Israel Matzav

Pollard: Why now?

On Tuesday afternoon, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that he will finally formally request the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.

“I intend to continue to act with determination to free Pollard, both because of the ethical obligation Israel has toward him and because Jonathan should have the right to live with his family and rehabilitate his health after so many years in jail,” Netanyahu said in the press release.

Sources close to Netanyahu said he had consulted with American officials and his advisers about whether issuing the formal call could be helpful or whether it would do more harm than good.

Netanyahu’s request is expected to take place ahead of Christmas, which falls out on Saturday, in an effort to take advantage of the holiday season’s spirit of goodwill in the United States.

“He will issue the request at the time that is best to bring Pollard home,” a Netanyahu associate said.

Unsurprisingly, President Obama seems no more inclined to take action than his predecessors were, despite the calls in recent months for Pollard's release by former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb, by former Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Dennis Deconcini, and by for CIA director James Woolsey.

The plea apparently received a cool reception in Washington.

“I am not aware that that’s something that the president is looking at doing,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters, according to the Associated Press.

I'm sure Obama is wondering what's in it for him.

Still, Caroline Glick writes that this is the time for public pressure on Pollard's behalf.

On the face of things, it seems that this is a particularly inauspicious time to renew the campaign to release Pollard. This is true first of all because of the nature of the current president who is the only one with the power to release him.

By now there is little question that Obama is the most hostile US leader Israel has faced. It is hard to imagine the circumstances in which he would agree to do something for Israel that his vastly more sympathetic predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton refused to do.

In light of Obama's attitude, at first blush it makes more sense to try to advance Pollard's case through quiet diplomacy. This is the argument that cabinet secretary Zvi Hauser made in testimony before the Knesset earlier this month. Hauser appeared before the State Control Committee to respond to State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss' recommendation that Netanyahu set up a ministerial committee to oversee a public, formal campaign calling for Pollard's release.

But on second thought, the current campaign is eminently sensible. To understand why, we must consider the relative benefits of quiet, behind the scenes diplomacy and loud, public diplomacy.

Quiet diplomacy works well when all sides share a perception of joint interests and when its exposure is likely to change that perception. For instance, Israel and its Arab neighbors perceive a shared interest in blocking Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But given the nature of Arab politics, that perception, which enables the likes of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain to work with Israel on preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, disappears the moment cooperation is made public.

Likewise, Lebanon's Sunnis and Christians share an interest with Israel in defeating Hizbullah. But their ability to work with Israel on defeating Hizbullah is destroyed the moment such work becomes public.

Quiet diplomacy does not work when there is no perception of shared interests. For instance, regimes that repress human rights to maintain their grip on power have little interest in cooperating with free societies, when the latter demand that they free political dissidents from prison. Quiet diplomacy in the field of human rights between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War never succeeded, because the Soviets realized that opening up their tyranny to domestic criticism would destroy the system.

And today, as Cairo's fake parliamentary elections and Teheran's continued repression of democracy protesters shows, the Obama administration's quiet diplomacy with the Muslim world regarding human rights and democracy has utterly failed.

It is in cases like this where public, noisy diplomacy comes in handy. Public campaigns are helpful when one government wishes to persuade another to do something it doesn't want to do. Last week we received a reminder of the effectiveness of such behavior with the publication of protocols of meetings held by president Richard Nixon in the Oval Office.

...

SINCE TAKING office, Obama has only used public diplomacy in the Middle East to convince one government to take action it believed was antithetical to its interests. Last year he waged a forceful, unrelenting public diplomacy campaign to convince Netanyahu to abrogate Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria. And it worked.

Although it harmed the sacrosanct pillar of Zionism that Jewish rights are nonnegotiable, although it weakened Netanyahu's standing with his party and voters and although it empowered the Palestinians to expand their political war against Israel on the international stage, Netanyahu gave in. The public pressure Obama exerted on him compelled him to act against his interests.

The US is not an evil empire. And it is hard to see how a clear demand for Pollard's release on humanitarian grounds will have any fundamental impact on its nature.

And that is fine. But the fact is that Obama has no interest in freeing a suffering Israeli agent who was railroaded by Weinberger and remains in prison due to the efforts of Israelhaters who wrongly insist he did untold damage to US national security. Indeed, many of Pollard's detractors are members of Obama's political camp.

Israel can't expect a lot of help on this from American Jews, although they stand to be major secondary beneficiaries if Pollard is released. The impact of his case on the US Jewish community has been debilitating. Although the US and Israel are strategic allies which share many of the same interests and fight the same enemies, Israel's detractors in the US foreign policy community use the Pollard case as an excuse for questioning the loyalty and patriotism of American Jews who serve in the US government and support Israel. His continued incarceration casts a long shadow over American Jewry.

The odds are poor that a public campaign to win Pollard's release will succeed. But if Israel is going to do anything at all, its actions should be concentrated in the public realm. As we have seen, quiet diplomacy, the strategy the Netanyahu government tried until now, will never get him out of jail.

And Israel must act. Pollard's unfair, unjustified and discriminatory sentence and treatment are a dismal symbol of Jewish vulnerability. His personal suffering is inhumane, real and unrelenting. He needs us to stand up for him.

And so we must. And so we will. The time has come, against all odds to shout that Pollard must be freed. Now.

Read the whole thing.

Over dinner last night, I was discussing with a couple of friends why the US continues to hold Pollard. In thinking about it, I arrived at three conclusions.

First, as Caroline hints, the American Jewish community is understandably uncomfortable and ambivalent about him. There is little doubt that Pollard's case did much to harm the American Jewish community by giving 'proof' to the canard that Jews have dual loyalties.

Second, Israel was (and in some cases still is) uncomfortable backing Pollard. We're like the kid who got caught going through Mom's drawers who found something he should not have found just when Mom walked into the room. It's embarrassing. You'd rather it just go away. But it hasn't. Part of growing up is understanding that you can't always shove embarrassing things under the rug. Israel has now recognized that, and is now - way later than it should have been - trying to deal with it.

Third, President Obama, like his predecessors before him, wants something in return. The 90-day 'settlement freeze' extension has been openly exposed as a farce, and I doubt Obama would accept it any more even if it were to be offered. I wouldn't back releasing 1,000 terrorists for Pollard any more than I would back releasing 1,000 terrorists for Gilad Shalit. Nor would I back doing anything else that would jeopardize Israel's security. So what's the price?

Morally, Israel is required to keep pushing for Pollard's release. But we also need to think about what we're going to offer Obama in return. Unfortunately, with this White House, the opportunity to do justice alone isn't going to be enough, especially when Israel is involved.

I finished my coffee (see the previous post). Back with more later.

Labels: Barack Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Jonathan Pollard

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:46 PM