Special Knesset Meeting Called to Release Pollard

[Jesus Malverde]

15. Why Obama won't pardon Pollard

The current US President has never commuted a life sentence for anyone and doesn’t appear open to changing his policy.

Israel is abuzz with allegations of American bad faith in continuing to imprison convicted spy Jonathan Pollard despite the fact that recent disclosures have revealed that the US itself has snooped on many friendly countries for years.

A November 10 Jerusalem Post editorial described the situation as “an egregious double standard and a stunning example of American hypocrisy.”

In Commentary Magazine, Jonathan S. Tobin charged that the use of the Pollard case “to demonize Israel or to claim that the Jewish state behaved in a manner unbecoming an ally is undermined by the revelations about the United States’ own considerable efforts to snoop on its friends.”

And Pollard’s wife Esther complained to the Post that US President Barack Obama wouldn’t free Pollard even as he participated in the traditional presidential ritual of pardoning turkeys on Thanksgiving. She found it objectionable that Obama would show “compassion and mercy to two lowly barnyard birds again this year, granting them a full pardon and sparing their lives” without showing her husband the same benevolence.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Why-Obama-wont-pardon-Pollard-334476

Many suspect the US refusal to grant clemency to Pollard is evidence Obama holds anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, or even anti-Semitic sentiments.

They’re wrong.