Special Knesset Meeting Called to Release Pollard

[Jesus Malverde]

14. Meyer Lansky and Jonathan Pollard

Meyer Lansky and Jonathan Pollard are both significant for what they say about US-Israel relations.

Israelis quarrel as to whether the country should have given in to US demands to extradite him, despite claims of achieving sanctuary in Israel under the Law of Return, but we've pretty much stopped arguing about him since he died in 1983.

What did he supply to Israel, and how important was it for what Israel was able to do?

Who violated the plea bargain, which was supposed to provide him with limited jail time? Was it first Pollard, who granted interviews in violation of the gag order he had agreed to, or was the principal actor Caspar Weinberger, said to be aiming for Pollard out of insecurity about his own Jewish background?

How stable was Pollard? Should he have been identified as a ticking bomb with unusual loyalties to Israel, and removed from his position with access to sensitive materials? Perhaps his superiors should be serving as much prison time as he. (The same argument could be made about those who continued the employment of Mordecai Vanunu, up to the time that the oddly behaving individual photographed the interior of the Dimona nuclear facility and sold the pictures to a British newspaper.)

Did Israel abandon Pollard in his time of need, when he was refused entry to the Israeli Embassy, which would have provided him at least temporary refuge from arrest?

How hard have Israeli officials pressed the Americans over the years to release him?

Has he served enough time, given how others have been treated for similar or more severe infractions?

Has he hurt American Jews via the issue of dual loyalties, and is it on account of this that there are American Jews who express a lack of interest in his fate, or oppose freeing him?

Israelis are also divided about him.While many believe that he has been punished enough, some do not want him here as the darling of the nationalist and religious right, likely to lionize him for breaking the law of the United States for the sake of Israel and the Jewish people.

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/meyer-lansky-and-jonathan-pollard