision he once made to harm the United States of America.

That’s the humane way to deal with a traitor.

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